Science funding

The National Science Foundation released this Dear Colleague letter yesterday:

June 6, 2017

Dear Colleague:

With this Dear Colleague Letter, the Directorate for Biological Sciences (BIO) is notifying members of the research communities . served by the Division of Integrative Organismal Systems (IOS) and the Division of Environmental Biology (DEB) to changes to the Doctoral Dissertation Improvement Grant (DDIG) Program.

Following a process of internal review and discussion regarding available resources, both the DEB and IOS Divisions will no longer accept DDIG proposals. This difficult decision was necessitated because of increasing workload and changes in Division priorities. This change is consistent with decisions made by other programs in BIO, which have not participated in the DDIG competition for more than a decade. This decision does not affect DDIGs that are already awarded.

We recognize that the independent research that was encouraged by the DDIGs has been an important aspect of training the next generation of scientists; we hope that this culture will continue. BIO continues to support graduate student participation in PI-led research across the entire spectrum of topics supported by its programs. Proposals for conferences are encouraged to include support for graduate and postdoctoral trainee travel and attendance. Further, NSF continues to support graduate research through the Graduate Research Fellowship Program (GRFP) and the NSF Research Traineeship Program (NRT).

Please see the Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs) (NSF 17-095) related to this DCL for more information.

If you have any questions pertaining to graduate student support under existing awards or future grant proposals, please contact the cognizant program director in the relevant Division.

James L. Olds
Assistant Director
Directorate for Biological Sciences

I hesitate to second-guess my colleagues at NSF. I know many of the program officers in the Biological Sciences Directorate and especially those in the Division of Environmental Biology. I know that they reached this decision because they believe that NSF can more effectively support research in life sciences by redirecting resources currently used to support Doctoral Dissertation Improvement Grants to other purposes, and I am confident their evaluation included an assessment of the impact on training of the next generation of life scientists. I also agree with many comments I’ve seen that DDIGs provide a great return on investment, at least in terms of the quality and quantity of research (and training) done with DDIG support. But I also know from conversations with current and former NSF officials that the there are large costs in time and money associated with reviewing DDIGs. I don’t have access to the data I would need to make a fair evaluation of the costs and benefits of the program, so I have no choice but to trust the judgment of my NSF colleagues.

Still, it saddens me to see this program go away. It has been an important part of PhD training in environmental biology for decades.

Last week I mentioned that I had considered participating in Benefunder and that an article in Science made me glad I’d decided not to participate.

I was tempted because it sounded like a very promising idea. In the end, though, I just couldn’t see investing $500 in the project. It seemed too unlikely that a donor would be interested in supporting the esoteric research that I do.

Christian Braemer, CEO/co-founder of Benefunder, left a comment on that post. If you’re interested in Benefunder, I encourage to visit the original post and read the whole comment. Here’s the key part of what he has to say about the article in Science:

The worst part is the title, which implies we’ve folded and that couldn’t be further from the truth as you’ll see in a string of press releases that are about to come out regarding new partners, board members, and investors (although this story certainly isn’t going to help with the latter).

Not to be overly dramatic, but this story is a major threat to finding new ways to fund research in this country. Consider this, with our new approach, if we get just 4% of current DAF distributions, that equates to over $1B in new funding for research. Crowdfunding (which we are not) doesn’t have the right alignment of interests, expectations, or volume to be able to pull this off – at least not for the foreseeable future.

By the way, Christian posted his comment on 8 November, the day after my original post went live. His comment only went live this morning, because it’s the first time in a week I’ve had a chance to check in.

A couple of years ago, I received an unsolicited invitation to participate in Benefunder, a sort of Kickstarter for scientists. I talked with the people running it a couple of times. They proposed a very intriguing idea: All I needed to do was come up with a snappy description of my research, some compelling images, and $500. They would promote my research as part of a portfolio that wealthy investors would contribute to both because they were interested in the research and because the contributions were structured in a way that provided substantial tax benefits, a donor-advised fund. I was tempted because it sounded like a very promising idea. In the end, though, I just couldn’t see investing $500 in the project. It seemed too unlikely that a donor would be interested in supporting the esoteric research that I do.

It appears that my skepticism was well founded.

[E]ven as Benefunder bulged with projects, donors remained scarce. “We were never able to get off the ground,” [Christian] Braemer [one of the Benefunder founders] says. Donor funds “were not willing to take the reputational risk [on] an unknown entity,” he says. And the firm received just a few “small transactions … a bit out of the blue.”

To stay afloat, Benefunder ramped up sales of the profiles and videos. In 2014 and 2015, it earned more than $660,000 this way but attracted just $62,000 in gifts, tax forms show. In late 2015, as the firm ran out of cash, it abruptly stopped recruiting researchers, left some videos unfinished, and laid off all but three of the 12 employees who worked for it and an allied firm. (Ambitious web fundraising startup fails to meet big goals, by Mark Harris, Science 354: 534; 2016  doi: 10.1126/science.354.6312.534 )