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Why do researchers need universities?
This is a follow-up question to How are junior professors evaluated for promotion? and probably an even more naive question. If I'm understanding the answer correct, professors need funding to do research, but once they get it, the university takes some of the grant as overheads (to pay for office space, electricity, etc), and the cut the university takes is substantial.
Given that then, why do professors need universities? One could just apply for the grant as per normal, and once one gets it, buy a slightly bigger house and convert one of the rooms into a lab. One loses nothing to overheads, gets to work from home, has zero teaching duties, can choose to settle anywhere (no two-body problem!), and can even monitor an experiment 24/7. This gets even easier if one works in a field that doesn't need a physical lab. Further, presumably the grant covers postdoc salaries, so one would still be able to pay for postdocs (although probably not PhD students since a professor without a university will not be able to award a degree).
The obvious answer is that one cannot apply for a grant without a university, but Google indicates that's not the case, e.g. NSA grants in mathematics only looks at one's previous accomplishments & potential applications of the research result, both of which are independent of the university. I suppose one could lose journal access, but there's always stuff like arXiv / ResearchGate, emailing the authors of the desired paper, or even Scihub (oops). It's conceivable that not working for a university loses one some prestige, since one can no longer claim to be a professor. However even then I'd expect at least some academics to choose this path, valuing the convenience & extra research funding over prestige.
If the answer to this varies from field to field, I'm most interested in the sciences.

What the OP suggests seems analogous to the job of a PI at a research institute.

"...convert one of the rooms into a lab. One loses nothing to overheads..." The enormous cost of building the lab wouldn't be considered overhead in this scenario? That's some pretty creative word usage, IMHO.

Another naive question: Is this academia-specific? I think this can be generalised to include why lawyers need law firms, health professionals need clinics/hospitals, tutors need tutorial centres, financial analysts need banks/financial institutions, etc. I don't imagine the answers are quite different unless the question is something like 'I get the case for other professions but I don't see how so and so from the other case/s is applicable to academia'

In fact, in the US, 2.5% of all government R&D money is set aside to be spent at small businesses outside academia or large companies. For example, the F-35 has a $55 billion R&D budget, so $1.4 billion was spent on research and development at these non-university small companies. Which I assume is greater than any university involvement in that project.

I’m afraid these days it’s more like “Why do universities need researchers?”: administrative life would be heaven without them.

Economies of Scale.

If I'm understanding the answer correct, professors need funding to do research, but once they get it, the university takes some of the grant as overheads (to pay for office space, electricity, etc), and the cut the university takes is substantial

The number of services provided by a university is substantial, of which space and electricity are the least of them.
Maintenance, janitorial, and IT services - machines break, rooms get dirty, and technology has inexplicable problems.  Universities have infrastructure in place to deal with all of this.
Access to literature - Universities maintain subscriptions to the journals, standards, and other references a researcher needs.
Laboratory equipment and specialists - Most scientific research requires specialized equipment, which can cost anywhere from a few hundred dollars to several million.  Universities can afford to maintain such equipment, and the expert technicians needed to run the equipment at maximum efficiency.
Other researchers - A university department provides ready access to and familiarity with other experts in your field for potential collaboration.  Additionally, it provides a way to find potential collaborators from other fields for the times when you find your research leaving the bounds of your expertise.
Students - an unfortunate amount of research is tedious.  A university provides a ready framework for delegating simple but time-consuming work to students so that a researcher can focus on the parts of the research that only they can do.
Contacts - Universities maintain contacts with businesses, governments, and other research institutions that can open more doors than any one researcher could do on their own.
Reputation - Being a member of a respected university means that people who trust that university will afford some measure of that trust as well.
Legal services and other expertise - While it would be nice if research could exist completely separate from the outside world, this is not the case. Universities have systems set up to support and advise their researchers when problems arise during their research.
Many of these things could be aquired by a solo researcher, of course. But doing so would cost time and money, likely amounting to more than a university takes in overhead. And things like contacts and reputation are difficult to purchase.

Tedious work and busywork are not quite the same thing! One can drop all busywork without any loss in productivity.

@LukeSawczak: an excellent point. Fixing now

I would say (or at least like to believe) that students do more than the tedious work. Students can really expand your reach as a researcher.  A research project is usually composed of many moving parts and a single person only has so much bandwidth. Nice answer, btw.

I agree with everything here except maybe what you said about students. While it's true that some of the more tedious tasks can be meted out to students, it's also true that many students are up-and-coming researchers in their own right. They often make significant contributions and have groundbreaking ideas, thereby countering the notion that there may be parts of the research effort "that only" the primary researcher can do. Some students can be real catalysts – an advantage you've omitted here.

You should also mention Access to funding: Some access to funding depends on association with a university (as well as universities' internal research funds).

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I'm surprised not to see "Salary" on this list.  Obviously researchers can (and do) get salaries from institutions that aren't universities, but the OP suggests "buying a larger house" and working there instead of at a university. My question: how would you pay the mortgage?

@user253751 Tangential indeed.  Also obtaining a mortgage and paying it off over time is how most people buy houses in much of the world.  And also, no; that’s not how mortgages work.

Another point is about the social environment. Research is a process with many needs, and one of them is contact with like-minded people to share insights, problems, day-to-day peer review, and so on. The lab is not only where the researcher does physical work, but a place where other researchers, students, and whole communities meet to have social exchanges. The university does this at a much larger scale. Even hard sciences like STEM need this social aspect.
The lone and autonomous scientist is a romantic view. Some papers on fringe areas have more than a hundred co-authors today.

+1 Part way through my dissertation research, I found I needed to know more about a topic on which my advisor knew no more than I did. What he did know was which of his colleagues would be both able and willing to help me.

Fringe areas?  Look at e.g. some of the papers out of e.g. CERN.  Wouldn't be that surprised if you could find a few where the list of co-authors is longer than the paper :-)

5,154 seems to be the record so far. https://telescoper.wordpress.com/2015/05/17/a-scientific-paper-with-5000-authors-is-absurd-but-does-science-need-papers-at-all/

@Cochise: 24 of 33 pages listing names?  Once again, my imagination fall short of reality :-(  Maybe we need to introduce some folks to the concept of "et al".

@jamesqf give credit where it is due. the et al. is fine for citations, but some people would be less inclined to dedicate time to a project if there are going to be no credits on the other end.

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There are really two questions here. 1.Do researchers need support? and 2. Do researchers need support from an organization that also teaches?
The answer to the first question is: As arrogant as some researchers are, they need support, from any number of other people. From human resources, to accounting to janitorial. If any researcher honestly thinks they are capable of doing all of those things better than professionals they are either laughably naive or simply stupid.  If those researchers think they don't need those things and believe they can  work in a vacuum, the same statement applies.
The answer to the second question is a bit more complicated but comes down to a couple of ideas, on the concept of giving back. Those researchers learned somewhere, most often a university and want that system to continue because they recognize the value even if it does "cost" them some percentage of their funding. The other is that most people recognize the value of new ideas and having to explain yourself to those with less knowledge than oneself. Universities also provide for continuity of research, very few projects are one and done, the environment of constantly changing students provides a way for ideas to grow and evolve or be supplanted by better ideas.
Finally from a funding perspective, funding entities recognize the value that universities provide to researchers and society as a whole and probably include that in their calculation when choosing what projects to fund.

Most of the services provided by universities are available on the market, as small businesses and independent professionals also need them. Apart from library services (access to paywalled journals etc.), you can usually buy them cheaper than typical university overhead rates.

@JouniSirén, and where would a researcher find these services? how much time would they spend picking the right one? How many resources would be wasted by researchers picking inefficient ones? Would the services have the specialties that the ones provided by the university have?

Most entrepreneurs manage just fine, so I guess most PIs would also be capable of working independently. The root issue is that large organizations such as universities tend to be inefficient. Economies of scale apply to some services (e.g. libraries and some IT admin tasks), but you can get other services (e.g. accounting and travel arrangements) cheaper from the market.

@JouniSirén, no most entrepreneurs don't "manage just fine" https://www.forbes.com/sites/ericwagner/2013/09/12/five-reasons-8-out-of-10-businesses-fail/#5cf7d896978d

I am going to contend that "most" entrepreneurs don't manage just fine. Many new businesses fail. My husband works at a very small research institute  (smaller than many departments) and is constantly frustrated by problems not related to science... accounting, record keeping, contracts, etc.

We were talking about support services here, not about the core business. Of course most businesses and most researchers fail, because they're not good enough or lucky enough against the competition, but that's beside the point.

@JouniSirén it is certainly arguable about how many businesses fail due to  bad core business ideas vs a lack of understanding of business in general, but that kind of makes my point. Do we really want 80% of researchers to fail? And don't tell me "well the dumb research won't get funded" because we both know that's not true. Dumb businesses get loans all the time, as does dumb research within (and outside) universities.

80% of researchers already fail, because that's the way the academic job market is designed to function. There is plenty of funding for hiring people to entry-level jobs but relatively few permanent jobs. This has little to do with supporting services, just like businesses rarely fail because they cannot find appropriate services for a reasonable price.

I found the  "Do researchers need support from an organization that also teaches?" section particularly interesting, where did you read about that? I'd like to read more about how and why teaching and research got paired together to make the university institutions we know of today.

I think it's worth noting that there are places, such as think tanks, national laboratories, and government agencies where elite researchers operate without teaching loads. But many of these organizations are larger and have more bureaucracy than universities.

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It is true that research (even research funded by government grants) can be done elsewhere than at universities.  But "professors" mainly do teaching, which is what the universities are set up for.
My answer: researchers do not need universities.  Professors do.  Even professors who also do research.
added
Maybe another way to make my point.  If you are doing research but not teaching, then your title should be something other than "Professor".
A line in the musical The Music Man asserts that band leaders are called "Professor" by courtesy, and need not actually be attached to a university.  That should not apply to non-teaching researchers.
note  This answer is for the original question title "Why do professors need universities?".

I think this answers the question, but I feel that misses its purpose. Perhaps the OP could be better worded?

I do not think it is accurate to state that professors mainly do teaching. In most large research universities they are compelled to teach, but their teaching volume/quality has negligible bearing on their tenure/promotion decisions.

@wil3 maybe, but a professor (with or without tenure, assistant or associate or full) is expected to teach, unlike, say, a researcher at a dedicated lab not in an university. Even given an occasional semester off without teaching. Other factors may be decisive in determining what level a professor attains, but to be any kind of professor at all, teaching is expected.

Even as a researcher, you want to be at an university or a research institute. The possibility to bounce ideas off of other people and get hints on how to tackle problems is invaluable. A considerable part of my research happens over lunch breaks.

Many (U.S. CS departments) have Research Faculty, similar to post-docs but with three ranks corresponding to the Teaching Faculty ranks of Assistant, Associate, and Full. Research Faculty do not normally teach but I know of a few cases when they occasionally taught a course that no teaching faculty member was qualified to teach.

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A couple more reasons:
Job security. For a tenured professor, it's nice to know that if the next grant application falls through you will still be getting a regular income.
Economy of scale. Setting up a lab from scratch for the sole use of one researcher would be seriously expensive. But sharing a lab with another group, in an existing building,  and reusing some equipment from a previous grant, that is more feasible.

Note that "job security" can be very illusory, depending on the type of position. "Soft money" faculty do not have a guaranteed salary, even after tenure; this type of position is more common in medical campuses.

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@BCLC thanks for pointing it out, but yes, the answer still stands.

There are people who do research outside of the context of a university. I work for a government contractor that gets US government money to do AI research.
In the US we also have institutions called National Labs that do research (some are affiliated with a university though), private companies that fund research (especially in math/CS/stats and biology/chemistry/medicine). This is only a partial list, I’m sure there are much more.

The National Lab System is about equally split between corporate and academic control. That said, the overhead at the labs would make even the most jaded academician wince.

what is jaded and what is wince? @aeismail

@SSimon Jaded is the opposite of idealistic. A wince s a facial expression that usually expresses distaste, unhappiness, or pain. Point was that the national lab system had massive overheard and administration issues that make the issues at universities seem minimal.

@StellaBiderman YES, I can confirm that this is same in Europe,

You could add think tanks, both public and private, to your list. None of which are quite the same as the OP's lone researcher working out of a "home" lab/office, of course.

Does getting US grants obligate you to publish the results?

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@Nat Super late to answer this, but I ended up looking through old answers of mine. No, it does not. Sometimes we’re even forbidden to do so by the client in question. Perhaps I was a little unclear; these are not NSF grants to advance the state of research, this is various government agencies paying for the answer to specific research questions that they have.

In all these excellent replies and comments, no one appears to have mentioned a critical point about government funding. Even if you found a (U.S.) government agency or organization that was willing to fund a self-employed researcher, you would by Federal law be required to have a FAR-compliant (Google) accounting system. This applies also to corporations and any other recipient organizations.
I have personal experience taking a leave of absence from a university to join a start-up temporarily, to transition some of my research results to practice. One of my research sponsors at the university wanted to continue funding my work at the start-up. That required the start-up to install a FAR-compliant accounting system. Maybe there were or now are less painful ways to get that started and use it, but the start-up's experience was quite a hassle (but worth all the money from the Government sponsor). I hate to think what it would be like for a self-employed researcher.

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Professors need to find students to do their research for/with them. To find good students, the best bet is to teach - it allows you to directly see them work and evaluate how they do in your subject. Being part of a university allows you access to students to use as a recruitment pool.
(Also, not everyone likes to have their co-workers know where their home is, and once you start renting office space elsewhere, you start running into all the administrative issues that a university also deals with and needs those overhead costs for...)

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Professors need universities because, by definition and etymology, a professor is transmitting knowledge by teaching it.
In some systems, you have professional researchers which are not professors and which are paid full time to do their research (since they belong to some other research institution than a University). For example, in France, we have the CNRS. See this answer.
Notice also that, as explained by all answers here, research is a social activity which needs teams to be done.

One could just apply for the grant as per normal, and once one gets it, buy a slightly bigger house and convert one of the rooms into a lab.

Then: how do you control that the grant is paying research? Notice also that management and administration require different skills and mindsets than doing research. Most researchers have to do some management & administration tasks (quite often too much of them) but are not happy and not very efficient at these tasks.

Some countries (e.g. Finland) have private grants that go directly to the researcher. Such grants are partially or fully tax exempt, and one of the conditions is that the funder has no control over how the grant is spent. In practice, this means that if you receive a multi-year grant, you have to demonstrate that you spent the year doing research in order to get funding for the next year.

Interesting. Is it common in Finland, or is it very exceptional and only for happy few, nearly Nobel-class, researchers?

It's mostly used by private foundations to fund early-career researchers. The total amount is comparable to the funding administered by the Academy of Finland, which is the main source of public funding for basic research.

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Your question contains the implicit assumption that the money that goes to the university for overhead would be available to the recipient for his/her use if not at a university. In the US, this assumption in general would not be true. In preparing a grant application the researcher lists the costs of the project, including salaries for the researchers, post-docs, travel costs, purchases,etc. Then the university overhead rate is applied to these costs. All costs must be justified in the grant application, so a professor couldn't just quit the university and double his/her salary for the purposes of the grant application. If somehow he/she could perform the research with no overhead costs, then none will be awarded. The independent researcher could claim overhead costs in the application, but these need to be real and have backup justification, so they can't just be diverted to more research funding.

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answer remains the same

A few answers to this question, from the perspective of a junior faculty member in a U.S. state university. Let's assume for the moment that this is allowed by the grant in question, which is often (and I'd say nearly always) not the case. But indulging the hypothetical.

One could just apply for the grant as per normal, and once one gets
  it, buy a slightly bigger house and convert one of the rooms into a
  lab.

I am lucky enough to have a grant with a decent overhead rate - but it only lasts for three years. "Buying a bigger house" is an extremely aggressive investment that will obligate me for years in property taxes if nothing else for something that may go away.

gets to work from home

I already spend pretty much as much time as I want working from home.

has zero teaching duties

I already have zero teaching duties...

can even monitor an experiment 24/7

This really doesn't strike me as a positive thing from the perspective of work-life balance.

Further, presumably the grant covers postdoc salaries, so one would
  still be able to pay for postdocs (although probably not PhD students
  since a professor without a university will not be able to award a
  degree).

You are vastly underestimating the amount of staff I have access to. I have an HR person who handles things like payroll. I have departmental staff that keep track of my budgets. A person who helps with proposal development (getting things in the forms needed for submission, etc.) and budget prep. Someone else who will review the complex contracts that come with large grants, data use agreements, etc.
And that doesn't even touch on things like the techs who keep the HPC cluster running, the internet up, the parking lot plowed, etc.
My overhead pays for some of their time. The overhead on my grant cannot possibly hire all of those people.

I suppose one could lose journal access, but there's always stuff like
  arXiv / ResearchGate, emailing the authors of the desired paper, or
  even Scihub (oops).

This doesn't even get close to replacing proper access via a library

It's conceivable that not working for a university loses one some
  prestige, since one can no longer claim to be a professor. However
  even then I'd expect at least some academics to choose this path,
  valuing the convenience & extra research funding over prestige.

"Environment" is a major part of a grant being evaluated, at least on NIH grants, and not being at a university or research institute makes that a much harder sell. While some researchers undoubtedly choose that path, that depends very heavily on their own personal reputations, which many researchers cannot necessarily rely on.

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@BCLC Yep.

Some for economical reasons. Their research could cost money and require a lab / equipment that costs more than they could afford to raise individually. Maybe they enjoy having a stable income which being in the employ of a university brings. Usually professorship gives a quite high pay.
Some for social reasons. They need the social connections at the university to find inspiration to do research and find collaborators for their research. Maybe they also enjoy teaching, in which case it is easier to find students to teach if you have a formal duty to do so. Also easier to get "padawans" / research students to inspire to carry your legacy forward once your time is over.
Some for status reasons. They enjoy the social status that comes with a professor title.

There's probably even more, but these were the first that came to mind.


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Any shame in copying from a grant proposal body to create an abstract?
I have to write an abstract for a grant proposal's cover page.
Is there any shame in strategically copying/pasting entire sentences from the body of the grant proposal and arranging them coherently to form the abstract?
On one hand, it feels funny to have (e.g.) the opening sentence be the same, and if the reviewers notice it, it might look unprofessional. On the other hand, if it's a well-written sentence, why should it matter if it were reused?

[Looks in the mirror]  Nope.

It should be fine. Grant reviewers are used to seeing similar (or the same) information listed in different parts of a grant. It also helps you keep your message consistent.

No, there is no shame in that.

On one hand, it feels funny to have (e.g.) the opening sentence be the same, and if the reviewers notice it, it might look unprofessional.

I usually try to have the "opening sentence" be different, but that is really more a matter of personal preference than anything else. I don't find it "unprofessional" if I review grant proposals where the main proposal and the abstract start with the same sentence.

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How to write PIs asking for PhD position?
I have read here that the best way is to keep it simple, be short and ask for meetings, which is a bit generic way to ask for a job. I agree more with the discussion posted here by a student in a similar situation as mine (I still haven't started emailing people but I've already have a long unfinished list).
Speaking with some PhDs and postodcs I know, they told me that the best way is to know somebody in and maybe write them first in order to introduce you to the PI before you send your email. Another advantage of this is that you will know if there is a position available or if it's not a good idea to work there (the people who actually work there might have the best advice about that). Finally, they might also be "more reachable" than the PI who gets thousands of mails. On the other hand, I don't know the people who work where I want to go so it would feel as impersonal as this question feels to you.
Given the fact that I may have to write several (around 20) of these mails I want to have a good strategy. I know it's a debate that mostly depends on the area. My area of research is Neurobiology of Memory and Learning but I might also be interested to change a little bit, maybe to Addiction (Always within neurobiology).
I would also like to add that in order to write a detailed email about the PI's research history and future path one must be able to have the time for:

Read the publications = A large amount of time
Actually come out with an idea that meets with the PI's expectations AND research interest/approach/knowledge AND more important technique capacity

Of course, being a PhD student means that you have to suceed in both of them but not for every research we would be happy to do (if we were accepted) in advance.

Can you clarify how your question differs from the previous question that you mention on how best to email a request for a phd postion?

The thing is that this person is asking to write for a process that has already happened (he found ONE lab) so he has already done the research and believes that "he is the perfect match". The thing is I'm not so confident about my chances to get the position with only one email and as far as I understand, the most common thing is to write to several PIs. This brings me back to my question, how to balance specific "why THIS lab, why me" and the more generic info they all want.  Also, do all PIs want applications with research proposal included?

Does this answer your question? How should I phrase an important question that I need to ask a professor?

When drafting your email, keep in mind that PhD advisors get tons of request like this. Your request has to stand out in order to have a chance of success. Most email requests are pretty generic, simply asking for a position, with some generic praise of the advisor's reputation, and a CV attached.
In order to stand out from the mass, the most important thing is probably that you do your research. What topic is the advisor working on? How does your background fit in there? Make it clear what you think you can contribute to the advisor's work. Try to get all this across as concisely as possible, maybe three or four sentences, at most. By all means, avoid being generic.
Surely you will have to put some time into it, but it will increase your chances of being considered dramatically. Better to send out fewer but well targeted emails than masses of generic requests.
If you get no response in spite of your request being well crafted, you can try following up once, after a week or so, but not more often.
EDIT: "Doing your research" does not mean writing a research proposal, but finding out what the PI works on and putting your skills and interests in this context. Most of the time the info on their website is sufficient, you don't have to read every single one of their papers.

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Statement of purpose: How to state PI backup
I am a foreign Biology student applying to USA phd programs.
I have contacted several PIs asking if they had an available position (because they work within my interests). I've got a lot of no responses, some "No funding/no position" and I've got some positive feedback. I have one particular university in which 3 PIs sent me back an "encourage to apply" mail.
Examples of these are:

You seem like a good fit (...)
I'll keep an eye out for your application
I might have some influence on comitee X
If you get accepted (I have no influence) ask to chat with me

Or just "I encourage you to apply".
From my point of view, the universities take into account that the PIs are willing to accept the candidate (they say the measure is "fit" not only grades). Then it would be more than wise to state clearly in my statement of purpose that I've spoken with Professor X about working there and received positive feedback. However, it might seem pedantic to state that "Professor X...". Just to make things clear, I'm not an outstanding, perfect grades, so I believe this could be a very important feature of my statement.
Finally, it is also stated clearly on many programs that PIs have no influence on comitee decisions. I believe that there's some "legal hole" in which they don't want to give control to PIs but they find themselves needing PI's approval or something.
My question is: Should I include this information? How to do it politely?

I do not think you can include your information in your application. I "Encourage you to apply" means totally nothing but a polite way to say "I cannot guarantee anything, nor do I want to but make an application anyway"

@Alexandros So the difference between a guy that says "I'll keep an eye for your application" and the guy who does not even answer is just that the former take the time to write a polite answer? It's hard to believe anyone who's not even interested would do that. Also, why mentioning their influence on comitees or something. It doesn't make sense to me

@MatiasAndina It sounds perfectly plausible to me that the difference between a guy who writes something noncommittal such as "you look good" or "I encourage you to apply" and the guy who doesn't answer at all is just that the former is more polite. Writing a short non-commital message takes no time at all, and a person  that would write such an email likely has written about 300 of those before (hence has a template).

@MatiasAndina That being said, "I might have some influence" and "If you get accepted ask to chat with me" sounds like they are genuinely interested. In these cases, I would definitely mention this in my application.

@xLeitix I believe I should definetly do it. The question was tailored about how to

If the response has a mentoring-type ring to it, you could at least notify the person once you have submitted your application.
If the response is non-committal, you should not pursue further correspondence with the person during the admissions process.
You should submit as strong an application as you can, but do not mention or hint at any personal connections with any faculty members.  (This paragraph is specific to the United States, and it is important.  If, on the other hand, a faculty member wishes to reveal some personal connection with an applicant, that's different, and it's okay.)
If the person came across quite mentor-like, you may submit a draft application and ask if there's anything that jumps out at him or her that needs more work.  (If in doubt, don't do this, though.  And if you are thinking of doing this, check with the person first.)


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PhD: Find the problem to solve or use tool to solve a problem?
So let's say I have a problem (X) that needs to be solved. Most people in research use several approaches around a sub-topic Y. Most of these algorithms have performance of 80-95% accuracy so there is a space for improvement. I understand that a proper PhD topic would be to find a better solution here.
But what if I just use a new technique (K) to solve this problem? It hasn't been addressed yet in literature. I expect the performance of it to be lower or near the conventional methods. I justify using it because it's outperforming in imagery tasks and it would open up the literature to a new method.
If I use K to solve this problem and get lower performance than conventional solutions Y, does that count as a proper PhD thesis?
In other words, to define a PhD topic, should I find the problem to solve or use a tool and see how it solves a problem?

Since you are in the computer science domain, you should think in terms of publications. Using DNN to solve this problem is probably one of those papers. One paper is usually not enough for a good CS PhD. You need a consistent body of work for a PhD and one paper does not cut it.

You completely misinterpreted my question.

How is that? A new technique with a similar (or worse performance) than previous methods might (or might not) give you a single paper. You need more than that. What didn't I understand?

The following answer/story is more to address the titular question, and the last line of the OP (free of the context of the rest of the post)...
I once attended a talk by Peter Sarnak.  He had the following to say (which I recall from memory; these are not guaranteed to be his exact words) on the matter:

My student had just recently finished solving a problem for his thesis.  He was very excited to have found a new way to approach the problem that worked.  He said to me,
"Okay, now that I have these new tools, what can I solve with them?"
To which I responded:
"No, no, no!  That's not how you do research.  You don't pick up tools and then take them to a problem to solve with them.  I mean, sometimes you can get lucky that way, so you can try it if you want.  But that's not the smart way.  What you do is, you pick up a problem and then you invent the tools you need to solve it.

As far as the more specific question of the OP...
Ultimately, this is something to discuss with your advisor.  Expecting worse results is not likely to sound very appealing as a project idea, unless you can make a convincing argument that it will make some sort of improvement—be it computation time, memory consumption, cost to implement (maybe it can be run on data obtained by cheaper technology that other methods basically can't), or a basic proof of concept that could lead to more meaningful breakthroughs after suitable adjustments and investigation, etc.  If you can do those now, your advisor may decide this could be a fruitful area of investigation.
Either way, talk it out and see what his opinion is, and if he knows if this actually has appeared in the literature before or not.

While I agree in general with the admonition not to go into things with a solution in search of a problem, many productive areas of research have been opened up by "We just invented this new hammer to solve this problem over here. Hmm. I wonder how many other nail-like problems we can use it on."

Here are my couple of rules that worked for me, students and friends:
What can you publish?: Find an area/sub area first, not the specific topic until you have a publication. For example, I choose the area of code generation, I keep working on it and then when I'm collecting my thoughts and findings to write a publication, I need to put a title on it. That title of the paper becomes my title, lets say: a code generator for the domain of X. If I can't publish more then well that will be my PhD thesis title. However if I keep working on it and then come up with more publications then that would effect my title as well. You see what I'm trying to say here?
Tools: The rule of thumb is that research-based tools developed by researchers are not that good in general. Their quality of code is not that great, and if you put all of your eggs in their basket, then you are risking many things, like time, effort and so on. However, if the tool is developed in your research group so then you can trust it to some extent, because then you can talk to the creators if you hit a problem.
Passion and Problem Not X and Problem: Find a problem that you are passionate about, that you will work couple of years on it; so why not something that you like or love? You did your Bsc and Msc, what topic/problem made you mad? What problem you saw that you think you can solve? Finding an easy path to a problem ends in disaster. You will talk about your problem/solution to other researchers, don't be a lifeless researcher that just roams around and have no passion about his/her topic. Again, you see what I'm saying here?


text:
Would it be a good idea to take online Master's program in Statistics?
I have BSc. in Statistics and I am interested in pursuing a Master's degree in Statistics.
I have looked at several master's program in Statistics, and I have narrowed my options down to few.
But it turns out that I can take all these master's program either via distance learning (i.e. online) or on-campus. Personally, I want to take my master's program via distance learning if I can, mainly because the issues that I have with relocation. But some people has been telling me to take the program on-campus because of the following reasons:

Taking program on-site is better because you don't get to chance to build a connection with people from industry or with your professors if you are an online student.
The employers will notice that I took the Master's program online, and it will serve as a disadvantage when I look for a job after graduating from the program

Can I overcome these issues while being a online student? Also, what are the pros of taking graduate program online compared to taking it on-site?
Thank you,

You could also take a hybrid approach, combining some online and some in person courses.

Are these purely course-based master's degrees, or is there a research component?

Some possible pros of doing the master's on campus: doing the program on campus could lead to a higher chance of actually finishing the program.  It's nice to have professors, classmates, advisors, administrators to talk to in person, when you (inevitably) experience a rough patch in the program - it could make the difference between finishing and not finishing.
Some possible pros of doing the master's online: you can learn at your own pace, to some extent, without peer pressure from classmates, and this might fit your learning style better.  Also, I imagine the online programs are much cheaper.
So ultimately, you have to decide whether you'll have the discipline to start and finish an online program.  As for job searching in stats, your skills probably matter way more than whether you did a degree on-campus or online, unlike, say, going for an MBA or JD, where prestige matters a great deal.  Also, you have other verifiable credentials to go after, with your stats skills set - such as actuarial exams.
Edit: Just saw your other questions and it seems that you are also considering PhD programs.  If so, you'll need letters of recommendation from professors, but for this to happen, you'll need to do the program on-campus.

@tilper, the no commute thing the OP seems to already know is a huge benefit, so I didn't address that in my answer.  But how does an online program student get (substantive) letters of recommendation from professors, if they did an online program?

Interesting @tilper - I didn't realize there was much (if any) interaction with professors for online courses.  What you say would make a good answer for this question.  (Unfortunately, I don't see an option to delete my own answer.)


text:
What type of education should I select in this form?
I am filling an application form for a PhD position and came upon this field:

It seems like a stupid question, but I am not familiar with this type of categorization. For a Master's degree, which one should I choose?

What happens if you select "Other"?

@PatriciaShanahan nothing. It's just another option.

Where is the university you're applying to?

@JeffE in Austria

I am assuming that this application form is a generic "job application"-form, rather than one designed specifically for positions as PhD students. To my knowledge, PhD positions in Austria are categorized as jobs anyway.
Then, translating back to German, I suppose the cases are:

Abitur/Matura
Universitaetsabschluss (= university degree)
Ausbildung

Thus, chose "study".

I would guess that "study" is just an awkward translation of "Studium".

license: Creative Commons - Attribution Share-Alike - https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/


text:
Strategy for applying to PhD in the US
My question was originally designed to be very related to this one.
However, I have continued to write it because it has a second part.
I am currently sending email to PIs in order to know if they have any position available for doing research in their lab (life sciences). My list includes some elite universities but it has a wide range (top 100 universities according to shangai rank). A problem I have is that I'm interested mostly on PIs and not so much on university X or Y (every university of the list would represent a major step forward on my career). I haven't had any repply so far but I'm still optimistic.
Reading some lab's webpages I've found messages like these on contact pages.

If you are not graduate student (...), the most direct way would be to
  apply to (INSERT PHD PROGRAM HERE).

Which is very related to

Please be aware that individual researchers have not influence on
  admissions comittee (...)

But also this,

Please contact me if you would like to discuss our graduate program or
  the research in my lab.

I know that mostly in Europe the logic for Msc or equivalent that rules is
mail to PI-> get accepted by him/her -> apply to university with very high chance

The thing that I like about that is that it doesn't matter that a particular university has only one place that you might be interested in. However, it may be useless to apply to a university where you have only one "awesome lab" meeting your interest and more wise to apply to a university where you have (say) 3 "OK labs". Although maybe "you having thumbs up from a PI" might change the strategy, several answers point out the variability on admission comittees and the fact that your applying to the university first (you have a strong coursework component during the first 2 years) definitely make the advisor's word less important.
So the question is: If PIs are less involved, wouldn't be a better strategy to apply to the university where there are more labs without contact or does the "european" logic still hold in the US?

"mail to PI-> get accepted by him/her ->" You have some misconceptions about Europe. In Europe you need a MSc to get admitted to a PHD. Therefore you have something more to show before getting to a PHD program. And any good PHD program has many local students (directly from the related MSc program) as candidates, so unless you are Mr Incredible, a simple email will probably not get you a PhD position in a competitive program.

I come from a country where we have only MSc choice, we don't have Bachellors degree. So yes, for anyone who holds a 6 year college degree from Europe (Bs+Master's or long old version) or everywhere that still uses this long format the logic runs as what I have stated. Also, no, I am not Mr Incredible (that's why I have so many doubts about what I should or shouldn't do or what to invest my time in). I have edited my question so it's more clear @Alexandros

Bill Barth's comment ("You don't need a yes in advance") is the main thing you should be focusing on. Prepare as strong an application as you can. Choose 3 - 5 universities that have programs and professors that make you drool when you imagine yourself studying there. Please note, the emails you have been sending are not a good way to approach this.
The standard strategy is to have one dream school, one "safety" school that you could get into even if you forgot to send an essay, and one that you are pretty sure you'd be happy with, and you think you have pretty good chances of getting into.
However, if you can afford a couple more applications, you could pick two more, but I personally think five is plenty.
Make sure all three (or five) appeal to you, in terms of location, climate, program of study.
One more note: if you do want to send one or two inquiries by email, they should be specific questions or feedback about a particular journal publication or research program, addressed to a researcher whose work you have looked into closely and you are truly excited about.

My acceptance to my PhD program was a bit outside this model since I had already done some undergraduate research with my advisor, nevertheless, I think I can fill in a few gaps.
No matter what you do, you will have to apply to a PhD program not a PI directly. For me, at my university, that meant using the university-wide online admissions process but targeting a particular college (the College of Engineering) and major (Aerospace Engineering). There was one process with customizations for each college and department since each had different requirements and requested materials. You generally can't avoid this process. Since these applications are tailored to the college and department, the admissions committees are at the departmental level. You don't necessarily apply directly to a department, but you materials will be routed there. Some universities may use separate processes for each department, but I haven't experienced that. Nevertheless, the decision will most probably be made at the department level.
Now, in parallel with your application, if you can establish a PI that you want to work with and who wants to work with you, you should do that. You may be accepted by the university before or after you are able to establish a relationship with a PI. That's OK. I suspect, though I don't have any direct evidence since I have not sat on any admissions committees, that if you do have a PI that wants to work with you before your application is considered, then they can weigh in on your behalf when the admissions committee meets. Having someone to stand up and say "I have funding and will support this student" goes a long way towards admissions for borderline candidates. For top candidates, it probably doesn't affect the admissions chances much, but it does help the department know in advance that finding them a supervisor will be easy. For borderline candidates, it can make all the difference.
I know (second hand) of at least one candidate that was admitted on their second or third try only after they came and worked for a research institute on our campus and established a relationship with a PI. They were both able to find a backer in the committee meeting and spend some time writing a few papers to improve their CV. This latter model is unusual, but they were determined to get a PhD from our school.

I find the same mixed feeling of my question on your answer. The feeling that you only need one "yes" is messing with my real chances calculation. I would love to be part of the "unusual model" and it would be a huge asset in my CV but I think it is almost impossible or I would have to wait a whole year not to mention the costs of one year expenses in the US.

You don't need a yes in advance from an advisor in the US to get admitted. It can help if your application is borderline, but otherwise you can be admitted on the merits of your application materials alone and find an advisor to work with when you get here. It is common to be admitted first and find an advisor second, I think.

So the wiser choice would be to avoid applying to the universities where I have only one candidate and try to contact the candidates  in the other universities but apply anyway even if I get no response?

@MatiasAndina, I didn't say that, necessarily. If you really think you know exactly what you want to do, and there are only a handful of people in the world you'd like to work with, then you might have to be more judicious about your applications, but you might also have to apply to all of them. That being said, lots of people change their minds once they get to grad school.

Bill Barth's comment ("You don't need a yes in advance") is the main thing you should be focusing on.  Prepare as strong an application as you can.  Choose 3 - 5 universities that have programs and professors that make you drool when you imagine yourself studying there.  (The emails you have been sending are not a good way to approach this.)  ...  I haven't understood whether you have a problem transcript, as in the case of the similar question you linked to.

@aparente001 I don't have a problem transcript, it's an average transcript (that means there are A LOT like me, so it's not bad but close). I would say I want to use the best strategy. I think I will have to focus on 2-3 universities despite them having less interesting labs

The standard strategy is to have one dream school, one "safety" school that you could get into even if you forgot to send an essay, and one that you are pretty sure you'd be happy with, and you think you have pretty good chances of getting into.  ...  However, if you can afford a couple more applications, you could pick two more, but I personally think five is plenty.  ...  Make sure all three (or five) appeal to you, in terms of location, climate, program of study.

@aparente001 This was the kind of answer I was looking for. So regardless of PIs, I should focus on the schools and use this kind of strategy. Also, yes 5 applications is a lot of money considering I've spent on TOEFL and GRE General and probably Subject test. You can post this as a more elaborate answer and I'd be happy to mark it as correct


text:
Structure of a paper: Development of a simulation approach
So far, I puplished a paper (literature review) using the "classical" structure: Introduction-Method-Results-Discussion-Conclusion.
At the moment I am writing another paper which presents the result of our developments of a simulation approach. The paper should contain the following parts:

Literature study
Description of the mathematical theory behind some methods
How we implemented (2) into the actual modeling language
Use cases

My question: How would you structure (+ name) the sections? My first idea was:

Introduction (including lit-review)?
Method (does the description of the mathematical theory belong to that section?)?
Implementation?
Results?
Conclusion?

Two more specific questions:

In which section would you place the description of the tool (f.i. a certain Matlab package)? In the "Introduction/lit-rev" section? Or in the "Implementation" section?
It is necessary to compare two fundamental modelling approaches (in order to motivate why we use one of them): Where would you place this section? In the section method, or lit-rev?

Thank you very much for your help!

As an editorial board member of a modelling journal, I broadly agree with @Adam_Bosen. I'd structure it something like this:

Introduction

Why it matters
Use cases
Lit review
Existing mathematical theory that you are using

Methods

New mathematical theory that you are developing
Description of your model (including all equations if there aren't too many, or with any but the most novel equations relegated to an Appendix if it is a complicated model). Mention the language of implementation if it is a modelling journal, but not the actual code. If it's for a disciplinary science journal, less detail here.
Details of testing procedures (e.g. how you compare it with other models, sensitivity analysis, performance characterisation methods).
Technical details of use cases (e.g. scenarios)

Results

Results of testing procedures
Results of use cases

Discussion

What you learnt about the use cases
Strengths and limitations of your new approach
Next steps and remaining challenges

Conclusion

How good is your model and what does it add to the stat of the art?

Appendices (optional)

Full equations
Model code
Data used

It depends on your target audience, but my inclination would be to say that unless you're specifically targeting an audience that would be interested in the detailed implementation (say, computer science), the means by which you implemented the theoretical model may not be sufficiently interesting to include in the main text.  With that in mind, I'd recommend the following structure:

Introduction
Methods

Theoretical Model

Reference to the appendix for implementation details

Use Cases

Results of use cases

Confirmation of model validity with use cases
Novel findings produced by the model

Conclusions
Appendix (or supplemental material, depending on the journal's requirements)

Details of implementation
Public location where source code will be available following publication

This structure comes with the caveat that I work in a field where models are valued for their ability to generate new findings, and are of lesser interest when they don't advance the state of knowledge within the field.  If your field is more interested in the implementation details you may want to go with your original layout and place the implementation description within the main text.
As for the other questions, I would describe the model in detail in the methods section, and compare the modelling approaches broadly in the introduction (with the bare minimum amount of detail to justify your new approach), and specifically in the methods, with an emphasis on why your approach addresses a weakness of the previous approach.

I like the detail in @significance 's answer, I'd recommend accepting that response.


text:
Are hand made posters acceptable in Academia?
Are hand assembled posters acceptable in Academia?
When I say academia, I mean formal presentation settings such as conferences and symposia.
I ask because I am preparing for a symposium and came across Colin Purrington's guide to conference posters found here.
On his site, Purrington writes:

If you’re crafty, a handmade poster is far superior to anything that you could make with a poster printer. Plus you’d be the highlight of a meeting.

My field is engineering by the way.
I couldn't find this anywhere else and every academic research poster that I have seen is printed. I can print my poster, I am just wondering, would there be any issues with presenting a professional looking hand made one?
On my hand made poster, all text would be printed, it would just be assembled on the board without a template.
Thank you.

Ah okay. I don't know engineering, so I won't answer but unless it was exceptionally well-constructed, I would probably assume your poster was lost somehow on the way to the conference.

Some examples of critiques of hand-drawn posters 1, 2, and 3

Till 2000 the vast majority of posters was printed in pieces. I would say if one is flexible and talented tgere in no difference at all.

Whatever else, the claim by Colin Purrington is extraordinary and, I think, objectively wrong. Most (even exceptional) handcrafted posters could be made at least equally well using computer aided design and a printer, and with less effort. Case in point: the example poster given in the blog post has nothing that couldn’t be done in software.

If I understand correctly the handmade posters Purrington refers to are posters that are drawn by hand. They are not posters pieced together prints of a smaller format.

What exactly are you asking about here? You start out by talking about "hand-assembled" posters, but the article you link to is talking about "hand-drawn".

I have done hand drawn posters. It does work, if your good. But you have to do it for the purpose of doing it. The calligraphy alone takes about 20 times longer than on a computer, its worth it if you are into calligraphy. Incidenttally I also still draw manufacturing drawings on drawingboard. But again for recreational reasons, i would never expect it to save time, in fact i expect doing this wastes a 100 times the time.

@KonradRudolph I definitely agree with that, I don't see why it is necessarily far superior to something made on LaTex.

I interpreted "handmade" as hand assembled, not drawn. @DavidRicherby

@Gnumbertester Follow the link in the article to Jason McDermott's beautiful hand-drawn poster (which is drawn on a single sheet).

Perhaps you can ask for your poster to be illuminated with gas lamps

The Reference Humanity Relies On And Which Has All The Answers (TM), otherwise known as xkcd is hand drawn.

acceptable by whom?Your supervisor? Ask him? Your own feelings of confidence/embaresment? Ask yourself? Is your content great and you want to be noticed? Do you just want to blend in? On a conference you are representing your group. If you are the head of the group you can do what you think is the most benificial. If not, ask the head.

Once upon a time I was at a conference and saw another attendee with a poster that had a knitted / crocheted virus in it. It was not only attention grabbing, but also relevant to the content - a 3D object was more intuitive to the reader than a 2D projection would have been.

If the poster is professional, informative, legible, easy to follow and appeasing to look at, then I am always in favour of doing anything but your standard box-tiled-poster (those look boring). I am not particularly crafty with my hands but I found that I am quite good with drawing and assembling amazing things with vector graphics. It certainly takes more time than laying down a couple of boxes (and hand-crafting will take even longer), but it gives me more freedom of expression (through formatting), my co-authors were always pleased and the posters stood out and were very well received.

You should present the best poster you can make
It is far easier to make a professionally looking, high quality poster using LaTeX or any other software than by hand-drawing it.
However, there are some really good artists out there who can manage to do a hand-drawn poster that looks better than a printed one could.
So don't use hand-drawing as a way to save time or money. A good hand-drawn poster is more work than any printed one.
If you are 100% certain that you can get your message across better with a hand-drawn poster, then go for it, otherwise use a printed one.

+1 for not using it to save time or money - that would indeed be a bad motivation. I however can see how hand crafting can save you from travelling with a tubus, which is IMHO a notable plus.

I just saw someone give a speed talk (so content similar to a poster) with handmade slides that were great---they had great penmanship, formatting, diagrams etc---which would have been hard to do in TeX.

@MartinModrák I hear that getting it printed on fabric is the way to avoid that.

@Kimball In TeX maybe (because TeX is utterly unsuited for the creation of graphics-heavy contents, despite frequently being used for it) but in a graphic design application, maybe coupled with a visual presentation tool (PowerPoint, Keynote, …)?

@KonradRudolph graphic design applications are utterly unsuited for the creation of graphics-heavy contents, despite frequently being used for it...

@leftaroundabout Uhm. No.

@KonradRudolph I suppose you did realise my comment was sarcatic. — Sure – GUI applications can make some graphic creations easier. In particular for unexperienced users, any text-based system will always be much more difficult, and I personally have never learned Tikz and am therefore quite lost when it comes to designing graphics directly in TeX. However, that doesn't mean that Tikz isn't a very suited tool in an expert's hands. Source code has undeniable advantages over mouse-commands. I do still use GUIs for some stuff, but for others I'm much faster in Haskell-diagrams.

I am two days away from a poster presentation. I opted to write mine in Latex because a poster in Latex looks professional.
If you are totally confident that your content is so striking that no-one will pay attention to the graphic art, then write your poster however you want.
The risk in a hand-made home-crafted poster is that it will stand out for the wrong reasons: the medium will swamp the message.
The answer to your question is that such posters are acceptable in academia, but if you want to take that route make sure that your content is really, really good.

If no one is paying attention to the graphical content of your poster, then you are using the medium all wrong.

I have seen "handmade" posters from time-to-time in the past few years. It is a little surprising whenever I see them and reminds me of my younger days. Usually they are A4, sometimes A3, (8.5"x11" or 11"x17") sheets of white paper glued/taped to a slightly larger piece of colored cardboard. Sometimes the title is printed on a large format poster printer, other times the papers are taped together carefully. It is most definitely easier to travel with a poster like this. I have never seen anyone make a really nice poster like this or do things that you cannot do in LaTeX, PowerPoint, or Illustrator.

A personal anecdote: this was my poster at a minor CS meeting last year: https://twitter.com/modrak_m/status/1040590435528388609 . I got a lot of attention and overwhelmingly positive feedback. Easier to travel (brown paper bought at the spot), also not spending much money on something that is discarded shortly after. Can recommend.

An academic poster should just tell the story of a study.
It should be clearly and briefly presented.
In principle, it does not matter if it is printed on paper or canvas, displayed on an electronic screen, printed on multiple A4 papers, drawn by hand, or sculptured, etc.
Non-traditional, creative presentation of a poster (may) attracts more attention (my own experience).

Supporting anecdotal evidence: i once saw someone give a talk using hand-drawn overhead sheets (in 2004, it was already archaic). It was a CS talk, attended by students and faculty and a few people from a bank. The industry people were impressed with the content of the talk and cards changed hands.

I have seen a lot of creativity in poster sessions. For instance, I saw someone bring a sheet of plastic that allowed them to use dry-erase markers, and then they basically gave a chalk talk to anyone who came up. I've also seen people just print out slides of a talk and staple them to the poster area. The former was good, the latter was not. Personally, the most I ever did was use velcro strips to mount a small Android tablet where I showed an animated figure.
I think doing something "non-standard" can be a great way to attract attention and even present things that a traditional beamer/Powerpoint/Illustrator poster can't (my motivation for doing an animation). However, you have to know what you're doing first, in my opinion. Don't do it because it seems more straightforward or allows you to avoid learning the software tools you're expected to be able to use.
Like in a lot of places, the key thing is that you should know the standards very well before you break them, and that if you do so, you have to do it very well.

Yes, of course, it is permitted. As you cited, it may even be the best way to get your ideas across. That is what is valued, not just "production values". You are a scholar, not an advertising guru.
At CS conferences, student posters are fairly often hand constructed, rather than professionally printed.
Just Do It, if it is the best way in your opinion.

Re "At CS conferences, student posters are fairly often hand constructed, rather than professionally printed. " - that's curious. What do you mean by "hand constructed"? I've never been to a CS conference, but the closest thing I've seen was someone just putting up a bunch of A4 printouts together.

@tomasz, imagine something that requires layers or something multi-dimensional for proper effect.

I see. That's interesting.

At a poster presentation your primary role is indeed advertising guru, whether you like it or not. This is literally the point of a poster presentation.

It really doesn't matter as long as it's readable. The content is far more important than the presentation. You are overthinking this.

I've had to downvoted this because it's simply wrong. Presentation absolutely matters and, in the case of a poster, is in fact paramount.

I absolutely agree with @KonradRudolph - clearly the content is important, but a poorly presented poster gives a poor first impression of the work. Maybe if someone's had time to read the paper in advance and found the work interesting, they might see through it, but realistically the poster is your first point-of-contact with the majority of the community and should present the work in a good light.

"Readable" is too low a bar for a poster, it should be effortless to read. I have never seen handwritten text or figures that were easier to read than computer-generated ones. Even typewritten text can become unreadable when standing several feet back in a crowd, that will only happen more easily with handwritten text.

@KonradRudolph: ... in fact, it's even called a poster presentation...
The presentation medium transports the content, so if that medium fails, the content is unfortunately lost to the audience as well.

I've seen probably 8000 conference posters in at quantum information theory conferences, and I can't even remember which ones were hand-printed, so I'd say the content is much more important than the presentation.  (The hand-printed ones are in the minority, but maybe 1 of 20 are that way.)   I do remember one funny poster some years back that was just a big pad of paper, with a little sign saying "Ask me anything you want".  The presenter went on to be a very successful professor.
In other fields the presentation may matter more.  I remember a math professor telling me a funny story of philosophy conferences, where the presenters stand up at a podium and read carefully-prepared speeches word-for-word.  We both sniggered at this, and he said that a philosopher had explained to him that this was because the phrasing and word-choice was very important, which made us both laugh.


text:
How to disclose a major change in scope from orignal F31 submission
I am trying to pull together my first progress report on my F31 fellowship. My concern is due to to COVID19 my ability to work with certain collaborators was diminished and my PI thought it was best to go in another direction. Since I really have no say in the matter, my objectives changed. As a result my aims and objectives have changed drastically. My PI does not want to say my objectives have changed; but they most certainly have.
How do I handle this? Ideally I would have one more report before I can make a run for it. I could hand wave this one and come clean on the 2nd report, but by then I would be almost ready to go so if they stopped it the financial pain would be minimized.
Is this a stain on one's career? Does this really matter at the F level?

No, it's not a stain, no it doesn't matter. Not at the "F" level, not at the "R" level. All that's really important is the overall output of the project: whether you able to eventually publish papers using the funding given to you by the end of the project.
You have to complete the progress report (I believe if you do not your funding will be suspended; probably you can get the funds released if you complete it late but I don't know the details of that situation), and I would not suggest reporting that any funds have been used illegally or that you participated in research misconduct. Otherwise...it really doesn't matter for either your reputation or for you continuing to get the funds. There's a statutory requirement to submit these, and I'd suggest being truthful, but they're not going through a peer review process or anything. It's normal for projects to change, and a global pandemic is probably one of the most unassailable reasons for this.


text:
Is a hybrid career possible in academia
I m rounding the corner of my PhD and wanted to have the semblance of a plan for next steps as I close out my degree.
I came from industry so I have a grasp of the pros and cons on that front. I also have exposure to the darkside of academia as I had a front row seat to lab startup trials and tribulations. My issue lies with the fact that my curiosity itch has the best chance to be satisfied on the academic side. In a post Covid world university budgets will be extraordinarly tight making an already dire market for tenure track positions worse. Also I can imagine non R1 institutions having less opportunities as well.
I was wondering if anyone ever witnessed someone cobble together a patchwork of job roles to make a career out of research blending industry and academia together. Like a part time soft money independent researcher in combination with something else to have a long term career. I know there are industrial post docs but I am looking for a career bit a temp position.
Looking forward to hearing responses.
UPDATE
I am relaxing the condition of working for both industry and academia at the same time as it seems to be a key roadblock in achieving the ultimate goal.

Are you specifically thinking of doing research in both contexts simultaneously? This may be quite difficult due to intellectual property issues. Teaching as an adjunct while having a separate job is another matter.

I like the idea doing research and having some autonomy. Who own the research is not as important as having the intellectual freedom to try stuff.  The traditional academic path seems less viable, I was wondering if there is a way to have more rights and security than an eternal postdoc or research track professor by blending in some industry invovlement or something.

There are other hybrid options, but you've cast the question so narrowly that, while what you seek is possible, the chances of achieving it are extremely small.

@TheCodeNovice Who owns the research may not be important to you; it is certainly important to a company that employs you, and one of the roles that academic institutions fill in research is being the entity that protects a granting organization's ownership in research (for government funded research, this ownership is often some sort of public ownership/public benefit) by policing conflicts of interest.

When I say that I don't care it means I would bend to whatever rules are required so I can have this life.

@buffy what is the limiting constraint?

Wanting it to be research on both sides of the fence. Very very unlikely.

@Buffy I updated my question to relax that condition. I am looking forward to your answer regarding potential hybrid alternatives to the tenure track/research track career path.

I think the cases I know of won't satisfy you much. I know people who have important research positions in industry (large companies with huge research budgets). But they also just love to teach and so do it as adjuncts, possibly over  a long period of time. They earn very little money from teaching but love it and do a good job. But they have no research impact at the university. I'd guess that @BryanKrause has better advice for you if he will expand his comments. I, too, would worry about conflicts with research on both sides of the fence. Commitment is necessary for a career.

So to reiterate what I wrote before, I think it's not at all about your willingness to bend. If actor A says "we own everything you do" and actor B says "everything you do is for public good according to laws XYX" you don't have space to say "Well I don't mind so that resolves that, right?" A still says ok you don't mind but we own it so we are good as long as we own it all. B says ok you don't mind but we can't be spending our money on benefits for A or any other letter.

I've had some second hand interactions with committees that resolve these conflicts, and for people with certain goals it makes sense, but the bar is super high, as it probably should be.

In my observation, there are some advantages and disadvantages in academia for faculty who come from an industrial background and have research interests relating to industry.  The main benefit I have seen is that this often gives useful applied research ideas, and it also often gives scope for some research projects that are of benefit to industry, and therefore gives the opportunity to secure industry funding for research.  Attracting "external funding" is one of the most sought after abilities for academics, and if you are able to develop a research project that attracts industry funding then your university will love you and you have a high chance of academic promotion.  Moreover, if you can secure industry funding for a project, this may make it easier to secure supplementary funding from traditional grant-funding bodies, since they don't have to fund the whole project.
The difficulty you will encounter, highlighted in the comments to your answer, is that there will be a need to negotiate ownership and IP issues in a way that satisfies all funding bodies and the university.  Companies and industry bodies will sometimes fund "general" research that they perceive to be of benefit to them, but they may want the research to lead to some new development or product where they can claim IP ownership.  Contrarily, public universities and public grant-funding bodies will want research projects that give some "public benefit" and not just a private benefit to a company or industry body claiming IP rights.  Consequently, if you want to create a successful research project that spans both these institutions, you will need to negotiate an appropriate compromise that satisfies all parties.  Usually this will entail a guarantee by the industry funders that you can publish some or all of your research in academic journals, but possibly with some extra private knowledge that they may lay claim to (e.g., ownership of a particular dataset, etc.).  I have not had experience with this, but I have seen some successful academics who manage to produce research projects that span industry.  Regardless of whether you can achieve this, I would say that it is often very valuable to have some industry experience coming in to academia.  At worst, it will give you some useful research ideas that have arisen from your industrial practice, and networking connections with industry figures to come up with new research ideas and methods.
In terms of pursuing a "hybrid" career, this may also be possible.  Universities usually allow (or even encourage) their academics to pursue some "service to the profession" that may consist of outside consulting work, or engagement with commercial/industrial projects.  As a rule of thumb, most universities allow an academic to spend up to 20% of their time on this, subject to faculty approval.  (But it varies, so check the rules at the particular university you are thinking of applying to.)  It might also be possible to supplement this with your recreational leave if you don't mind using this for outside work.  To have a successful "hybrid" career, you will have to adapt to the imperatives of university environment, in particular the necessity to "publish or perish".  Nevertheless, having an industrial background can sometimes help with this, insofar as it assists in creating useful research ideas.

I've been (am?) doing something that may be along the lines you are thinking about.
As a PhD student, I decided from the experience of many short fixed term contracts (I started with 3 consecutive contracts covering my first 6 months...) that an economic plan B is needed that can be put into action at short notice whenever needed. That plan was a small side-line freelancing in my profession, which also had an episode of part-time employment in industry.
I do like doing academic research, but I did not like the transition into academic management that I always saw with colleagues starting their own groups/becoming professors. Which for me pointed strongly to staying on postdoc positions and not wanting to advance to group leader/PI level.
Also, in my country academic freedom is a right only for professors, for everyone below it is up to the professor's discretion (which for me worked out better in some groups and worse in others).
At some point, I decided it is time for a change and I started a business in earnest when my contract ran out. The research institute offered me a half-time position to have an easier transition (for both sides), which I took. Since then, I've had a number of shorter and longish part-time postdoc positions at different research institutes. I treat them mostly like any other customer. The scientific/technical staff I work with typically would hire me as company/consultant, but the grant structure over here often means that it is much easier for them to employ me for a project than to get external consulting.
The standard employment contracts of course don't work (see @BryanKrause's comments), and that certainly tends to create extra hassle. But I know perfectly well which modifications I need and can explain why this is not a whim but a requirement (otherwise no end of hassle about ownership of IP rights may ensue).
You need to be willing to end negotiations immediately they indicate that such accomodation is not possible. OTOH, I've also had very positive interactions, where the contract was handled at the top of the legal department with "of course we need some extra clauses, here's a draft, please see whether they suit your needs."
Now a crucial difference here between your proposed solution and what I'm doing is that having two employers means that there's always a third party with legitimate interest in the contract. And that's going to create hassle. (I'd go so far and say this is a flaw in the legal system we have because it envisions only standard work in the form of 100 % positions, and thus has defaults that create serious trouble in many places when someone deviates from that "official vision" of employment)
In practice, I've known people on a lower carreer level (PhD students) to have two part time contracts in parallel (university + industry) without anyone caring about the legal nightmare this situation actually creates: as long as the work is sufficiently insignificant, noone cares because there will be no litigation.

I even like to teach (I do courses), but I'd say you should be carefully checking and negotiating conditions when you consider becoming a freelance academic lecturer. I've managed to get paid decently for a university training/workshop/block course event, but the usual rates the universities list are ridiculous - they clearly indicate that this is for people who want to lecture at university for reasons of vanity (or maybe altruism?), but certainly not for a living.

Covid has not only effects on acadmic job availability, it has similar effects on many industries, btw.
However, you may be able to turn some aspects into your advantage with your potential part-time employers:

With such a hybrid approach, you may be able to take positions that would not be acceptable for a more "normal" carreer.
I.e., moving is sensible only if the contract has a certain volume, and at some point in life even researchers with a rather strong nomadic trait are likely to want settling down more permanently. E.g. I enjoy that I have a "permanent base camp" called home now - my nomadic trait gets sufficient attention by traveling to my customers [except right now...]
It is probably much easier right now to convince such potential employers (research institutes/universities) that you'll do a majority of the work from your own [home] office. Thus, you can accept positions that are further away than would be practical for a normal rate of showing up in person.

This is inspiring thank you! I like the idea of part time jobs between labs. As long as I can draw the line properly so people respect boundaries ( not a strength for any PI), this may be worth pursuing. Though I worry about the pay being enough why get me when they can abuse a grad student... Kidding.... Sort of....

@TheCodeNovice: If you'd like to chat, feel free to email me (see profile). (I'll delete this comment after a while)