Tomorrow's Giants: a conference hosted by the Royal Society and Nature forum: topic
This is a public forum
Research Organization: size of groups, pro-capite group performance etc.
Giovanni Settanni
Friday, 18 September 2009 22:12 UTC
Following the meeting in Cambridge, I would like to share some ideas which did not explicitly come out during the meeting.
The organization of research in the UK, at the moment, allows for PIs to lead very large groups of researchers, mostly at the PhD or post doctoral level. In some case, the PI provides the group with a pyramidal structure where senior post-doc are allowed to manage/supervise subgroups of people mostly on an informal basis, in other cases the PI will directly supervise each member of the group.
A PI with a large group will probably have a larger chance of producing good science with respect to a small group. However, depending on the way the group is organized, several of the projects (and associated people) may more likely end up in the “background”, resulting in a waste of human and financial resources.
So, I wonder if the evaluation of the performance of a PI should take into account not only her/his absolute scientific production but also the amount of resources that he used to get it.
This may result in a natural downsizing of large groups, or in improved effort from the PIs to provide a better structure to their groups.
Similarly, it may open the way to more formally recognized long term research positions in between the postdoc and the PI level, with the function of supervising more closely all the projects of the group.
-
Replies
-
I also wondered about the appreciation of ‘research income’ by the universities, which results in the researcher achieving the same result with more grant money than someone else is considered ‘better’, despite the fact that he is less efficient in the use of resources and therefore should be considered ‘worse’.
The funding system appears to impose a fundamental conflict between the economic benefit of the universities and the economic benefit of the nation.
Viable suggestions for a change?
-
I agree that there is a perverse motivation to bring in as much cash as possible, and that it might be possible to assess ‘value for money’ by calculating something like cost per publication or cost per citation?
But this would introduce a bias too. At least in my field, about 75% of a grant is spent on salary for post-docs / RAs etc. And maybe we should value the work PIs do providing jobs / training for junior scientists, including (in a big well-funded lab), providing some scope for the junior scientists to pursue higher risk projects. A system that valued ‘papers per dollar of grant money’ would create a system where PIs are under pressure to get more done with a smaller group, and junior group member have to work harder on projects will guaranteed results (even more than at present).
Isn’t there a saying that as soon as you try to measure and reward something (in economics / sociology), that thing will no longer be a good indicator of what you are trying to measure?
-
