Something like this could tackle it at the appropriate institutional level. Make the ERC grant less a golden ticket and more driven by actual research demands.

Haven't thought about it much, I admit, and of course could come with other side effects.

bsky.app/profile/thom...

Yeah I can believe that. There is so much pressure from universities to apply. For myself, for example, it's the only realistic shot at tenure.

But it's pretty draining to spend a huge chunk (20, 30%?) of an already short-term contract on an application that can get smacked with a 3-year ban.

Fair. I wish ECRs (or applicants, generally) were consulted as well, though...

Reddit's answer is that the native name would have been "midge" (a concept I am familiar with, having lived in Scotland...). Which derives from Proto Indo-European and has a shared etymology with Latin musca, from which mosquito derives from.

But why did the awkward "mosquito" replace midge!

So how and why did English land on a loan word (Spanish/Portuguese) for mosquito? In the 16th century, apparently.

It's not like they didn't exist in the British isles before that!

It's telling that the quote tweets alone here and on other social media suggest many fairer alternatives. If only they had a community of experts to consult before making such a drastic decision!

Don't let our reality become background noise or a "show" you've grown tired of. Please help us amplify the truth. Every life taken was important and irreplaceable. These are not just statistics; they are unspeakable crimes.

Every day, I write the same story: Russian strikes claiming lives. One person here, five there, a child, a grandparent... These tragedies have become so routine that the world is growing numb.

Wait what the hyttynen - HYTTY joke also works in other languages!?

Academics: small non-random samples are unrepresentative and problematic.

Same academics deciding what gets published and funded: a biased n=2 is fine, actually.

Yeah that is one of the obvious solutions. As a premise it really is ridiculous to spend so much time on a document that in most cases is read by no one.

Siri, what's the Matthew Effect?

My suggestion would be something like:

Brief application: 3 pages of text, CV, list of 10 relevant publications

Reviewers skim through and select top 50%.

Followed by an honest-to-good lottery.

Would allow for actually brave ideas, still select for merit (somewhat), waste less time for all.

Well, what can you say; academia seems quite consistent in optimising for the wrong things.

If there's one thing academia knows, it's how to design an inefficient system.

I also like this idea. It has nuance. Demand for big chunks of money should not be institution-driven, but based on real needs and prospects of good ROI. "Money as a merit in itself" is a corrupt road in recruitment policy.

bsky.app/profile/thom...

- In any meaningfully progressive field, an application will be redundant after the lengthened embargo. So much for improving one's work based on feedback.

- All the more incentive to outsource the ERC process to consultants.

Genuinely discouraged to even try again.

This renewed system:

- Punishes people for taking any real risk (so much for funding high-risk research!).

- Wastes applicants' time (still have to write that B2, baby! Even if no one reads it and you get banned!)

- Reduces mental well-being of ECRs... Yet another notch lower.

This basically amounts to "too many people are applying, so we'll make the process entirely insufferable to reduce applications".

There would have been another option to reduce workloads of reviewers *and* applicants: making the application form less dense.

Thoughts:

ERC could instead just make indirect costs ineligible

That would get a lot of pushback from infrastructure-heavy institutions, but it’s justifiable on it own terms (“we fund the projects themselves, not the costs of running a place”) and it would certainly reduce the number of applications

Three weeks of practice later, juggled 3 balls with 92 consecutive throws. 🤹‍♂️

Hitting the 100s soon!

(The kid stares at me with a confused face.)

Academics don't like being told that they live in an Ivory Tower, but I have to say, only people who have spent practically their whole life within the security of tenured employment could come up with such a cruel solution. There are more equitable ways to solve the low success rate problem.

Yeah. And effectively each ticket costs the public thousands (even tens of thousands!) in € and/or opportunity costs.

My career experience has been that delivering excellence on the cheap doesn’t get rewarded. Delivering average but funded does

Actually thinking more, ERC could simply make indirect costs ineligible. That would get a lot of pushback but it’s justifiable on it own terms (“we fund the projects themselves, not the costs of running a place”) and would certainly reduce the number of applications

100% this.

It is ridicilous that hoarding money (from a *very* limited zero-sum pool) has become a merit in itself.

In no other business would we consider money spent a merit in itself.

From what I see, ROI is typically secondary to grant € received.

I find it especially brutal that the solution for a too heavy application was to make the process even more insufferable and mentally draining for applicants. It just feels disrespectful.

Especially since the other option would have been to streamline the process (less work for everyone involved).

I think opportunity costs are just way out of order currently. I would vote for lottery with a quick pre-screen.

Tai ainakin tuhoa.

Luovaa tuhoa!