> Continued funding will require perennial marketing to your peers.
I'm not a fan of this proposal either, but how does this aspect differ from the current system, really? Who do you think reviews grant proposals?
If I had a nickel for every PI who came back from a study section saying "We gave high scores to project X, because I know the PI, Y. He does good stuff." (i.e., the decision was made apparently with little reference to what was in the actual proposal), I could afford at least a better parking spot.
I like your idea. One problem, though. It seems to require some kind of post-hoc evaluation of whether a proposal succeeded or not. In its simplest form, this would reward low-impact, sure-to-succeed types of projects which are already a scourge at least at the NIH. The worst kind of grant IMO is not the one that fails, but the one that, after it succeeds, nothing of value was learned.
I think post-hoc grant evaluation is a great idea and needs to be done much more, I just wanted to point out that "success" is multidimensional: successful at meeting its aims, or successful at improving our state of knowledge? The latter is what we want but very difficult to evaluate even qualitatively.
I'm not a fan of this proposal either, but how does this aspect differ from the current system, really? Who do you think reviews grant proposals?
If I had a nickel for every PI who came back from a study section saying "We gave high scores to project X, because I know the PI, Y. He does good stuff." (i.e., the decision was made apparently with little reference to what was in the actual proposal), I could afford at least a better parking spot.
I like your idea. One problem, though. It seems to require some kind of post-hoc evaluation of whether a proposal succeeded or not. In its simplest form, this would reward low-impact, sure-to-succeed types of projects which are already a scourge at least at the NIH. The worst kind of grant IMO is not the one that fails, but the one that, after it succeeds, nothing of value was learned.
I think post-hoc grant evaluation is a great idea and needs to be done much more, I just wanted to point out that "success" is multidimensional: successful at meeting its aims, or successful at improving our state of knowledge? The latter is what we want but very difficult to evaluate even qualitatively.