From Your Comments: Paperwork and Young Scientists

From AJ Righter, with the Environmental Protection Agency's research division, on Are We Drowning our Young Scientists in Paperwork:

It seems calls for reform are widespread right now and it appears to be for good reason. However, I feel it important to bear in mind that the way things are right now is at least in part due to earlier calls for reform. In this case, there was likely a group of people who felt there needed to be some way to increase accountability for grant money. The end result is our current process (an oversimplification to be sure, but I believe it to capture the gestalt of the process). So, this time perhaps we would benefit not from new policy to "fix" a specific issue, but from asking ourselves what it is that scientists are supposed to be doing and how can we create a system that encourages that.

An anonymous commenter says:

The issue is drowning middle range and senior investigators and the entire science enterprise in general.