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Assay and Acquisition of Radiopure Materials

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aaac:may26

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Agenda May 26, 2015

  • Presentation by Ted Von Hippel on the article and its survey. Linked at
  • Moving forward with Agency Statistics and Analysis. The Longer report on Proposal Pressures that was not in finished form by the March 2015 AAAC report, may be a good place to start. What are the questions not yet answered, what additional information is required to make a case.

Work Plan

  1. Use the data already collected and mine it for some more specific questions and data-driven scenarios
  2. Determine what information didn't make it into the original survey and incorporate it in the new one.
  3. Gather a larger data set and cover more agencies for the conditional and correlated information.

Sample questions that go beyond the Von Hippel Survey

Important note: This list is far too long and we would clearly need to reduce the number of questions, The ones listed are just examples

Answer these questions with a scale: strongly agree <--> neutral <--> strongly disagree)

  • How would the following actions by the funding agencies affect you?
    • Limiting applicants to one PI or CoI proposal per year:
      • would increase the time I could spend on my research
      • would reduce my chances for tenure.
      • would cause me to leave the field.
      • would reduce the number of proposals I submit.
      • would improve the quality of those proposals I submit
      • would reduce the size of my research group
    • Calling for proposals every other year
      • Etc..
    • Introducing a pre-proposal stage.
      • Etc…
    • Reducing the amount of funding for individual proposals
      • Etc..
    • Creating smaller research grants for exploratory research, with an expectation that successful proposals are likely to be funded in the following year
  • Proposals to non-governmental research funds are easier to get funded (or “are available to me” )
  • There are too many scientists in the field of astrophysics and the low success rate is an appropriate method of population control

Other questions

  • If my proposal is rejected, (choose one answer that best represents your action)
    • I resubmit the same proposal the next year
    • I submit a different type of proposal the next year
    • I support my research on someone else's grant
    • I submit a similar proposal to a different federal funding source
    • I submit a similar proposal to a private funding source
    • I concentrate on other aspects of my job (e.g. teaching)
aaac/may26.1432578662.txt.gz · Last modified: 2015/05/25 13:31 by prisca

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