# Is there a name for people who just get paid to be geniuses **URL:** \ **Category:** Factual Questions\ **Created:** [August 7, 2025, 3:17am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-there-a-name-for-people-who-just-get-paid-to-be-geniuses/1021795 "2025-08-07T03:17:00Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 18\ **Page:** 2
**Author:** ![pjd](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/pjd/32/3009_2.png) [@pjd](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/pjd)\ **Post date:** [August 7, 2025, 4:22pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-there-a-name-for-people-who-just-get-paid-to-be-geniuses/1021795/21 "2025-08-07T16:22:28Z")
> [@Wesley\_Clark](#): > > I can’t remember the thread, Probably [this one.](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/17-year-old-refutes-math-conjecture-enters-phd-program-without-a-degree/1021655/18) ---
**Author:** ![md-2000](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/9d8465/32.png) [@md-2000](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/md-2000)\ **Post date:** [August 7, 2025, 5:32pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-there-a-name-for-people-who-just-get-paid-to-be-geniuses/1021795/22 "2025-08-07T17:32:46Z")
Wasn’t that the purpose of Bell Labs, before deregulation and anti-trust breakup destroyed the river of money that made it possible? And the flood of inventions and basic scientific discoveries that came out of that sort of proved it was a good idea. ---
**Author:** ![psychonaut](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/psychonaut/32/4655_2.png) [@psychonaut](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/psychonaut)\ **Post date:** [August 7, 2025, 5:37pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-there-a-name-for-people-who-just-get-paid-to-be-geniuses/1021795/23 "2025-08-07T17:37:15Z")
> [@wolfpup](#): > > Virtually any well-credentialed senior professor in academia fits that description. Even well-credentialed senior professors are usually required to teach classes and sit on committees, which is a far cry from the OP’s “give them a blank check and let them decide what problem to solve and how to solve it”. Most research universities set a nominal research:teaching:service ratio for faculty; 40:40:20 is fairly common, but this can vary from university to university or department to department, and sometimes exceptions are granted to individual faculty members. For example, your teaching load might be (temporarily) reduced or even eliminated if you manage to pull in a particularly large research grant, or if you take on a major administrative role such as Department Head or Vice Provost. Anyone lucky enough to have a 100:0:0 ratio _and_ complete freedom to set their own research agenda is most likely in a non-tenured, bring-your-own-funding situation. Their job title is probably something like “research scientist” or “research fellow” rather than “professor”, and while they are indeed working with a blank cheque, the bank account it’s drawn on has only as much money as the grants they’ve been awarded. They need to periodically replenish it with more grants in order to maintain their job. But as long as they’re successful at doing this, they fit the OP’s description quite well. ---
**Author:** ![Q.Q.Switcheroo](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/q.q.switcheroo/32/5713_2.png) [@Q.Q.Switcheroo](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Q.Q.Switcheroo)\ **Post date:** [August 7, 2025, 5:59pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-there-a-name-for-people-who-just-get-paid-to-be-geniuses/1021795/24 "2025-08-07T17:59:16Z")
> [@psychonaut](#): > > a 100:0:0 ratio _and_ complete freedom to set their own research agenda Isn’t that the case for fellows of All Souls College at Oxford? ---
**Author:** ![psychonaut](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/psychonaut/32/4655_2.png) [@psychonaut](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/psychonaut)\ **Post date:** [August 7, 2025, 6:04pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-there-a-name-for-people-who-just-get-paid-to-be-geniuses/1021795/25 "2025-08-07T18:04:19Z")
> [@Crafter\_Man](#): > > I worked at a research institute for 28 years. One thing to be cognizant of is that the “superstar/genius researcher” is often anything but. Most the time they’re only an expert in one thing: the fine art of making themselves look good. It’s all about perception. The real work is done by others, and they simply take credit for it. And then they get lots of recognition, awards, and accolades for it. Amen to that. > [@](#): > > There are definitely “real deal” geniuses out there. But they tend to be the ones quietly working in the lab. Yes, and if they’re not reporting to anyone else, they’re quite often early-career researchers who have pulled in one of their first grants as a PI. Unfortunately, some of them end up devolving into the parasitic types you describe. Though in a way the funding system encourages this: if you succeed at getting a major research grant, then this might lead to your getting an even bigger grant the next time around, and so on. You use the grant money to hire research assistants and postdocs to help you do the work, write the papers, come up with new ideas, and write further grant applications. Your applications are ever more successful and so you hire more and more staff. Eventually your group becomes so big that you can’t possibly involve yourself in all their work, and they end up doing experiments, writing papers, coming up with new ideas, and writing grant applications with little or no involvement from you. But because it’s _your_ name and reputation that has been consistently winning grant money and other awards, _your_ name goes on all the papers and grant applications anyway. Letting your underlings claim sole authorship would be fairer but much riskier. Their salaries depend on a steady stream of grant money, which agencies are less likely to dole out to less experienced researchers. ---
**Author:** ![psychonaut](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/psychonaut/32/4655_2.png) [@psychonaut](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/psychonaut)\ **Post date:** [August 7, 2025, 6:34pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-there-a-name-for-people-who-just-get-paid-to-be-geniuses/1021795/26 "2025-08-07T18:34:36Z")
> [@Q.Q.Switcheroo](#): > > Isn’t that the case for fellows of All Souls College at Oxford? I think so, but the College incentivizes its fellows to teach with larger stipends/salaries. Examination fellows in their third to seventh years get £27,838 without teaching, but £30,591 with teaching. Postdoctoral fellows can get £43,455 without teaching or £46,428 with. Senior research fellows can get £105,693 without teaching or £115,487 with teaching. Some categories of fellows have access to a small amount of additional funding for basic research expenses (computer equipment, laboratory consumables, conference travel, etc.). At this level of remuneration, I’d expect that most fellows would still need to turn to scholarships and grants to fund their research program, unless they’re working in a very low-expense field such as mathematics or philosophy. ---
**Author:** ![F.U.Shakespeare](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/f/aca169/32.png) [@F.U.Shakespeare](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/F.U.Shakespeare)\ **Post date:** [August 7, 2025, 7:14pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-there-a-name-for-people-who-just-get-paid-to-be-geniuses/1021795/27 "2025-08-07T19:14:07Z")
I don’t have an answer to the OP. But IIRC mathematician John von Neumann was approached by the Rand Corporation to provide them (for pay) with the ideas that occurred to him while he was shaving daily. ---
**Author:** ![Pasta](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/ecccb3/32.png) [@Pasta](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Pasta)\ **Post date:** [August 7, 2025, 9:52pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-there-a-name-for-people-who-just-get-paid-to-be-geniuses/1021795/28 "2025-08-07T21:52:22Z")
> [@psychonaut](#): > > Your applications are ever more successful and so you hire more and more staff. Eventually your group becomes so big that you can’t possibly involve yourself in all their work, and they end up doing experiments, writing papers, coming up with new ideas, and writing grant applications with little or no involvement from you. But because it’s _your_ name and reputation that has been consistently winning grant money and other awards, _your_ name goes on all the papers and grant applications anyway. This is a rather caricatured view. It’s like the old adage about a customer claiming that a skilled tradesman is charging too much because it only took them 5 minutes to fix the problem. In very large groups with a hands-off-style PI, the PI will be giving critical injections of intuition or direction to group members’ work even if, from a bird’s-eye view, it appears that the PI “isn’t involved” at all. On the more direct side, the very existence of the research assistant position or postdoctoral position itself may be due to previously awarded grants for the general scope of work put forth by the PI, and the PI will be providing directly or indirectly relevant infrastructure for the work (both equipment and human.) On a practical side, most federal funding opportunities are restricted to senior PIs, but when there is a funding opportunity that a postdoc is eligible for, you can bet the PI is happy for them to take that independence. In the end, though, whether the group is small and working closely together or large and more hierarchical, it is exceedingly rare for a junior member of a group to genuinely “lone wolf” something from start to finish. (And for cases that come close, it’s very much in the PI’s interest to elevate that researcher’s standing with due credit. Producing good science and good _scientists_ both feed into a group’s and a university’s reputation.) Dropping back to the OP: > [@Wesley\_Clark](#): > > Is there a term for this, where someone has shown themselves to be creative, intelligent, competent, etc and the public or private sector realizes the best thing to do isn’t to tell them what problem to solve, but to just give them a blank check and let them decide what problem to solve and how to solve it? As suggested upthread, university professors have some aspects of this, but not all. The research direction is a free choice on paper, but at the end of the day it needs to be funded somehow. There aren’t blank checks. The closest to a blank check would be start-up funding for a new faculty member, which is meant to seed their work and won’t have many strings attached. Very quickly, though, the funding of the operation will need to come from somewhere, so proposed directions of work are going to have to convince somebody (e.g., a funding review panel.) For those just starting out, the research will also need to have enough likelihood of success to yield convincing results for later promotion reviews (for, say, tenure.) And while attention must be split between research and non-research obligations, the fraction for each does vary a lot form place to place, and during research sabbaticals the research fraction can be ramped up to basically 100%. ---
**Author:** ![jnglmassiv](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/f07891/32.png) [@jnglmassiv](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/jnglmassiv)\ **Post date:** [August 7, 2025, 9:57pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-there-a-name-for-people-who-just-get-paid-to-be-geniuses/1021795/29 "2025-08-07T21:57:33Z")
> [@Dorjan](#): > > “Fellow” was the first term that popped into my head. Same and I think X in Residence is good, too. ---
**Author:** ![Beckdawrek](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/beckdawrek/32/3647_2.png) [@Beckdawrek](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Beckdawrek)\ **Post date:** [August 7, 2025, 9:58pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-there-a-name-for-people-who-just-get-paid-to-be-geniuses/1021795/30 "2025-08-07T21:58:34Z")
Sigh. ---
**Author:** ![Banksiaman](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/banksiaman/32/3334_2.png) [@Banksiaman](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Banksiaman)\ **Post date:** [August 7, 2025, 10:33pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-there-a-name-for-people-who-just-get-paid-to-be-geniuses/1021795/31 "2025-08-07T22:33:13Z")
> [@Napier](#): > > There was some business strategy book that spoke of the “deep smarts” that companies accumulated to manage the science and technology at the core of their business. I think they described this as one of the intangibles of value. My company bought into this view, and would sometimes refer to the “deep smarts people” in whom this expertise was held. Corporate technical knowledge is definitely a thing (ie an asset that has value, and costs to get), and as its almost entirely intangible is often readily lost in restructurings and downsizing without realising that a resource which was built up with a half-century of investment in training and experience is being let go with no back-up plan. In our world technical experts are referred to as Subject Matter Experts [SMEs], and in normal practice if the SME says no, this won’t work or it should be done this way, you need to have good arguments and expect to do your feasibility homework to propose it any other way. This is not being a genius in the OP’s sense, but a reflection of an older style of corporate culture, where someone was probably spotted at university, given a cadetship and then stayed with one company or within an industry sector for the next 50 years. During that time they see and do enough to know what works or doesn’t, what is missing and needed, and what sorts of ideas keep coming back like bad pennies. ---
**Author:** ![psychonaut](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/psychonaut/32/4655_2.png) [@psychonaut](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/psychonaut)\ **Post date:** [August 7, 2025, 11:22pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-there-a-name-for-people-who-just-get-paid-to-be-geniuses/1021795/32 "2025-08-07T23:22:57Z")
> [@Pasta](#): > > This is a rather caricatured view. I’m sorry if I gave the impression that this scenario describes all large research groups. But there are certainly a few of them that fit the caricature. > [@](#): > > On the more direct side, the very existence of the research assistant position or postdoctoral position itself may be due to previously awarded grants for the general scope of work put forth by the PI, and the PI will be providing directly or indirectly relevant infrastructure for the work (both equipment and human.) Merely heading a research group, or providing funding or infrastructure, does not merit authorship credit on publications or grant applications. This is explicitly spelled out in various ethical codes adopted by publishers and funding agencies. (For example, according to the International Committee of Medical Journal Editors, “[e]xamples of activities that alone (without other contributions) do not qualify a contributor for authorship are acquisition of funding; general supervision of a research group or general administrative support…”) Yet these codes are routinely ignored by certain PIs who know they can get away with it. > [@](#): > > On a practical side, most federal funding opportunities are restricted to senior PIs I’m not sure which federation you’re talking about, though I’m sure the situation varies a lot from country to country. At least the ones I’ve worked in have plenty of funding programs specifically targeted at early-career researchers, including newly-minted PhDs. The more competitive ones award enough money to start up and run a small research group with part- or full-time staff for five or six years. Even the entry-level grants are usually enough to cover one’s own salary and maybe one or two doctoral researchers for three years. (Of course, this is all assuming research in a field that doesn’t have very high equipment or travel costs. If you need to run a wet lab, or fund months-long foreign expeditions, then obviously the money will run out sooner, or you won’t be able to hire as many assistants.) ---
**Author:** ![Pasta](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/ecccb3/32.png) [@Pasta](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Pasta)\ **Post date:** [August 8, 2025, 12:07am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-there-a-name-for-people-who-just-get-paid-to-be-geniuses/1021795/33 "2025-08-08T00:07:54Z")
> [@psychonaut](#): > > I’m sorry if I gave the impression that this scenario describes all large research groups. But there are certainly a few of them that fit the caricature. I agree that the caricature does exist. I just think it looks like it applies to a lot more cases than it actually does and can thus give a false impression of how large groups typically operate. I am very far from the medical research industry, though, so maybe it’s worse there than I appreciate (if that’s where your sense stems from, say.) > [@psychonaut](#): > > The more competitive ones award enough money to start up and run a small research group with part- or full-time staff for five or six years. This looks like a difference in definition in the prior posts. Someone eligible for such funding in a supervisory role is not the sort of person I was thinking about, and also not the sort of person that would be subject to the noted concerns. In the US, this is already equivalent to a new faculty member at a university or a staff scientist at a lab, which is already “senior PI” in the language I was using. So, maybe we’re not so far apart on this point. > [@psychonaut](#): > > [e]xamples of activities that alone (without other contributions) do not qualify a contributor for authorship are acquisition of funding; general supervision of a research group or general administrative support… My point is that “other contributions” is almost never null for the work of hired researchers (of the sort I mean; not the more senior cases you might have been talking about.) “Providing funding” isn’t enough when it’s, say, a central university fellowship without intellectual ties to the work or it’s an independent named fellowship or something. But proposing a direction of research and getting funding for it, including funding a researcher to carry it out with possible deviation due to their own intellectual contribution, does not remove the PI’s intellectual contributions (even assuming they 100% disengage after that, which is usually a bad approximation of reality.) There is always a gray area somewhere between the two regimes, but in my experience – again, maybe biased toward the fields and settings I am closer to – there aren’t routine shenanigans with regard to credit. ---
**Author:** ![kenobi\_65](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/kenobi_65/32/13178_2.png) [@kenobi\_65](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/kenobi_65)\ **Post date:** [August 8, 2025, 12:22am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-there-a-name-for-people-who-just-get-paid-to-be-geniuses/1021795/34 "2025-08-08T00:22:56Z")
In the late 1990s, I met a guy named Gordon McKenzie, who was a long-tenured creative at Hallmark Cards. He had been the Chief Creative Officer there, and then got a promotion to a “Fellow”-type position – senior management asked him to become a “creative troubleshooter,” and he gave himself the title “Creative Paradox.” He wrote a book called “Orbiting the Giant Hairball,” which is about how to work in a corporate environment while maintaining your creative spark (and not getting “sucked into the hairball”). In a passage from his book, his boss describe his role as: > [@](#): > > Gordon’s job…is to keep track of new ideas and sort of sense the spiritual needs of the organization and address them. He was such a wonderful guy, and I’ve read his book several times. He died suddenly, a few months after I met him, which made me very sad. ---
**Author:** ![bump](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/7c8e57/32.png) [@bump](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/bump)\ **Post date:** [August 8, 2025, 2:26pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-there-a-name-for-people-who-just-get-paid-to-be-geniuses/1021795/35 "2025-08-08T14:26:45Z")
> [@Crafter\_Man](#): > > I worked at a research institute for 28 years. One thing to be cognizant of is that the “superstar/genius researcher” is often anything but. Most the time they’re only an expert in one thing: the fine art of making themselves look good. It’s all about perception. The real work is done by others, and they simply take credit for it. And then they get lots of recognition, awards, and accolades for it. That’s how the world works. More often than not, the best workers aren’t the ones being promoted, it’s the ones who play the PR game and are competent. It’s a consequence of human nature; people who stand out tend to get focused on. The trick is to manage when and how you’re noticed. ---
**Author:** ![md-2000](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/9d8465/32.png) [@md-2000](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/md-2000)\ **Post date:** [August 8, 2025, 5:15pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-there-a-name-for-people-who-just-get-paid-to-be-geniuses/1021795/36 "2025-08-08T17:15:49Z")
> [@Crafter\_Man](#): > > I worked at a research institute for 28 years. One thing to be cognizant of is that the “superstar/genius researcher” is often anything but. Most the time they’re only an expert in one thing: the fine art of making themselves look good. It’s all about perception. The real work is done by others, and they simply take credit for it. And then they get lots of recognition, awards, and accolades for it. Remember that in 1922 when Banting and his assistant Best isolated insulin and proved it was a life-saver for Type I diabetics, the Nobel prize went to … drumroll … Banting and MacLeod, because MacLeod was the head of the lab where Banting was doing his research. And, as MacLeod said about Best, “grad students don’t get Nobel Prizes.” Banting strongly disagreed and apparently gave Best half of his prize award. ---
**Author:** ![Frilly\_Heck](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/f/90ced4/32.png) [@Frilly\_Heck](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Frilly_Heck)\ **Post date:** [August 8, 2025, 5:29pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-there-a-name-for-people-who-just-get-paid-to-be-geniuses/1021795/37 "2025-08-08T17:29:14Z")
[Hetairai.](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hetaira) Probably not what you were looking for, granted. ---
**Author:** ![Marvin\_the\_Martian](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/marvin_the_martian/32/2898_2.png) [@Marvin\_the\_Martian](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Marvin_the_Martian)\ **Post date:** [August 8, 2025, 6:06pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-there-a-name-for-people-who-just-get-paid-to-be-geniuses/1021795/38 "2025-08-08T18:06:39Z")
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