Greta nodded reflexively. "It’s hard to believe how far we’ve fallen. Science funding used to be allocated by peer review from within the science community. It wasn’t doled out by Congress in pork-barrel grants for domestic political advantage. Nowadays, scientists spend forty percent of their working time mooching around for funds. Life in science was very direct, in the good old days. The very same person who swung the grant would do her own benchwork and write up her own results. Science was a handicraft, really. You’d have scientific papers written by three, four co-authors—never huge krewes of sixty or eighty, like we’ve got now."