科研创新的鼓励机制

　　中文概要

　　科研基金的变革

　　科研经费的来源正在经历着一场变革，以往的科研项目是在获得了科研基金后展开研究的;而如今，某些科研领域在取得了创新性的突破后，会赢得“奖金”、“投资”性质的科研基金。

　　科研创新“鼓励”机制的利弊分析

　　--刺激科研创新;

　　--抛开往绩、资深团队背景、论文发表数量以及知名度等硬性指标的束缚，科研基金的“鼓励”机制能够给予底层科研人员更多的机会;

　　--竞争导致的局限性：医学领域较其他学科更容易吸引投资者的关注;而且在医学领域中，科研人员更倾向于对热门课题的创新研究以在竞争中取胜;

　　--由于目前依旧可以通过传统方式获取科研基金，资源浪费的情况在所难免。

　　原文

　　There’s a change afoot in the way in which research is being funded and it could benefit previously unrecognized researchers without a strong track record, large team of postdocs or a long publication list. In an Analysis article in the January 22 edition of Cell, Amy Maxen describes this shifting landscape and the potential it holds for funding agencies and unknown researchers alike.

　　The change relates to the balance between ‘push’-style. funding, the traditional model of research funding in which a funding body provides support for selected proposed research projects in advance, and ‘pull’-style. funding, presently most obvious in the purchases of intellectual property from academic institutions and biotech companies (or of the entire company itself) by the pharmaceutical industry after the innovation has occurred. The problem with this model of ‘pull’-style. funding is that it is focused solely on medicines for wealthy Western consumers. Now, competitions for incentive prizes for innovations are opening up new avenues of research funding, received after the research has been performed and results of value have been demonstrated, for otherwise under-the-radar researchers in all areas of science, technology and medicine.

　　Maxen cites a 2009 report by McKinsey, a major international consultancy, showing that the offering of prizes as incentives for research innovations has increased over the last decade. She also comments that President Obama recently asked federal agencies to use incentive prizes more to drive technological innovation. InnoCentive, a company that spun out of the pharmaceutical giant Eli Lilly, puts ‘seekers’ of innovative technological solutions in touch with ‘solvers’ who compete for cash prizes to provide a solution. Visitors to the Nature website will have noticed the recent introduction of their open innovation challenges, which offer the journal’s readers the opportunity to participate in advertised research and development challenges, via their partnership with InnoCentive. The X Prize Foundation, in conjunction with sponsoring companies and philanthropic sources such as The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, performs a similar function. For the sponsors, the benefits of such an approach are obvious: the risk of failure is placed on those who take part in the competition, and funding is paid only on delivery of results. This model also gives sponsors access to a much broader group of investigators, including those who would not have met the criteria for funding under the traditional grant model.

　　So what does this mean for Chinese researchers and academics? Institutional requirements and exclusion criteria aside, this new model of increased funding of actual results, rather than the potential for results, levels the playing field and opens up new avenues of research funding. Anyone can be a ‘solver’, regardless of their academic status, the length of their publication list or the size of their lab. And those with the best and most promising solutions to problems can claim prizes ranging in value from tens of thousands of dollars to millions of dollars. There are many challenges open to competition, and creative, lateral-thinking Chinese researchers should be aware of them.

　　However, the movement toward competitions is not without its risks. Even though there exist initiatives to provide prizes for innovations relating to neglected diseases (such as tuberculosis and malaria, which are major problems in the developing world but lack the high earning potential of other therapeutic areas that predominate in the drug pipelines of pharmaceutical companies), there will inevitably be many more research areas than there can be prizes. Solutions may be just around the corner in some of these areas, and yet competition for prizes may pull talent and resources away from those problems that don’t attract prize money. Moreover, it is possible that funds administered through the traditional route and allocated to a specific project are squandered in the competition for a prize in the same or a related area of research. After all, the funds used to support the solvers and fund the development of innovations has to come from somewhere, most likely the traditional sources. Because there can only ever be one winner for any given prize, many in a competition will come out with nothing. And because results are never guaranteed, a risk that has previously been shouldered by the funding bodies supporting the research, some researchers will find it difficult to show where and how allocated funds have been spent, and therefore struggle to obtain further funding for their research via the traditional route. Thus, an appropriate balance between push- and pull-style. funding needs to be maintained. Moreover, researchers tempted by prizes for innovation need to ensure that their research programmes continue as usual while contemplating innovative solutions to fashionable problems.