One of the downsides I've noticed writing grants is that, while I'm spending time thinking about science, it's often in a very narrow frame of what the particular grant is asking for and/or the goals of the funding agency. As opposed to a more general frame of "what would advance science" or "what would advance health technology", which I might be doing when I am, for example, writing a review paper or having a discussion with colleagues. Perhaps the issue with this is that compromises on what you really want to work on are terrible: https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/DdDt5NXkfuxAnAvGJ/changing-the-world-through-slack-and-hobbies#How_can_hobbies_compete_at_all_with_jobs__My_theory__compromises_are_terrible
So I think one way to optimize the usefulness of a competitive grant writing procedure is to make the application review process very open-ended as opposed to narrowly defined.
Sorry, I'm having a little trouble following the citations -- where is this quote mentioned?
> In a 2018 survey, scientists said that “at least one third of the effort spent on applications is scientifically useful,” Myers says. And "for each additional hour scientists report spending on fundraising, they report spending 6 minutes less engaged directly on their research,” Myers says.
The 2018 survey is from Schneider, not Myers, and doesn't have the mentioned quote (unless it's not verbatim?) Also, I couldn't find the second quote in Myers' preprint. Am I missing something?
One of the downsides I've noticed writing grants is that, while I'm spending time thinking about science, it's often in a very narrow frame of what the particular grant is asking for and/or the goals of the funding agency. As opposed to a more general frame of "what would advance science" or "what would advance health technology", which I might be doing when I am, for example, writing a review paper or having a discussion with colleagues. Perhaps the issue with this is that compromises on what you really want to work on are terrible: https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/DdDt5NXkfuxAnAvGJ/changing-the-world-through-slack-and-hobbies#How_can_hobbies_compete_at_all_with_jobs__My_theory__compromises_are_terrible
So I think one way to optimize the usefulness of a competitive grant writing procedure is to make the application review process very open-ended as opposed to narrowly defined.
Sorry, I'm having a little trouble following the citations -- where is this quote mentioned?
> In a 2018 survey, scientists said that “at least one third of the effort spent on applications is scientifically useful,” Myers says. And "for each additional hour scientists report spending on fundraising, they report spending 6 minutes less engaged directly on their research,” Myers says.
The 2018 survey is from Schneider, not Myers, and doesn't have the mentioned quote (unless it's not verbatim?) Also, I couldn't find the second quote in Myers' preprint. Am I missing something?