Saturday, June 11, 2011
Rashomon in politics
One of the most annoying aspects of modern partisanship is that both sides have peculiarly wrong and unchangeable images about certain parts of life. Many of these are agreed-on lies. Both sides agree that X is true; one side says this is a good thing, the other says it's bad. In fact X is false.
But some of these fixed false ideas are unique to one side. Conservatives have an especially weird set of stereotypes about education in general and college in particular. They're correct in criticizing the totalitarian impulse in 'liberal-arts' departments, but they're wrong about the basic problems with tenure and research. I've hit the tenure question often, so it's time to handle a new error.
A caller to Laura Ingraham's show made an excellent proposal. When gov't pays for development of, say, new photovoltaic cells, the present structure of research funding guarantees slow and 'chronic' progress. If we switched to the earlier system of prizes for completed projects (invented by King George 3 for research on navigation) we'd get faster and cheaper success.
The caller clearly had experience with real research.
Ingraham's sub-host missed the point entirely. He said "Yes, we need to introduce competition into research!"
No! Competition isn't the missing element. The present setup has plenty of competition in the initial choice of projects. You need a very good proposal plus very good evidence that your facility is ready and able to run the project.
The problem happens after you get the grant. At that point your incentive is to keep the project running as long as possible, with success always just around the corner. Otherwise your grad students may be unfunded for an indefinite interval until the next successful grant, and the university will have to fire the technicians who were being paid by the grant.
Best part of the prize-for-success system: It gives amateur scientists a sporting chance. If you can develop the idea on your own, running on savings or contributions, you get to enjoy the big money. If the idea truly requires expensive equipment, then academia will have the advantage. ¶ 2:03 PM
But some of these fixed false ideas are unique to one side. Conservatives have an especially weird set of stereotypes about education in general and college in particular. They're correct in criticizing the totalitarian impulse in 'liberal-arts' departments, but they're wrong about the basic problems with tenure and research. I've hit the tenure question often, so it's time to handle a new error.
A caller to Laura Ingraham's show made an excellent proposal. When gov't pays for development of, say, new photovoltaic cells, the present structure of research funding guarantees slow and 'chronic' progress. If we switched to the earlier system of prizes for completed projects (invented by King George 3 for research on navigation) we'd get faster and cheaper success.
The caller clearly had experience with real research.
Ingraham's sub-host missed the point entirely. He said "Yes, we need to introduce competition into research!"
No! Competition isn't the missing element. The present setup has plenty of competition in the initial choice of projects. You need a very good proposal plus very good evidence that your facility is ready and able to run the project.
The problem happens after you get the grant. At that point your incentive is to keep the project running as long as possible, with success always just around the corner. Otherwise your grad students may be unfunded for an indefinite interval until the next successful grant, and the university will have to fire the technicians who were being paid by the grant.
Best part of the prize-for-success system: It gives amateur scientists a sporting chance. If you can develop the idea on your own, running on savings or contributions, you get to enjoy the big money. If the idea truly requires expensive equipment, then academia will have the advantage. ¶ 2:03 PM
