{"id":842,"date":"2009-04-16T11:40:41","date_gmt":"2009-04-16T15:40:41","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/esa.org\/esablog\/?p=842"},"modified":"2009-04-16T11:40:41","modified_gmt":"2009-04-16T15:40:41","slug":"forget-peer-review-give-everyone-a-grant","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/esa.org\/esablog\/2009\/04\/16\/forget-peer-review-give-everyone-a-grant\/","title":{"rendered":"Forget peer review. Give everyone a grant."},"content":{"rendered":"

\"ResearchBlogging.org\"<\/a><\/span>A paper in Accountability in Research<\/a> last week has stirred up significant controversy among researchers, science journalists and bloggers this week. \u00a0Directly from the abstract:<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cUsing Natural Science and Engineering Research Council Canada (NSERC) statistics, we show that the $40,000 (Canadian) cost of preparation for a grant application and rejection by peer review in 2007 exceeded that of giving every qualified investigator a direct baseline discovery grant of $30,000 (average grant).\u201d<\/span><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Richard Gordon<\/a>, a radiologist, and Bryan Poulin<\/a>, a business researcher, say in their paper that the current system is wasteful of taxpayers\u2019 money.\u00a0 They also suggest (in animated language) that if the peer-review process were abolished for baseline research, then innovative ideas would be encouraged.\u00a0 For scientists requiring large amounts of money to conduct highly technical research, a separate peer-review system like the one we have today would suffice.<\/span><\/p>\n

The paper lists more than 20 reasons why our current granting system is flawed. One criticism stood out. When universities hire faculty, isn\u2019t that already a peer-review process? Shouldn\u2019t we trust the scientists who have put years of hard toil into earning a PhD and landing an academic job? Besides, there\u2019s enough peer-review at later stages in the process: journal articles and conference proceedings are held up to rigorous scrutiny. Worse, perhaps the competition among scientists to \u201cget a leg up\u201d in the early stages of their careers dissuades students from entering the field.<\/span><\/p>\n

What would happen to the field of ecology if every qualified ecologist received $25,000 U.S. dollars to explore a new research idea? If it worked, then you\u2019d have some data to put into that $500,000 grant application. If not, then you\u2019d probably bark up another tree without wasting years trying to get money to test it out.<\/span><\/p>\n

What do you think? Does the current system encourage a \u201cgood old boys\u201d club? Or would opening the floodgates for funding of a lot of misguided research?<\/span><\/p>\n

Read an extensive blog discussion of this article on A Blog Around the Clock<\/a>. You can also request a copy of the paper from the very generous author, Richard Gordon, at gordonr at cc.umanitoba.ca<\/a>
\n<\/span><\/p>\n

Gordon, R., & Poulin, B. (2009). Cost of the NSERC Science Grant Peer Review System Exceeds the Cost of Giving Every Qualified Researcher a Baseline Grant Accountability in Research, 16<\/span> (1), 13-40 DOI: 10.1080\/08989620802689821<\/a><\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

A paper in Accountability in Research last week has stirred up significant controversy among researchers, science journalists and bloggers this week. \u00a0Directly from the abstract: \u201cUsing Natural Science and Engineering Research Council Canada (NSERC) statistics, we show that the $40,000 (Canadian) cost of preparation for a grant application and rejection by peer review in 2007 exceeded that of giving every…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":50,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[10,48],"tags":[219,122,166],"class_list":["post-842","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-ecology-in-policy","category-ecology-and-society","tag-grants","tag-peer-review","tag-scholarship"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/esa.org\/esablog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/842","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/esa.org\/esablog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/esa.org\/esablog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/esa.org\/esablog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/50"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/esa.org\/esablog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=842"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/esa.org\/esablog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/842\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/esa.org\/esablog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=842"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/esa.org\/esablog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=842"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/esa.org\/esablog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=842"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}