In his latest article, tells a striking story: much early life science research software was created as non-commercial passion projects; the field got "spoiled" by free labor, now doesn't know how to directly fund software dev for science.
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The suggestion (which seems good!) is that labs should be able to hire professional research software engineers (and designers and PMs), at competitive rates. What changes would be needed to the NIH funding process to permit this?
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One thing I wonder (which Elliot alludes to): would it be better to "timeshare" these teams across multiple labs? IME it's often tough to consistently "saturate the queue" of engineers in research-land—too hard to make long roadmaps. (see 3rd section in andymatuschak.org/2021)
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With some exceptions, biotech values assets (ie therapeutics) not people. Software is all about the people. It’s a classic culture clash.
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