What would you say is the #1 action our society should take? (Or does that require more study before we know?)
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Break up NIH and NSF into 10+ bodies with fully independent approaches. Every 5-10 years, reassess their budgets. Hegemonic monoculture today very pernicious.
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Both NIH and NSF are bottom-up organizations. Scientists propose the research directions and panels of scientists decide which ones to fund. This is not a monoculture
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Replying to @tdietterich @roybahat and
The structure itself is the monoculture.
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But if the structure does not determine research directions, does it matter? Isn't it like the CPU that any program can run on?
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Replying to @tdietterich @roybahat and
Yes, because it's nowhere close to being fully general (like a CPU). The mechanism of study sections is very different to hypothetical alternative mechanism where independent agents can of own volition give $5M to a lab.
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Replying to @patrickc @tdietterich and
I'm not saying that one is a priori better than the other. Just that the NIH (or NSF) embody definite mechanisms that incentivize certain things and discourage others.
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Replying to @patrickc @tdietterich and
You're a scientist and I'm not, so feel free to push back or tell me I'm totally wrong :-). But my POV is informed by dozens of conversations with practicing scientists and also senior managers at NIH/NSF.
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I have worked with both NSF and DARPA, and I think we need both kinds of funding mechanisms. DARPA is closer to the "give $5M to a lab" model, and I think biomedicine needs much more of that kind of project-oriented funding too
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Replying to @tdietterich @patrickc and
Computer science has advanced rapidly because of a three-way collaboration between NSF, DARPA, and industry
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Agree that CS seems much healthier (perhaps in part because it's much less costly than biomedicine). Out of curiosity, do you attribute ~all of the outperformance of HHMI investigators to selection effects? (This paper attempts to control for that: https://www.nber.org/papers/w15466 .)
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I don't have any experience with HHMI (but perhaps you were directing that question at the other folks here)
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