The second problem coming out of the growth of the NIH is that the onerous process of applying for grants has put a premium on status-seeking rather than pure science. This was a theme of Katalin Karikó’s years in the wilderness. “I wasn’t very good at kissing butts,” Karikó said bluntly. In Breaking Through, she wrote that she felt success in academia was more about marketing and status than it was about hard science:
