4 ms·

Science is very well funded in the U.S. Requiring selling your ideas is important to put funding where the good ideas are. Some are better at selling than othe

Science is very well funded in the U.S. Requiring selling your ideas is important to put funding where the good ideas are. Some are better at selling than others though. It's a competitive market as it should be. To weed out the ideas that shouldn't be funded. A better way to very ideas?

lacampbell 9y ago
Applied science surely needs to rest on a healthy bedrock of pure science to draw ideas from. I don't think you can advance science purely by relying on what might have "real world" applications. It's a process of discovery. Also remember lots of "useless"/theoretical science turned out to have enormous real world uses.
- tertius 9y ago
  My comment said nothing about "applied science" vs. "basic science." I'm actually talking about basic science. You can do basic science but have very bad ideas based on very poor data which you interpreted poorly. You shouldn't be funded. There are enough people with good ideas for basic science who should rather get the money.
tertius 9y ago
I meant to type "A better way to vet ideas?"
pvaldes 9y ago
Exact... in the U.S.
Fomite 9y ago
The idea that science funding at this point is a function of "What ideas are good" is pretty contrary to actual evidence.
- tertius 9y ago
  Care to elaborate? To get funding you have to provide a hypothesis and aims to prove/disprove with a starting justification for said hypothesis. If your hypothesis is good compared to someone who has a poor hypothesis you should get the funding. We can't just open the funding floodgates to everyone. Not all people with graduate degrees are good at science. And only the best should be rewarded with funding. Again, there is unfortunately an advantage if you're a good writer, but I don't think there's a better system at this point in time that we can rely on except maybe past published work.
  - Fomite 9y ago
    What you described is what should happen. What actually happens is you provide a research question and the way you intend to approach it. What determines whether you get funding is a complex function of your age (don't be young), gender (don't be a woman), race (don't be non-white), history (come from a big lab with a prominent PI), whether you've been funded before, weird reviewer preference (like, seriously, whether you put citations in your specific aims), what section you went to and whether or not the review panel thinks this is worth doing, whether you lie in the comfortable space where your work is neither very safe nor particularly risky, etc. Plus stochasticity. We might not be able to "open the funding floodgates" to everyone, but at the moment it's hardly a meritocracy, and it's strangling junior scientists. It's been fascinating to see things evolve even during the relatively short period of my career.
    - tertius 9y ago
      > What actually happens is you provide a research question and the way you intend to approach it. Which is what I described. Except that I'm comparing two identical candidates except that the one has better science than the other, which is the genesis of my thesis: Bad science should not get funded. All of the things you mention come into play at one degree or another depending on field. I think with some experience can agree to this, but even with this, I don't see how an alternative approach would make it better than what we currently have. Evolution is really what's happening, and from my perspective for the better. > Age Advancing one funeral at a time... > Gender. The effect of this is field specific. Biology for instance skews female and I've met some fiercely competitive female biologists who are very successful, but besides my anecdote, females are preferred in biology overall. > Race. My sample size is a little small but does not skew Caucasian. > History. Which I don't see as a bad thing. Except if a PI makes the mistake of hiring an incompetent (but very aggressive) postdoc that can't tell a nude mouse from a barbering one... I've seen this happen and yes, the person carries clout from the lab with them. > Funded before. I don't see this as a bad thing either. As there as numerous (though not nearly as large) sources of funding only for young scientists to help alleviate this issue. But this + history = track record. So bad for some, but good if controlled for bad science. But this too can be overcome through aggression and politicking. > Reviewer preference. From my experience a lot of established scientists outsource this to younger scientists so that they can get experience judging good science. But yes, this is all over the place. But for all the shortcomings like the randomness you mention, this is a good tool especially if the reviewer pool is somewhat diverse, but also experts, a hard combination for sure. > Worth doing Or competes with things they're working on in secret... > it's hardly a meritocracy You meant to say Utopia right? If you don't expect it to be a meritocracy then you'll be happier in the long run. As long as the system is evolving in a good direction, which from my perspective it is, we can ignore that it is not a perfect meritocracy. But creating perfect markets is pretty hard to do in general.
Gatsky 9y ago
This misses the point that grant agencies are rubbish at funding great ideas. And also that some scientists shamelessly oversell their ideas and even falsify data - behaviour which is of course encouraged by the system of perverse incentives you advocate.
- hyperbovine 9y ago
  This reminds of that Churchill quote about democracy: "the worst form of government, except for all those other forms that have been tried." Besides competitive grant awards, do you have a better mechanism for reliably funding brilliant ideas? I doubt it. I agree the system could be improved in certain ways, like tilting the funding stream less heavily towards older PIs, and funding a few moonshots, both problems the NIH at least claims to be addressing now. Also, some scientists do overhype their ideas, and a very few might make up data, but the majority do neither.
  - Gatsky 9y ago
    The problem is of course your argument justifies any incumbent system no matter how heinous. I don't think the analogy holds up. And I don't think I am required to present a plan to revolutionise research funding in a comment on HN.
    - tertius 9y ago
      I don't think you're required to no, but you can at least attempt an answer or cite someone else that has put thought into an alternative. And just because you fail at your attempt does not make your initial point void.
    - hyperbovine 9y ago
      If the current system is so "heinous" then seemingly that should not be very difficult.
- tertius 9y ago
  Yes, but they're at least adequate at funding good science. That is all that they are attempting. I did mention that there are people with salesmanship and that's an advantage that you really can't control for. Well except through scrutiny of only the science, which seems to be fairly well done through a group of scientists who have to approve proposals. "Oversell ideas and falsify data": Of course a competitive market will encourage these behaviors. But just because there are unethical people in science doesn't mean that we should do away with the system. I would add to "falsify data", misinterpret and misunderstand data (and specifically the statistics involved). Again, something you can control for to some degree with scrutiny of the applications by other good scientists.
eli_gottlieb 9y ago
>Science is very well funded in the U.S. Then why do the grant agencies have a constantly-declining acceptance rate, and budgets that basically stay constant every year in real dollars while the economy as a whole grows?
- tertius 9y ago
  I didn't say that it was growing at some arbitrary rate. Something being well funded does not mean that that funding will improve over time. If R&D is 2% of GDP and declines slightly over time but remains in the top 10 we can still call it very well funded. And just because acceptance rate is declining and competition is increasing still does not mean that science is not very well funded in the U.S.

lacampbell 9y ago

Applied science surely needs to rest on a healthy bedrock of pure science to draw ideas from. I don't think you can advance science purely by relying on what might have "real world" applications. It's a process of discovery. Also remember lots of "useless"/theoretical science turned out to have enormous real world uses.

tertius 9y ago
My comment said nothing about "applied science" vs. "basic science." I'm actually talking about basic science. You can do basic science but have very bad ideas based on very poor data which you interpreted poorly. You shouldn't be funded. There are enough people with good ideas for basic science who should rather get the money.

tertius 9y ago

I meant to type "A better way to vet ideas?"

pvaldes 9y ago

Exact... in the U.S.

Fomite 9y ago

The idea that science funding at this point is a function of "What ideas are good" is pretty contrary to actual evidence.

tertius 9y ago
Care to elaborate? To get funding you have to provide a hypothesis and aims to prove/disprove with a starting justification for said hypothesis. If your hypothesis is good compared to someone who has a poor hypothesis you should get the funding. We can't just open the funding floodgates to everyone. Not all people with graduate degrees are good at science. And only the best should be rewarded with funding. Again, there is unfortunately an advantage if you're a good writer, but I don't think there's a better system at this point in time that we can rely on except maybe past published work.
- Fomite 9y ago
  What you described is what should happen. What actually happens is you provide a research question and the way you intend to approach it. What determines whether you get funding is a complex function of your age (don't be young), gender (don't be a woman), race (don't be non-white), history (come from a big lab with a prominent PI), whether you've been funded before, weird reviewer preference (like, seriously, whether you put citations in your specific aims), what section you went to and whether or not the review panel thinks this is worth doing, whether you lie in the comfortable space where your work is neither very safe nor particularly risky, etc. Plus stochasticity. We might not be able to "open the funding floodgates" to everyone, but at the moment it's hardly a meritocracy, and it's strangling junior scientists. It's been fascinating to see things evolve even during the relatively short period of my career.
  - tertius 9y ago
    > What actually happens is you provide a research question and the way you intend to approach it. Which is what I described. Except that I'm comparing two identical candidates except that the one has better science than the other, which is the genesis of my thesis: Bad science should not get funded. All of the things you mention come into play at one degree or another depending on field. I think with some experience can agree to this, but even with this, I don't see how an alternative approach would make it better than what we currently have. Evolution is really what's happening, and from my perspective for the better. > Age Advancing one funeral at a time... > Gender. The effect of this is field specific. Biology for instance skews female and I've met some fiercely competitive female biologists who are very successful, but besides my anecdote, females are preferred in biology overall. > Race. My sample size is a little small but does not skew Caucasian. > History. Which I don't see as a bad thing. Except if a PI makes the mistake of hiring an incompetent (but very aggressive) postdoc that can't tell a nude mouse from a barbering one... I've seen this happen and yes, the person carries clout from the lab with them. > Funded before. I don't see this as a bad thing either. As there as numerous (though not nearly as large) sources of funding only for young scientists to help alleviate this issue. But this + history = track record. So bad for some, but good if controlled for bad science. But this too can be overcome through aggression and politicking. > Reviewer preference. From my experience a lot of established scientists outsource this to younger scientists so that they can get experience judging good science. But yes, this is all over the place. But for all the shortcomings like the randomness you mention, this is a good tool especially if the reviewer pool is somewhat diverse, but also experts, a hard combination for sure. > Worth doing Or competes with things they're working on in secret... > it's hardly a meritocracy You meant to say Utopia right? If you don't expect it to be a meritocracy then you'll be happier in the long run. As long as the system is evolving in a good direction, which from my perspective it is, we can ignore that it is not a perfect meritocracy. But creating perfect markets is pretty hard to do in general.

Gatsky 9y ago

This misses the point that grant agencies are rubbish at funding great ideas. And also that some scientists shamelessly oversell their ideas and even falsify data - behaviour which is of course encouraged by the system of perverse incentives you advocate.

hyperbovine 9y ago
This reminds of that Churchill quote about democracy: "the worst form of government, except for all those other forms that have been tried." Besides competitive grant awards, do you have a better mechanism for reliably funding brilliant ideas? I doubt it. I agree the system could be improved in certain ways, like tilting the funding stream less heavily towards older PIs, and funding a few moonshots, both problems the NIH at least claims to be addressing now. Also, some scientists do overhype their ideas, and a very few might make up data, but the majority do neither.
- Gatsky 9y ago
  The problem is of course your argument justifies any incumbent system no matter how heinous. I don't think the analogy holds up. And I don't think I am required to present a plan to revolutionise research funding in a comment on HN.
  - tertius 9y ago
    I don't think you're required to no, but you can at least attempt an answer or cite someone else that has put thought into an alternative. And just because you fail at your attempt does not make your initial point void.
  - hyperbovine 9y ago
    If the current system is so "heinous" then seemingly that should not be very difficult.
tertius 9y ago
Yes, but they're at least adequate at funding good science. That is all that they are attempting. I did mention that there are people with salesmanship and that's an advantage that you really can't control for. Well except through scrutiny of only the science, which seems to be fairly well done through a group of scientists who have to approve proposals. "Oversell ideas and falsify data": Of course a competitive market will encourage these behaviors. But just because there are unethical people in science doesn't mean that we should do away with the system. I would add to "falsify data", misinterpret and misunderstand data (and specifically the statistics involved). Again, something you can control for to some degree with scrutiny of the applications by other good scientists.

eli_gottlieb 9y ago

>Science is very well funded in the U.S. Then why do the grant agencies have a constantly-declining acceptance rate, and budgets that basically stay constant every year in real dollars while the economy as a whole grows?

tertius 9y ago
I didn't say that it was growing at some arbitrary rate. Something being well funded does not mean that that funding will improve over time. If R&D is 2% of GDP and declines slightly over time but remains in the top 10 we can still call it very well funded. And just because acceptance rate is declining and competition is increasing still does not mean that science is not very well funded in the U.S.