[notbob]

Several million dollars is not a lot of money for a group this size. We're talking "travel to annual meetings and fund administrative overhead (e.g. security clearances are not cheap)" money.

There's "not in it for the money", and then there's "dipping into my personal funds".

Also, again, for many of these scientists, 1MM+ is the annual opportunity cost they pay to stay in academia/public sector vs. private industry. If they were in it for personal payout, they'd have jumped ship a long time ago.