How can funders promote significant breakthroughs?
Is real scientific progress slowing? Are funders of research, whether governments, corporations, or philanthropies, getting a good return on their investment? Along with many others (based largely on intuition and anecdote) I believe that the system is broken, and at many different levels. What are possible ways forward? How might current systems of funding be reformed?
The Economist recently published a fascinating column (in the Finance and Economics section!), How to escape scientific stagnation. It reviews a number of recent papers by economists that wrestle with questions such as those above.
Philanthropists... funding of basic research has nearly doubled in the past decade. All these efforts aim to help science get back its risk-loving mojo.
In a working paper published last year, Chiara Franzoni and Paula Stephan look at a number of measures of risk, based on analyses of text and the variability of citations. These suggest science’s reward structure discourages academics from taking chances.
Another approach in vogue is to fund “people not projects”. A study in 2011 compared researchers at the Howard Hughes Medical Institute, where they are granted considerable flexibility over their research agendas and lots of time to carry out investigations, with similarly accomplished ones funded by a standard NIH programme. The study found that researchers at the institute took more risks. As a result, they produced nearly twice as much highly cited work, as well as a third more “flops” (articles with fewer citations than their previously least-cited work).
Despite the uncertainty about exactly how best to fund scientific research, economists are confident of two things. The first is that a one-size-fits-all approach is not the right answer,... DARPA models, the Howard Hughes Medical Institute’s curiosity-driven method, and even handing out grants by lottery, as the New Zealand Health Research Council has tried, all have their uses.
The second is that this burst of experimentation must continue. The boss of the NSF, Sethuraman Panchanathan, agrees. He is looking to reassess projects whose reviews are highly variable—a possible indication of unorthodoxy. He is also interested in a Willy Wonka-style funding mechanism called the “Golden Ticket”, which would allow a single reviewer to champion a project even if his or her peers do not agree. ...many venture-capital partnerships employ similar policies, because they prioritise the upside of long-shot projects rather than seeking to minimise failure.
The study that I would like to see done is along the following lines. Identify at what age and what type of institution and what type of funding environment, the biggest breakthroughs happen. I suggest that you will find in the U.S.A, that it was done by young faculty at the top 20 institutions in an era when they did not have to worry much about getting grants. If so, then I think most of the money should be given to them!
"I suggest that you will find in the U.S.A, that it was done by young faculty at the top 20 institutions in an era when they did not have to worry much about getting grants."
ReplyDeleteMy question would be: How do you know that those institutions are still hiring the smartest people nowadays? There are many economic and let's face it political reasons, why that may not be true anymore.
The first link in the article does not work.
ReplyDeleteThe EU has done a study along similar lines. On which locations should public investment happen? It concluded that it only makes sense to support the most developed locations. Of course, this was never enacted for obvious political reasons.
ReplyDeleteThe question I would ask is the following: if Hardvard, Yale and MIT are so successful, why not carefully try to scale their model by say increasing enrollment and faculty positions by 10% each year? Why are these institutions not growing if they are great?
Because these are private universities. Government has not much to say about how they are managed (growth etc). And the public universities in the US are state managed while the funding comes from federal sources.
ReplyDeleteThe financing source is not the point. Why does a private university not want to grow? The only reason I can see is that the value of the education it provides lies only in its exclusivity.
DeleteThere are many reasons to not grow. Quality does often not remain constant with increasing size.
DeleteAnd I thought you proposed to emulate these private universities in the public colleges. My bad for misunderstanding that.
Ok. Fair enough.
DeleteGreat work, well done;)
ReplyDeleteThe first link in the article is broken.
ReplyDeleteThe first link in the article is still broken.
ReplyDeleteSorry for that and for being slow to fix it. Should be okay now.
DeleteThank you!
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