Peter and Geoff: First, I echo those who applaud your new venture. I will be reading. Now to my demur about how you characterized my post over at Effect Measure. I didn't say that the pig in the python problem was from new grad students and post docs coming online. Here is what I said:

"In other words, the increase in funding and facilities encouraged more laboratories and more graduate students and more post docs. Now funding is flat and there is a large encumbered expense. Zerhouni says 80% of the grant money is for ongoing, committed research. Of the 20% available for new grants, with flat funding the only new moneies are from grants that have run their course and not been renewed. Flat funding is in reality a substantial decrease because research expenses greatly exceed inflation as new technologies required to keep a lab competitive come on line."

As the labs get bigger and more work is taken on, the assembly line runs faster and any funding shortfall is felt more quickly. Bigger labs mean more grant proposals to keep them running and more projects. Renewals are needed to keep the students and postdocs past their traineeships and as grants run out they need to be renewed, not by the post docs but by the PIs. I see this happening in my own department (which I chaired for 26 years). The first victims here won't be senior investigators like me. I'm all set. It will be the middle class of researchers, those in their mid to late forties who can't get their grants renewed or new RO1s in time and slip off the tenure track. This affects those below them -- the graduate students and the post docs -- but just as significantly, it affects the next generation of academic leaders, my replacements. Thus this is a double whammy, or triple, if you consider the hams in the middle of the sandwich.

Anyway, keep up the good work. We need more discussion and analysis from your perspective. We are at opposite ends of academic careers so we are bound to see things differently. The discussion will do everyone some good.