Rethink funding by putting the lottery first

Finn Luebber; Sören Krach; Marina Martinez Mateo; Frieder M. Paulus; Lena Rademacher; Rima Maria Rahal; Jule Specht

doi:10.1038/s41562-023-01649-y

Rethink funding by putting the lottery first

Finn Luebber, Sören Krach^*, Marina Martinez Mateo, Frieder M. Paulus, Lena Rademacher, Rima Maria Rahal, Jule Specht

^*Corresponding author for this work

Clinic of Psychiatry and Psychotherapy

8 Citations (Scopus)

Abstract

A lottery at the beginning of a grant application process with a normative rather than competitive focus might facilitate the funding of new and exploratory ideas. We simulated four exemplary funding scenarios and here compare their benefits and drawbacks with respect to costs, diversity and quality. We contrasted a one-stage scenario (for example, the classic National Institutes of Health Research Project Grant R01 or the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft), a two-stage scenario (for example, the European Research Council (ERC)), the tiebreaker lottery (for example, SNSF) and the proposed pre-lottery scenario, and we transparently model various assumptions that affect the success of grant applications. All modelled scenarios result in improved quality of selected grants. However, when considering the costs, sunk costs, effects of self-selection and different biases in each additional review round, we can see that the pre-lottery scenario may have many advantages over others (Fig. ). Here, our simulations illustrate the potential value of pre-lotteries in the grant application process in freeing up substantial resources, which could again be used to improve the review process (for example, by training reviewers in order to reduce bias ).

Original language	English
Journal	Nature Human Behaviour
Volume	7
Issue number	7
Pages (from-to)	1031-1033
Number of pages	3
DOIs	https://doi.org/10.1038/s41562-023-01649-y
Publication status	Published - 07.2023

Funding

A lottery at the beginning of a grant application process with a normative rather than competitive focus might facilitate the funding of new and exploratory ideas. We simulated four exemplary funding scenarios and here compare their benefits and drawbacks with respect to costs, diversity and quality. We contrasted a one-stage scenario (for example, the classic National Institutes of Health Research Project Grant R01 or the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft), a two-stage scenario (for example, the European Research Council (ERC)), the tiebreaker lottery (for example, SNSF) and the proposed pre-lottery scenario, and we transparently model various assumptions that affect the success of grant applications. All modelled scenarios result in improved quality of selected grants. However, when considering the costs, sunk costs, effects of self-selection and different biases in each additional review round, we can see that the pre-lottery scenario may have many advantages over others (Fig. ). Here, our simulations illustrate the potential value of pre-lotteries in the grant application process in freeing up substantial resources, which could again be used to improve the review process (for example, by training reviewers in order to reduce bias ). As bias “ … is something we’d like to avoid ”, as Matthias Egger (president of the Swiss National Science Foundation (SNSF)) asserts, a broadening of the debate on the models of research funding by stakeholders is needed. To counteract biases, it has been suggested that a lottery as a ‘ tiebreaker ’ in the final decision round could help to increase decision quality and reduce discrimination. The SNSF has already implemented the idea of a random-selection process for awarding grants in the final stage of the decision process, as has the German Volkswagen Foundation . The latter found that researchers were in favour of the lottery step because it enabled riskier proposals and reduced perceived biases.

UN SDGs

This output contributes to the following UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs)

SDG 3 Good Health and Well-being
SDG 10 Reduced Inequalities

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10.1038/s41562-023-01649-y

Cite this

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abstract = "A lottery at the beginning of a grant application process with a normative rather than competitive focus might facilitate the funding of new and exploratory ideas. We simulated four exemplary funding scenarios and here compare their benefits and drawbacks with respect to costs, diversity and quality. We contrasted a one-stage scenario (for example, the classic National Institutes of Health Research Project Grant R01 or the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft), a two-stage scenario (for example, the European Research Council (ERC)), the tiebreaker lottery (for example, SNSF) and the proposed pre-lottery scenario, and we transparently model various assumptions that affect the success of grant applications. All modelled scenarios result in improved quality of selected grants. However, when considering the costs, sunk costs, effects of self-selection and different biases in each additional review round, we can see that the pre-lottery scenario may have many advantages over others (Fig. ). Here, our simulations illustrate the potential value of pre-lotteries in the grant application process in freeing up substantial resources, which could again be used to improve the review process (for example, by training reviewers in order to reduce bias ).",

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Rethink funding by putting the lottery first

Abstract

Funding

UN SDGs

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