Funding Research with PayPal

In doing my research for my scientific blog yesterday, I ran across the following quote on the Paleobiology Database (PBDB): "The Paleobiology Database's core facility is funded by charitable contributions"

I'm not sure what the story is with that. They also mention that they were originally funded by NSF, but since the "core facilities" apparently include the database coordinator, software manager, and database programmer, I can only assume that they need considerable "charitable donations" to maintain the database itself and support the data collection activities.

This highlights one of the problems with the formation of the digital databases that I think the scientific field has yet to grapple with: digital databases, unlike the old-school data compilation books, need constant upkeep, maintenance, and software upgrades to remain useful. Funding agencies invest money in the initial concept and creation, but should funding agencies agree to fund these projects indefinitely? On the other hand, how useful is it to gather the data into a database that exists for a few years and then decays away? What seems necessary is an alternative, source of support that these resources transition to. But what should that be? One option is to require fees to use the data. While I can understand the necessity of such a step, the scientist in me cringes at the pay-for-data model. Another option is to create an alliance with an institution who commits to basic maintenance of the resource....a federal agency, museums, university, conservation group, etc, whose mission coincides with the focus of the digital database. But is there another option? The Barack Obama option? I have to admit I so enjoyed the PBDB Science (see yesterday's posting) paper and was so appalled that the PBDB didn't have funding that I looked around for a PayPal button to donate a few bucks to them.

While I am only slightly serious about the Barack Obama model of presidential election funding being an option for scientific research in general, I have to admit to some curiosity of what would need to be done to make it work. Obviously, we would need to reach out beyond the our immediate scientific community. Sorry, guys, but if I have enough meaningful spare cash to invest in someone's research, it's going to mine or perhaps extreme charity cases where I think the research is really really important and a crime against humanity to let it die. And perhaps that's the rub, convincing a lot of people who know/understand little about what you are doing and why it is important/cool/interesting enough to spare a few dollars. In my field, at least, I think conservation research might do pretty well that way, but basic scientists like myself may be out of luck. On the other hand, have I mentioned lately how my research is going to save the world......?

Whispers from the NSF frontlines

After a more light-hearted post about ISI rankings, it's time to return to more serious topics: NSF.

The deadlines for many...if not all...of the ecology and evolution-related panels at NSF are looming and we have hit that time when those of us preparing to storm the castle are getting feedback from those that the castle repulsed. The funding "no"s are trickling out now from the last round at NSF and some of the feedback on why certain proposals have been turned down is...interesting.

Colleagues on at least two different proposals that went to at least two very different panels have now spoken to at least two different program officers. Their proposals were ranked with "excellent"s and given "funding recommended" stamps of approval by their panels. They were turned down because the PIs already had money and/or tenure. In other words, untenured people who did not have money were apparently being given priority. (I should note that this does not mean that they were the only ones being given funding).

I want stop here and make it crystal clear that I am NOT ranting about NSF (though I understand this would be a funnier posting if I was). When funding rates hit 8% (or lower, which I suspect happened on this last round), program officers have to make some tough choices. I may have my opinions on their recent decisions, but all I know with any certainty or clarity is that I REALLY do not envy them right now. So, what might this new, unofficial policy mean? Well, if the whispers are true, then this means that NSF has stepped in to prevent the kind of decimation of the assistant professor ranks that was prophesied over at the DrugMonkey blog. I voiced my skepticism at that site that such mass non-tenurings were feasible for universities, though I was also accused of living under a rock for having said opinions. I will qualify my previous stance on this to say that a) mass firings in the medical sciences may more common (I'm not in the medical sciences and I'm happy to assume that the people over at DrugMonkey understand their field better than I do) and b) I should add that I agree increased non-tenurings over the short-term (next 1-2 years) might happen but that over the longer-term, would not be sustainable for most universities. When I'm in one of my cynical but amused moods, I'll play out what I think would happen to the State University of the Short-Sighted if they implemented the mass-firings policy over the long-term.

I'm still digesting what the new filter at NSF might mean for individual researchers and also broader impacts on collaborative research (what happens if the lead PI has money but the co-PIs don't or vice versa), university practices (do people now have problems being promoted to full, and do I even care about that?), and a host of other things. Whether in the long-term I agree with what NSF is doing (which hopefully will only have to happen for the short-term), I at least find it comforting that someone in a position of power (i.e., not me) is thinking about these things too!

NSF funding rates and University tenuring policies

I read with interest a posting by DrugMonkey on the "undoubling" of the NIH budget. I poked around for similar information on the National Science Foundation, but did not find anyone who put the NSF budget in the context of inflation.

NSF's funding rates have been at ~8% for my field for the past few years. There were rumors that NSF was to undergo a doubling like NIH, but it really never materialized. I suspect, that given various budget cuts, NSF has at best kept up with inflation. At worse, it hasn't even done that.

General Disarray and I have speculated on what the 8% funding rate at NSF means for the tenuring process at universities. Our university, like many others, requires a "federally-funded" grant as part of the promotion and tenure process. Really, though, the requirements for the grant are usually more stringent than that. Grants run through other institutions do not count for the tenure process because the tenuring university does not "see" that money (seeing has nothing to do with it being visible on your CV and everything about whether the accounting office can roll around in the Facilities and Administration returns in some secret back room). At my institution, the grant must be "in operation" at the time of tenure (i.e., if you had a grant while an assistant professor but it ran out before you came up for tenure, it wouldn't count.) I have a friend at another institution who was told the grant must be at least $500,000 to count, meaning his $150,000 in NSF funding did not. (I always meant to ask him if he had 5 grants each $100,000 or 10 grants each $50,000, would that count, but it always sounded too much like an SAT or GRE question).

The current 8% funding rate has us curious. Can universities afford to be so picky about grants now or do they risk losing their untenured faculty because their expectations no longer meet funding reality? I haven't done the math on this, but I am very curious to see what tenure decisions really look like for assistant professors in my cohort. Will the less-mighty and more scarce dollar really play such a big role for us as it has for cohorts past? While I suspect that the answer is "no", I have no intention of being the guinea pig for our brave, new, less-funded world, so back I go to my NSF proposal.