Research funding
Science Philanthropy for the 99 Percent
12/10/12 13:23 Filed in: GenomeWeb Daily Scan
Bitesize Bio highlighted a new website, called Flintwave, that combines social networking and crowdfunding to support specific projects. Scientists can use the site to share videos, posts, and presentations that "science enthusiasts" can follow and fund. It joins a host of other science crowdsourcing sites that have popped up recently, including Open Genius, the SciFund Challenge (hosted by RocketHub), IAMscientist, Microryza, and Petridish. Eva Amsen at the Occam's Typewriter Irregulars questions whether the model can be as fruitful for scientific research projects as it is for other disciplines as much higher levels of fundraising are required and a direct return on investment is much less likely. S. Pelech calculates that the research behind the average NIH-funded scientific paper with a 5.5 impact costs at least US$ 128,000 to fund, and figures that in view of this cost, the number of biomedical research projects that are likely to be funded by crowdsourcing online is probably much too small to be of real significance in the progress of scientific research as a whole. Read More...
It Was the Best of Times, It Was the Worst of Times...
08/09/10 19:49 Filed in: GenomeWeb Daily Scan
Physician James Le Fanu has suggested that research institutions have never been so impressive and well funded, but their recent output has been rather disappointing when compared to the beginning of the 20th century, and this has generated a lot of negative feedback from the biomedical research community. S. Pelech accepts some and challenges many of Dr. Le Fanu criticisms about biomedical research progress, but points out that the US citizen commitment to finance biomedical research has actually been very modest in real numbers when income, taxation and inflation are factored in. Read More...
Global Scientific Principles
16/05/12 13:05 Filed in: GenomeWeb Daily Scan
The Nature News blog reported the creation of the Global Research Council (GRC) by a group of research agencies leaders from nearly 50 countries. The GRC plans to discuss "shared goals, aspirations, and principles, and provide a vehicle to unify science across the globe." op, where research agencies agree on broad-brush issues but do little to resolve practical differences." S. Pelech questions whether further politicization and standardization of scientific research is so desirable. While a strong case can be made for international funding of a few large scale projects for the common good, he argues most research in academia and industry should be investigator-driven and collaborations should be dynamic and naturally arise from the science rather than the desires of politicians and bureaucrats to see further interactions with their favoured countries. He describes three trends related to the financing of scientific research endeavours that he finds particularly disturbing. Read More...