In an earlier post about the Sand Island that this blog is named after, I show my brother Ron as a kid, on a boat off of the island of Pohnpei. I didn't mention that he later returned to Pohnpei to teach at the same school that my parents worked at in the '70s, and while there began the field work that has developed into an ambitious career in biological research.
     Since his days directing an agriculture program on Pohnpei, he has traveled throughout the Pacific and written a monograph on the ants of Micronesia. He's collected specimens in New Guinea and Indonesia, and is going to the Philippines this May, on a grant from National Geographic. He has a PhD from Harvard and has been a post-doc at the American Museum of Natural History in New York and now the University of North Carolina at Charlotte.

And he can't get a full-time job.

He writes papers, is a good communicator (unlike many scientists), researches, organizes conferences, and teaches well, but these skills are not enough. The ability to secure grants outweighs all else, since academic labs cannot depend on their host universities for complete financial support.
     The New York Times and others have written about a shift from public funding for scientific research to investments by the rich. While their donations are generous and impressive, why would enthusiastic billionaires support scientists doing long-term research on general questions that don't have an immediate effect on their pet causes? Cut off from federal money, scientists have to scout for sources of money and court the hell out of it so that they can then fund their own jobs.
     Broad analysis about the state of scientific research in the U.S. has gotten personal. Won't someone give my brother a job? He can teach a killer workshop and is also a lot of fun at a party; brains and social skills to match. And, he made a new website that is independent of any school — a necessity since he doesn't know where he will have to go next in order to pay the rent.