Results of last competition on MRC (now CIHR)
grants posted yesterday (www.mrc.gc.ca).
INDIVIDUAL OPERATING GRANTS:
381 are funded out of 1203 applicants
Success rate (overall) 32 %
Of those:
Renewal applications success rate 60 %
New applicants success rate 22 %
Tough to get into the sand box, new kids.
(22 % is not much). Better dump your hard
earned biomedical PhD and get a used car
salesman licence instead.
Easy to get to the junkyard, older kids.
(60 % success rate scaps some 40 % to the
trash basket at each new funding cycle.
What a waste!).
Average value of the awarded grant is
close $ 100,000 (Can) per year with
not much difference for new grants
( $ 94 K) and renewals ( $ 102 K).
No "baseline grants" anywhere on the
horizon.
To repeat my PRIME question asked earlier:
WHEN/WHERE WE ARE GOING TO SEE ANGRY
DEMONSTRATIOINS OF THE UNFUNDED?
(or, at the very least, FLOOD of letters
to the newspapers, etc).
(above figures indicate a crowd of
some 800 unfunded in just this cycle
alone)
Alex Berezin
On Thu, 29 Jun 2000, Geoffrey Hunter wrote:
> Dear Minister:
> A prime example of the failure of Peer Review
> to support innovation, is reported in Peter Calamai's article:
>> "Funding brush-off costs Canada spot in limelight"
>> printed on page A10 of the Toronto Star of June 27, 2000,
> and available on-line at:
>>http://www.thestar.com/back_issues/ED20000627/news/20000627NEW10_NA-GENOME27
> .html
>> As you will read, not only did the repressive bigotry of peer-review cost
> Canada a "spot in the limelight" - it cost us of the order of a billion
> dollars in annual sales of DNA sequencing machines.
>> Yet in your letter to me of April 6, 2000, you defended peer-review as
being
> "well-accepted", and summarily dismissed Professors Gordon and Poulin's
> representations to the House CIHR Committee for an innovative way of
> distributing CIHR's budget (designed to stimulate innovation based upon
the
> solid experience of successful innovation at Bell Labs and the 3M
company).
>> How long will it be before you and your Cabinet colleagues wake up to the
> realities of what it really takes to promote innovative research upon
which
> the future prosperity of Canada depends ?
>> Members of CARRF have recognised the failure of MRC and NSERC to support
and
> promote innovation for more than 20 years, and yet all of our
> representations for changes designed to re-vitalise Canadian research have
> been shrugged aside by the complacency of paper-shuffling bureaucrats and
> the myopic perspectives of the well-accepted, well-funded, promoters of
> their own "safest research".
>> A proposal to NSERC (similar to Gordon and Poulins for CIHR) was dismissed
> without proper consideration just a few years ago.
> Back in 1984 I proposed (to the Minister and the NSERC President)
> dynamic distribution of funds based upon current needs, so that
> research developments would be promoted by innovative ideas and scientific
> opportunities, rather than being restricted by fixed funding as at
present.
>> 25 years ago I conceived of a superior computer design, that had it been
> funded might well have created a Canadian Microsoft. Like Norman
Dovichi's
> idea for a DNA sequencer, it was denied funding on the grounds that I
wasn't
> "in the mainstream" of my research discipline.
>> No doubt Selectivity by Peer-Review (Gordon McNabb's death sentence on
> Canadian innovation) will continue, but please disabuse yourself of the
> delusion that it promotes and supports innovation. It is politically
> expedient and bureaucratically satisfying, but it is counter-productive of
> innovative research.
>> Geoffrey Hunter, President,
> Canadian Association for Responsible Research Funding,
> Department of Chemistry
> York University,
> Toronto, Canada M3J 1P3
> Tel: 416-736-5306
> Fax: 416-736-5936
> Email: ghunter at yorku.ca>>
