Scientific Philanthropy

Something for nothing?

beyondbland — Thu, 02 Feb 2012 22:29:34 +0000

A recent issue of Nature included this piece:

Philanthropy: The price of charity
Patrick Aebischer
Nature 481,260(19 January 2012)doi:10.1038/481260aPublished online 18 January 2012
Philanthropists should pay their fair share of research costs, says Patrick Aebischer.
I have no idea what this means. If it is about indirects I have already addressed this issue — oddly enough in the pages of Nature.

http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v477/n7363/full/477162a.html

The idea that philanthropy is free riding on research Universities is should be utterly laughable except in that this misunderstanding shows up the pitiful state of understanding of institutions that we have reached. Philanthropists, unlike governments, are not asking Universities to do anything. Philanthropy is not outsourcing its own research agenda to academics. Universities ask philanthropists to help them fulfill their twin missions of teaching and scholarship. Universities are SUPPOSED to carry out research and scholarship. So a grant to a university is budget relieving; it frees up resources the University would have to spend on salaries or equipment or other resources. There are no costs not being covered – this is a ruse of the worst kind and is a deliberate attempt to divert philanthropic resources. It is time for individuals to learn some history.

another year ends and begins

beyondbland — Tue, 03 Jan 2012 22:16:49 +0000

Perhaps the oddest thing about the change in year is the reality of how much one day is like another. You go to bed Saturday 2011 and you wake up Sunday 2012. That is not to say that I do not see the reason for the all the hoopla. It is wonderful that we have these celebrations that get us through the dark days of winter. In St. Louis the days are already noticeably longer and despite the cold air it is hard for thoughts not to drift to gardens and to spring. So is it with philanthropy — the fiscal years will be ending. The glossy annual reports will stuff mailboxes. AFter a brief respite the charitable organizations will launch their drumbeats for funds. And there will be the claims of great strides and revolutionary progress. But not really. Each day will be much like the others. Some of us will keep on with the daily work of learning as much as you can about the opportunity for funding and worrying about philosophy and principles. I hope you will continue to visit this blog and send me your thoughts. Happy 2012!

Enabling the Status Quo

beyondbland — Tue, 29 Nov 2011 17:49:18 +0000

Holiday music, the enforced cheerfulness, the sugary food everywhere – not a problem. The one aspect of the holiday season I truly dread it is the hokey appeals from disease-specific organizations. The promise of cures around the corner. The hyped “breakthroughs” that on closer inspection are slight, incremental gains in our knowledge (and usually of animal models not people) at best. And the gratuitous claim that just as the cure is within reach the feds are yanking the funding and slowing progress (and you know who to blame for that!). It is all nonsense. And yet – I appreciate that for individuals with diseases and for their families hope is what keeps you going through the dark days. Raising money and pushing the science forward is how you gain control over this terrible occurrence over which we have no real control. SO what’s my beef?
My beef is that all this rhetoric actually has the opposite effect from what is intended. Our unquestioning acceptance of the assumptions explicit and implicit in these appeal missives does not drive progress. It enables the status quo. There is no need to really reach, to really try new kinds of studies, to re-evaluate our knowledge, or to challenge the reigning dogma if we consider it our duty to clamber aboard for the sake of holiday-feel-good. One of these years, MY holiday wishes will come true and some disease charity somewhere will write something authentic. And no one but me will respond. Because serious thought is so much harder than hype and hope. Pass the eggnog!

No sacred cows in science?

beyondbland — Mon, 26 Sep 2011 21:25:02 +0000

In an opinion piece in today’s wsj Professor Kaku asserts that in science – authorities are not what counts. Experiments count.

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424053111903703604576588662498620624.html?mod=googlenews_wsj

I used to believe this. I wish I still could. In several conversations recently, friends and I (sadly shaking our heads at what is a sure sign of official geezerdom) have wondered at the apparent disdain for objective truth among the scientists we know. What seems to matter is what one asserts – particularly if it fits with a certain view of the world. Meaning: public enthusiasm is good for science funding. Alternative meaning: we should run the world because we are smarter than those currently running it and we know what is best for you. Of course, historians could correct this latter assertion – but they are too busy protecting their own patch of turf. Perhaps Kaku can still believe that experiments are what matters because he is a physicist. Perhaps we have become cynical because we live in the world of neuroscience and psychology. If so – then I hope the “physics envy” dogging the biological and social sciences wins the day.

Caution: avoid falling in love with your idea

beyondbland — Wed, 10 Aug 2011 16:18:32 +0000

Recently, a colleague generously agreed to go over a presentation he had made at a leading summer course for graduate students and post docs in his field. It was a textbook example of what such lectures should do — presented an alternative idea concerning an important topic in the field, surveyed the experimental findings that called the “orthodox” theory into question, discussed new data, reviewed why the old and new data supported the “alternative” hypothesis, and then closed by pointing out why the alternative hypothesis could also be wrong. Beautiful. With the number of retracted publications due to fraud or misapplications of science on the rise it is important to remind young researchers that finding what is true is more important (and, of course, scientifically more interesting) than proving your idea right. Don’t fall in love with your idea – it makes it hard to admit that it’s wrong. Instead, fall in love with the search, with inquiry, with the process of finding out what is really going on. Funders, too, should take caution to heart. It is too easy to fall in love with your ideas, with your programs, with your goals — such that the truth gets altered to fit your preconceived reality. Better to be willing to always remember to ask yourself — what would it take to convince me that this program, this grant, this idea could be wrong? A dose of healthy skepticism keeps us all honest.

Lots of slosh but little slush?

beyondbland — Fri, 08 Jul 2011 18:10:08 +0000

A friend pointed out to me that increasingly every scientific idea, from the grand to the mundane to the trivial, now needs $1 million in grants or its just not worth doing. Most of these ideas, he claims, are $100K ideas at best. But pointing that out extinguishes interest. Whow can go to all the trouble? What is missing today is access to the small amounts of money needed to test an idea. And the culture has changed to one of “why be in for a penny when you can be in for a pound?” In the good ole days – when the total funding pie was alot smaller than it is today as was anyone’s individual slice of it – departments and laboratories always managed to have small amounts of slush funds that could be used to test the feasibility of a new idea. So, how can it be that with the millions of dollars being thrown at academic research right now there is no slush? My hypothesis is that the slush has become slosh. Labs are actually awash in cash but spending it like the proverbial drunken sailors. So little studies become big studies. New ideas become grand ideas. And like most big things – these projects become too big to fail. Requiring that more money be spent to salvage what’s already been wasted. And so we go. Maybe it is time to bring back smaller budgets, testable ideas, and the slush fund.

The same only different?

beyondbland — Mon, 20 Jun 2011 19:07:36 +0000

An astute friend recently sent me an email with the following announcement :
Please join the National Institutes of Health (NIH) in exploring open innovation approaches enabled by the new prize authority.
Crowdsourcing: The Art and Science of Open Innovation
My friend observed that the “prize” approach to stimulating innovating problem solving has been around for a long time and just keeps being re-invented with a new hype. I have always found prizes curious when it comes to problems requiring knowledge generation not just knowledge application because it is never clear how one finances the first component of the quest. What is interesting to me in the re-invention of prizes as “crowdsourcing” is the clever way typical NIH “throw more money at problems” approach is now combined with a “throw more people at problems” approach. I do think the more people you have working on problems can lead to new insights. It might also just add to more noise. In fact I always thought that was what the big pyramid of the scientific workforce was supposed to be doing — you capture alot of people at the bottom with all their ideas mixed in and jumbled up with all the noise – and then over time a gradual seiving begins such that only those with clever and original ideas persist.
At the moment – there seems to be a lot of clutching at straws among science funders hoping somehow if one grabs often enough the brass ring is bound to be in one of the handfuls of hay. This might be OK for private funders — after all we should be about experimentation and willingness to fail. The federal funders are responsible for maintaining the enterprise and when they go all silly and trendy — well the enterprise responds by getting all silly and trendy. Not good.

Doing good by staying put?

beyondbland — Tue, 07 Jun 2011 15:42:17 +0000

Recently I participated in a series of small meetings with prominent scientists. Over dinner the discussion turned to recent and upcoming travel. Summers in Aspen or Wyoming or Nova Scotia. Trips to Paris, Venice, Rome, Sienna, Melbourne, Singapore, Buenas Aires, Rio, … you get the picture. Sabbaticals here – field research there. For all of the complaining (the other most popular topic is the lack of funding!) the picture emerges once again of what a priviledged life academic scientists live. Non-scientists are often awed by the far reaching experiences researchers enjoy. Exciting work, bright colleagues, eager trainees, fascinating travel.
AND this got me thinking… so, even while much of this travel is supported by private funds such as meetings hosted by Foundations or disease organizations and some of the travel costs were born by companies or covered under consultancies rather than re-imbursement from research grants (although certainly research grants also cover travel -particularly to professional society meetings) – MUCH of the travel expenses are, in one way or another, still coming from the same pot as direct research funding. SO — what if all scientists agreed that they would travel less – say 50% – and divert the funds for meetings, workshops, conferences, lectures (these in particular can easily be replaced by electronic tools) back into the LAB research budget? We could accomplish several things with 1 stone:
1) less time away from home; 2) energy and water resources saved; 3) more money for research. Worth considering? And with the time saved – researchers could actually go on a proper vacation – but paid for with their own dime, like regular folk.

Calling all Davids — time to get your sling shots!

beyondbland — Tue, 10 May 2011 17:37:52 +0000

Despite the cliche of graduation not being the end but the beginning – the cliche is a truism for anyone who has spent a good deal of their adult life involved in academia. My years are still tied to the rhythm of the academic year. So June often seems like the “end” and September the “beginning.” And as I do every year – I have great plans to use the transition months of summer for ambitious projects. I hope use the months of July and August to read and educate myself about several new opportunities opening up in neurological disease research mainly because the failures accruing from the dogmatic directions have become undeniable. The predominant theories of neurodegenrative neurological disease research have been whittled away by a spate of recent findings such that the edifice may have finally become small enough to fail. And from the collapse comes opportunities for novelty and innovation. Good news for small funders – because it allows room for new ideas and smaller scale investments. When the status quo Goliath becomes a little unsteady on its feet, the Davids become emboldened. And philanthropy can provide the assistance needed to knock the giants off their feet. If we are brave.

A dangerous combination- arrogance and ignorance

beyondbland — Wed, 20 Apr 2011 20:40:57 +0000

Some members of the Council on Foundations must have thought it was amusing to “put Philanthropy on trial” at the annual CoF meeting. Instead they got caught up in their own cleverness. http://www.cof.org/events/conferences/2011Annual/trial.cfm Unfortunately – the hung jury verdict (10 agreed philanthropy was guilty of mis-use) was misled both by the “prosecution” and the “defense” who seemed to have no true understanding of the deep roots of American Philanthropic traditions. Now a “foundation” or a “charity” or even a particular program can be evaluated as a good use of funds or not — BUT PHILANTHROPY as an institution? The mock-trial was silly. Unfortunately it was also dangerous. Diversity of opinion and decision making is the bedrock of philanthropy – and this country’s rightful distrust of centralized decision making. Philanthropy is social venture capital. Our tax code encourages philanthropy for a reason. Strategic philanthropy, as I have explained in this blog, is not the same as charitable giving. Strategic philanthropy is most effective when it 1) attempts to support the aquisition of new knowledge and its responsible application, 2) attempts to understand the root causes of problems, and 3) challenges common wisdom assumptions and tests alternative models. Philanthropy is a key contributor to scientific and medical research, education, the arts, and parks. Philanthropy is not ONLY AND NECESSARILY about providing support to the poor. At a time when many of our civic institutions are under attack because people are ignorant of their history, purpose, and design, smart people don’t play with fire. Only the arrogant and the ignorant light up what they can not control.