[Fomite]

"In the old days, people did research for the sake of research, and mostly out of Europe came the greatest scientific works we have seen."

In the old days, scientific careers were largely restricted to the independently wealthy or those who could secure patrons.

I also feel like there's a sort of tension with what Hacker News broadly wants out of science. There's often a lament that there aren't enough staff science positions, or positions where people can have a career beyond a postdoc that's just devoted to research.

Those things have to be paid for. Postdocs are expensive. Staff scientists are expensive - and terrifying, because they have careers and kids and mortgages. Postdocs are expensive.

That ends up eating a lot of a PIs time, because the success rate on proposals are low. Even worse now.

Would I love to be able to just sit in my office, think my thoughts, and occasionally write those thoughts up? Sure. But I'd also like to give people an opportunity to have careers in science where they can get paid.

[IronyMan100]

The Idea of a staff Scientist is to Help with writing proposals, teaching and doing Research. It's also the only way of conserving the tacit knowledge of the Research group. Your PhD Student and Postdocs are gone after 3-6 years, and often enough the knowledge generated in this time is leaving with them. You are Not sitting around and writing Up your thoughts.

[Fomite]

Staff Scientists don't help with teaching, essentially by definition, unless we dilute teaching to the very broad level of "helping students with things". They are certainly helpful for research, and in my experience only somewhat useful for writing proposals - certainly not to the point that they'd be self-funding (rare is the staff scientist who is good at writing proposals, wants to, yet does not want to be a PI).

None of that gets to the actual point of my comment, which is that it's all well and good to say people should do science for science's sake, but in the meantime, rent is due.