Friday, February 13, 2009
Thursday, February 12, 2009
Comments on Stephen Quake's Column on Science Funding
Link to the original Article
Thoughtful and wonderful. Great choice of topic and columnist, Olivia.
As a new faculty (haven't been a year yet) my feelings are very appropriately described by Dr. Quake. Since I've joined the new position, I've been telling people that it is exactly like a small business. The Institution gives you some capital (with strings attached) to start your business. They pick you, not always based on your scientific potential, more based on your success in obtaining funding - if you have been lucky to post-doc with a scientist in an Institution where your mentor and the Institution allowed you to write small grants and made supporting commitments. Then the real struggle begins - you’re essentially expected to establish, sell and turn a profit (in the form of indirect costs from your grants) back to the investor (the Institution) within let’s say between two to three years. I personally do not know a lot about typical venture capital funded start up businesses, but tend to think that these are some quite extreme parameters that a new faculty is expected to operate. This excludes all other faculty related commitments – typically 15% of expected time.
Having complained about all that I do realize, and in fact cherish the fact, that above all “we get paid (albeit poorly) to pursue our hobbies”. There is typically no “boss”, and no regular work schedule. However, one aspect I find objectionable about some of the senior scientists/faculties. Some of us do not value the communication of our science part. I have heard very senior and excellent scientists say that there should be a mechanism where you just staple your papers and NIH should fund you. Two objections - first it is your responsibility to the society, which is funding your research, to communicate your science. Thus you are responsible to write simple well explained grants, so that people see the importance of your research. Second, it just shows blunt arrogance. How many Americans really know the name of NIH compared to NASA? Do they know that NIH’s annual budget is much higher than NASA? Why the country which spends highest amount of money in scientific research still have debates about evolution among common people? I think we scientists have really done a poor job of communicating life science research to the society.
As with other services, science has just become more and more expensive. With the advent of knowledge and discoveries, it always opens up more questions, more new topics of research. The list of interesting scientific problems always grows in geometric progression. On top of which, the amount of findings reported in a typical scientific paper grows with time. There is probably no journal which will now accept a paper reporting cloning and sequencing a gene! Thus, financially most of the times, the cost of a scientific paper published today is higher than five year ago just in terms of content generated. Therefore, it is not sustainable to practice science this way. This makes the determination of interesting project worth funding even more difficult. We do need to think about a different way to go forward. I don’t know what and how, but want put forth one idea: Biosphere. How about creating a portal for creative ideas in modern biology? I think there is a large no. of ideas, thoughts, that glimpses scientists' mind, and never get tested, because of practical limitations. But, there is someone, somewhere who may be able to test the idea or hypothesis. Therefore, the portal, which will primarily work by wiki principle, will provide people the chance to check out ideas, or get thought provoking facts. This can help in changing a large no. of me-too type experiments and papers and we will rest easy knowing that some of our radical new ideas might get tested and stop complaining about NIH funding.
Thoughtful and wonderful. Great choice of topic and columnist, Olivia.
As a new faculty (haven't been a year yet) my feelings are very appropriately described by Dr. Quake. Since I've joined the new position, I've been telling people that it is exactly like a small business. The Institution gives you some capital (with strings attached) to start your business. They pick you, not always based on your scientific potential, more based on your success in obtaining funding - if you have been lucky to post-doc with a scientist in an Institution where your mentor and the Institution allowed you to write small grants and made supporting commitments. Then the real struggle begins - you’re essentially expected to establish, sell and turn a profit (in the form of indirect costs from your grants) back to the investor (the Institution) within let’s say between two to three years. I personally do not know a lot about typical venture capital funded start up businesses, but tend to think that these are some quite extreme parameters that a new faculty is expected to operate. This excludes all other faculty related commitments – typically 15% of expected time.
Having complained about all that I do realize, and in fact cherish the fact, that above all “we get paid (albeit poorly) to pursue our hobbies”. There is typically no “boss”, and no regular work schedule. However, one aspect I find objectionable about some of the senior scientists/faculties. Some of us do not value the communication of our science part. I have heard very senior and excellent scientists say that there should be a mechanism where you just staple your papers and NIH should fund you. Two objections - first it is your responsibility to the society, which is funding your research, to communicate your science. Thus you are responsible to write simple well explained grants, so that people see the importance of your research. Second, it just shows blunt arrogance. How many Americans really know the name of NIH compared to NASA? Do they know that NIH’s annual budget is much higher than NASA? Why the country which spends highest amount of money in scientific research still have debates about evolution among common people? I think we scientists have really done a poor job of communicating life science research to the society.
As with other services, science has just become more and more expensive. With the advent of knowledge and discoveries, it always opens up more questions, more new topics of research. The list of interesting scientific problems always grows in geometric progression. On top of which, the amount of findings reported in a typical scientific paper grows with time. There is probably no journal which will now accept a paper reporting cloning and sequencing a gene! Thus, financially most of the times, the cost of a scientific paper published today is higher than five year ago just in terms of content generated. Therefore, it is not sustainable to practice science this way. This makes the determination of interesting project worth funding even more difficult. We do need to think about a different way to go forward. I don’t know what and how, but want put forth one idea: Biosphere. How about creating a portal for creative ideas in modern biology? I think there is a large no. of ideas, thoughts, that glimpses scientists' mind, and never get tested, because of practical limitations. But, there is someone, somewhere who may be able to test the idea or hypothesis. Therefore, the portal, which will primarily work by wiki principle, will provide people the chance to check out ideas, or get thought provoking facts. This can help in changing a large no. of me-too type experiments and papers and we will rest easy knowing that some of our radical new ideas might get tested and stop complaining about NIH funding.
The bottom line - Convenience
Convenience, or a false sense of convenience, is the most important thing that people want.Why did the explosion of blogging, podcasting etc., essentially content generation exploded in internet era? Part of it is of course ego satisfaction, as I had discussed before, but the other part is it has just become very easy and convenient. I think this should be the most important thing in any product design, marketing approach. I'm sure most marketing guru knows it, but it sometimes get lost in other complicated issues.
Several examples: E-mail - just because it was easy and convenient. Now, when other more convenient ways of communicating are becoming available e.g. texting, tweettering, people are slowly shifting. Think about why do we use all the abbreviations and shortcuts. Wikipedia has become one of the most referenced source, because, it is a lot more convenient to find info and refer to it than finding any other source. In fact our sense or perception of truth, I'm sorry to say, a lot of times depends on convenience. I can argue that one reason for Barack Obama's history making successful campaign was they were very effective in making it more convenient to organize, and get involved than before.
Am I sounding cynical? Well, I don't mean to. It is only because the word "Convenience" has some negative sleazy connotation. May be a better word/phrase would be "make it easy"....
Several examples: E-mail - just because it was easy and convenient. Now, when other more convenient ways of communicating are becoming available e.g. texting, tweettering, people are slowly shifting. Think about why do we use all the abbreviations and shortcuts. Wikipedia has become one of the most referenced source, because, it is a lot more convenient to find info and refer to it than finding any other source. In fact our sense or perception of truth, I'm sorry to say, a lot of times depends on convenience. I can argue that one reason for Barack Obama's history making successful campaign was they were very effective in making it more convenient to organize, and get involved than before.
Am I sounding cynical? Well, I don't mean to. It is only because the word "Convenience" has some negative sleazy connotation. May be a better word/phrase would be "make it easy"....
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