Inkless Wells

Paul Wells on all the latest out of Ottawa—along with the occasional post about jazz. Follow Paul on Twitter: @InklessPW

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Today's a big day in Canadian science

by Paul Wells on Monday, May 17, 2010 8:46am - 25 Comments

Today on campuses across Canada, university officials and Conservative politicians will be announcing the first winners of the Canada Excellence Research Chairs competition. Sometimes referred to by academics as the “uber-chairs,” the CERCs seek to add an extra layer of, well, elitism (and believe me, I mean that in a good way) on top of the hundreds of federally-funded Canada Research Chairs who’ve already transformed Canadian research.

The goal of the CERCs is to give 20 chairholders and their research teams up to $10 million each for seven-year research programs. That’s a lot of money and, I suspect even more important, a solid long-term commitment to do good science without having to spend half your time doing grant applications for next year. The program is explicitly designed to draw international along with domestic talent, although one of the interest twists is that for the preliminary, short-list round, universities submitted research projects without saying who they had in mind to do the work. (I bet that in most cases, they knew precisely who they had in mind, but I’d be curious to hear if there were exceptions. “Pick us! We want to do photonics! Quick, do you know anyone who does photonics?“)

The selection board for this project is a Who’s Who — Rob Prichard, Margaret MacMillan, a former RIM principal, the president of a big Asian university — and the review panel designed to actually sift the short list is even more international in composition. Close observers of the whole thing will notice that, between the selection board and the review panel, a fast one has already been pulled, so that while the first is heavy with social sciences and humanities experience, the second has only engineers, physicists, chemists and molecular biologists. There will be other reasons to quibble about the results (the news release I’ve seen says Tony Clement will announce only 19 winners in Toronto this morning; I wonder what happened to the 20th? I suspect I’ll keep wondering). But since I doubt you’ll be hearing anywhere else today about the very existence of this program, I thought I’d at least note for you that it’s happening and that, to me, it’s good news.

I’ll update after the winners are announced.

Tags: CERC, research

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http://intensedebate.com/people/G0D God

I hear they are sending Brad Trost to the announcement.

Who better to represent cutting edge science than a man who thinks the world is 6000 years old?

http://intensedebate.com/people/Thwim Thwim

Funny.. I thought You thought that. :)

http://intensedebate.com/people/Be_rad Be_rad

No, just the clods who presume to represent Him to the rest of us.

bergkamp

" elitism (and believe me, I mean that in a good way) ….. "

Elitism is good if done correctly because we are not all created equal, people have wide mix of skills and talents and everyone should be encouraged to fulfill their potential. We don't encourage excellence enough in Canada, we are happy with mediocrity and say we tried our hardest.

"Close observers of the whole thing will notice that, between the selection board and the review panel, a fast one has already been pulled ….. "

Not sure why you think a 'fast one' has been pulled but I assume it's because social scientists get to nominate smart people while the scientists and mathematicians get to make final decision. I am Arts graduate, so I have nothing against the Arts, but I would prefer my tax $$$ to support proper research into things of more immediate use and not the airy fairy ideas that Arts people are famous for.

"I wonder what happened to the 20th?"

They are going to have to sing for their supper? Or maybe it's a playoff – three teams remain but only one gets the prize.

And you learn something new everyday. I had never heard of the word photonics till this morning nor did I know it was a field of study.

http://intensedebate.com/people/tobyornotoby tobyornotoby

"not the airy fairy ideas that Arts people are famous for. "

Way to come out in favour of higher learning. Maybe the engineers can build you a smart box so that you won't have to think before you write. Oh wait, not necessary,

Cats

Yeah! Heaven forbid a taxpayer express preference on where their money is spent.

You'd think it was a democratic right for which people shouldn't be criticized, or something.

Cats in the corner, looking unkindly at you.

http://intensedebate.com/people/Thwim Thwim

What on earth made you think that having a democratic right to do something absolves you from criticism for that activity? You have the democratic right to be as stupid as you care to be. That doesn't mean that others don't have the democratic right to criticize you for it.

Cats

There's a difference between criticism and outright abuse.

And his point may or may not be a good one. With limited research dollars our goal should be to maximize their economic return. Others may wish for cultural or artistic advancement instead and hold those things to be of value.

That's a simple statement of preference, of values, and of goals.

I guess you disagreeable lot have never heard of agreeing to disagree ?

Some cats are just grumpy!
http://intensedebate.com/people/Thwim Thwim

Yes, and speaking of arts research as being "airy fairy" was the first line of abuse.

sea_n_mountains

Yeah! Heaven forbid the rest of us wish that the (assumed) taxpayer know what she/he is talking about in stating their preferences about where their money is spent.

if the projects were airy-fairy in the manner implied they would not make it through the selection process. there are a lot of great things that have, continue and will come out of the arts. to pretend all of the arts is airy fairy is silly.

bergkamp

"Maybe the engineers can build you a smart box so that you won't have to think before you write."

Maybe they can, maybe they can't, but I certainly won't be waiting for anything useful from English profs and the like.

I am curious to know why you, Thwim and sea_n_mountains claim the Arts are great but don't provide a single example of the great things created by History and Woman's Studies profs. I am history grad, I have nothing against Arts, but $$$ are finite and I think it's better to give money to scientists and mathematicians.

If we are trying to improve better good of society than money to improve health or environment is better spent than money on gender studies piffle.

jay

Oh oh–sounds like someone had a bad experience in a women's studies course.
non-partisan

And once again the Arts vs. Science debate breaks out for the nth time, surprisingly adding nothing new. Can't you people stick to the pages of your undergrad newspaper's editorial pages?

BTW, if you wanted to read a real contribution to this debate, you could read Well's essay, posted here a couple weeks ago "In praise of the squishy subjects."

http://intensedebate.com/people/Thwim Thwim

And the commentary therein, where I point out specific advances that women's studies brought forward.

thomasein

From my experience (I was a member of a Centre of Excellence) Wells is absolutely correct that they they know exactly whom they have in mind. In fact, the judging panel can deduce the identity of the researcher from the project description.

For a different perspective; headline from today:

Fears of brain drain as renowned British scientists move to Canada
http://www.guardian.co.uk/science/2010/may/17/bra…

http://intensedebate.com/people/Inkless Inkless

Hey thanks for that Guardian link. I'm struck by the British names, and also the two German researchers. Both countries have lately become easier for investigators to leave. Our own story is mixed but remains generally positive.

thomasein

Given the drastic budget cuts presently occurring in US and European universities I wouldn't be surprised to see much more of this in the coming year. It is too bad the government isn't taking a more opportunistic approach but I guess that would necessitate having to actually devise a strategy.

sbt

"It is too bad the government isn't taking a more opportunistic approach but I guess that would necessitate having to actually devise a strategy."

Maybe we could create a 200 million dollar fund to attract 20 top researchers to Canada?

Dee

Why do I have a feeling that curiosity-driven, basic scientific research isn't going to get much (if any) of this research funding?

http://intensedebate.com/people/Inkless Inkless

Enh. I have some critiques of the way the selection was rigged so that certain areas of research would win and others wouldn't be represented, but it's actually really hard to excel in applied research without having your foundational chops in order too. The University of Ottawa lured a photonics guy from Rochester NY, and he'll be splitting his time between the faculties of Engineering (go-go applied let's-start-a-business stuff) and Physics (long-horizon secrets-of-the-universe stuff). Just as there's actually less and less difference between sub-atomic physics and cosmology — turns out the same phenomena drive the tiny and the vast — it's hard to find a good applied scientist who isn't, when governments aren't looking, a strong theorist too.

In other words, curiosity-driven research does okay, as long as investigators are curious about the right things. Not perfect. Not bad.

Dee

Re: "…but it's actually really hard to excel in applied research without having your foundational chops in order too…"
No argument from me on this. That's a given.

But I would still argue that the majority of people they're funding are essentially doing applied research. Nothing wrong with that necessarily but as Willard Boyle, the Nobel laureate who co-invented the CCD, has argued there is a still unappreciated value in curiosity-driven research (particularly by our current government).

Robert Boyd (new dude at UOttawa) works on applied optics but clearly does some interesting fundamental stuff in photonics and optical physics.

I agree that this program is a good start (better than no new research funding initiatives). It just would be nice (he said naively) if the government better understood the nature of how science is done, and that there isn't always a glitzy new product waiting to be exploited after a couple of years of research effort.

Nevertheless, thanks for writing about this new funding program, Paul. It's good to see some coverage of science in the Canadian media. We could use a lot more…

edeast

Very nice. The winners have been announced.http://www.cbc.ca/health/story/2010/05/17/canada-…
Anne Onymous

From this morning's Globe story: "The researchers – half recruited from the United States, with four from Britain and the rest from Germany, France and Brazil"

Conspicuously absent in that list is "Canada". Wells said: "The program is explicitly designed to draw international along with domestic talent".

In my field of expertise, I know of one proposal that went forward with a Canadian name as the intended recipient; the project was rated highly by the review board — well inside the top 20 — yet it was rejected because the intended recipient was Canadian. (Admittedly my source for this is the rejected recipient, but I've known him for 10 years, and sour grapes are not in his nature. In fact I encouraged him to raise a stink about this and he declined.)

So it seems that the government has managed to take what should be a good news story about Canadian scientific research and use it to, once again, screw over Canadian researchers.

If I were a little more secure in my own academic career, I would write to the recipients and ask them how it felt to be chosen not because they were the best, but because their countries of origin look good on a press release.
Holly Stick

And why no women?
JamesHalifax

Holly….there were no women picked because they didn't measure up to the required standards.

Simple as that.

Of course, we could pick some women simply BECAUSE they are women, but what would that accomplish other than making you feel good? It certainly wouldn't bode well for real science or research.