But I need money to just do. Approximately a million dollars.
Who is going to give me a million dollars without a proposal as to my plan on how to spend that?
Is one person going to be the decision maker on who gets money? That seems like it would be susceptible to strong biases. A committee could make decisions with less bias.
And how will they discern between proposals? Money isn’t unlimited, and a million dollars is a lot of money — you don’t want to just give that away to anybody. Some prior track record of success on the part of the applicant would help demonstrate their ability to accomplish the proposed research. Maybe they would demonstrate that prowess somehow, through written means perhaps, like a document, published for all to read.
So from first principles we’ve arrived back at the current situation. I don’t think things are perfect, but throwing out the whole system without understanding why it’s there will just lead to more dysfunction.
Yes no one likes writing grants, and yes publishing can be gamed. But until you solve the fact that research costs money, and a few people have control over most of the available money, then we’re (scientists) going to have to spend a lot of time convincing them to give us some of what they have.
Everything you say is so true and the last line is the way its always been:
>research costs money, and a few people have control over most of the available money, then we’re (scientists) going to have to spend a lot of time convincing them to give us some of what they have.
Definitely, and I think it pays to be very adaptable whether you are operating with an academic approach or not.
Institutions that have developed over sometimes hundreds of years can be hard to beat. I wouldn't want to stop that kind of progress. But I think there should be alternatives, and I do think a lottery has its place.
>I need money to just do. Approximately a million dollars.
I'm a lot worse off than that.
It would take $10 million to build the kind of lab I need, to deploy the full one percent of my findings.
So I would have to accept the situation, being likely to settle for less than one percent and focus on that.
And to potentially scale up from there I think I'd have much better luck by personal meetings & communication with money people compared to what results I could expect from issuing scientific papers. Where I have had some good luck when reaching a commercially viable milestone.
But that's seriously a lot of money so I would have to really be ready for some high-touch sales.
>Who is going to give me a million dollars without a proposal as to my plan on how to spend that?
I know what you mean.
And I'm at the other end of the spectrum, without a PhD. Making outright grants even more elusive today. I would have to be very persuasive about how I would return their money, and in multiples rather than just margins. So that would be a lot of explaining to do.
Which is why I built my first lab 30 years ago entirely from recycled materials.
There wasn't $10 million forthcoming back then either.
But I need money to just do. Approximately a million dollars.
Who is going to give me a million dollars without a proposal as to my plan on how to spend that?
Is one person going to be the decision maker on who gets money? That seems like it would be susceptible to strong biases. A committee could make decisions with less bias.
And how will they discern between proposals? Money isn’t unlimited, and a million dollars is a lot of money — you don’t want to just give that away to anybody. Some prior track record of success on the part of the applicant would help demonstrate their ability to accomplish the proposed research. Maybe they would demonstrate that prowess somehow, through written means perhaps, like a document, published for all to read.
So from first principles we’ve arrived back at the current situation. I don’t think things are perfect, but throwing out the whole system without understanding why it’s there will just lead to more dysfunction.
Yes no one likes writing grants, and yes publishing can be gamed. But until you solve the fact that research costs money, and a few people have control over most of the available money, then we’re (scientists) going to have to spend a lot of time convincing them to give us some of what they have.