The perception that academic scientists must pursue money from government agencies like the National Science Foundation and the National Institutes of Health is subverting the aims of science and making it harder for institutions and individual professors to do innovative and original research.
Of course winning a large federal grant attracts a lot of attention because the process is highly competitive. Successful professors are congratulated from all sides, and universities tout the news on their Web sites — all of which is fine. But we have created a climate in which we now rank professors in subtle ways based on the number and size of their grants, and that is not fine, given that the best science does not always come from researchers with the most or the biggest grants.
One problem is that federal grants, especially those from the NSF and the NIH, typically support work that the reviewers of grant applications believe will produce immediate, important results. Successful grants tend to focus on manageable questions generally recognized as key within the current paradigms of a discipline. They seldom involve innovative science or tackle deeply challenging questions that might turn out not to have answers, even though such risky approaches could well lead to vital new knowledge.
That imbalance has gotten worse since the NSF began requiring grants to meet its broader-impact criterion, which ties science to societal values. It is not a bad idea to have some people working on research linked to societal values, especially if the government is paying for studies related to its specific interests. But it is not wise to require everyone in the academy to take those values into account, because society is particularly bad at picking out what theoretical and practical research will be important in the future.
Much of the most important and innovative science has come not from well-supported research programs but from the laboratories of daring mavericks working on the edge of what was considered acceptable at the time. Risky, obscure questions from the fringes of a field hardly ever win federal grants; work on them is usually unappreciated until it redefines the discipline and becomes seen as acceptable and likely to produce results. For example, Mario R. Capecchi of the University of Utah, who with two colleagues won the Nobel Prize in Medicine last fall for his work in gene targeting, said in an interview that one of his greatest challenges was finding money to support his research. It was risky, with questionable returns — work that might not have panned out. Naturally, his Nobel Prize should make it much easier for him to get funds.
A second problem is that the biases in financing can lead to bias in what scholarly journals accept, creating an unhealthy focus on what’s scientifically popular. With journals and granting agencies preferring certain kinds of research, universities inevitably favor them, too. All that creates a culture in which large grants become the easily identified currency of acceptable science.
When getting a grant becomes a scientist’s chief goal, rather than a means to an end, science suffers because innovation, research that cannot be done quickly, and conceptual advances are all devalued and thus become less common. Therefore federal grants may in the end subvert the diversity and freedom that move science forward.
In effect we have embraced a kind of business model: Research that produces immediate results is promoted as the standard. But that model mistakes popularity for progress and allows scientific fashion to set priorities for research.
When a science department in a university sets winning grants from agencies like the NSF or the NIH as a goal for its faculty members, ultimately everyone is harmed. Those of us who apply for large federal grants simply because we feel pressured to go after what has become the only acceptable source of money are betraying our best instincts on where science needs to go, and what contributions we can make.
Fields like mine — ecology — that involve complex, long-term studies suffer. I work in ecological theory, and it takes me almost three years to build and test a computer simulation model. I suspect that I will never get money from the NSF, but I have applied for it because I have felt that my university expected me to do so. My time would have been better spent working on models and doing the science I know.
Too often there seems to be a temptation to seek grants even if we have no real interest in the program we apply to. What drew me to science and keeps me in it is the pursuit of questions that genuinely intrigue me. The thought of doing research just to get money goes against everything I believe in. The small grants I have received from government agencies and other sources are adequate for my lab, but they seem to produce disdain in some of my colleagues.
I’m not opposed to NSF support for those who want to pursue it; I just don’t want to be seen as having a character flaw if I don’t seek it. I want the freedom to choose to go after it — or not.
That ability to choose the source of our funds is related to academic freedom. Tenure was established to protect professors so they could pursue the questions that they defined as important. Raises and promotions can be used to subtly subvert academic freedom by defining what is valuable and what is not. The strength of the academy stems from its allowing ideas to bubble up from the bottom.
Work in my field clearly shows that genetic variety is essential for a species to adapt to the changing complexities of the world. When variety decreases, the pace of evolution slows. That is true in science as well. When we limit what research is desirable or even acceptable, everyone loses.
Steven L. Peck is an associate professor of biology at Brigham Young University.
http://chronicle.com Section: Commentary Volume 55, Issue 7, Page A42