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The Psychological Science Accelerator @PsySciAcc has struggled to get grant funding: https://psysciacc.org/2021/01/11/how-should-we-fund-the-psa/
ManyBabies has also struggled to support itself, with very limited grant success.
How can such impactful projects receive so little support?
ManyBabies has also struggled to support itself, with very limited grant success.
How can such impactful projects receive so little support?
PSA has produced very exciting findings: https://www.nature.com/articles/s41562-020-01007-2
ManyBabies has been the most exciting thing I've worked on in my career: https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/2515245919900809
These will be very highly cited papers that also produce other impacts via high-value shared materials and data.
ManyBabies has been the most exciting thing I've worked on in my career: https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/2515245919900809
These will be very highly cited papers that also produce other impacts via high-value shared materials and data.
These projects are also transformative because they build broad, inclusive networks of researchers - often at lower-resourced institutions. This model is a pathway into high level collaborative research for scientists from a much broader range of backgrounds.
These collaborations propose large, distributed projects that don't fit well with traditional funding mechanisms. For ManyBabies, we have applied for grants prior to finishing planning the studies - because the funds would support the planning process as well as the studies!
A few MB projects have been proposed after planning is complete, but the same kinds of design concerns have tanked the reviews that get raised around much smaller studies - without recognition of the vastly larger "bang for buck" of the massive distributed collaborations.
Our current PI and project-centered national funding mechanisms just don't fit well with newer collaborative models like PSA or MB. Small-scale support from flexible funders like @PsychScience and @Foundation_JF has been critical for both PSA and MB, though.
For example, $50k from @PsychScience - distributed in sums of 1-2k to participating labs - was transformative for ManyBabies 1. But it's a nightmare thinking about how to regrant these tiny sums under standard national funding mechanisms.
It's sad that giant NIH consortia receive millions of dollars for collaborative science, while *much* smaller amounts would be transformative for MB or PSA organizations. But there's no @NSF mechanism for light admin support of an international collaboration network.
In sum, we need key orgs like @FABBS, @cogsci_soc, and @PsychScience and forward-thinking foundations like @Foundation_JF and @templeton_fdn to get together and consider how to provide sustaining funds for collaborative organizations. This work is transforming the field.
Tagging folks: @psforscher @hansijzerman (who wrote the blogpost), @CRChartier, @BrianNosek who has worked on this problem extensively and helped us get funding; MB partners @chbergma @melissaekline @JKileyHamlin @Krista_BH; DARCLE folks @CristiaAlex @bergelsonlab @middycasillas
