4 ms·

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

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