4 ms·

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

by 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".

alpineidyll3 6y ago
How about actually measuring them by the citation count on their papers (note this is already a minor factor in tenure decisions, after monies brought in :P )
- mcguire 6y ago
  Has a bit of a problem for them as don't have many papers yet.
- jltsiren 6y ago
  Citations are cheap, and they are being gamed all the time. It's like search engine optimization, but on a smaller scale. Grants are one of the least bad means of evaluating a researcher, because the decisions are not made lightly. Getting funded usually implies that experts have spent a nontrivial amount of time judging the merits of the applicant and their ideas and found them particularly worthy.
  - alpineidyll3 6y ago
    Having gotten grants including the NSF career award. I respectfully disagree lol.
- cycomanic 6y ago
  The thing is, you're trying to create a metric that measures an essentially unmeasureable quantity and to predict future outcomes on this. Moreover you're trying to do this for generally very smart people, so obviously they adapt their behaviour to those metrics (they game the system is a less favourable way of saying this). So the only thing you have achieved that the academics change their work to maximize those metrics. We have seen this with grants as well, to be successful you essentially have to write lots of grant (a period without grants can be career ending), so academics spend up to 50% of their time on grant writing and reviewing. At this point I'm not convinced a lottery would not be a better way of distributing money (and I say that as someone who has been fairly successful at getting grants)

by usrusr 6y ago

alpineidyll3 6y ago

How about actually measuring them by the citation count on their papers (note this is already a minor factor in tenure decisions, after monies brought in :P )

mcguire 6y ago
Has a bit of a problem for them as don't have many papers yet.
jltsiren 6y ago
Citations are cheap, and they are being gamed all the time. It's like search engine optimization, but on a smaller scale. Grants are one of the least bad means of evaluating a researcher, because the decisions are not made lightly. Getting funded usually implies that experts have spent a nontrivial amount of time judging the merits of the applicant and their ideas and found them particularly worthy.
- alpineidyll3 6y ago
  Having gotten grants including the NSF career award. I respectfully disagree lol.
cycomanic 6y ago
The thing is, you're trying to create a metric that measures an essentially unmeasureable quantity and to predict future outcomes on this. Moreover you're trying to do this for generally very smart people, so obviously they adapt their behaviour to those metrics (they game the system is a less favourable way of saying this). So the only thing you have achieved that the academics change their work to maximize those metrics. We have seen this with grants as well, to be successful you essentially have to write lots of grant (a period without grants can be career ending), so academics spend up to 50% of their time on grant writing and reviewing. At this point I'm not convinced a lottery would not be a better way of distributing money (and I say that as someone who has been fairly successful at getting grants)