3 ms·

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 hypot

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.
  - Fomite 9y ago
    > Advancing one funeral at a time... This is not a good thing. > 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. Biology skews female. Success in biology grant applications does not. https://www.statnews.com/2016/07/29/women-in-science/ https://www.statnews.com/2016/07/29/women-in-science/ > My sample size is a little small but does not skew Caucasian. NIH funding does. https://www.nih.gov/news-events/news-releases/nih-commissioned-study-identifies-gaps-nih-funding-success-rates-black-researchers https://www.nih.gov/news-events/news-releases/nih-commission... > 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. But this entirely undermines your concept of this being a meritocracy. The name behind your former job doesn't mean your idea is any good, but we'll give you the benefit of the doubt. > 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. They are manifestly failing. > 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. This isn't necessarily good for science. http://science.sciencemag.org/content/354/6312/aaf5239 http://science.sciencemag.org/content/354/6312/aaf5239 > From my experience a lot of established scientists outsource this to younger scientists so that they can get experience judging good science. Not on study panels they don't. > 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. It's not evolving in a good direction. Science funding is accumulating in a smaller number of "long tail" well funded labs. Science is hemorrhaging young investigators, and especially women and PoCs. The average age of a first major independent award is climbing. Paylines are going down. https://nexus.od.nih.gov/all/2017/03/06/mid-career-investigators-shifting-demographics-nih-grant-recipients/ https://nexus.od.nih.gov/all/2017/03/06/mid-career-investiga... I really can't see how you can possibly look at this and go "Oh yeah, this is going good places."
    - 9y ago

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.
- Fomite 9y ago
  > Advancing one funeral at a time... This is not a good thing. > 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. Biology skews female. Success in biology grant applications does not. https://www.statnews.com/2016/07/29/women-in-science/ https://www.statnews.com/2016/07/29/women-in-science/ > My sample size is a little small but does not skew Caucasian. NIH funding does. https://www.nih.gov/news-events/news-releases/nih-commissioned-study-identifies-gaps-nih-funding-success-rates-black-researchers https://www.nih.gov/news-events/news-releases/nih-commission... > 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. But this entirely undermines your concept of this being a meritocracy. The name behind your former job doesn't mean your idea is any good, but we'll give you the benefit of the doubt. > 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. They are manifestly failing. > 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. This isn't necessarily good for science. http://science.sciencemag.org/content/354/6312/aaf5239 http://science.sciencemag.org/content/354/6312/aaf5239 > From my experience a lot of established scientists outsource this to younger scientists so that they can get experience judging good science. Not on study panels they don't. > 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. It's not evolving in a good direction. Science funding is accumulating in a smaller number of "long tail" well funded labs. Science is hemorrhaging young investigators, and especially women and PoCs. The average age of a first major independent award is climbing. Paylines are going down. https://nexus.od.nih.gov/all/2017/03/06/mid-career-investigators-shifting-demographics-nih-grant-recipients/ https://nexus.od.nih.gov/all/2017/03/06/mid-career-investiga... I really can't see how you can possibly look at this and go "Oh yeah, this is going good places."
  - 9y ago