6 ms·

The grant system completely compromises most faculty'$ ability to do anything with their decades of training besides sell themselves. Especially young faculty d

The grant system completely compromises most faculty'$ ability to do anything with their decades of training besides sell themselves. Especially young faculty during their most productive years. The only way to turn this around is to change the way we give credit for scientific achievements, and stop rewarding "I wrote the grant" With authorships. (Im ex faculty)

lumost 6y ago
I wonder how much of the rise of modern "pop-sci" as a genre in writing, film, and tv is due to the current academic incentives. If you're so good at selling yourself and field why not take the pitch directly to a paying audience rather than grant committees?
- SCUSKU 6y ago
  While at first I balked at this idea, I suppose what you're proposing is crowdsourcing academic research funding. Naturally, the first thing that comes to mind is how accountability can be managed. One of the major pitfalls of the crowdfunding model seems to be that the fundraisers can make like bandits with the money, with seemingly little recourse, or incentive for the crowd.
  - lumost 6y ago
    I don't think that I was proposing crowdfunding for science, but rather that the incentives in modern academia would give rise to modern popular science figures as those most able to secure funding. It's likely not the healthiest situation for actual discovery.
    - fuzzfactor 6y ago
      There's still this: https://experiment.com https://experiment.com
  - ngcc_hk 6y ago
    One nay wonder one can make a human gene fish ... monkey and pig are what chinese good at but I guess fish is easier. Look at those lovely eye from... want a crowd fund or public fund ... But the key would be attention. It will draw attention. What the worst is private fund one may say then. What is the key issue is what the goverence model or ethical standard. Probably competition across nations ... it will kill us.
laretluval 6y ago
> stop rewarding "I wrote the grant" With authorships. How could this work? If you have more grant money you have more resources to write papers.
- alpineidyll3 6y ago
  Many faculty getting the most funding are never involved in writing the papers attributed to them. (Source: years spent at the top five universities and my own faculty experience) Would work simply: fund students directly. If faculty contribute training or ideas students can grant authorship. Faculty/postdocs still peer review papers.
  - rsfern 6y ago
    I really like this idea of funding students directly, I feel like it’s pretty well aligned with e.g. the NSF’s mission wrt workforce development, and it reduces the power imbalance for students who find themselves in a toxic group environment I guess there’s still a need for bigger grants because some labs cost more than others to run, but those grants could cover the cost of equipment and materials without having to directly cover student salaries.
    - alpineidyll3 6y ago
      Yeah. I think simply making faculty apply for infrastructure and only funding students and no faculty time is the right way to go. Unfortunately this is the opposite of the way that the NSF is being propelled (since panels are dominated by 'eminent scientists' ~= well connected old lazy scientists)
  - JadeNB 6y ago
    > If faculty contribute training or ideas students can grant authorship. I don't know a particularly good way to get around this issue and still reward faculty for collaboration with students, but, in this situation, faculty are just going to pressure students to 'recognise' their (the faculty's) contributions with an authorship—say, by threatening to withhold a recommendation letter.
timr 6y ago
> The grant system completely compromises most faculty'$ ability to do anything with their decades of training besides sell themselves. I agree that the academic world is broken, but this narrative that success -- in any field -- isn't dependent on your ability to sell yourself is problematic. I left academia behind because I saw that it was a brutal, improbable grind, sure, but mainly because I could see that the same skills needed for success as a professor had a much higher expected value elsewhere. In academia or otherwise, disproportionate success comes to those who combine ability with self-promotion. The people who put their heads down and focus on obscure problems will always be at the mercy of the winds.
- josephg 6y ago
  > but this narrative that success -- in any field -- isn't dependent on your ability to sell yourself is problematic. Some people make fantastic researchers and are terrible at selling themselves and their work. It seems like a bad deal for everyone if these people are blocked from making contributions to science.
  - etrautmann 6y ago
    Yes - the idea that everyone in science must be a fantastic Jack or Jill of all trades is absurd. There is no room for oddballs that are missing any of 20 subtle skills, including many social ones that should have little to do with research skill. Incentivizing teams to succeed instead of individuals is essential for reforming our current broken system.
    - usrusr 6y ago
      The question is what would be the alternative to grant applications. A grant lottery?Tenure lottery? Stop funding entirely and just include "dear God, make our science advance" in your evening prayer? Nobody considers the grant treadmill an achievement to be proud of, but arguments against the claim that it's the least bad solution have to go beyond just "it's not good".
      - 6y ago
Al-Khwarizmi 6y ago
> The only way to turn this around is to change the way we give credit for scientific achievements, and stop rewarding "I wrote the grant" With authorships. (Im ex faculty) I totally agree with your diagnosis of the problem, but I don't see how your proposed solution would solve anything. First of all, grants are needed to do any meaningful research and advance one's careers in most fields, authorship or no authorship. So the incentive to spend a disproportionate amount of time selling oneself would still be there. Second, as you yourself imply, the reasons why young faculty don't take a more active role in research are (mostly) not voluntary, it's because they are forced into the grant treadmill. I don't see why they deserve punishment (in the form of fewer authorships) on top of that. They're already overworked getting the grants and you want them to spend more hours in the lab to get authorships in addition? Third, how do you even police authorships? Especially when a person has a position of power due to having the funding with which other people in the lab are hired. There are already guidelines from scientific societies that in theory don't allow people who just obtained the funding to claim authorship, but people do it anyway. Even if someone complained, they can claim that they actually contributed (e.g. by going through the paper, checking and polishing for correctness) and it's very hard to disprove. I think the solution has to be to the tune of (1) funding purely based on past CV, not projects (spare us all the effort of convincing reviewers that what we're going to do is the bee's knees, and drawing fictional Gantt charts when in research it's practically impossible to predict anything. If we have produced relevant results in the past, we will probably keep producing them); (2) flatter funding (reward better CVs with better funding, but keep decent enough funding for everyone to keep feedback loops at bay and not throw people that got unlucky with experiments under the bus); and (3) individual funding for everyone instead of a large chunk of funding that goes to the head of the lab.

lumost 6y ago

I wonder how much of the rise of modern "pop-sci" as a genre in writing, film, and tv is due to the current academic incentives. If you're so good at selling yourself and field why not take the pitch directly to a paying audience rather than grant committees?

SCUSKU 6y ago
While at first I balked at this idea, I suppose what you're proposing is crowdsourcing academic research funding. Naturally, the first thing that comes to mind is how accountability can be managed. One of the major pitfalls of the crowdfunding model seems to be that the fundraisers can make like bandits with the money, with seemingly little recourse, or incentive for the crowd.
- lumost 6y ago
  I don't think that I was proposing crowdfunding for science, but rather that the incentives in modern academia would give rise to modern popular science figures as those most able to secure funding. It's likely not the healthiest situation for actual discovery.
  - fuzzfactor 6y ago
    There's still this: https://experiment.com https://experiment.com
- ngcc_hk 6y ago
  One nay wonder one can make a human gene fish ... monkey and pig are what chinese good at but I guess fish is easier. Look at those lovely eye from... want a crowd fund or public fund ... But the key would be attention. It will draw attention. What the worst is private fund one may say then. What is the key issue is what the goverence model or ethical standard. Probably competition across nations ... it will kill us.

laretluval 6y ago

> stop rewarding "I wrote the grant" With authorships. How could this work? If you have more grant money you have more resources to write papers.

alpineidyll3 6y ago
Many faculty getting the most funding are never involved in writing the papers attributed to them. (Source: years spent at the top five universities and my own faculty experience) Would work simply: fund students directly. If faculty contribute training or ideas students can grant authorship. Faculty/postdocs still peer review papers.
- rsfern 6y ago
  I really like this idea of funding students directly, I feel like it’s pretty well aligned with e.g. the NSF’s mission wrt workforce development, and it reduces the power imbalance for students who find themselves in a toxic group environment I guess there’s still a need for bigger grants because some labs cost more than others to run, but those grants could cover the cost of equipment and materials without having to directly cover student salaries.
  - alpineidyll3 6y ago
    Yeah. I think simply making faculty apply for infrastructure and only funding students and no faculty time is the right way to go. Unfortunately this is the opposite of the way that the NSF is being propelled (since panels are dominated by 'eminent scientists' ~= well connected old lazy scientists)
- JadeNB 6y ago
  > If faculty contribute training or ideas students can grant authorship. I don't know a particularly good way to get around this issue and still reward faculty for collaboration with students, but, in this situation, faculty are just going to pressure students to 'recognise' their (the faculty's) contributions with an authorship—say, by threatening to withhold a recommendation letter.

timr 6y ago

> The grant system completely compromises most faculty'$ ability to do anything with their decades of training besides sell themselves. I agree that the academic world is broken, but this narrative that success -- in any field -- isn't dependent on your ability to sell yourself is problematic. I left academia behind because I saw that it was a brutal, improbable grind, sure, but mainly because I could see that the same skills needed for success as a professor had a much higher expected value elsewhere. In academia or otherwise, disproportionate success comes to those who combine ability with self-promotion. The people who put their heads down and focus on obscure problems will always be at the mercy of the winds.

josephg 6y ago
> but this narrative that success -- in any field -- isn't dependent on your ability to sell yourself is problematic. Some people make fantastic researchers and are terrible at selling themselves and their work. It seems like a bad deal for everyone if these people are blocked from making contributions to science.
- etrautmann 6y ago
  Yes - the idea that everyone in science must be a fantastic Jack or Jill of all trades is absurd. There is no room for oddballs that are missing any of 20 subtle skills, including many social ones that should have little to do with research skill. Incentivizing teams to succeed instead of individuals is essential for reforming our current broken system.
  - usrusr 6y ago
    The question is what would be the alternative to grant applications. A grant lottery?Tenure lottery? Stop funding entirely and just include "dear God, make our science advance" in your evening prayer? Nobody considers the grant treadmill an achievement to be proud of, but arguments against the claim that it's the least bad solution have to go beyond just "it's not good".
    - 6y ago

Al-Khwarizmi 6y ago

> The only way to turn this around is to change the way we give credit for scientific achievements, and stop rewarding "I wrote the grant" With authorships. (Im ex faculty) I totally agree with your diagnosis of the problem, but I don't see how your proposed solution would solve anything. First of all, grants are needed to do any meaningful research and advance one's careers in most fields, authorship or no authorship. So the incentive to spend a disproportionate amount of time selling oneself would still be there. Second, as you yourself imply, the reasons why young faculty don't take a more active role in research are (mostly) not voluntary, it's because they are forced into the grant treadmill. I don't see why they deserve punishment (in the form of fewer authorships) on top of that. They're already overworked getting the grants and you want them to spend more hours in the lab to get authorships in addition? Third, how do you even police authorships? Especially when a person has a position of power due to having the funding with which other people in the lab are hired. There are already guidelines from scientific societies that in theory don't allow people who just obtained the funding to claim authorship, but people do it anyway. Even if someone complained, they can claim that they actually contributed (e.g. by going through the paper, checking and polishing for correctness) and it's very hard to disprove. I think the solution has to be to the tune of (1) funding purely based on past CV, not projects (spare us all the effort of convincing reviewers that what we're going to do is the bee's knees, and drawing fictional Gantt charts when in research it's practically impossible to predict anything. If we have produced relevant results in the past, we will probably keep producing them); (2) flatter funding (reward better CVs with better funding, but keep decent enough funding for everyone to keep feedback loops at bay and not throw people that got unlucky with experiments under the bus); and (3) individual funding for everyone instead of a large chunk of funding that goes to the head of the lab.