Italians are filing their taxes in these days, and they are given the opportunity to choose the charity to which they wish to donate 0.5% of it. Cinque per mille translates to 5‰, or 0.5%. It does add up. You can give it to non-profit organizations, or for scientific research, or for health research (curiously defined separately from scientific research).
It’s a new opportunity, dating back to the very near 2006. Before that, Italians had had the only choice of donating 0.8% to the Catholic Church of Rome, other religious institutions, or the State itself.
Naturally, adverts are everywhere on the street, TV, radio, and the web, to induce the taxpayers to donate their cinque per mille to this or that cause. In the case of scientific research, some of them are trying to convey the idea that if you donate to University XYZ its scientists will deliver results, so your money will be really well spent. This is not a trivial excercise, in a country where public funding to scientific research is among the lowest in Europe (see also this forum on the Italian NN group).
A peculiar aspect is that you can donate to individual institutes, not only to a foundation, say, which calls for scientific proposals. What happens to those money then? How are they transferred to Research? One Institute, while inviting the citizes to donate to them, denounces that they have not yet received the donations of either 2006 or 2007. Another highlights the fact that you can even donate to a specific, already existing project, presumably already funded, albeit minimally. This practice, arguably, bypasses peer-review, and may not be that a good thing to do. Opponents of this view, however, may argue that those projects have already passed peer-review – you wish – and would be just benefiting from additional, newly created funds. But then again, as wished by a given taxpayer, why should a particular, peer-reviewed project, be boosted with extra cash, leaving others behind, despite the fact that they also passed peer-review? Mmmmm.
Better perhaps to donate to organizations who will distribute funds strictly by the peer-review process, and to projects that have not seen the light yet. Well, this is, at least, the position of this humble blogger.
This sounds unbelievably chaotic, Massimo. Not to mention the fascinating concept of the taxpayer as peer-reviewer!
Life imitating art, or possibly, given the Roman context, Ars longa vita brevis (trans_: ‘this bikini is too small’). Nature’s Futures has published two or three stories on what happens when science is given over to commercial pressure or (God forbid) if ‘the public’ has a direct say in how research funds are spent. See for example "_Shopping":http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v438/n7064/full/438128a.html by Scott Seller-Mason.
Does this lead to scientists/ institutes explaining what they do to the public (I’m just wondering what the ‘ads’ trying to persuade people to plump for certain institutes by touting they’ll get ‘results’ look like)?
Maxine, yes I think it is chaotic. In essence, the taxpayers are given three options:
Sarbjit, the ads are very similar in nature. They mention how important (their) research is and what a difference to humanity it would make if you donated money to them. There is no detail of explanation to the level that you are referring to. The particular advert that irritated me was a dialogue between two young citizens; one was asking whether the researcher in XYZ University were really going to deliver results, and the other one replied, assuringly, that they were among the very best in Europe. Donating to them was a guarantee of success. Mmmmm. Scary.
Thanks, Massimo. I have blogged about this over at Peer to Peer.
Thank you Maxine for blogging about it on Peer to Peer.
I should also highlight that this topic was featured in other webpages over the last few days:
From the Blogosphere by Maxine Clarke, also on the Nature pages, of course,
and ScienzaEsperienza (in Italian).
Thank you and grazie!
Press Release Update. Today in the daily La Stampa
Congratulations, Massimo!
Thank you, Maxine! You are very highly responsible for this glimpse of media coverage.
Follow-up: 0.5% of tax story will be hosted on Radio 3 Scienza, the daily science program from Radio 3 (much like BBC Radio 4 or NPR in the US), next week on Tuesday at 11:50 AM, Central European time. Members of the Bel Paese fan club, tune in for the live audio show (you’ll need get to the live stream from Radio 3), or listen to the podcast later.
It will be in Italian. And since I am a fan of the program, I asked to be in the studio instead of being interviewed on the phone! 8-}
Ciao.
Hey, Massimo, at the conference I’m attending (ISSCR) Nature is kindly giving out free copies of the 22 May issue. (With a couple of highly relevant stem-cell articles in the issue…) And I finally saw Maxine’s From the Blogosphere feature in print.
What a difference a piece of paper and some typesetting makes! And now, a live audio interview (I’d personally be terrified)! It’s about time that a blog – well, two blogs – led to mainstream media coverage about issues related to science rather than to self-promotion of various bits of creative production. Massimo, I hope to hear you talk about your take on this fallout at the end of August.
And, related – do I understand right, that research grants are themselves distributed without a peer-review system? Or is it only in the solicitation of the famous 0.5% by private research foundations, perhaps promoting individual projects? Many private charities collect funding from the public by saying, with your money, you see this and that biomedical research advance, but it doesn’t mean that the particular lab gets the money as they have to request grants like everyone else, and are subject to a peer review panel.
I guess the shocking thing is that this is about public money, instigated by a governmental measure, and yet any institution that advertises better will draw more funds to itself without an obligation for external review of its relative merit compared with other institutions in the country. Am I understanding it right?
Heather, you are exactly on spot. Peer review is already partly adopted in Italy. I don’t know the exact figures though. Here is a story, and a brand new letter to another big journal on the need to solicit the expansion of peer review in Italy.
The problem is that the lay person cannot understand the need for peer review (much like I cannot influence decisions in banks or courts, say). But then the fund raising campaign should not take advantage of the (respectful) ignorance of the citizens. This is sort of a public offense in the name of science and health.
You are throwing in an idea for a session on August 30. Has this been organized already? Either way, I’d be more than happy to talk about this Italian Experience, if there will be room. Need to ask Matt.
Maxine kindly sent me a copy of the May 22nd issue of Nature. Something to show to the nephews one day. 8-}.
I agree with the contents of the Pinto’s article. In reality, the problem of how to join the quality of the research to the distribution of funds is very old in Italy, and the negative solutions given to it have been mirrored on the scientific development of the Italian University and the Italian private Foundations supporting scientific research. This key problem is further worsened by another bad Italian habit in the scientific policy, i.e. the absence of a true check not only on the quality of a presented project but also of the working expenses for the project. Nevertheless, such a very “typical” system allows a very few individualities to emerge, but at the same time is one of the structural faults of Italian research planning, which helps to maintain the research in Italy at a very low level in comparison with that in U.S.A. and the most scientifically developed countries of European Community.
This does sound tricky Massimo .. .