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Comment by codekilla | Hacker News Reader

I worked in the Broad building at Caltech (Eli Broad), and I watched for 2 years as they demoed the parking lot outside my office to build the 200 million dollar Chen neuroscience building. It is a complete and total waste of money, and I say that cognizant of arguments like 'attracting talent'...etc. At one point we calculated the number of neuroscience postdocs we could hire for that money and easily came to the conclusion that we could have pulled off a Manhattan project of neuroscience with that kind of money. It's pathetic that donors delude themselves into thinking that projects like this do ANY good.

Edit: link: https://www.henselphelps.com/project/chen-neuroscience-resea...

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Donor behavior such as this comes down to human psychology and neuroscience.

* Tribalism: Humans like people who "are like them", it's easier to relate. Thus, IME, Stanford grads prefer other Stanford-branded people. Or at least crême de la creme Ivy. Especially compared to the plebs and the proles.

* Vanity: Donors find it appealing that the structure will be around for a long time, prominently and proudly emblazoned with the donor's own name. Yes, external validation does feel good. Especially among certain (insecure) types. A truly altruistic and self-assured person makes donations anonymously.

Empire building is a popular pastime among the human species, especially those with power. The rest of us settle for something like Civ, SimCity, or sand castles.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Theatre_of_Pompey

Not the first by a long shot.

(Ahem, pyramids ...)

People should invest local. I just handed a check to our sons martial arts center. It is used for scholarships for kids that can't afford monthly dues. Every dollar is treasured.

Yea but it won’t raise your prestige, I mean giving charity to Stanford, one of the top schools in the world, shows everyone how baller you are, and maybe the next 20 generations of Doerrs will get guaranteed admission too

I chuckled when they demolished the nearby Mead undergrad chem lab to make way for another such building, then I realized that the department graduating 5 undergrads a year might have something to do with it. I already missed the sculpture where the bagpipe guy used to play that got taken out for some ChemE building.

> easily came to the conclusion that we could have pulled off a Manhattan project of neuroscience with that kind of money.

In general I wish people spent more time looking at alternatives when these huge projects are proposed. For instance, it drives me nuts thinking of all the alternatives when I see making bids to pay billions for the Olympics. That's the kind of money that could turn the whole area into a science Mecca in several different, with a whole host of positive downstream effects locally.

wait, is the 200 million just for the building, or for the entire facility (new equipment, etc)? Building a new facility in itself seems a worthwhile enterprise - though as a postdoc myself I'd rather have pay bumps for the postdocs :)

I believe at least 170 million was slated initially for construction costs, which may have run over. I don't know how much was for new equipment, but I can't imagine it was a significant fraction (and likely it was an additional expense over those numbers).

170+ million for a BUILDING?! That doesn't make sense to me at all - as someone who spends his waking hours in research laboratories in a newish building of comparable size to the Chen building, I can't see where the money would go.

here's a guess, our fancy new stem cell research building has 3 pieces of chihuly glass about each about the size of a mini cooper...

Well....for starters there is the monkey tunnel that leads from Broad to the Chen building because....you guessed it....the vivarium was in the basement (and still is) of Broad. Many neuroscience labs were in Broad (a VERY nice building in and of itself).

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