Dear WWGD:
I am a postdoc working on an important scientific problem, one that I find rewarding and challenging. But a month before the end of the funding cycle, our team had a budget surplus, at which point my supervisor suggested that I find a way to spend it. Otherwise, he sighed, we’ll never see that kind of money from the NSF again, and he’ll have to eliminate a research assistant.
So I went out and bought the department a 3D photocopier. This purchase, as you might expect, has made me the heroine of the department—not just because I’ve saved an RA’s position, but because I’ve given us all access to a 3D photocopier. Could be cooler? Not much.
And sure enough, next funding cycle has come around, and the NSF hasn’t reduced our budget, so everybody’s happy, right? Except I sometimes feel guilty, even though I know I shouldn’t. If I’d said no, my supervisor would have just gotten one of the other postdocs to buy something else, and our department would still have a $17,000 toy, but what I’d have is a gap in my CV, because right now I’d be out looking for a job without benefit of a reference, I guarantee.
Look, I’m just an aspiring scientist who’s trying to be rational about the moral choices I’ve made and the moral choices I’ll make, so please help me out. The next time something like this happens, I want to know:
What Would God Do?
WWGD: Allow a three-year-old to get leukemia.
I can give you a Christian response, whether you really wanted one or not. Other responses might help you as well.
My answer depends on which God are you talking about. Even the Christian religions, which are considered monotheistic, provide three views of God: the Creator (God the father), the Redeemer (Jesus), and the Advocate (the Holy Spirit). If we look to the Old Testament, at the Creator, the Department would be Judged as sinful and your lab would be knee-deep in cockroaches. If we look to the synoptic gospels, the life of Jesus, He would challenge you to use that money to make your lab more relevant to the people that it serves. By writing here, you have followed God as the Holy Spirit, who lit a fire in your soul to focus on God in a secular world and call the question to the attention of the rest of us.
To God, the important thing is to ask the question, and find an appropriate response. To the Department, you have rendered unto Caesar what is Caesar’s. I doubt either judges you harshly; and yet you feel there is something amiss. I should think that has to do with not (in your view) spending the money in a way that benefits society. That falls in the seeing-God-as-Jesus category. This decision is made and past; but next time, if you want to act differently, I would recommend you refine your question to “What would Jesus do?”
@max: I’m not really a postdoc. The situation is fiction. But thanks for taking the time to comment.
(told to me by Allan Sandage)
There is a story from the early days of the Mt. Wilson and Palomar Observatories. Many years ago, when Walter Adams was director (1923-46) , the observatory was run with a very tight fist. Adams liked complete control. He was known to be very frugal, even replacing higher wattage bulbs in the mountain dorm rooms in the “Monastery” with lower wattage ones (such that astronomers would go to the mountain with their own bulbs to replace them). He also edited and approved all papers by the staff, such that all papers written during that time sounded like Adams had written them. At the end of the year he always proudly sent money back to the Carnegie Trustees to show that he was a frugal steward of the Observatory.
Every year there was a party at the Carnegie Institution on P Street in Washington DC where the Directors would gather with captains of industry and well appointed politicians. It was evidently quite a fete and lots of money was spent on food and wine. As the story goes, Adams was in the bathroom and complained to someone why Carnegie was spending so much money on a party rather than give more money to the divisions. He was told it was because some tight-fisted director always sent money back at the end of the year, and the Carnegie Trustees used it on the lavish party. I don’t know what GWHD, but Adams was thereafter careful never to send money back to P Street.
As long as you spend it on something useful within the terms of the project, you are probably within moral and legal bounds.
God, of course, would wake the NSF up and make them see how pointless their rules are.
This is a classic issue in govt (and some other large organisation) budgeting – you end up with a surplus in the last few months of the year. It may be because you’ve kept a contingency float or because a project is delayed, so term payments haven’t been required. But the system isn’t sufficiently flexible for this. How do you cope?
All sorts of solutions – some of the moral ones being less than “proper” – make advance payments to a regular supplier, for example (you know you are going to need 20x next year – pay for them now.) Or even hoarding consumables (as you are not a business, you probably only asset account for major items), if you have the space. Or an early IT refresh, etc.
Re Richard: Regardless if it is fiction or nonfiction (and just for conversations sake), reading this blog and Max’s response kind of opened my eyes from a long forgotten value towards morality. I guess I too have been too caught up in the worldly humdrums because my initial reaction to your question on WWGD is “huh? It benefited everyone didn’t it? What’s wrong with that?” Only then when I read Max’s response did I realize that my values and morals have become so twisted to have adapted such an outlook. The society nowadays have set a certain standard of acceptance towards the slightly immoral acts because “of practicality” or “it’s thinking out of the box” or “it’s a gray area”. We no longer sweat small stuff like that, pushing our conscience further into the background. But then again, this world is all about survival. I’m not so sure as to how an individual would survive and succeed if one would strictly follow the code of what’s right and what’s not…
Richard, I would appreciate some clarification on WWGD’s reply. I can think of some implications, but I would like to know what you intended that reply to indicate.
@Bruz: I think I’d prefer to let the reply speak for itself.
@morgan: You’re right, of course. But regarding fiction/nonfiction, I guess I saw the point of the piece as the punchline (see Bruz), not the set-up. Still, if the piece gets people thinking about morals, that’s a good thing.
Wow, some readers are not quick at picking up dark humor, huh?
@Max Robinson: I think WWGD is the better question because we all know what J would do. He’d blow it wine, fish, bread, and prostitutes while Judas pouted in the corner.