My spouse worked at National Research Lab for his entire career. His indirect costs were always higher than 15% (probably because as a National Lab, the facility doesn’t get outside funding from sources other than the federal government…)
Grant money is not supposed to be used to pay for upscale hotels and restaurants. If the individual you are referencing is using it that way, they are abusing their grant.
SIL travels for conferences as part of his job as director of research program and as a board member/officer for various academic organizations. He gets a per diem allowance. If he chooses to spend more than his per diem allows, it comes out of his pocket. (Same was true when DH was still traveling for work.)SIL always flies coach (since that’s all his grant allows)–even when he’s flying halfway around the world.
According to Nature, indirect costs ranged from 15% to 60%, but each individual grant was able to negotiate its own cap based upon its needs. Large institutions were more able to successfully negotiate higher caps–likely because highly specialized lab require greater infrastructure support. (High-powered computing centers require special electrical & cooling systems, for example. Same for labs using very high powered lasers. Laser labs also require specialized foundations to ensure a perfectly level surface. Labs that handle nuclear materials requires very specialized storage and handling facilities and extra layers of security.) Cancer treatment centers have some of the same infrastructure needs as highly specialized research labs. They house huge computing centers that are use to operate radiation therapy equipment and process imaging data . They also need highly specialized facilities to “cook,” process, store and dispose of radioactive isotopes** used in cancer treatment and [PET and CAT] imaging studies.
**Most of these isotopes have a very short half life so must be irradiated onsite which means a cancer treatment facility needs to have its own small nuclear reactor.