Posts by James Green
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Ooops. Somebody just messaged me and it occurs to me that I should link Twizel. Twizel has a very elliptical loopy design, but if you look at the satellite image, you'll see not little parks interconnecting everywhere (working like a much nicer alleyway). The upshot is, it's generally much more direct to walk anywhere.
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It was the multiple concussions rather than the helmet that stopped me from cycling.
There's also some neat analysis that suggests that cul-de-sacs* also have a net negative impact on human health, so does this mean that we can ban Albany and Rolleston? Or at least new poorly thought out subdivisions?
*Cul-de-sacs increase the distance to walk or bike between any two points and general favour the use of cars as transport. The extreme counterpoint is Twizel, where is typically much less direct to drive anywhere than walk, as it follows a transport scheme cooked up in Scandinavia.
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Oh, and finally, before I got side-tracked onto the mechanics of Uncle Marsden, I'd really like to endorse the conclusion of Bart's original post:
The only funding that can lift that kind of novel work is based on pure science quality, like the Marsden Fund. Which also has a very good record of producing patents and new business ideas.There was a psychologist on NatRad a couple of weeks back talking about how cash incentives actually slowed people's ability to problem solve. He didn't say by increasing functional fixedness in some many words, but that's how I read it. Which neatly encapsulates why funding high quality pure science may be better than targeting money to specific ends.
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Personally I think the current system isn’t bad and would work a lot better if more proposals could be funded overall. It’s because the overall money pool is so small that you get good proposals rejected.
I wholeheartedly agree with this. If there was more money, then I certainly wouldn't advocate a system with a random component, which is only there to reduce the time drag for those who write good but unfunded proposals.
Also, the reason why I would increase the chances for time in the hat is if it were a properly random draw, some poor bastards would never get drawn, and some people would 'win' most years.
I’m pretty sure wine is involved in some of the screening process
Undoubtedly :)
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But at the least it prevents people wasting time where the panel knows they wouldn't fund any full application that came to them on this topic from these people.
Except that the Round 1 mentality also leads people to put in less serious punts, so that they might get the opportunity of the second round, which is also a time-waster.
Otherwise you might have full applications from recent graduates who have yet to get published. That's a waste of everyone's time.
I disagree. Marsden's Fast Start is targeted toward these people. I also seem to recollect some research that many of the great ideas in science are actually from people earlier in their careers. Established scientists do fantastically in an accumulative fashion, but breakthroughs tend to come from younger scientists. Almost like a variation on functional fixedness.
And finally, as I think I said at the outset, the best solution would actually be enough money to fund the high quality proposals!
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It strikes me that what is really being asked for with this short pre-proposal is an "elevator pitch" -- the 30 second summary of your idea you can give to a bigshot you just happen to find yourself standing next to in an elevator (ok, lift, since this is New Zealand) with. And this is not an intrinsically unreasonable request.
Personally, I think that Round 1 requires too much to be pinned down for it to really be an elevator pitch. I appreciate that it would be possible for people to pitch a really catchy idea and then completely change it into Round 2, but at the moment, I think there isn't enough scope for an idea to grow from Round 1 (where it has to be pretty much fully fledged).
An alternative idea I've heard kicked around is to keep the top few unfunded Round 2 proposals in the mix for next year. Whether this would actually work, or whether these people would want to modify them is open to debate.
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I'm not sure if many academics would be impressed if they were told that their application would be picked randomly to go on to the (much more extensive and hard work) second round. You might easily send the most brilliant and useful idea back because it never got looked at.
That assumes that the first round is working well as a screening test. I wouldn't say that it is doing an appalling job, but I'm not sure it's doing a great job.
Secondly, while the second round is much more extensive and hard work, you have to do quite a lot of the preparatory work for this for Round 1. Just because Round 1 is light on methodology and requires no budget, you still have to have quite a lot of this stuff sketched out. In this proposed scheme, you would simply put your name in the hat for the lottery, no proposal required. You win, you write a full proposal.
Thirdly, I'd be inclined to weight it so the longer your name has been in the hat, the higher your chances are. Perhaps with a guaranteed entry to Round 2 after X years if your luck has been out.
Finally, while it might lead to revolt, this was actually cooked up by a bunch of colleagues (I can't claim credit), so there is at least some appeal beyond me. Actually, HRC has just gone down the two-round path, and it may have been in relation to that that we were discussing it. -
I know from our experience that proposals that appeal to neurophysiologists and to bacteriologists and to developmental biologists and to biochemists are the ones that get through. Broad appeal.
Marsden is like a two-phase wine judging.
Round 1 is like a wineshow (e.g., Liquorland Top 100). Winners are those that stand out from the 50-100 that you've already tasted. Gold Medal wines aint subtle, but.
Round 2 is like sampling a few more wines in depth. Finesse, elegance and structure become more important than brash. -
That isn't true. If you look at the results from the Royal Society who manage the Marsden's it shows they are actually very successful when measured in terms of papers, patents and even in generating new business ideas.
No no. I wasn't criticising the quality of Marsden funded projects at all. I've been to Round 2, and I'm absolutely confident that my project would have been amazing :)
What I meant is that if they made the first round a random draw, it wouldn't produce discernably different outcomes with respect to quality, and there would be a great time-saving for researchers and panellists alike (ie non-monetary cost) -
The worst thing about it being a lottery is that it is costly and inefficient. It's a massive blight on researchers' and panellists' time for little gain. Having an actual lottery would be cheaper, fairer, and probably have a pretty similar hit rate in terms of funding actually good projects versus crap projects.