he Health Research Council (HRC) has just announced a new scheme, Explorer Grants; $150,000 (research working expenses only) over two years looking for research that will “advance ideas considered to be transformative, innovative, exploratory or unconventional and have a potential for major impact.” The first $150,000 must go back to the HRC because the scheme itself is all of those things. Trialling changes to the the fundamentals of research funding and then grant allocation in the one scheme is remarkable.
This afternoon I was waving my arms over lunch (do you not get excitable over science funding in your household?) talking about the “research working expenses only” part of the announcement. Basically this means no researcher salary costs and no overheads come with the grants, which researchers really, really like because they get to see all the money and institutions really, really hate because they get to carry all the costs. I’m no fan of full cost recovery funding of research but the money to pay the wages, keep the lights on and the equipment running has to come from somewhere. I think that one government institution inserting the thin end of the wedge on behalf of researchers with other parts of government having to pick up the cost is cheeky and someone should be keeping an eye on them. Research institutions have being playing slightly fast and loose with overheads from HRC grants, and particularly Marsden funding (prestigious research grants for basic science), for some time but I think this is the first time a major funding body has broken ranks since full cost funding was introduced not far off 20 years ago.
I think that the way to go is to block-fund capability – salary and overheads – and to use the research working expenses to direct where that capability is applied. This would solve a lot of problems with maintaining capacity and skills, career continuity for scientists and how institutions can build and retain teams with the critical mass to be useful. It also introduces some new problems… but come and have lunch with me sometime.
After lunch I got to the ‘random process’ part of the announcement. Funding will be randomly allocated amongst any projects that are worthy of funding. I mean, like, OMG! Is the HRC really owning up to the fact that a handful of dice (or some more sophisticated version thereof) is as good as a panel of the great and good pitilessly arguing over the exact ranking of a set of indistinguishable alpha-rated research proposals before they make the cut? I think they are. I am absolutely a big fan of stochastic processes (ask my lunchtime companion) and this just has to be an innovation that is worth exploring across science funding.
And the proposals will be assessed without the panels knowing who submitted them. The money could be given to people you have never even heard of! It is all very radical.
In my opinion most of the funding allocation methods used in the New Zealand contestable science system are exquisitely designed, pseudo-objective ways of funding to the mean. I’m not saying this is an entirely bad thing, it means that nothing really hopeless will get funded. However, with a set of dice there is a chance of funding the top 10% of research proposals, those close enough to genius that they look a little crazy and will really be transformative, rather than have them nobbled by the panel in the last stages of discussion. And think how many more projects could be funded if all the panel meetings were over before lunch.
So, plenty of exciting announcements on science funding system recently; the National Science Challenges, which I wrote about here (I know that you probably haven’t read it because I monitor my stats, and sorry about all the phone stuff), and now the HRC running an experiment to explore some very unconventional policy initiatives. Good on them – even if it probably isn’t their core business.
