Redish Lab on Nostr: npub1skvad…laky3 npub16vc9r…0z487 The fact that 50% of the submitted grants are ...
npub1skvad2l2wrxgdmt6yxk9kt2rjhw5tucjzhf54pktfq2gg0qhgwyqdlaky3 (npub1skv…aky3) npub16vc9rzpyj4vszj6mec3fznnq3mr7jzu7kjz63d6a5ca6jffznm7qg0z487 (npub16vc…z487)
The fact that 50% of the submitted grants are "not discussed" is a testament to the problems with the grant system that are, IMHO, more serious than the problems in the journal/paper publication system. The amount of time wasted on the grant competition is terrifying and a huge inefficiency in the grant system. With papers, we can at least put the work out as preprints, and the effort is not wasted.
The "not discussed" review came from the idea that grants are a simple contest, so all you need to determine is which to fund. I got into science just as the old system was being replaced. In that old system, grants were very large (25 pages of research proposal, really!), grant review was seen like paper review and every grant was provided a set of things to change/fix (think "major revision" from peer review). There was a very real sense that if you fixed the problems, you would get funded. This meant that if you started the process 2-3 years early, you could survive on one grant. Lots and lots of labs had one grant for decades. Once they were funded, they would start the renewal process in year 3, and could reliably know whether they were going to be funded in year 5 (when the cycle ran out) or whether they needed to scramble. In practice, most labs could safely live on one grant.
But this was deemed that it "took too long to get a grant funded" (as if science works on that kind of fast timescale) and people shouldn't have to wait in line to get funded. So they nixed this.
PS. Our recent T32 (months of work) and our recent U01 (months of work) were also "not discussed". The amount of work I could have done on real science instead of writing grants is ... I can't even...
PPS. Here's an interesting suggestion of a "good enough + lottery system" .https://journals.plos.org/plosbiology/article?id=10.1371/journal.pbio.3000065 npub16nf96938l0uqz4j6kw0m9w60h368yklusr9wmrrx9xy8v5yuhd6qu4q6as (npub16nf…q6as)
The fact that 50% of the submitted grants are "not discussed" is a testament to the problems with the grant system that are, IMHO, more serious than the problems in the journal/paper publication system. The amount of time wasted on the grant competition is terrifying and a huge inefficiency in the grant system. With papers, we can at least put the work out as preprints, and the effort is not wasted.
The "not discussed" review came from the idea that grants are a simple contest, so all you need to determine is which to fund. I got into science just as the old system was being replaced. In that old system, grants were very large (25 pages of research proposal, really!), grant review was seen like paper review and every grant was provided a set of things to change/fix (think "major revision" from peer review). There was a very real sense that if you fixed the problems, you would get funded. This meant that if you started the process 2-3 years early, you could survive on one grant. Lots and lots of labs had one grant for decades. Once they were funded, they would start the renewal process in year 3, and could reliably know whether they were going to be funded in year 5 (when the cycle ran out) or whether they needed to scramble. In practice, most labs could safely live on one grant.
But this was deemed that it "took too long to get a grant funded" (as if science works on that kind of fast timescale) and people shouldn't have to wait in line to get funded. So they nixed this.
PS. Our recent T32 (months of work) and our recent U01 (months of work) were also "not discussed". The amount of work I could have done on real science instead of writing grants is ... I can't even...
PPS. Here's an interesting suggestion of a "good enough + lottery system" .https://journals.plos.org/plosbiology/article?id=10.1371/journal.pbio.3000065 npub16nf96938l0uqz4j6kw0m9w60h368yklusr9wmrrx9xy8v5yuhd6qu4q6as (npub16nf…q6as)