Be #Excellent - science in Europe / Holland - #wetenschapper2030

At the "Wetenschap 2030 / Evolutie of revolutie" conference in The Hague it was all about excellence. Confusion set in when the question was raised: what is excellence.

Two big Dutch science funding organisations invited young scientist to consider scientific practice in 2030. It was a great gathering, more than half of the public were women, one prominent speaker told them she had two children and we were reminded that a more diverse team is a more successful team as shown in a recent paper.

One of the introductions set the tone. In science itself there is no room for all of us. It would take exponential funding, funding that is not available. In a few panels the subject of the daily practice was discussed and indeed, it is cut throat. Many people do not share expertise, results; there is no common good, everything to win in a rat race to move up the ladder towards tenure. Some say these practices are on the way out, others indicate that it depends on the field you research.

And then there is this guy from Europe who says, only excellence will get you funding from the EU..

What helps; scientists that may indicate what their primary concern is to be, what they want to be evaluated on; education, research.. Counter intuitively, such focused reviews have the effect that results outside the track benefit as well. In this way it is the university itself who finds excellence and improves its processes.

Another perspective on excellence; what value does research offer. Not to the scholars, nor the universities but to the ones bearing the burden of the costs and expect results. Are these results truly the best that can be achieved, does it reflect cooperation, are the numbers reproducible and the papers readable. For Europe to fund; the proposal must have merit.

My take away message; all those scientists that do not collaborate, back stab and think it acceptable because that is the way it is done, they do not deserve my taxeuro going forward towards 2030. The good news; thanks to Open Science and everything related change is underway but we are not there yet. Important: it does not follow that getting funding is a sign of quality, there is too little money to go around for all proposals with merit.
Thanks,
       GerardM

#Wikimedia - #diversity is not only about #gender

The image captures it well. Many of one group, few of another. Each group aims to achieve its priorities and consequently one group is better represented in the results. The other group can be women, it can be muslims, it can be native Americans.

When you do not like the result, you want to fix it. Arguably the battle of Uhud is more important than the battle of Gettysburg. Arguably there are not enough female editors of our projects. Arguably we do not inform properly about subjects centred in Africa or Asia; we certainly do not have enough people caring about these subjects.

When an imbalance is to be addressed, it is important to understand why it exists, what the consequences are and what keeps the imbalance in place. Females leave because of the way they are treated. The solution is simple; do not tolerate abusive sexist behaviour. Never mind freedom of expression; if someone wants to be a male chauvinist  pig, he can behave or go elsewhere. Never mind who you are, be good or be gone.

You can not pay your way out of this. You have to address the evil that is in the way groups act.

The decision of what to fund has been given to volunteers. They have found that our community is big and, the requests for funding are extremely diverse. To bring more focus to their activity, they decided to only fund projects that addresses the gender gap in editors for a set period of time. Consequently the funding of everything else stops. The least that can be said is that for all the other projects there is no continuity. There is not even continuity for the gender issue as this special period will end.

Arguably this is a bad idea. Arguably having all funding decisions in one central place is not scalable.
Thanks,
      GerardM