Gary Collins  🇪🇺

Sorry to hear that. So depressing is the lack of methods funding.

It's disappointingly just par for the course in Methods Funding. What's grating is this particular funder frequently asks me to do peer review whilst at the same time is not willing to fund anything we do.

I think I know *exactly* which funder that is for the same reasons! We should go on strike!

Well indeed...I won't be rushing to review for them again. I also feel sorry for ECRs, must be incredibly difficult to build a career in academia and stay motivated with the precarious state of funding research. They'll be driven away from academia.

Exactly @GSCollins. In a time where we need young methodologists more than ever.

If we collectively added the time we spent on grant application development I think we would be shocked. Time we could be creating, developing and learning. Also - is it me or are funders asking for more work up front than they ever use to? Good luck!

You should be careful to suggest whatever methodology did get funded is “rubbish”.

I never suggested that. My dig at 'rubbish' was not aimed at what they funded in terms of Methods. I've no idea what they funded. My dig is more general towards non-methods research which I see gets funded.

My bad, then. The methodology pot is sadly very small and we are not competing openly for the other funding, so I don’t think we can compare our methods proposals with more basic science. But I do agree there should be larger funds for stats methodology.

Sound methods underpin sound research, if funders are not willing to fund research into methods, then that can compromise findings from applied research. Funding for methods are woefully inadequate. Quoting my old boss (Doug Altman) we need research done for the right reason.

I completely agree. In addition, I think statistical support should be required and funded as well.

After spending the budget on the mice, cages, reagents, and pipettes there was nothing left for statistical support so here’s a few bar charts with error bars and some t-tests. SCIENCE!

It is a difficult decision as you know. You have to balance the cost-benefit of the article celebration dinner to the statistician. On average, it’s more fun to have calibration dinner than a consultation session with a statistician, as almost any statistician can tell you

Sincerely, I’m sympathetic to grant writers trying to put together a budget. But I’ve seen cases where they would have benefited from testing 6 experimental groups instead of 10 and shunting some money towards stat support and larger experimental groups.

I got a similar email from probably the same funder yesterday afternoon, so share your disappointment. Totally agree with your comments regarding impact

Sorry to hear that. One of the problems is the lack of funders willing support this type of research, there are too few/no alternatives.

Often reviewers don't understand the methods being proposed in methods grants... my hunch is that this lack of understanding =frustration and hence poor scoring. Methods grants are deeply undervalued :(. We need to to change this.

I agree, but the main problem is there's less money set aside by funders for Methods grants - and too few funders willing to fund methodology, and that needs addressing. Lots of people competing for a very small pot of money.