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Just logged in to a (5-hour!!!) webinar aimed to help in "outreach to funders and policy-makers". Obviously *not* my thing but was advised to join. Follow this thread for a live coverage and see why *noone* should ever have to go through smth like this again.
Just to clear the atmosphere. This has nothing to do with science, so scientists wouldn't/shouldn't be able to follow all the policy-making, PR, lobbying(=bad word) described.
*Convincing* scientists that this matters though is crucial to justify the existence of a whole universe of people that have created their own jobs out of satelite activities related to scientific research.
The first thing that strikes everybody who -naively- joins this sort of discussions is how many these people are. By my own -and I hope I am wrong- estimate 1 out 6 people working in research today is *not* doing any research. (S)he is working on administrative tasks.
I have no idea if this applies to other sectors, but I am amazed to realize that a 15%-20% of all resources (human, financial, other) in an intensive activity (such as research) is devoted to administration and management.
Correct me if I am wrong but spending 15% of your budget on administration and management is the definition of bad administration and management.
And yet, this is presented as a good thing. Scientists get to sit and listen project management experts much more often than management experts get to sit and listen scientists. (Happening to me right now).
Is this a necessary evil? The only way to play the game? I am not at all sure about this.
In the EU, money spent on science (per capita) have been more or less stable over the years (adjusting for an increasing number of scientists working in research). So what has changed?
Basically the number of intermediate, administrative personel, project managers, "advocacy and positioning" experts has increased immensely. Research funding agencies actually employ more people without a science degree than people with one.
One obvious reason for this rise is that someone has to help with "all the bureaucracy". Which is a circular argument. Bureaucracy was not there in the first place. It was created by "outsiders" in order to (let's admit it) create their own jobs.
Ex-scientists that are fed up with the establishment (but end up working for it), economists (they are everywhere), historians, political scientists and other humanities majors that our societies have no better use for, have become "advocacy and positioning" experts.
(These are basically lobbyists and public relations specialists but it sounds so much better)
And they are here to preach the truth to scientific researchers about how to "increase their visibility", "identify opportunities" and -the bottom of it- how to make sure they get money so that they don't lose their jobs.
Which brings me to my webinar. I am an interdisciplinary researcher, which means I could find an interest in a wide-range of topics from biology to math and from physics to linguistics. Yet, what am I listening to?
Two and half hours (and counting) for "advocacy and positioning", "management", "operational efficiency" and "policy making", to explain how I am supposed to "identify stakeholders", "attract partners" and "build links" with "decision makers".
Am I supposed to relate to that?
Short answer: Of course not. But is this supposed to help my work in any way?
Short answer again: No. But somehow I have to believe it does. Even worse, I am expected to feel bad if it doesn't.
Which brings us to the heart of the matter. Is the role of scientific researchers being "hijacked" by bureaucrats?
Short answer: Yes. Scientific research is impossible without funding. Funding is less and less likely to be obtained without the help of advocacy, administration and management experts. The way I see it, these guys are stealing the show.
How did this happen? This is basically a simple process of creating an intermediate layer of "experts" between taxpayers' money and those who get to spend it.
Taxpayers pay for a whole bunch of things that they expect to get back in the form of services. Scientific research is one of those. I, as a researcher, am a spender of that money. So state and international funding agencies are supposed to help be do that.
However, they feel they cannot do this properly without the help of experts. These experts are not scientists themselves (or if they are, they don't work as such). They are experts in judging how the money will be spent more efficiently.
Which is fair enough. The problem is that there are simply too many of them. The even bigger problem is that they too get to be paid by taxpayers money.
By a rough estimate, something close to 20 cents for each euro spent on research funding is "absorbed" by this intermediate layer to cover "management and administration" and "dissemination and outreach" costs.
Basically ~20% of taxpayers money going to research is not going to research. Research is being used as an excuse to sustain a whole non-research, non-scientific infrastructure.
Does it pay off? Is research more efficient and more properly managed? I am not sure. But I would really love to see some performance indicators being positively correlated with administration costs.
While I am waiting for these, I can tell you one such performance indicator that is always presented as proof of good administration: Fund "absorption". That is, spending. Spending is good. The more you spend, the more efficient you are being.
This is not a joke. Funding agencies actually hate it when you fail to spend money. Someone would say that they even urge you to spend it. And what a better way for doing so than having a 20% overhead for administration.
To cut this long thread short, until we get a meaningful way to compare scientific output with(now) and without(before) the explosion of this intermediate, administrative layer we will never know if we really need it.
I for one don't need to go through such webinars. And I don't think anyone else does. If we really have to, we can always hire someone to do this for us and pay her/him with taxpayers' money.
Disclaimer: I am not being critical to all these people, who are actually -once they assumed their role- here to actually help. I am simply questioning a model that imho makes bad use of time and resources. Researchers are perhaps more responsible for getting along with this.
