This is a very insightful article, and I agree that the second Trump administration requires that we rethink how we are funding scientific research. I also love the analogy of old growth trees.
My background is in social science where grants are far less important, but most of what you say rings true and aligns with what I hear from others.
I would like to supplement it with a few observations:
1) The link between Basic Science and Technological Innovation/Economic growth is far weaker than commonly assumed. While there are clearly certain fields where science is directly related to technology (for example, medical, chemistry, and materials), the vast majority do not. After an academic career, I worked 20 years with engineers. Not once did they show any interest in science.
I recommend you are your readers read the following summary of “The Economic Laws of Scientific Research” by Terence Kealey. He makes a compelling claim that the links are nowhere near as close as often believed, and it is really just lobbying for government funding of science.
2) Technological innovation comes largely from combining existing technologies in new ways, not from scientific discovery. It is engineering, not science. Science has some impact on engineering in the long term, but far less than most people realize:
3) As for reforming the process, I like most of your proposals, but I think they do not get to the heart of the matter. It is better to radically expand research prizes that are focused on solving key societal problems. Prizes radically reduce the bureaucracy and only pay for results. Done properly, prizes could create an entire ecosystem of Venture Capital for non-market goals:
<<For example, our paper proposing a synthetic origin of SARS-CoV-2 was first rejected by an editor who didn’t know what they were talking about, then we made an appeal because we did know what we were talking about, then the editor in chief wisely stepped in and said this should be sent to peer review. The editor in chief sent the paper in front of a mixed bag of scientists, received some fair reviews from unbiased scientists and then received flak on social media and beyond from scientists who are invested in risky virological research. Eventually, the board of directors, which includes some people from the Wellcome Trust (as the Wellcome Trust funds the journal itself), unceremoniously fired the editor in chief for freely speaking his long-held political views, and then replaced the editor in chief with a guy who claimed they couldn’t find “unbiased” reviews, made some claims demonstrating he too didn’t know what he was talking about, and then rejected the paper.
That, folks, is our journal system. Don’t believe me?>>
Wow! Thanks Alex! As a forest scientist, I like the metaphor (of course). Some additional thoughts to yours.. (1) I've worked at USDA internal and external R&D. Within my career, I saw choices about research topics and approaches taken out of the hands of universities associated with people supposedly using the research, to panels of other researchers along the NSF model. Extramural has gotten more and more divorced from real world problems. I put a research user (a person whom the research was supposed to benefit) on one panel and it was thought to be heretical. We even gave a grant to a community group (who had the capacity to do the study) but that was even more heretical. Not so with intramural.
(2) Co-design and co-production is probably the only way to work on some contentious topics. Both scientific sides (say pro and con) as well as practitioners (doctors in the medical world) need to use their combined knowledge and work together to design studies that get at their areas of disagreement. For some reason, this is currently only done accidentally rather than intentionally.
(3) There are tremendous gaps and overlaps among government research programs. For example, take wildfire.. NOAA, NASA. Forest Service, USGS, EPA, NSF. No one is there to say "hey, we're funding 300 things in different agencies that sound exactly alike, and yet no one is looking at x or y that wildfire practitioners and decision makers are interested in, maybe we should look at this together."
(4) The bigger the policy impact scientists think their work should have, the more open and transparent they should be with data and models, including QA/QC on data acquisition, storage and use. And of course, what you said about open access to all USG funded research.
Maybe those things aren't "better for scientists" but they'd be better for "science" and the public.
“Science advances one obituary at a time.”
Max Planck
This is a very insightful article, and I agree that the second Trump administration requires that we rethink how we are funding scientific research. I also love the analogy of old growth trees.
My background is in social science where grants are far less important, but most of what you say rings true and aligns with what I hear from others.
I would like to supplement it with a few observations:
1) The link between Basic Science and Technological Innovation/Economic growth is far weaker than commonly assumed. While there are clearly certain fields where science is directly related to technology (for example, medical, chemistry, and materials), the vast majority do not. After an academic career, I worked 20 years with engineers. Not once did they show any interest in science.
I recommend you are your readers read the following summary of “The Economic Laws of Scientific Research” by Terence Kealey. He makes a compelling claim that the links are nowhere near as close as often believed, and it is really just lobbying for government funding of science.
https://techratchet.com/2021/11/04/book-summary-the-economic-laws-of-scientific-research-by-terence-kealey/
2) Technological innovation comes largely from combining existing technologies in new ways, not from scientific discovery. It is engineering, not science. Science has some impact on engineering in the long term, but far less than most people realize:
https://frompovertytoprogress.substack.com/p/understanding-technological-innovation
https://frompovertytoprogress.substack.com/p/technological-innovation-is-like
3) As for reforming the process, I like most of your proposals, but I think they do not get to the heart of the matter. It is better to radically expand research prizes that are focused on solving key societal problems. Prizes radically reduce the bureaucracy and only pay for results. Done properly, prizes could create an entire ecosystem of Venture Capital for non-market goals:
https://frompovertytoprogress.substack.com/p/innovation-prizes-are-underestimated
https://frompovertytoprogress.substack.com/p/innovating-the-next-energy-revolution
I believe you Alex.
And I thank you for your judicious witnessing.
<<For example, our paper proposing a synthetic origin of SARS-CoV-2 was first rejected by an editor who didn’t know what they were talking about, then we made an appeal because we did know what we were talking about, then the editor in chief wisely stepped in and said this should be sent to peer review. The editor in chief sent the paper in front of a mixed bag of scientists, received some fair reviews from unbiased scientists and then received flak on social media and beyond from scientists who are invested in risky virological research. Eventually, the board of directors, which includes some people from the Wellcome Trust (as the Wellcome Trust funds the journal itself), unceremoniously fired the editor in chief for freely speaking his long-held political views, and then replaced the editor in chief with a guy who claimed they couldn’t find “unbiased” reviews, made some claims demonstrating he too didn’t know what he was talking about, and then rejected the paper.
That, folks, is our journal system. Don’t believe me?>>
Wow! Thanks Alex! As a forest scientist, I like the metaphor (of course). Some additional thoughts to yours.. (1) I've worked at USDA internal and external R&D. Within my career, I saw choices about research topics and approaches taken out of the hands of universities associated with people supposedly using the research, to panels of other researchers along the NSF model. Extramural has gotten more and more divorced from real world problems. I put a research user (a person whom the research was supposed to benefit) on one panel and it was thought to be heretical. We even gave a grant to a community group (who had the capacity to do the study) but that was even more heretical. Not so with intramural.
(2) Co-design and co-production is probably the only way to work on some contentious topics. Both scientific sides (say pro and con) as well as practitioners (doctors in the medical world) need to use their combined knowledge and work together to design studies that get at their areas of disagreement. For some reason, this is currently only done accidentally rather than intentionally.
(3) There are tremendous gaps and overlaps among government research programs. For example, take wildfire.. NOAA, NASA. Forest Service, USGS, EPA, NSF. No one is there to say "hey, we're funding 300 things in different agencies that sound exactly alike, and yet no one is looking at x or y that wildfire practitioners and decision makers are interested in, maybe we should look at this together."
(4) The bigger the policy impact scientists think their work should have, the more open and transparent they should be with data and models, including QA/QC on data acquisition, storage and use. And of course, what you said about open access to all USG funded research.
Maybe those things aren't "better for scientists" but they'd be better for "science" and the public.
Could be.
[https://unbekoming.substack.com/p/heresy]