[Vp-reproduce-subgroup] About grants

Fri Apr 2 07:34:50 PDT 2021

Jacob,
I have nothing further to add.
Reinhard

Reinhard C. Laubenbacher, Ph.D.
Dean’s Professor of Systems Medicine
Director, Laboratory for Systems Medicine
Division of Pulmonary, Critical Care, and Sleep Medicine
Department of Medicine
University of Florida

________________________________
From: Jacob Barhak <jacob.barhak at gmail.com>
Sent: Friday, April 2, 2021 10:12 AM
To: Laubenbacher,Reinhard <Reinhard.Laubenbacher at medicine.ufl.edu>
Cc: vp-reproduce-subgroup at lists.simtk.org <vp-reproduce-subgroup at lists.simtk.org>
Subject: Re: About grants

[External Email]
And Renhard,

Please respond to this message - the mailing list has a size limit so I cut down the quoted text to allow further correspondence.

William mentioned that different jurisdictions see grants quoted differently, so this discussion that associates culture with inefficiency may be important in itself.

           Jacob

On Fri, Apr 2, 2021 at 9:00 AM Jacob Barhak <jacob.barhak at gmail.com<mailto:jacob.barhak at gmail.com>> wrote:
So Reinhard,

Your message brings an important topic related to credibility so I am starting a new thread  - yet I am limiting it to the relevant mailing list that deals with credibility.

Since you are attempting to expand the definition of a grant, allow me to diminish it and balance things out.

Unlike a contract where the contractor has to deliver a product, a grant allows failure and allows means to change course things. The idea is to improve chances of success.

This does not mean that a grantor can take liberties and do other activities they did not promise in the grant proposal and assign it to the grant.

Yes, a grantor can change the course of research and modify their actions, even if they did not promise those in the original research proposal. However, if someone was funded to do X, once cannot claim Y to be part of the grant activities, unless Y contributes towards X and is inline with the intention of X.

You see Reinhard, part of the inefficiency in the research system that creates all those non reproducible research publications has to deal with the fact that grant receivers do not really have to be accountable - in other words - their promises did not have to be fulfilled.

You see, there is no accountability and if the grantor is allowed to do something different with the time paid by the grant and claim success, the reason why grant money was given loses the intention part and makes the system inefficient.

Even within this effort of writing a white paper you can see considerable delays - partially because people in this group were busy writing grants to promise things to do in the future. Those delays alone meant inefficiency. Yet if those promises don't have to be fulfilled, then why are those being promised at all? It just becomes more and more inefficient paperwork that delays things from happening and reduces product.

It also contributes to a culture of "we can do whatever we want" which should be diminished. Academic freedom is given for reasons other than not needing to fulfill promises.

If you allow people to put a grant number in work that is supposed to be volunteer based, it is similar to reporting to the government and the taxpayer that the money received for project X was well spent and project X advanced.

As much as I like the work we did - I am unsure of how many grants the government provided that will support such an activity.

There are a few exceptions, yet otherwise I am not sure what grant numbers should appear on the white paper - I will be delighted to learn to be wrong and that governments see this effort as so important that multiple grants were provided to address the issues we discussed.

                Jacob

On Fri, Apr 2, 2021 at 6:39 AM Laubenbacher,Reinhard <Reinhard.Laubenbacher at medicine.ufl.edu<mailto:Reinhard.Laubenbacher at medicine.ufl.edu>> wrote:
Dear all,
while I am not an author on this manuscript, let me add a thought. What Jacob describes
applies to a contract, but maybe not so much to a grant. Grant deliverables are not spelled
out explicitly and can include things related to the research, such as training students,
organizing workshops, or authoring papers broadly related to the topic of the funded research.

I agree that every author should decide on their own how this work fits with their individual
situation.
Reinhard

Reinhard C. Laubenbacher, Ph.D.

Dean’s Professor of Systems Medicine

Director, Laboratory for Systems Medicine

Division of Pulmonary, Critical Care, and Sleep Medicine

Department of Medicine

University of Florida

________________________________
From: William Waites <wwaites at ieee.org<mailto:wwaites at ieee.org>>
Sent: Friday, April 2, 2021 3:21 AM
To: Jacob Barhak <jacob.barhak at gmail.com<mailto:jacob.barhak at gmail.com>>
Cc: Rahuman Sheriff <sheriff at ebi.ac.uk<mailto:sheriff at ebi.ac.uk>>; Bruce Shapiro <shapirobg at gmail.com<mailto:shapirobg at gmail.com>>; vp-reproduce-subgroup at lists.simtk.org<mailto:vp-reproduce-subgroup at lists.simtk.org> <vp-reproduce-subgroup at lists.simtk.org<mailto:vp-reproduce-subgroup at lists.simtk.org>>; vp-integration-subgroup at lists.simtk.org<mailto:vp-integration-subgroup at lists.simtk.org> <vp-integration-subgroup at lists.simtk.org<mailto:vp-integration-subgroup at lists.simtk.org>>; Jonathan Karr <jonrkarr at gmail.com<mailto:jonrkarr at gmail.com>>; John Gennari <gennari at uw.edu<mailto:gennari at uw.edu>>; Winston Garira <Winston.Garira at univen.ac.za<mailto:Winston.Garira at univen.ac.za>>; Laubenbacher,Reinhard <Reinhard.Laubenbacher at medicine.ufl.edu<mailto:Reinhard.Laubenbacher at medicine.ufl.edu>>; Faeder, James R <faeder at pitt.edu<mailto:faeder at pitt.edu>>
Subject: Re: [Vp-reproduce-subgroup] [Vp-integration-subgroup] Recap from joint meeting regarding the white paper

[External Email]

Jacob, I suggest that it is better to let the individual authors decide what is appropriate for them to acknowledge and not second-guess what their situation is. In my case, the local norm is that I should do, regardless of your experience in the university system. In the interests of transparency it is also better to mention any funding that could be relevant.

I am paid on a grant from the MRC to understand the COVID-19 epidemic in a particular part of London. I’m not doing anything at multiple scales, and the grant is not about supporting international efforts to improve the state of the art in computational modelling methodology. However, I am using compositional techniques that are relevant for what the group is doing and dissemination is always a part of research grants. If some idea or technique that I have to develop to do the work that I am paid to do turns out to be useful elsewhere, or helps inform discussion in a working group on viral pandemics, then that is something to include when reporting to them. It shows “impact”, funders like that, it costs nothing, and it’s good for everyone.

-w

> On 1 Apr 2021, at 22:01, Jacob Barhak <jacob.barhak at gmail.com<mailto:jacob.barhak at gmail.com>> wrote:
>
> Thanks William,
>
> Since you brought up funding sources, allow me to name a comment.
>
> If you are funded to do exactly the work we did in this white paper, the grant number should be mentioned. However, if you are funded to do some computational modeling work to produce results, then perhaps it will not be appropriate. After all this working group effort is supposed to be a volunteer group. As much as this work is important, I am not aware of anyone being paid to do it, if there is such a person, I would ask them to step up and take more responsibility.
>
> I suspect that only people like Sheriff may have grants targeting reproducibility issues, although I might be wrong.
>
> I know that when I was in the University system, I have to go over all the funding sources once a year and sign a legal declaration that ties the funding sources to the work I did and associated amounts of effort.  Those numbers matter since they report how public money is spent. And if public money was spend to produce this white paper - it must be transparent. As far as I know this did not happen, yet I might be wrong and may need correction.
>
> I will let each and every one of you to decide if they need to include their funding source on this white paper - you know what you are funded for. Yet I ask you put this publicly on this mailing list - otherwise it is hard for me to collect all the pieces together.
>
> You should include this with your reference of publication venue.
>
>              Jacob
>

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