2018 Marie Curie Individual Fellowship (H2020-MSCA-IF-2018)

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megasphaera@yahoo.it
Posts: 14
Joined: Sat Jan 12, 2019 11:57 am

Re: Marie Curie Individual Fellowship Forum

Post by megasphaera@yahoo.it » Sun Jan 13, 2019 1:24 pm

Well, I mean, is a large group of evaluators, so the diversity in it also cover, let's say, poor evaluators :lol:

As you said, luck is important. People are now considering or investigating a lottery system for grant selection. Just yesterday I have read a paper on plos biology about it, here is the link:

https://journals.plos.org/plosbiology/a ... io.3000065


Bren wrote:
Sun Jan 13, 2019 1:14 pm
Excellent response, thank you!

Just on point 2: I am guilty of some 'blanket thinking' on this point, I admit. I had the experience a few months ago of being told that two people I know are expert evaluators for MCSA (not in my discipline) and my response was something like "You are shitting me, those idiots can just about tie their shoe laces". I'm sure there are some excellent people involved.
megasphaera@yahoo.it wrote:
Sun Jan 13, 2019 1:01 pm
Thanks for raising this.

Regarding your first point: that is a major problem in academia, it has been like this forever and is something that journal are trying to address by making the authors of a paper in review anonymous. In academia there is a lot of competition and if you don't like someone or you are working in the same field and get the chance to review one of this person's paper, well it is easy to imagine what will happen. Again we are trying to advance human knowledge, so personal beliefs, ideology and what you like/dislike should stay at home. In biomedicine and in each specific topic, we all know the big names or what your competitors are doing so even if your name isn't there, it is quite easy to guess and penalize a paper/application if you are an asshole!

2) Usually, you apply for a MSCA after your PhD or few years postdoc so most of the times, someone which has few years of experience more than you, will evaluate your proposal (i guess). I have some colleagues working as experts (senior postdocs and young PIs) and have considerably more experience than me (i have been working in my field for 6 years and have one postdoc experience), and I deeply believe in their integrity and objectivity when evaluating proposals. Of course, I cannot speak for all the thousand experts for the IF :lol: . If i am not wrong if you are awarded a MSCA-IF they invite you to evaluate next year proposals. I have heard this from someone and i could be completely wrong. In this case it would be a young postdoc with very few experience in project evaluation, hence the case you are considering. As you said, I don't think that a senior PI or a professor will sign as an expert, unless is invited.

3) The trend and how "hot" is your topic is something major in the life sciences and biomedicine as well, but is based purely on the science you are doing and what everyone else is doing, so i would say this is normal in the LIF.

In my case, I never took it personally, this is how things works in academia, and i have faced rejection multiple times before and i will face it many times in the future. As i said before, resilience is essential in academia and in my opinion is what differentiate a successful scientist from the rest!
Bren wrote:
Sun Jan 13, 2019 12:36 pm
I decided to apply for this funding 4 days before the deadline, and, in fact, knew little about MCSA before that. I've only been in academic for few years, after working in the non academic sector for 15 years.

When I looked into this fellowship 3 things struck me: 1) That applications are not anonymous. I think it would be awkward to anonymise applications but I think it could be done, and should be done. There are 'big names', superstar academics in all of our disciplines, and proposals linked of those names will, I believe, be look upon favorably by evaluators. This is a problem.

2) The second thing that struck me (once I had spoken to colleagues), and this has been raised by others on this forum, is that evaluators can hardly be called 'experts' as a lot of them are junior academics and postdocs. So, as a former drug addict who has spent 15 years working with drug addicts after I cleaned ups, and has 3 degrees, a phd, and a rake of publications, my proposal on the psychology of addiction recovery will be evaluated by a young postdoc who is understandably trying to supplement his or her income. Senior academics don't work as experts cos they dont need the dough.

3) Issues, especially social and political issues, go through trends of 'popularity' (popularity isn't the right word, but hey you get my meaning). Proposals relating to immigration, refugees, racism, radicalization etc will be far more likely to get funding than proposals relating to equally important and pressing problems such as addiction, organised crime, sex crime etc (I'm a criminologist, hence the focus on crime). I'm sure this trend of 'in vogue' issues is present in other fields too.

My point here is that, similar to the point with the political ideology, one could make an argument that there is a lot of arbitrariness in the scoring of these proposals, a lot will depend on the luck of the draw and the integrity and intelligence of evaluators. Therefore, man we really shouldn't take it too personally if we don't get selected, so much is about luck, luck, luck. I aint gonna stress, and I aint gonna take it personally if I dont get it. Theres a lot of dice rolling involved here.



ATBGF2017
Posts: 128
Joined: Tue Jan 02, 2018 1:31 pm

Re: Marie Curie Individual Fellowship Forum

Post by ATBGF2017 » Sun Jan 13, 2019 2:02 pm

On this point: there should definitely be some sort of criteria (if there are not already). For example applying to MSCA and going over the 80 threshold (or maybe even 70).

Another incentive would be increasing the evaluation fee in order to attract more talented and experienced researchers. If you can pour billions to funding, you sure as hell can give spend a few million more for a better evaluation mechanism.
Bren wrote:
Sun Jan 13, 2019 1:14 pm
Excellent response, thank you!

Just on point 2: I am guilty of some 'blanket thinking' on this point, I admit. I had the experience a few months ago of being told that two people I know are expert evaluators for MCSA (not in my discipline) and my response was something like "You are shitting me, those idiots can just about tie their shoe laces". I'm sure there are some excellent people involved.
megasphaera@yahoo.it wrote:
Sun Jan 13, 2019 1:01 pm
Thanks for raising this.

Regarding your first point: that is a major problem in academia, it has been like this forever and is something that journal are trying to address by making the authors of a paper in review anonymous. In academia there is a lot of competition and if you don't like someone or you are working in the same field and get the chance to review one of this person's paper, well it is easy to imagine what will happen. Again we are trying to advance human knowledge, so personal beliefs, ideology and what you like/dislike should stay at home. In biomedicine and in each specific topic, we all know the big names or what your competitors are doing so even if your name isn't there, it is quite easy to guess and penalize a paper/application if you are an asshole!

2) Usually, you apply for a MSCA after your PhD or few years postdoc so most of the times, someone which has few years of experience more than you, will evaluate your proposal (i guess). I have some colleagues working as experts (senior postdocs and young PIs) and have considerably more experience than me (i have been working in my field for 6 years and have one postdoc experience), and I deeply believe in their integrity and objectivity when evaluating proposals. Of course, I cannot speak for all the thousand experts for the IF :lol: . If i am not wrong if you are awarded a MSCA-IF they invite you to evaluate next year proposals. I have heard this from someone and i could be completely wrong. In this case it would be a young postdoc with very few experience in project evaluation, hence the case you are considering. As you said, I don't think that a senior PI or a professor will sign as an expert, unless is invited.

3) The trend and how "hot" is your topic is something major in the life sciences and biomedicine as well, but is based purely on the science you are doing and what everyone else is doing, so i would say this is normal in the LIF.

In my case, I never took it personally, this is how things works in academia, and i have faced rejection multiple times before and i will face it many times in the future. As i said before, resilience is essential in academia and in my opinion is what differentiate a successful scientist from the rest!
Bren wrote:
Sun Jan 13, 2019 12:36 pm
I decided to apply for this funding 4 days before the deadline, and, in fact, knew little about MCSA before that. I've only been in academic for few years, after working in the non academic sector for 15 years.

When I looked into this fellowship 3 things struck me: 1) That applications are not anonymous. I think it would be awkward to anonymise applications but I think it could be done, and should be done. There are 'big names', superstar academics in all of our disciplines, and proposals linked of those names will, I believe, be look upon favorably by evaluators. This is a problem.

2) The second thing that struck me (once I had spoken to colleagues), and this has been raised by others on this forum, is that evaluators can hardly be called 'experts' as a lot of them are junior academics and postdocs. So, as a former drug addict who has spent 15 years working with drug addicts after I cleaned ups, and has 3 degrees, a phd, and a rake of publications, my proposal on the psychology of addiction recovery will be evaluated by a young postdoc who is understandably trying to supplement his or her income. Senior academics don't work as experts cos they dont need the dough.

3) Issues, especially social and political issues, go through trends of 'popularity' (popularity isn't the right word, but hey you get my meaning). Proposals relating to immigration, refugees, racism, radicalization etc will be far more likely to get funding than proposals relating to equally important and pressing problems such as addiction, organised crime, sex crime etc (I'm a criminologist, hence the focus on crime). I'm sure this trend of 'in vogue' issues is present in other fields too.

My point here is that, similar to the point with the political ideology, one could make an argument that there is a lot of arbitrariness in the scoring of these proposals, a lot will depend on the luck of the draw and the integrity and intelligence of evaluators. Therefore, man we really shouldn't take it too personally if we don't get selected, so much is about luck, luck, luck. I aint gonna stress, and I aint gonna take it personally if I dont get it. Theres a lot of dice rolling involved here.



megasphaera@yahoo.it
Posts: 14
Joined: Sat Jan 12, 2019 11:57 am

Re: Marie Curie Individual Fellowship Forum

Post by megasphaera@yahoo.it » Sun Jan 13, 2019 2:43 pm

I don't think increasing the evaluation fees would help, as they are quite high already.

Everyone can apply, actually i have applied just to see how it works. Maybe, they should train extensively the evaluators and examine them before evaluations. However, this won't change a rejection if they don't like a project or think is not relevant.
ATBGF2017 wrote:
Sun Jan 13, 2019 2:02 pm
On this point: there should definitely be some sort of criteria (if there are not already). For example applying to MSCA and going over the 80 threshold (or maybe even 70).

Another incentive would be increasing the evaluation fee in order to attract more talented and experienced researchers. If you can pour billions to funding, you sure as hell can give spend a few million more for a better evaluation mechanism.
Bren wrote:
Sun Jan 13, 2019 1:14 pm
Excellent response, thank you!

Just on point 2: I am guilty of some 'blanket thinking' on this point, I admit. I had the experience a few months ago of being told that two people I know are expert evaluators for MCSA (not in my discipline) and my response was something like "You are shitting me, those idiots can just about tie their shoe laces". I'm sure there are some excellent people involved.
megasphaera@yahoo.it wrote:
Sun Jan 13, 2019 1:01 pm
Thanks for raising this.

Regarding your first point: that is a major problem in academia, it has been like this forever and is something that journal are trying to address by making the authors of a paper in review anonymous. In academia there is a lot of competition and if you don't like someone or you are working in the same field and get the chance to review one of this person's paper, well it is easy to imagine what will happen. Again we are trying to advance human knowledge, so personal beliefs, ideology and what you like/dislike should stay at home. In biomedicine and in each specific topic, we all know the big names or what your competitors are doing so even if your name isn't there, it is quite easy to guess and penalize a paper/application if you are an asshole!

2) Usually, you apply for a MSCA after your PhD or few years postdoc so most of the times, someone which has few years of experience more than you, will evaluate your proposal (i guess). I have some colleagues working as experts (senior postdocs and young PIs) and have considerably more experience than me (i have been working in my field for 6 years and have one postdoc experience), and I deeply believe in their integrity and objectivity when evaluating proposals. Of course, I cannot speak for all the thousand experts for the IF :lol: . If i am not wrong if you are awarded a MSCA-IF they invite you to evaluate next year proposals. I have heard this from someone and i could be completely wrong. In this case it would be a young postdoc with very few experience in project evaluation, hence the case you are considering. As you said, I don't think that a senior PI or a professor will sign as an expert, unless is invited.

3) The trend and how "hot" is your topic is something major in the life sciences and biomedicine as well, but is based purely on the science you are doing and what everyone else is doing, so i would say this is normal in the LIF.

In my case, I never took it personally, this is how things works in academia, and i have faced rejection multiple times before and i will face it many times in the future. As i said before, resilience is essential in academia and in my opinion is what differentiate a successful scientist from the rest!


Bren
Posts: 349
Joined: Sat Jan 12, 2019 11:55 pm

Re: Marie Curie Individual Fellowship Forum

Post by Bren » Sun Jan 13, 2019 11:23 pm

For folks who are funded, does anyone know exactly what documentation the EU requires to prove that the scholar is actually living in the country and doing the work? I know that they will obviously need confirmation from the host institution, but how about proof of residence and utility bills and such?

I ask because my sister lives in the country/city that I hope to move to, and she has a spare room so I will basically live there rent free (in the unlikely even that I am funded that is). I also wouldn't have utility bills in my name. Does anyone know if the EU would accept info/confirmation from the host institution only?

danGFSOC
Posts: 216
Joined: Tue Jan 02, 2018 8:46 am

Re: Marie Curie Individual Fellowship Forum

Post by danGFSOC » Mon Jan 14, 2019 9:52 am

I don't agree with you. If you look for people that won the fellowship, you will see that often supervisors are far from being superstars. I know personally people that won the fellowship with supervisors that are not even full professor; and I know also people supported by top institutions (e.g. Cambridge, Oxford, Berkeley, Harvard) that got it after two or three attempts.

Also regarding social and political issues, the relationship between your research and policy priorities and "EU challenges" can be built in different ways. To give you examples: I read abstracts about research on small and very marginal heretical movements in the Middle Ages or culture of drinking in the Ancient Middle East or the use of cursing in texts in Latin literature. It is very difficult to imagine an impact on EU policies and priorities working on such topics, however applicants envisioned a social impact: values of tolerance and freedom in the EU (for heretical movements), free of speech and censorship (for cursing), still alive culture of drinking in the Islamic world where EU agriculture and trade can develop (for drinking culture in Ancient Middle East).

Political ideology is an issue but for me it is under the more general problem of "personal preferences" of the evaluators. To avoid this the application should be linked to policy and official documents: e.g. official recommendations, EU strategic plans etc. It is true (and this is a critical point for my application) that sometimes the evaluators check if you or your supervisor are part of an academic community that share with him/her common interests and values. This is a problem, but not very different from theoretical and methodological preferences.

And don't agree on applications being anonymous: Marie Curie program is not just about scientific ideas but a project for developing scientific careers within the EU. That's why under FP7, Marie Curie program was under the pillar PEOPLE (and maybe it still is). And you can't evaluate a project on careers without looking at CVs.

For evaluators, don't know. I did not look into it and I don't even know personally Marie Curie evaluators. But I guess that to find outstanding evaluators to read and evaluate 10'000 applications of 20 pages in a couple of month is a sort of mission impossible.


Bren wrote:
Sun Jan 13, 2019 12:36 pm
I decided to apply for this funding 4 days before the deadline, and, in fact, knew little about MCSA before that. I've only been in academic for few years, after working in the non academic sector for 15 years.

When I looked into this fellowship 3 things struck me: 1) That applications are not anonymous. I think it would be awkward to anonymise applications but I think it could be done, and should be done. There are 'big names', superstar academics in all of our disciplines, and proposals linked of those names will, I believe, be look upon favorably by evaluators. This is a problem.

2) The second thing that struck me (once I had spoken to colleagues), and this has been raised by others on this forum, is that evaluators can hardly be called 'experts' as a lot of them are junior academics and postdocs. So, as a former drug addict who has spent 15 years working with drug addicts after I cleaned ups, and has 3 degrees, a phd, and a rake of publications, my proposal on the psychology of addiction recovery will be evaluated by a young postdoc who is understandably trying to supplement his or her income. Senior academics don't work as experts cos they dont need the dough.

3) Issues, especially social and political issues, go through trends of 'popularity' (popularity isn't the right word, but hey you get my meaning). Proposals relating to immigration, refugees, racism, radicalization etc will be far more likely to get funding than proposals relating to equally important and pressing problems such as addiction, organised crime, sex crime etc (I'm a criminologist, hence the focus on crime). I'm sure this trend of 'in vogue' issues is present in other fields too.

My point here is that, similar to the point with the political ideology, one could make an argument that there is a lot of arbitrariness in the scoring of these proposals, a lot will depend on the luck of the draw and the integrity and intelligence of evaluators. Therefore, man we really shouldn't take it too personally if we don't get selected, so much is about luck, luck, luck. I aint gonna stress, and I aint gonna take it personally if I dont get it. Theres a lot of dice rolling involved here.

megasphaera@yahoo.it wrote:
Sun Jan 13, 2019 12:11 pm
This is the standard european life sciences panel, so you are safe :D .

What you have raised is an interesting point i did not think about it, as i am not from your field and do not know anything about social science. Can you raise this point to the EU? Can you maybe propose a project that consider this issue and bias in your panel? I mean science should be free from personal beliefs! But i guess is the same in our field as other scientists might not like your theory or way to see stuff.
Bren wrote:
Sun Jan 13, 2019 11:51 am
Are you sure? I'm pretty sure last year was 91. Oh, I don't know what LIF stands for, maybe that's different to ST EF without the LIF... :D


megasphaera@yahoo.it
Posts: 14
Joined: Sat Jan 12, 2019 11:57 am

Re: Marie Curie Individual Fellowship Forum

Post by megasphaera@yahoo.it » Mon Jan 14, 2019 10:16 am

That is very interesting and very well thought from the applicant.

Of course applying with a big name in the field is not going to give the fellowship. Also going in with high impact publications; i have heard of people saying "i have a publication in a top journal and they did not gave it to me". Of course they did not understand the complexity of this fellowship and all the aspects you need to consider to get funded.

I agree with you: being anonymous for the MSCA is not feasible as you need to have a look at the CV. I think now MSCA programme is under the pillar of Excellent science.


danGFSOC wrote:
Mon Jan 14, 2019 9:52 am
I don't agree with you. If you look for people that won the fellowship, you will see that often supervisors are far from being superstars. I know personally people that won the fellowship with supervisors that are not even full professor; and I know also people supported by top institutions (e.g. Cambridge, Oxford, Berkeley, Harvard) that got it after two or three attempts.

Also regarding social and political issues, the relationship between your research and policy priorities and "EU challenges" can be built in different ways. To give you examples: I read abstracts about research on small and very marginal heretical movements in the Middle Ages or culture of drinking in the Ancient Middle East or the use of cursing in texts in Latin literature. It is very difficult to imagine an impact on EU policies and priorities working on such topics, however applicants envisioned a social impact: values of tolerance and freedom in the EU (for heretical movements), free of speech and censorship (for cursing), still alive culture of drinking in the Islamic world where EU agriculture and trade can develop (for drinking culture in Ancient Middle East).

Political ideology is an issue but for me it is under the more general problem of "personal preferences" of the evaluators. To avoid this the application should be linked to policy and official documents: e.g. official recommendations, EU strategic plans etc. It is true (and this is a critical point for my application) that sometimes the evaluators check if you or your supervisor are part of an academic community that share with him/her common interests and values. This is a problem, but not very different from theoretical and methodological preferences.

And don't agree on applications being anonymous: Marie Curie program is not just about scientific ideas but a project for developing scientific careers within the EU. That's why under FP7, Marie Curie program was under the pillar PEOPLE (and maybe it still is). And you can't evaluate a project on careers without looking at CVs.

For evaluators, don't know. I did not look into it and I don't even know personally Marie Curie evaluators. But I guess that to find outstanding evaluators to read and evaluate 10'000 applications of 20 pages in a couple of month is a sort of mission impossible.


Bren wrote:
Sun Jan 13, 2019 12:36 pm
I decided to apply for this funding 4 days before the deadline, and, in fact, knew little about MCSA before that. I've only been in academic for few years, after working in the non academic sector for 15 years.

When I looked into this fellowship 3 things struck me: 1) That applications are not anonymous. I think it would be awkward to anonymise applications but I think it could be done, and should be done. There are 'big names', superstar academics in all of our disciplines, and proposals linked of those names will, I believe, be look upon favorably by evaluators. This is a problem.

2) The second thing that struck me (once I had spoken to colleagues), and this has been raised by others on this forum, is that evaluators can hardly be called 'experts' as a lot of them are junior academics and postdocs. So, as a former drug addict who has spent 15 years working with drug addicts after I cleaned ups, and has 3 degrees, a phd, and a rake of publications, my proposal on the psychology of addiction recovery will be evaluated by a young postdoc who is understandably trying to supplement his or her income. Senior academics don't work as experts cos they dont need the dough.

3) Issues, especially social and political issues, go through trends of 'popularity' (popularity isn't the right word, but hey you get my meaning). Proposals relating to immigration, refugees, racism, radicalization etc will be far more likely to get funding than proposals relating to equally important and pressing problems such as addiction, organised crime, sex crime etc (I'm a criminologist, hence the focus on crime). I'm sure this trend of 'in vogue' issues is present in other fields too.

My point here is that, similar to the point with the political ideology, one could make an argument that there is a lot of arbitrariness in the scoring of these proposals, a lot will depend on the luck of the draw and the integrity and intelligence of evaluators. Therefore, man we really shouldn't take it too personally if we don't get selected, so much is about luck, luck, luck. I aint gonna stress, and I aint gonna take it personally if I dont get it. Theres a lot of dice rolling involved here.

megasphaera@yahoo.it wrote:
Sun Jan 13, 2019 12:11 pm
This is the standard european life sciences panel, so you are safe :D .

What you have raised is an interesting point i did not think about it, as i am not from your field and do not know anything about social science. Can you raise this point to the EU? Can you maybe propose a project that consider this issue and bias in your panel? I mean science should be free from personal beliefs! But i guess is the same in our field as other scientists might not like your theory or way to see stuff.


Bren
Posts: 349
Joined: Sat Jan 12, 2019 11:55 pm

Re: Marie Curie Individual Fellowship Forum

Post by Bren » Mon Jan 14, 2019 11:29 am

Very thoughtful response, thank you.

On your first point, yes of course there are many such cases, and I am not arguing that anonymity would be feasible. However, i do know that junior academics are very often starstruck by senior academics so I think it can be an issue. However its an impossible one to judge.

I disagree with you on your points re political ideology, and sticking to EU policy positions is not enough to over come this. Let me give you an example: Imagine if I, as a criminologist, wanted to conduct research into the possibility of extending administrative segregation and restricted regimes in prisons for organised crime members and gang leaders. This would fit easily under the heading of 'secure societies' as research demonstrates that such individuals continue to conduct their activities from behind bars, ordering murders, organizing drug imports etc. The United States recognizes this and restricts the communication, visits, letters etc of such people. The justification for this research would be to protect communities and societies that are being victimized by predatory individuals and groups, most of the victimized are of course the poor and disadvantaged. This research would absolutely NEVER be funded under MCSA as the vast majority (judging by publications) of European criminologists, sociologists, anthropologists etc who are interested in penal matters have a strong anti-incarceration ethos. They work diligently to try to reduce sentences and make prison regimes more humane. I agree with them 100% when it comes to most prisoners, but I maintain that there is a class of predators who we need to treat differently. So, there ye have it: thats a project that would align with EU policy and priority but would never be funded due to the dominance of a liberal orthodoxy in academia which is, in some important instances, divorced from the reality of issues that affect lower socio-economic groups and communities.

This is just one small example. But imagine your application was in one of the more 'heated' areas of research (racism, gender studies, feminism, transgender issues, immigration, etc etc): the experts your proposal would be sent to would undoubtedly be people with very strong opinions who would shoot down any proposal which deviated from their ideological position. Unfortunately, a significant proportion of social scientists are 'activist academics' who have a political and social agenda which they pursue. How many is a 'significant proportion': who knows, but from my experience it is maybe 75% of the social scientists that I have known and worked with. One could assume then that a way to increase the possibility of funding is to adhere to dominant orthodoxy when drafting ones proposal in the expectation that experts will broadly agree with ones ideological stance.

So, as a non-left wing person in the social sciences, my strategy has to be two fold: 1) Align my proposal with EU policy priorities, and 2) Predict what topic (s) may be acceptable to those who hold to the dominant political ideology amongst academics which, in Europe, is a spectrum running from left liberalism to far-left/socialist. I had 3 really good ideas for which I wanted funding, and I actually applied with my third preference because I knew that the first two would never be acceptable to your average EU social sceientist.

danGFSOC wrote:
Mon Jan 14, 2019 9:52 am
I don't agree with you. If you look for people that won the fellowship, you will see that often supervisors are far from being superstars. I know personally people that won the fellowship with supervisors that are not even full professor; and I know also people supported by top institutions (e.g. Cambridge, Oxford, Berkeley, Harvard) that got it after two or three attempts.

Also regarding social and political issues, the relationship between your research and policy priorities and "EU challenges" can be built in different ways. To give you examples: I read abstracts about research on small and very marginal heretical movements in the Middle Ages or culture of drinking in the Ancient Middle East or the use of cursing in texts in Latin literature. It is very difficult to imagine an impact on EU policies and priorities working on such topics, however applicants envisioned a social impact: values of tolerance and freedom in the EU (for heretical movements), free of speech and censorship (for cursing), still alive culture of drinking in the Islamic world where EU agriculture and trade can develop (for drinking culture in Ancient Middle East).

Political ideology is an issue but for me it is under the more general problem of "personal preferences" of the evaluators. To avoid this the application should be linked to policy and official documents: e.g. official recommendations, EU strategic plans etc. It is true (and this is a critical point for my application) that sometimes the evaluators check if you or your supervisor are part of an academic community that share with him/her common interests and values. This is a problem, but not very different from theoretical and methodological preferences.

And don't agree on applications being anonymous: Marie Curie program is not just about scientific ideas but a project for developing scientific careers within the EU. That's why under FP7, Marie Curie program was under the pillar PEOPLE (and maybe it still is). And you can't evaluate a project on careers without looking at CVs.

For evaluators, don't know. I did not look into it and I don't even know personally Marie Curie evaluators. But I guess that to find outstanding evaluators to read and evaluate 10'000 applications of 20 pages in a couple of month is a sort of mission impossible.


Bren wrote:
Sun Jan 13, 2019 12:36 pm
I decided to apply for this funding 4 days before the deadline, and, in fact, knew little about MCSA before that. I've only been in academic for few years, after working in the non academic sector for 15 years.

When I looked into this fellowship 3 things struck me: 1) That applications are not anonymous. I think it would be awkward to anonymise applications but I think it could be done, and should be done. There are 'big names', superstar academics in all of our disciplines, and proposals linked of those names will, I believe, be look upon favorably by evaluators. This is a problem.

2) The second thing that struck me (once I had spoken to colleagues), and this has been raised by others on this forum, is that evaluators can hardly be called 'experts' as a lot of them are junior academics and postdocs. So, as a former drug addict who has spent 15 years working with drug addicts after I cleaned ups, and has 3 degrees, a phd, and a rake of publications, my proposal on the psychology of addiction recovery will be evaluated by a young postdoc who is understandably trying to supplement his or her income. Senior academics don't work as experts cos they dont need the dough.

3) Issues, especially social and political issues, go through trends of 'popularity' (popularity isn't the right word, but hey you get my meaning). Proposals relating to immigration, refugees, racism, radicalization etc will be far more likely to get funding than proposals relating to equally important and pressing problems such as addiction, organised crime, sex crime etc (I'm a criminologist, hence the focus on crime). I'm sure this trend of 'in vogue' issues is present in other fields too.

My point here is that, similar to the point with the political ideology, one could make an argument that there is a lot of arbitrariness in the scoring of these proposals, a lot will depend on the luck of the draw and the integrity and intelligence of evaluators. Therefore, man we really shouldn't take it too personally if we don't get selected, so much is about luck, luck, luck. I aint gonna stress, and I aint gonna take it personally if I dont get it. Theres a lot of dice rolling involved here.

megasphaera@yahoo.it wrote:
Sun Jan 13, 2019 12:11 pm
This is the standard european life sciences panel, so you are safe :D .

What you have raised is an interesting point i did not think about it, as i am not from your field and do not know anything about social science. Can you raise this point to the EU? Can you maybe propose a project that consider this issue and bias in your panel? I mean science should be free from personal beliefs! But i guess is the same in our field as other scientists might not like your theory or way to see stuff.


xman25
Posts: 123
Joined: Mon Jan 14, 2019 2:44 pm

Re: Marie Curie Individual Fellowship Forum

Post by xman25 » Mon Jan 14, 2019 2:45 pm

Any evaluation and ranking folks this year?

IF ST LIF
Posts: 132
Joined: Tue Jan 16, 2018 7:10 pm

Re: Marie Curie Individual Fellowship Forum

Post by IF ST LIF » Mon Jan 14, 2019 3:06 pm

Not for the moment... I think they are a bit delayed. Last year my proposal went from submission to evaluation on January the 9th. Then one day later to ranking...

Bren
Posts: 349
Joined: Sat Jan 12, 2019 11:55 pm

Re: Marie Curie Individual Fellowship Forum

Post by Bren » Mon Jan 14, 2019 3:25 pm

What does this mean? I'm not very clued in on this, appreciate any insight....
xman25 wrote:
Mon Jan 14, 2019 2:45 pm
Any evaluation and ranking folks this year?

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