Jessica Wade: belief

Transcript context

…But that will just up the requirement. Why not take away the support and just impose a three-page maximum? Nothing else is considered. Attach a PDF, but it won’t be read. Wouldn’t that be better? Well, again, then we’re just going to favor the people who are in places or have this prior history of writing these things and can write these savvy three-page proposals. We need to give people the support to be able to write them. Something I’ve seen a lot, not only on trying to improve things for celebrating women scientists, but it’s just this complete inequality and access inequity in the way that we give people support and access. This hidden curriculum in academia has a huge influence on the type of science that we fund. Sure, reduce the page count. I had to write something recently for an American funder where they were like, “Just write 20 pages.” I was like, “What do you mean, just write 20 pages? ” Definitely reduce the page count, but I think beyond that, we need to make sure everyone’s getting the same opportunity to write those perfect three pages. Because at the moment, we don’t, which is why we see biases in what’s coming out and who’s being funded. Stuart Buck has argued we should fund basically people, not projects, in most areas. The Arc Institute in California, connected to Stanford, has more or less that approach. Do you agree, disagree?…

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