11 ms·

Scientific grant applications are getting heavier on hype

88 points by dev_tty01 4y ago

phantom_of_cato 4y ago
They are also getting heavier on highly politicized terms. [1] [1]: https://www.cspicenter.com/p/increasing-politicization-and-homogeneity-in-scientific-funding-an-analysis-of-nsf-grants-1990-2020 https://www.cspicenter.com/p/increasing-politicization-and-h...
- Eddy_Viscosity2 4y ago
  Ironically, "highly politicized terms" is itself a politicized term.
  - phantom_of_cato 4y ago
    Not really, but even if it was, what meaningful difference would it make? You can see the list if the terms in the article, and it's hard to deny that they are very political.
    - swatcoder 4y ago
      My ad blocker might be hiding the list you’re talking about. I see a graphic with “Most incresed hype adjectives” but I can’t imagine that’s the one you mean. Can you paste them, maybe?
      - phantom_of_cato 4y ago
        Sorry, I wasn't referring to the submitted article, but to the one I had linked to in my comment. There's a list of the terms above the chart in page 6 of the PDF, for example: https://cspi.substack.com/api/v1/file/2f0c41b8-a81b-45b1-9346-42a79680ae53.pdf https://cspi.substack.com/api/v1/file/2f0c41b8-a81b-45b1-934... The fact that these terms are political isn't controversial. In fact, you can trace back the popularization of some of them in political discourse to landmark SCOTUS decisions and executive orders. See [1], for example. [1]: https://www.thirteen.org/wnet/supremecourt/rights/landmark_regents.html https://www.thirteen.org/wnet/supremecourt/rights/landmark_r... "The Supreme Court, in a 5-4 decision written by Justice Lewis Franklin Powell, ruled that a state may constitutionally consider race as a factor in its university admissions to promote educational diversity, but only if considered alongside other factors and on a case-by-case basis."
- kgarten 4y ago
  - phantom_of_cato 4y ago
    > you might have a romantic impression about what science is and how it works. Not really. But something which is already bad can still get worse.
    - kgarten 4y ago
      Again, politics is part of science. Your politics and beliefs will shape the research questions and hypothesis you are asking. Please define worse. I think it was worse in the past (and can give you examples if you really want to read them), there was a lot of sexist and racist work done under the term "Science." I don't see that much work like that anymore ... Yes, maybe some fringe gender science folks are overstressing sth. but come on, I don't see a problem in that (compared to how people misunderstood Darwin in the past ...).
      - phantom_of_cato 4y ago
        > Again, politics is part of science. But the question is: Should it be like that? Should we encourage or discourage that? > (and can give you examples if you really want to read them) Sure, I'd appreciate it. Especially if the articles/books covering them were not published in the recent years. I've read "Betrayers of the Truth" [1], so I know about the Piltdown Man [2] (which was apparently used to "prove" that earliest men were British), or that Cyril Burt [3] had most probably falsified data in his studies on heritability of IQ. Sometimes these exposés are themselves a tad biased though. > some fringe gender science It's not just social sciences, although they are much more affected. See the charts in the article linked in my original comment, for example. And, IMO, it's not just a fringe part of gender studies. Its departments are essentially ideological think-tanks of the worst kind, with very little objective research being done by them. > I don't see that much work like that anymore But I'm sure you also know that there are certain things which are probably true, but almost no one would ever dare (or could) publish any kind of new evidence supporting them in the current climate. [1]: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Betrayers_of_the_Truth https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Betrayers_of_the_Truth [2]: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Piltdown_Man https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Piltdown_Man [3]: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cyril_Burt https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cyril_Burt
fghorow 4y ago
News item. "MY research is TRANSFORMATIONAL."
SubiculumCode 4y ago
its time to move to a different funding mechanism. We spend half our time begging for money instead of doing science.
- jpeloquin 4y ago
  Reduce the number of PIs until grant paylines go back to ~ 30%. Institutions that don't play ball—that hire grant-seeking PIs at a greater than sustainable rate—should be penalized. First, by reduction of indirect costs, then by making applicants affiliated with that institution progressively ineligible for various funding mechanisms. Once the applicant pool is back in balance with the money pool, there can be more focus on science and less on salesmanship.
  - jmcgough 4y ago
    Alternatively, give more money to the NSF. It's a tiny sliver of our federal budget and is a much more effective use of money than a lot of other short-term solutions we fund.
    - jpeloquin 4y ago
      I agree that increasing public research funding is a good idea, but it can only fix the payline & hype problem (increase efficiency) temporarily, until universities once again expand their departments. For example, the NIH budget increased by ~ 2.5× between 98 and 03, which prompted many universities to form new biomedical departments. In a way, that's exactly the intended effect. The point of increasing funding was to do more science, and to a degree more researchers = more science. But hiring out-competed the funding increase and ultimately created the problems highlighted in the posted article. The capacity to consume money can always grow faster than funding. On Hacker News we often talk about bad incentives in science from an individual's perspective, but the main incentive problem is at the organizational level. From an organizational perspective, every additional grant-seeking researcher is still a marginal benefit, no matter how little time they actually spend on research. E.g., even a 99% marketing 1% research split (an exaggerated ratio, only for illustrative purposes) means adding another "researcher" is still a marginal benefit to the organization even though it wastes most of public's money on institutional growth rather than science. The equilibrium state is a near-total focus on grant-seeking and marketing. To ensure the public's money is spent effectively, funding agencies need to pay more attention to designing their policies to counteract this tendency. You might get your wish regarding the NSF specifically though. An 18% increase will make a difference for a couple years: https://nsf.gov/about/budget/fy2023/index.jsp https://nsf.gov/about/budget/fy2023/index.jsp
logisticseh 4y ago
There has been a real shift in the culture of academia over the last 10-15 years that coincides with what I'm starting to call "the rise of the Twitter Prof". The twitter thing is both literal and also a stand-in for similar junk like TED talks. IMO, the US needs to clean house. We should restructure our research funding so that it goes to motivated and curious people instead of politically connected PIs. This means totally disconnecting NSF/NIH/DARPA funding from the university apparatus. Treat academic affiliation -- and the associated albatross of "overhead" -- as a hindrance to grant applications as opposed to a requirement. Imagine how much better the caliber of our research will be if we pay grad students $100K instead of paying them $35K and their university $65K. We could 10x our research spend by giving money to the right people instead of giving it to people who can stomach and afford giving 2/3rds of their funding to sad excuses for institutions that American universities have become. At the very least, tax payers need to stop bailing out student loan debt while simultaneously funding multiple annual week-long conferences in Hawaii and Europe for professors who scoff at their teaching assignments.
- octoberfranklin 4y ago
  This is sort of what NGI Zero is doing, mostly via NLNet: https://nlnet.nl/project/current.html https://nlnet.nl/project/current.html https://www.ngi.eu/ngi-projects/ngi-zero/ https://www.ngi.eu/ngi-projects/ngi-zero/ They're an insignificantly-tiny fraction of EU research funds, but I'm shocked how often I come across an outstanding project (nix, chips4makers, betrusted, libresoc, searx, OTR, osmocom, qubes, sourcehut, wireguard) that they funded. Whatever awesomeness the NSF had in the 1970s-1980s died somewhere in the mid-1990s, and appears to have been reincarnated with these guys.
- anu7df 4y ago
  Yes, the university taking 60-70% is almost highway robbery, but it is hard to completely disassociate from them. For one, the university can through economies of scale reduce the cost of setting up and running experimental facilities. Moreover, one usually finds motivated researchers in academic settings (I am anticipating dissent here, since that could be because of the funding flowing only through Universities). However talented and motivated researchers usually find other work situations which while to fully aligning to their erstwhile research interests, pay for a good life. Those who really have the passion that exceeds the mundane normalisation of drive ( also called life per some definition) usually seek refuge in the academic setting. So, yes if we can set up labs like the old Bell labs or find a way to replicate the tenure model of universities, taking funding away from the univ mechanism and giving it to individual unaffiliated researchers won't be practical. But even if that can be achieved, you have just replaced universities with a slightly different structure. Better option is to trim the fat and realign priorities at universities, which is also easier said than done. Cushy administrator jobs, student housing mansions with 5 star facilities, large stadium colosseum all should go.. But systemic reasons, societal perception, need to justify legacy admission all factor in here as strong headwinds.
deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
MooMooMilkParty 4y ago
I love a good cynical take as much as the next HN reader, but as a researcher working in the environmental/climate space many of us are using these words because the are true. Sure there are some folks I consider full of buzzwords and light on substance but I think it's warranted for scientists to make "inflated" claims to get their research noticed. Yes, there are structural problems in academia and research funding that do need to be fixed, but I'm not sure this shift in language is completely a symptom of it. People are actually dying out there and we are pleading to get funding to try to help. Just the last couple of weeks: - Flooding in Pakistan kills 1000+: https://www.vox.com/world/2022/8/30/23327725/pakistan-flooding-unprecedented-political-economic-humanitarian-crisis https://www.vox.com/world/2022/8/30/23327725/pakistan-floodi... - Ongoing slow disaster in the Colorado River Basin: https://www.npr.org/2022/08/27/1119550028/7-states-and-federal-government-lack-direction-on-cutbacks-from-the-colorado-riv https://www.npr.org/2022/08/27/1119550028/7-states-and-feder... - Jackson, MS water crisis: https://www.cnn.com/2022/08/30/us/jackson-water-system-failing-tuesday/index.html https://www.cnn.com/2022/08/30/us/jackson-water-system-faili... - Record breaking heat forecasted for CA this coming week: https://www.latimes.com/california/story/2022-08-31/the-heat-dome-phenomenon-thats-generating-californias-hottest-week-and-why-its-getting-worse https://www.latimes.com/california/story/2022-08-31/the-heat... - Spanish drought destroys harvests: https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-62707435 https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-62707435 - China factories shut down because of heat wave: https://www.wsj.com/articles/chinas-factories-hurt-amid-covid-disruptions-heat-waves-property-slump-11661944730?mod=hp_lead_pos12 https://www.wsj.com/articles/chinas-factories-hurt-amid-covi... - Drought dries up rivers in France: https://www.reuters.com/world/europe/frances-river-loire-sets-new-lows-drought-dries-up-its-tributaries-2022-08-17/ https://www.reuters.com/world/europe/frances-river-loire-set...
- enviclash 4y ago
  I am a colleague, and IMHO in our community people uses "transformation" very often without any real transformational substance. It would be nice to connect! (mail in about)
- seydor 4y ago
  > but I think it's warranted for scientists to make "inflated" claims to get their research noticed. Researchers are scientists, not marketing-people. If you really want to impact policy, go into politics. Otherwise it's an authoritarian twist on what democracy is What you are doing by makign a random list of events is even a travesty of science. How do these events compare to the past.
Gatsky 4y ago
> And where does the actual language come from? Millar is already at work on his next project to answer that question, too. In some preliminary data analysis of all previous NIH calls for grant applications, he found that all of the hype adjectives identified in this month’s study also appear in information from the NIH telling people how to apply for grants. It may be the case that the rise in hype words in applications has happened, in part, because regulators planted the seeds. (Emphasis mine) This is the essential point, buried in the article. Granting agencies cause a lot of this nonsense. The grant assessment criteria they provide will literally say things like: “demonstrate the work is novel and transformational.”
- aaplok 4y ago
  This. And then applicants who tell the reviewers explicitly the information they need using phrases like "this application is innovative because..." tend to be more successful than those who let the reviewer guess. As is clear in this thread people want bang for their buck. So applications are asked to justify what bang they will provide, and the successful ones tell it.
- mattkrause 4y ago
  Amen. Literally the first sentence of the NIH criteria page: https://grants.nih.gov/grants/peer/critiques/rpg.htm https://grants.nih.gov/grants/peer/critiques/rpg.htm "R01, R03, R21, R34. Reviewers will provide an overall impact score to reflect their assessment of the likelihood for the project to exert a sustained, powerful influence on the research field(s) involved..."(Emphasis mine). There are whole sections called "Innovation" and "Significance."
- PeterisP 4y ago
  Yeah, as soon as grant agencies add scoring criteria like "+1 point: does this application support sustainable development?", for a weird reason every grant from theoretical math to astronomy will have some paragraph with "sustainable" as the main keyword.
enviclash 4y ago
As a proposal reviewer, I see these words and other strategies (like putting in the abstract "I published in this nature journal") a nudge against the chritical mindset required for providing fair feedback. On the other hand, if you are humble, you might not excite enough the reviewers. Anyone with a suggestion for a sweet middle point?
stevejohnson 4y ago
[dead]
waffles2021 4y ago
About a decade ago, everyone was told that scientific documents were impenetratable by common folk, so to make them more accessible and attract more funding, a narrative should be created and include literary devices to spice them up. Now everything reads like a TED talk.
shakow 4y ago
Grant givers: specify they will only give money to ‶oustanding″, ‶novel″, ‶impactful″, ‶game-changing″, etc. applications; prioritize hype over matter. Grant given: fill their application with hype and buzzwords to get grants. Well well, who could have guessed this completely unforeseeable consequence...
alpineidyll3 4y ago
That's sad because grant panels approve based on political and personal relationships, not the content of the grant. Lol this is like complaining about mafia talking about cannoli....
t_mann 4y ago
Interesting finding. An immediate question that I would have was how did the language in the rejected proposals change? If we see more 'groundbreaking' adjectives today, this could mean different things: either the NHS has shifted towards preferring applications with more sensationalist language, or the authors have collectively shifted towards such language (or a mix of the two). Would be interesting to look at next (since they seem to be doing a series of papers on this topic).

88 points by dev_tty01 4y ago

They are also getting heavier on highly politicized terms. [1] [1]: https://www.cspicenter.com/p/increasing-politicization-and-homogeneity-in-scientific-funding-an-analysis-of-nsf-grants-1990-2020 https://www.cspicenter.com/p/increasing-politicization-and-h...

Eddy_Viscosity2 4y ago
Ironically, "highly politicized terms" is itself a politicized term.
- phantom_of_cato 4y ago
  Not really, but even if it was, what meaningful difference would it make? You can see the list if the terms in the article, and it's hard to deny that they are very political.
  - swatcoder 4y ago
    My ad blocker might be hiding the list you’re talking about. I see a graphic with “Most incresed hype adjectives” but I can’t imagine that’s the one you mean. Can you paste them, maybe?
    - phantom_of_cato 4y ago
      Sorry, I wasn't referring to the submitted article, but to the one I had linked to in my comment. There's a list of the terms above the chart in page 6 of the PDF, for example: https://cspi.substack.com/api/v1/file/2f0c41b8-a81b-45b1-9346-42a79680ae53.pdf https://cspi.substack.com/api/v1/file/2f0c41b8-a81b-45b1-934... The fact that these terms are political isn't controversial. In fact, you can trace back the popularization of some of them in political discourse to landmark SCOTUS decisions and executive orders. See [1], for example. [1]: https://www.thirteen.org/wnet/supremecourt/rights/landmark_regents.html https://www.thirteen.org/wnet/supremecourt/rights/landmark_r... "The Supreme Court, in a 5-4 decision written by Justice Lewis Franklin Powell, ruled that a state may constitutionally consider race as a factor in its university admissions to promote educational diversity, but only if considered alongside other factors and on a case-by-case basis."
kgarten 4y ago
- phantom_of_cato 4y ago
  > you might have a romantic impression about what science is and how it works. Not really. But something which is already bad can still get worse.
  - kgarten 4y ago
    Again, politics is part of science. Your politics and beliefs will shape the research questions and hypothesis you are asking. Please define worse. I think it was worse in the past (and can give you examples if you really want to read them), there was a lot of sexist and racist work done under the term "Science." I don't see that much work like that anymore ... Yes, maybe some fringe gender science folks are overstressing sth. but come on, I don't see a problem in that (compared to how people misunderstood Darwin in the past ...).
    - phantom_of_cato 4y ago
      > Again, politics is part of science. But the question is: Should it be like that? Should we encourage or discourage that? > (and can give you examples if you really want to read them) Sure, I'd appreciate it. Especially if the articles/books covering them were not published in the recent years. I've read "Betrayers of the Truth" [1], so I know about the Piltdown Man [2] (which was apparently used to "prove" that earliest men were British), or that Cyril Burt [3] had most probably falsified data in his studies on heritability of IQ. Sometimes these exposés are themselves a tad biased though. > some fringe gender science It's not just social sciences, although they are much more affected. See the charts in the article linked in my original comment, for example. And, IMO, it's not just a fringe part of gender studies. Its departments are essentially ideological think-tanks of the worst kind, with very little objective research being done by them. > I don't see that much work like that anymore But I'm sure you also know that there are certain things which are probably true, but almost no one would ever dare (or could) publish any kind of new evidence supporting them in the current climate. [1]: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Betrayers_of_the_Truth https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Betrayers_of_the_Truth [2]: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Piltdown_Man https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Piltdown_Man [3]: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cyril_Burt https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cyril_Burt

fghorow 4y ago

News item. "MY research is TRANSFORMATIONAL."

SubiculumCode 4y ago

its time to move to a different funding mechanism. We spend half our time begging for money instead of doing science.

jpeloquin 4y ago
Reduce the number of PIs until grant paylines go back to ~ 30%. Institutions that don't play ball—that hire grant-seeking PIs at a greater than sustainable rate—should be penalized. First, by reduction of indirect costs, then by making applicants affiliated with that institution progressively ineligible for various funding mechanisms. Once the applicant pool is back in balance with the money pool, there can be more focus on science and less on salesmanship.
- jmcgough 4y ago
  Alternatively, give more money to the NSF. It's a tiny sliver of our federal budget and is a much more effective use of money than a lot of other short-term solutions we fund.
  - jpeloquin 4y ago
    I agree that increasing public research funding is a good idea, but it can only fix the payline & hype problem (increase efficiency) temporarily, until universities once again expand their departments. For example, the NIH budget increased by ~ 2.5× between 98 and 03, which prompted many universities to form new biomedical departments. In a way, that's exactly the intended effect. The point of increasing funding was to do more science, and to a degree more researchers = more science. But hiring out-competed the funding increase and ultimately created the problems highlighted in the posted article. The capacity to consume money can always grow faster than funding. On Hacker News we often talk about bad incentives in science from an individual's perspective, but the main incentive problem is at the organizational level. From an organizational perspective, every additional grant-seeking researcher is still a marginal benefit, no matter how little time they actually spend on research. E.g., even a 99% marketing 1% research split (an exaggerated ratio, only for illustrative purposes) means adding another "researcher" is still a marginal benefit to the organization even though it wastes most of public's money on institutional growth rather than science. The equilibrium state is a near-total focus on grant-seeking and marketing. To ensure the public's money is spent effectively, funding agencies need to pay more attention to designing their policies to counteract this tendency. You might get your wish regarding the NSF specifically though. An 18% increase will make a difference for a couple years: https://nsf.gov/about/budget/fy2023/index.jsp https://nsf.gov/about/budget/fy2023/index.jsp

logisticseh 4y ago

There has been a real shift in the culture of academia over the last 10-15 years that coincides with what I'm starting to call "the rise of the Twitter Prof". The twitter thing is both literal and also a stand-in for similar junk like TED talks. IMO, the US needs to clean house. We should restructure our research funding so that it goes to motivated and curious people instead of politically connected PIs. This means totally disconnecting NSF/NIH/DARPA funding from the university apparatus. Treat academic affiliation -- and the associated albatross of "overhead" -- as a hindrance to grant applications as opposed to a requirement. Imagine how much better the caliber of our research will be if we pay grad students $100K instead of paying them $35K and their university $65K. We could 10x our research spend by giving money to the right people instead of giving it to people who can stomach and afford giving 2/3rds of their funding to sad excuses for institutions that American universities have become. At the very least, tax payers need to stop bailing out student loan debt while simultaneously funding multiple annual week-long conferences in Hawaii and Europe for professors who scoff at their teaching assignments.

octoberfranklin 4y ago
This is sort of what NGI Zero is doing, mostly via NLNet: https://nlnet.nl/project/current.html https://nlnet.nl/project/current.html https://www.ngi.eu/ngi-projects/ngi-zero/ https://www.ngi.eu/ngi-projects/ngi-zero/ They're an insignificantly-tiny fraction of EU research funds, but I'm shocked how often I come across an outstanding project (nix, chips4makers, betrusted, libresoc, searx, OTR, osmocom, qubes, sourcehut, wireguard) that they funded. Whatever awesomeness the NSF had in the 1970s-1980s died somewhere in the mid-1990s, and appears to have been reincarnated with these guys.
anu7df 4y ago
Yes, the university taking 60-70% is almost highway robbery, but it is hard to completely disassociate from them. For one, the university can through economies of scale reduce the cost of setting up and running experimental facilities. Moreover, one usually finds motivated researchers in academic settings (I am anticipating dissent here, since that could be because of the funding flowing only through Universities). However talented and motivated researchers usually find other work situations which while to fully aligning to their erstwhile research interests, pay for a good life. Those who really have the passion that exceeds the mundane normalisation of drive ( also called life per some definition) usually seek refuge in the academic setting. So, yes if we can set up labs like the old Bell labs or find a way to replicate the tenure model of universities, taking funding away from the univ mechanism and giving it to individual unaffiliated researchers won't be practical. But even if that can be achieved, you have just replaced universities with a slightly different structure. Better option is to trim the fat and realign priorities at universities, which is also easier said than done. Cushy administrator jobs, student housing mansions with 5 star facilities, large stadium colosseum all should go.. But systemic reasons, societal perception, need to justify legacy admission all factor in here as strong headwinds.

deleted 4y ago

[deleted]

MooMooMilkParty 4y ago

I love a good cynical take as much as the next HN reader, but as a researcher working in the environmental/climate space many of us are using these words because the are true. Sure there are some folks I consider full of buzzwords and light on substance but I think it's warranted for scientists to make "inflated" claims to get their research noticed. Yes, there are structural problems in academia and research funding that do need to be fixed, but I'm not sure this shift in language is completely a symptom of it. People are actually dying out there and we are pleading to get funding to try to help. Just the last couple of weeks: - Flooding in Pakistan kills 1000+: https://www.vox.com/world/2022/8/30/23327725/pakistan-flooding-unprecedented-political-economic-humanitarian-crisis https://www.vox.com/world/2022/8/30/23327725/pakistan-floodi... - Ongoing slow disaster in the Colorado River Basin: https://www.npr.org/2022/08/27/1119550028/7-states-and-federal-government-lack-direction-on-cutbacks-from-the-colorado-riv https://www.npr.org/2022/08/27/1119550028/7-states-and-feder... - Jackson, MS water crisis: https://www.cnn.com/2022/08/30/us/jackson-water-system-failing-tuesday/index.html https://www.cnn.com/2022/08/30/us/jackson-water-system-faili... - Record breaking heat forecasted for CA this coming week: https://www.latimes.com/california/story/2022-08-31/the-heat-dome-phenomenon-thats-generating-californias-hottest-week-and-why-its-getting-worse https://www.latimes.com/california/story/2022-08-31/the-heat... - Spanish drought destroys harvests: https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-62707435 https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-62707435 - China factories shut down because of heat wave: https://www.wsj.com/articles/chinas-factories-hurt-amid-covid-disruptions-heat-waves-property-slump-11661944730?mod=hp_lead_pos12 https://www.wsj.com/articles/chinas-factories-hurt-amid-covi... - Drought dries up rivers in France: https://www.reuters.com/world/europe/frances-river-loire-sets-new-lows-drought-dries-up-its-tributaries-2022-08-17/ https://www.reuters.com/world/europe/frances-river-loire-set...

enviclash 4y ago
I am a colleague, and IMHO in our community people uses "transformation" very often without any real transformational substance. It would be nice to connect! (mail in about)
seydor 4y ago
> but I think it's warranted for scientists to make "inflated" claims to get their research noticed. Researchers are scientists, not marketing-people. If you really want to impact policy, go into politics. Otherwise it's an authoritarian twist on what democracy is What you are doing by makign a random list of events is even a travesty of science. How do these events compare to the past.

Gatsky 4y ago

> And where does the actual language come from? Millar is already at work on his next project to answer that question, too. In some preliminary data analysis of all previous NIH calls for grant applications, he found that all of the hype adjectives identified in this month’s study also appear in information from the NIH telling people how to apply for grants. It may be the case that the rise in hype words in applications has happened, in part, because regulators planted the seeds. (Emphasis mine) This is the essential point, buried in the article. Granting agencies cause a lot of this nonsense. The grant assessment criteria they provide will literally say things like: “demonstrate the work is novel and transformational.”

aaplok 4y ago
This. And then applicants who tell the reviewers explicitly the information they need using phrases like "this application is innovative because..." tend to be more successful than those who let the reviewer guess. As is clear in this thread people want bang for their buck. So applications are asked to justify what bang they will provide, and the successful ones tell it.
mattkrause 4y ago
Amen. Literally the first sentence of the NIH criteria page: https://grants.nih.gov/grants/peer/critiques/rpg.htm https://grants.nih.gov/grants/peer/critiques/rpg.htm "R01, R03, R21, R34. Reviewers will provide an overall impact score to reflect their assessment of the likelihood for the project to exert a sustained, powerful influence on the research field(s) involved..."(Emphasis mine). There are whole sections called "Innovation" and "Significance."
PeterisP 4y ago
Yeah, as soon as grant agencies add scoring criteria like "+1 point: does this application support sustainable development?", for a weird reason every grant from theoretical math to astronomy will have some paragraph with "sustainable" as the main keyword.

enviclash 4y ago

As a proposal reviewer, I see these words and other strategies (like putting in the abstract "I published in this nature journal") a nudge against the chritical mindset required for providing fair feedback. On the other hand, if you are humble, you might not excite enough the reviewers. Anyone with a suggestion for a sweet middle point?

stevejohnson 4y ago

[dead]

waffles2021 4y ago

About a decade ago, everyone was told that scientific documents were impenetratable by common folk, so to make them more accessible and attract more funding, a narrative should be created and include literary devices to spice them up. Now everything reads like a TED talk.

shakow 4y ago

Grant givers: specify they will only give money to ‶oustanding″, ‶novel″, ‶impactful″, ‶game-changing″, etc. applications; prioritize hype over matter. Grant given: fill their application with hype and buzzwords to get grants. Well well, who could have guessed this completely unforeseeable consequence...

alpineidyll3 4y ago

That's sad because grant panels approve based on political and personal relationships, not the content of the grant. Lol this is like complaining about mafia talking about cannoli....

t_mann 4y ago

Interesting finding. An immediate question that I would have was how did the language in the rejected proposals change? If we see more 'groundbreaking' adjectives today, this could mean different things: either the NHS has shifted towards preferring applications with more sensationalist language, or the authors have collectively shifted towards such language (or a mix of the two). Would be interesting to look at next (since they seem to be doing a series of papers on this topic).