[contrarian1234]

I'm not in the same field, nor in the USA, but I've found the incentives usually work but there is a misunderstanding of the role of the professor.

All the professors I know have their teams pursuing multiple lines of work. Some are "safe" and some are more out there. A typical "safe" area is usually running some very expensive piece of equipment (like a mass spectrometer or something) b/c that automatically generates collaborations and gets your name on lots of papers. You need to mix and match and use the safer work to fund your more experimental ideas. They also basically never do too much research themselves. They will dip in and give suggestions and guidance and help out, but their primary role is to teach and act as a lab manager - directing students and postdocs to different areas of research. So in a way, if you're being a professor and personally deeply involved in the research, then you're "doing it wrong".

On a high level, at least from these popsci descriptions of her work, it kinda feels like Katalin Karikó was just not doing the professor role correctly? The fact she was working on this one problem (and seemingly nothing else?) is very surprising for a professor. Professors aren't just tenured post-docs. If you don't want to be a lab manager then I don't think being a professor is the job for you

[kevinventullo]

I guess the question I have is whether this is really the optimal setup. Shouldn’t we be encouraging more tenure-aged faculty to be getting their hands dirty with research?

[Fomite]

There are professors that choose to go this route. It is very risky, but if it pays off, it pays off big.