Mastodawn

Brian Nosek Jan 5, 2023

Yes!

US National Science Foundation looks to shake up funding with ‘Golden Ticket’ pilot

The agency wants to give individual reviewers the power to fund proposals they think are promising, even if other panelists disagree. The aim is to avoid only backing the least controversial applications

https://sciencebusiness.net/news/us-national-science-foundation-looks-shake-funding-golden-ticket-pilot

US National Science Foundation looks to shake up funding with ‘Golden Ticket’ pilot

The US National Science Foundation (NSF) is looking to give its review panel members a ‘Golden Ticket’ to fund proposals they think have great potential, even if this goes over the heads of other panellists and programme officers. NSF hopes the pilot could help shake up how it distributes its $8.8 billion annual budget, preventing a “regression to the mean” in consensus-based funding decisions that risk rewarding only the least divisive proposals, not those with most potential.

Science|Business

Show thread

Hugh Osborn Jan 5, 2023

@briannosek In the only panel I have ever done, one proposal got marked by everyone else marked as amongst the top-ranked, but I was certain they had (either ignorantly or fraudulently) cooked the numbers and overestimated their yield by about a factor 1000x. Only my dissent stopped that PI from getting $1.5M. So I'm a bit wary of this idea...

Show thread

Ben Blaiszik

@briannosek @ExoHugh it’s interesting, and in this individual case you were likely right. But, it could be in a different hypothetical case that a group makes a step-function discovery and are not funded for similar skepticism. It could cut both ways!