Granting agencies demand that proposals specify in detail an investigator's intentions, methods, anticipated findings, and relevance to disease treatment. An investigator's prior efforts heavily influence the likelihood of obtaining a grant. This test of feasibility, funding for junior colleagues' salaries, and other obligations reduce an investigator's risk tolerance. But this fear of risk also lessens the possibility of revolutionary discoveries, which often come from taking on tasks perhaps thought to be nearly impossible. On many levels, cooperation between industry and university serves the commonweal, but funds from industry necessarily come with encumbrances that can harm the academic enterprise if the goals are not closely aligned.
Scholarly work is often less immediately profitable than more pragmatic goals.
With attention so diverted, many worthy but less immediately fruitful lines of investigation will wither from neglect. Of course, money powers the academic enterprise. The issue is balance. The proper academic equation is the reverse of Jim's, where power and money serve knowledge or scholarship and where we are judged by these endpoints. Richer, bigger, and better are not necessary bedfellows, and we must not fear making scholarly choices about money.