MIoIR
‘Frontier research’ and the European
Research Council: a connection still
to build?
P. Larédo, Universities of Paris-Est & Manchester
IGS - EU SPRI FORUM conference
on tentative governance in emerging S&Y
Twente, 28-29 October 2010
Contents
• Frontier research as politically-driven rationale:
EU and US rationales
• Looking at different types of implementation
• Positioning the ERC answer
- a redefinition of frontier through peer review
processes
- from theories to facts: a revised view?
• Shaping a potential path for evolution: the ERC
as the ‘agency of agencies’
2 types of rationales underlying
policy making
• L. Bach (2007, PRIME EPOM project)
• Production policy rationales: emanating from
scholarly conceptual developments (e.g.
market failure, science as a public good…)
• Governance policy rationales: derived from
practice and causal beliefs produced in the
course of actions. One famous ‘recent’
example: collaborative programmes
--> consider Frontier research as a ‘type 2’
rationale for public action.
Frontier research ‘in action’
• A famous origin - science the endless frontier
- recently revived:
• Not only Europe and the ERC, also the US
and the NSB, NSF, NIH and DoE.
• Two terminologies: ‘frontier research’ and
‘transformative science’
• Converging views and revealing differences.
ERC & Frontier research (extracts of the
2008 work programme)
• The fundamental principle for all ERC activities is that
of stimulating investigator-initiated frontier research
across all fields of research, on the basis of
excellence.
• ERC Advanced Grants provide an opportunity to
established scientists and scholars to pursue frontier
research of their choice.
• Advanced Grants are intended to promote substantial
advances in the frontiers of knowledge … including
unconventional approaches and investigations at the
interface between established disciplines
• (projects should) demonstrate the ground-breaking
nature of the research
Defining Frontier Research
HLEG 2005. Members: B. Martin, S. Kuhlmann, A. Bonaccorsi, P. Stephan
• Classical distinctions between basic and applied have lost much of their
relevance… prefer to use the term frontier research to basic research
• Following characteristics:
- at the forefront of creating new knowledge and new understanding.
“Those involved are responsible for fundamental discoveries and
advances in theoretical and empirical understanding, and even
achieving the occasional revolutionary breakthrough that completely
changes our knowledge of the world”.
- risky endeavour
- concerned with both new knowledge about the world and with
generating potentially useful knowledge at the same time
- Frontier research pursues questions irrespective of established
disciplinary boundaries
Defining ‘transformative research’
(US) National Science Board, 2007
• Science progresses in two fundamental and equally valuable ways.
• The vast majority of scientific understanding advances incrementally
… Progress is evolutionary - it extends and shifts prevailing
paradigms over time
• Less frequently, scientific understanding advances dramatically,
through the application of radically different approaches or
interpretations that result in the creation of new paradigms or new
scientific fields. This progress is revolutionary, for it transforms
science by overthrowing entrenched paradigms and generating new
ones.
• The research that comprises this latter form of scientific progress (is)
termed transformative research. This pathway is marked by its
challenges to prevailing scientific orthodoxies.
Transformative research in act
• Answer 1: Business as usual
NSF and the inclusion of one new selection criteria:
To what extent does the proposed activity suggest
and explore creative, original, or potentially
transformative concepts?
• Answer 2: Add another instrument to the portfolio
(keeping the rest untouched)
NIH and a specific programme: Pioneer awards “to
support individual scientists of exceptional quality”
• Answer 3: Build a radically new process tailored to
the area considered (see Bonaccorsi’s introduction to
this conference)
DoE Energy Frontier Research Centers
• ‘Incremental advances in current energy technologies will not address
the energy challenges of the 21st century. History has demonstrated
that radically new technologies arise from disruptive advances at the
science frontiers’(2008)
• A process: BESAC report (2003), ‘basic research needs
workshops’ (3 years, 1500 participants, 12 reports), policy paper
in 2008, Call in 2009, 47 centers and 800 m $
• 5 scientific grand challenges ‘which no longer were discussed in
terms of traditional scientific disciplines’ and which ‘described a new
era of science’
• A tailored approach to research production in Energy:
‘Energy Frontier Research Centers will bring together the skills and
talents of multiple investigators to enable research of a scope and
complexity that would not be possible with the standard individual
investigator or small group award’.
Return to Europe and the ERC
• Rephrasing the question for ERC and ‘frontier
research’: Is the process adequate? Can ERC cater
for different knowledge dynamics?
• ERC implementation structures and operations at a
glance:
- addresses single principal investigators through 2
‘all over the board’ calls: starting and advanced grant
schemes
- functions through 25 panels made of a dozen peers
for over 340 areas identified
ERC Process: ‘frontier science’ and peer
review processes
• Wood & Wessely (2003): no clear evidence to substantiate
any view point.
• Yalow (1982): ‘The need to promote scientific revolutions
and the outcome of peer review are in opposition”
• NSB very negative views (see next slide)
• Lamont’s illuminating work on interdisciplinary grant
committees: ‘procedural fairness’ is warranted on
“respecting disciplinary sovereignty” on two grounds:
- epistemological styles (Mallard, 2006): what makes
proposals robust
- location/positioning in the explicit or implicit research
agenda of the discipline
NSB ‘evaluation’
• Transformative research frequently does not fit
comfortably within the scope of project-focused,
innovative, step-by-step research
• … nor does it tend to fare well wherever a review
system is dominated by experts highly invested in
current paradigms or during times of especially
limited budgets that promote aversion to risk
• Experts in the areas being challenged (many of
whom may sit on review panels) may dismiss such
ideas by pronouncing the research overreaching or
without basis.
ERC Process: ‘frontier science’ redefined
through peer review processes
• Frontier research = those cases that do not follow
dominant disciplinary styles and/or position
themselves outside the ‘mainstream’ agenda
• Frontier research as a left over:
- committees are quite good at eliminating ‘bad’
proposals (van der Besselaer & Leydesdorff, 2008)
- committees privilege ‘evolutionary projects’
- space for ‘frontier research’ depends on the
selection pressure
• Conclusion: above a certain pressure (success ratio),
ERC will only marginally fund ‘frontier research’
From theories to facts
• The rate of selection is now around 15%, not different to what is
observed in different national funding agencies
• But the size of grants is large (1.5 million for a starting grant on
average)
• Heinze et al. (2009) tell us that a key criterion for creativity in science
is ‘large, multiyear, flexible’ funding.
• Should we link this to a recent surprising fact: One of the 2010 Nobel
prize winners (Novosolov) is the recipient of a starting grant (!)
• Is thus the answer, size of grant, and the interpretation: the ability to
play a double game, meaning that beyond a certain size, justifications
and argumentation only cover a limited fraction of the grant, thus
there is no need to be ‘over’ challenging….
Implications & questions raised
• Implication 1: though a left-over, there will be a
number of scientific breakthroughs nurtured by ERC.
But to paraphrase Bozeman about the role of military
funding on innovation in the US: one needs not
consider efficiency issues.
• Implication 2: this drives to politically shift the balance
in political terms between ‘excellence’ and ‘frontier
research’
• Question: if the ERC is already at a quasi-standard
rate of success in the world of European funding
agencies, how will it cope with its planned increase of
resources? Can it increase present schemes? What
about new schemes?
Elements to consider for new schemes
focused on frontier research (1)
1 Rationale for more direct targeting on frontier research
• Going back to the so-called European paradox: EU is good at science
and poor at innovation
• Debate (1): EU is good at incremental science (Dosi, Bonaccorsi) &
poor at ‘frontier research’
- One marker: Nobel prize winners and the 3 to 1 ratio in favour of US
- Policy translation: research performers too fragmented (thus centres
of excellence, NoE, EIT…)
• Debate (2): core fragmentation is at funding level and explains
differences
- the ERA rationales report (Georghiou et al, 2008)
- size of funding pools central (organisational differences) central
(Laredo 2004, cf appendix to this presentation)
Conclusion: need for greater articulation between national
and European levels to create coordinated funding pools
Elements to consider for new schemes
focused on frontier research (2)
2 Build on existing practices & policy discourse
• How to create critical size pools?
- build on the lasting success of ERA-Nets and the
increasing collaborative move between national EU
agencies
- Join the band and adopt the ‘joint programming’
• How to adapt to different knowledge dynamics (‘one
size does not fit all’)?
- recognize that most ERA-Nets are thematically
driven
- build on the DOE process and join the European
fashion of ‘vision shaping’
An exotic answer: the ERC as the
‘agency of agencies’
• A learning path: the ERC keeps part of its funds for
‘joint programming’ with national agencies
• A standing forum to select challenging issues
(multiple possible alleys including calls for want-to-be
areas)
• ERA-Net like structures to define directions (the DoE
type basic research grand challenges) and to
organise selection processes
• Adapted instruments to cater for the specificity of
themes/domains (e.g. DOE EFRC)
Appendix
US-EU difference in breakthrough
science: a conjecture
• Take one field and suppose equivalent investments between EU
and US (e.g. chemistry and catalysis)
• US intervention concentrated at Federal level with 3 agencies
(e.g. NSF, DoD & DoE), used to collaborate (e.g. National
Nanotechnology Initiative); In Europe, at least 10 agencies &
programmes, loosely coupled.
• Suppose US spends 100, 70 on ‘mainstream’ agenda, and 30
on multiple heterodox alleys
• EU has similar ‘mainstream’ agenda and professional agencies
that want to insure critical mass: overall result: 85% of total
funds on mainstream agenda.
• EU agencies do not coordinate choices in frontier research and
thus aggregate on the most likely.
• Overall result: 4 times less alleys explored and thus 4 times less
potential ‘Nobelisable’ science