Why Do Administrative Things Get in the way of Science

I'm hoping to make this a short post this weekend. The question is why do administrative problems get in the way of research? Instead of concentrating on the task at hand, (ie doing experiments) we have to order said supplies and reagents to keep the lab running efficiently and make sure we have the proper authorization to perform said experiments. Do you know that I need to have committee approval to run any variation of my experiments on my laboratory mice? So instead of performing the experiments, generating the data that can help save human lives, I have to write a protocol revision for our animal experiments this week. Some time this red tape is just completely frustrating.

Just a disclaimer - Stanford is no exception it like this everywhere.