Posts by Bart Janssen
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James
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
Ah I see. Yeah kinda. The reason for making some kind of science quality cut in the first round is to stop people sending in absolute dross … and you know they would. As it is I know from seeing a couple of panellists at work that they do take that first round pretty seriously and there really is a significant chunk of applications that are rejected on quality. It is the top third that is difficult to select from.
As for completely data free first round, I guess I wouldn’t favour it but hey try it and see what happens. However, I wouldn’t say that just because your name has been in the hat for a long time you should get a better chance.
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.
like a two-phase wine judging
I’m pretty sure wine is involved in some of the screening process :).
Don
Hell yeah! Patents are good but they are best at the late end stage of any R&D. At the discovery phase the more open you are the more collaboration you get. People at conferences don’t talk to people who keep secrets. The more brains (worldwide) you get on a project at the early stage the faster you get to the point where a product becomes possible.
There are Biotech companies that are now shifting to "open source" because they can’t do all the basic discovery themselves and they make more progress towards products by allowing the wider scientific community to contribute.
I did think it was funny to hear a bureaucrat say it was nice to be in a room with scientists :). Usually we don't get anywhere near people like him. -
My point is that if you fail at the first round you have no idea if your proposal was viewed as brilliant, good, rubbish, science fiction or what
I agree Steve. The only advice I can give you is to ask panelists. they can't and won't be specific but they can tell you what things they are looking for in the first round.
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. And then in the second round really high quality specialist appeal.
I'd love to have a system that had enough funding to let more different proposals through. But because of the effort they put into the second round they can't let too many through the first round and that means you need to impress all the panelists to get through that first round.
That's why I think we need to double or triple Marsden funding. They have been the most successful funding tool over the last decade. that success seems hard to ignore.
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why? it works well for China and Japan
Because if you are in that game you need to be faster than China and Japan. They can put 20 PhDs for every one of ours on any project we can think of and hence they are faster.
You can however, collaborate with chinese and japanese groups and that does work.
We are a small country, what works for China and Korea and Japan does not work for us.
That also implies China and Japan are not doing basic discovery science. That's a myth we in the west like to kid ourselves with ... that we are innovative and they are not, sadly it isn't even a plausible myth.
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James
[Marsend's]
probably have a pretty similar hit rate in terms of funding actually good projects versus crap projects.
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. Much more successful than any other funding system that has been tried in New Zealand.
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everyone I meet and talk about Marsden with agrees that it is, in fact, just a lottery
Steve I understand your frustration but I do disagree. That first round of the Marsden is very hard because it is only one page and you need to excite most if not all of the panel. In a really narrow field that is really difficult. I know several people who have sat on those panels and they struggle with that first phase as much as you do. You need to convince (in one page) a dozen different scientists that your work as a good chance of producing a Science or Nature publication.
But as bad as that first phase is, the result is that most of the applications that go on to be considered as full applications are very good science. One of the messages I've heard many times is that the panels could fund twice as many grants without dropping quality at all and put twice as much money into each grant with no concern that it would be wasted.
BTW the Marsden process is neither costly nor inefficient. Panelists get a couple of hundred dollars for about three weeks work for the first phase and another 2 weeks work for the second round. It is vastly cheaper than the FRST system.
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Yes, it puts the risk mostly on the taxpayer
And given the size of NZ and the fact that most big companies can more easily and efficiently do their R&D in Aus I can't see that changing. What this funding package is trying to do is encourage business to invest in NZ R&D, and it might work.
But the risk is not as bad as you think. Despite the fact that you can't predict which project will produce the new businesses you can say that if you fund enough good quality science the you will produce new businesses.
Yes the immediate payoff is for that business but if you look at data worldwide you can see that the country as a whole benefits as well. Hence the strong relationship between GDP and R&D spending. This is the point Professor Gluckman has made in most of his speeches.
The key is to fund quality science and fund enough. Where we've failed as a country over the last 30 years is by pretending we can do more with less money by picking winners. All we've proved is we can do less with less money.
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a depressingly partisan slagging of Gluckman.
Good grief that's awful. Professor Gluckman may have his faults, who doesn't, but there can be no question he is a very good scientist and really does believe that science can and should contribute to society.
Science funding isn't a National v Labour thing. Note Labour only promised to deliver lots of money to science just before they were voted out. Science funding has suffered for 30 years. That's plenty of time for either major party to have changed things.
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You are truly evil Emma, you know damn well that any man who actually tries to "dress for success" is only going to be laughed at by you ladeez! All you've done is hand out guides to being an object of mirth as opposed to being an object of desire.
a) they're more or less proportional to body size, and
b) they're pretty much all the same.Having grown up as a nudist I can say you are wrong Emma. I've seen some disturbingly non-proportional instances.
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I was born in 1957 and I was too young for the Beatles.
I had two older brothers who brought the frenzy into the house so I was exposed to it younger than most :).
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It has ever been thus. There are no more ardent fans than tiny girls.
Oh yeah I get that. And I also get that it isn't a creation of the modern media. For some reason there is a need to adulate (and ululate).
Jeez, how old are you Bart??
hmmm old enough to remember the Beatles frenzy and to be horrified that my female friends liked this.
I totally get the intensity of the emotion that goes along with these teen stars. I'm just not sure why such a need to go crazy exists in our species (and yes I am accepting that Canadians are the same species :P).