Science magazine reports a surprising and important scientific development that has been years in the making: US research faculty now spend an estimated 42% of what they consider “research time” on on pre- and post-award administrative activities — on writing progress reports, satisfying intricate rules for revenue management, working on review boards, and so on. In his editorial reporting this development, Alan Leshner (CEO of the AAAS) offers what I think is an excellent methodological suggestion. Don’t try to streamline this sprawling mass of administrative procedures; instead, compile a list of all the purposes they are intended to serve, and then consider how these purposes can best be accomplished. A zero-based approach to implementation, if you will, aiming to make forms follow functions.
The cost of pouring so much creative brainpower into creating administrative records is astonishing, whether measured in dollars or in lost output. But do quantitative metrics like these capture all, or even most of the cost? I think issues of quality dominate here.
Doing good science is a creative enterprise, but as the job of science mutates into a job of administration, some of the most creative scientists will turn away. Of those who press forward, some (distracted by science itself) will fall behind in the game of competitive paper-pushing. And among those that succeed, many (most?) will shelve their best and boldest ideas in order to win funding from a grant system that is a notoriously effective innovation killer.
If the best science is creative, then the system works against its own aims. The 42% does more that subtract from productive research time, because it degrades the creative quality of the product.
And how can one judge the cost of this? Consider that degrading creativity will postpone transformative advances — the unexpected ideas that can make a whole field of study irrelevant, and the new instruments that can collect more data in a day than in a lifetime’s labor before. Consider the differential value of a year’s delay, and the cost of the loss. And compare this to what “42%” would suggest.
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Carl Shulman 12.19.08 at 5:27 am UTC
If researcher capacity increases through learning by doing, then just reducing hours for real research in any fashion (not just grant bureaucracy, but also office politics in academia, serving on committees, etc) will reduce production more than linearly.
Of course, as you say, this is worse because it qualitatively shapes the kind of research that is done, biasing it towards less innovative work with higher likelihood of modest success and lower expected value.
michael vassar 12.19.08 at 6:08 am UTC
http://www.cs.virginia.edu/~robins/YouAndYourResearch.html Given two people of approximately the same ability and one person who works ten percent more than the other, the latter will more than twice outproduce the former.
If 10% more work doubles productivity then activites that reduce work time 50% reduce output 99%. Reducing work 42% reduces output 97%
This is almost exactly enough to compensate for the increased number of scientists over the course of the 20th century, possibly maintaining a constant rather than exponentially increasing rate of real advance.
Warren Lockhart 12.19.08 at 5:25 pm UTC
michael vassar,
You make it sound like the only cause of accelerating advance is the population increase. The main cause of acceleration is that we use our previous tools to fashion the next generation of tools. Our progress would accelerate even with a constant number of scientists.
In any case, a few simple observations should be enough to convince you that the rate of advance is not flat – you don’t need to play a guessing game. It’s a shame that scientists are less productive because of office politics, paperwork and pointless meetings, but it won’t change the ultimate outcome for the human race.
William Nelson 12.20.08 at 5:03 am UTC
Researchers who have done quality work in the past and have submitted a quality proposal should be given the money and trusted to do the right thing with it, without a lot of pointless oversight. If they don’t perform, then no money next time, plus no publication, no tenure, etc…there are so many other incentives.
Less oversight will be more cost effective as well as ensuring that the best scientists continue to choose to work in this country rather than others.
Phillip Huggan 12.20.08 at 1:43 pm UTC
It should be easy enough to make a list of task that can be delegated to lower paid employees. The assumption is a professor will then output more or more quality work with more free time. If not a some of the funding should come from a salary cut.
For the above examples, I doubt there is a substitute for writing progress reports or sitting on a review panel (whatever that means). But the revenue management rules can be handled by someone lesser paid as long as the researcher keeps a folder of receipts and other paperwork.
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