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Published online 18 June 2008 | Nature 453, 975-976 (2008) | doi:10.1038/453975a
News Feature
Funding: The research revolution
As the first grants from the European Research Council begin to come through, Geoff Brumfiel investigates whether the new system is meeting its goals.
Markus Reichstein is obsessed with dirt. If he could just do a better job of simulating the stuff, says the 35-year-old climate modeller, he could minimize a major source of uncertainty in climate predictions.
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"Newcomers to the EU such as the Czech Republic and Hungary fare much worse, hosting only a handful of winners between them." It seems unfair to add 6 (hungary) + 1 (czech rep.) ( + 0 (slovakia) + 0 (poland) + 0 ..) and conclude that this gives a small average.. Not to put to fine a point on it, Hungary with 6 successful applications (and a high rate of success) has preformed admirably in my opinion, of course as a conflict of interest I must declare that I am a PhD student in one of the Hungarian labs that received funding from the ERC. -g
By saying that in ERC they are "radicals" simply because they pretend (only pretend!) to judge proposals mainly by their scientific value (contrary to the main EU project practice!), the ERC director confirms officially the corrupt practice of major EU research programmes beyond ERC (where he should have enough of experience!). As to the real ERC practice, let's have a closer look at the resulting structure of this "research revolution" as described in this article (impossible to find any details at the official ERC site - it should be the famous European "transparency"!). (1) Particular examples of "radically higher quality" of accepted proposals. (a) Improving fine details of only one factor (soil processes) of climate computer simulation (Marcus Reichstein from Jena) is indeed a "radically great" perspective, if one recalls that there are hundreds and thousands of other, equally important and poorly specified factors and that those simulations have proven to be but absolutely, totally inefficient and misleading (and it's rigorously explained why: they try to reproduce highly chaotic, "noncomputable" natural processes extremely sensible to all details while using evidently computable "models" that cannot take into account even major detail variations in principle). So at least one million euro is lost for nothing (with much greater quantity of inevitably generated total losses), in this particular case alone. Give me one percent of the sum, and I'll explain you the details ensuring the economy of the remaining 99 percent to be invested in really necessary, explicitly problem-solving research on climate/ecology (few percent more and I'll teach you the well-specified, objective criteria for it). Unless the charitable help to "poor" facilities of East-German science is the true purpose of this grant (as one may understand from the article), within the "absolutely nationality-independent" ERC selection criteria. (b) Looking at temperature fluctuation contribution to noise in gravitational-wave detectors (Livia Conti from Padova) is an equally "great", "problem-solving" research taking into account that the entire search for nonexistent, already theoretically inconsistent gravity waves (during decades of fruitless and super-expensive efforts!) provides a characteristic example of "radical" efficiency in modern science. And during all those decades they certainly had no possibility to look for the heat noise influence in those particularly fine and sensible experiments... The Soviet Union was yet alive and great when they already did. But mafia is immortal, what can you do about it? You owe me a few percent, Livia, for not telling them the details... (c) Studying single-molecule dynamics within cells (Johan Elf from Uppsala) sounds really great (Swedes are the greatest, I knew it!) except that it remains absolutely unclear even what are the problems to solve in this case, how and why. But no worry, one can be sure that it will again be some ambiguous "experimental details" of an endless "search" finding and solving nothing at all, in principle. You know, Johan, you are really frightening because if you succeed with single-molecule dynamics in cells, then modern medicine will be forced to pass to indeed radically new level and take into account the dynamics of all molecules in all body cells to derive its conclusions. Oh, yeah, those Swedes are really dangerous (not in football, though)! Therefore, Johan, ten percent, and you can safely use the remaining funds for those absolutely useless games. Or is there a "master molecule" in my body cells that determines my whole life?! Say it now, Johan, and you can keep the change! And we know the final result in advance: only Swedish Absolut can heal single molecules! Looking forward to meeting you for an Absolut-ly serious discussion (now you have the funds for it!). (d) And so on, which makes 1 billion euro every year (and counting) for "radically" efficient research within only this ERC framework (around ten percent of entire EU research budget that supports, as we now know directly from the ERC director, yet more "useful" projects within much more "honest" selection of ever "higher quality" results)... (2) Distribution of "absolutely nationality-independent" grants by country shows indeed "radical" effects! The absolute, really far-ahead champion is Britain, with almost twice as many grants as Germany (for a much smaller country) or France, and of course, it's a mere coincidence that it's the country of the ERC director (Fotis Kafatos from Imperial College, London)... Another striking "coincidence" is the great success of Israel that gets the same number grants as Spain, Italy, or Netherlands. Knowing the size of Israel and its major position in Europe (disputes about the real centre of Europe are finished now!), we can only deduce that this "radically" quality-based ERC selection procedure reveals an order-of-magnitude higher quality/efficiency of Israeli science with respect to Europe. After which it becomes clear that European scientists of Jewish origin that still (massively!) remain in Europe and do not emigrate to Israel ensuring THAT quality of research are doing it by mere human compassion for the old mother Europe, despite everything... Although, on the other hand, nobody has ever heard about any particular flux of great results or fundamental problem solutions coming from Israel (should be around ten times greater than that from a big European country!). Maybe it will start right now, after the "radically" new understanding of "absolutely nationality-independent" selection by ERC? Shalom Israel, says "nationality-independent" ERC, by attributing to Israel researchers 24 times more grants than to Norwegians (a truly inefficient country winning only 1 grant!), 12 times more with respect to Ireland (a strange correlation with recent events!) and 8 times more with respect to the Denmark (it's better even not to mention poor Slavic brothers from former "Central" Europe because their "nationality-independent" success is close to zero in average and because we know now where the true, scientific Centre of Europe is!). I don't know what to say in addition to those numbers. Maybe it's time to modify the notion of "nationality" itself (and why not "independence")? Something "radical" is definitely going on in European research funding... And Helga Nowotny, the ideological leader of EU research novelties says about these first ERC results that "overall it went surprisingly well". Then ... Shalom Helga! It's well surprising indeed, especially the "radical" efficiency of the underlying "peer-review" (uncontrollable self-selection) procedure... (3) NSF as the "radical" dream of European research. From the article: ""The dream of everyone is the National Science Foundation," says Ernst-Ludwig Winnacker, the ERC's secretary general, based in Brussels, Belgium." And the praise continues, so that the purpose of European science becomes clear at last: it should become American science. That's what I call true European patriotism of high EU officials! The only problem is that the top NSF officials themselves have great doubts about the efficiency of their own system and try to modify it essentially (http://www.nsf.gov/nsb/committees/tr/index.jsp ) using advice of European research managers (http://www.es.ucl.ac.uk/people/braben/ )! Wait, let's arrange things logically. So, the decadent American science makes serious efforts to modify its outdated and inefficient research organisation system. At the same time yet more decadent European science only dreams about approaching to the inefficient American research organisation. And it is only ERC that can probably approach it, in future. Usual EU research (90 % of total funding) cannot even dream about it. I am terrified even to think about certain East-European, "Academy-of-Sciences" ways of science organisation... We should stop applying the same word "science" to this huge hierarchy of fraud and parasitism! There are so many different species... [As a result of this and other "pictures of science", do you also have this persistent impression that "something is slightly wrong with our science", or is it my personal obsession?] In summary, the essential ERC result estimates by the objective and critically thinking science journalist from Nature, Geoff Blumfiel, are strictly positive. By coincidence, he is also based in London... As well as the Nature magazine... Finally got it, Geoff: it's not nationality-independent research selection, it's Europe- and research-independent distribution of EU research funds! NSF can only dream about it! Shalom to Her Majesty!
To my mind in this article Geoff Brumfiel very nicely highlights the value of the new ERC funding mechanism, which allows young researchers to build up and follow an independent research line within fundamental science, permitting – and even asking – also for interdisciplinary and high-risk research. However, admittedly the national opportunities have been underrepresented, which is understandable from the point of view the article is written. Nevertheless, being mentioned throughout the article as one successful applicant, I would like to shortly but firmly state that in my case the German Max-Planck Society and the Max-Planck Institute for Biogeochemistry in Jena, had already been offering excellent research opportunities for me since 2006, when I was appointed as Independent Junior Research Group leader, via a Max-Planck-wide funding mechanism that is quite comparable to the ERC scheme. So I was definitely not frustrated before getting the ERC grant, but on the contrary, the excellent infrastructure and intellectual environment at the Max-Planck-Institute for Biogeochemistry highly motivated me and built a strong basis for such a successful proposal, where also intensive within-institute collaboration is foreseen. It is still true however, that the ERC grant allows me to establish a new line of – as I think – original and important research. Such additional support to a recently established junior group from national funding bodies would have been virtually impossible to get for funding policy reasons, I presume. - Markus Reichstein -
Markus Reichstein: "I would like to shortly but firmly state that in my case the German Max-Planck Society and the Max-Planck Institute for Biogeochemistry in Jena, had already been offering excellent research opportunities for me since 2006, when I was appointed as Independent Junior Research Group leader, via a Max-Planck-wide funding mechanism that is quite comparable to the ERC scheme. So I was definitely not frustrated before getting the ERC grant, but on the contrary, the excellent infrastructure and intellectual environment at the Max-Planck-Institute for Biogeochemistry highly motivated me and built a strong basis for such a successful proposal, where also intensive within-institute collaboration is foreseen." - Reply: Ah, so this was one of these "starting grants" which went to someone already fully funded and didn't really need the money to start his lab and put food on the table. Great radical departure from how things have always been...