On Wed, 02 Jan 2013 14:57:19 -0800, Scott O Lilienfeld wrote:
Hi TIPSters...happy New Year.
[snip]
Here's what has moved me to write. A number of psychology departments
in R1 institutions, including a major one in the Southeast (not Emory,
although
we may be following suit soon, I predict) are in the process of revising
their
tenure and promotion documents to demand that large-scale federal grant
funding should be a strong expectation, if not an outright requirement, for
tenure (and almost certainly, promotion to Full Professor). I have serious
reservations about this proposal for a host of reasons,
In the late 1980s, early 1990s, I had a colleague who was finishing up a
post doc and was looking for his first academic position. He applied to
one of those colleges in the Cambridge, MA area and in his interview with
the dean was told up front that it was expected that, if hired, it was
expected
that he would be bring in around three times his yearly salary in grant
money
and would continue to do so while there. He had a good "intellectual
parentage" but was unsure if he handle the pressure to accomplish this AND
get tenure.
Some people thrive under such situations, some people go off and teach. ;-)
Whether institutions want to attract such people (i.e., skilled grant
getters)
may have less to do with the degree that they are "influential" than with
the
amount of indirect costs that they bring in. When psychologists can do
something that can be patented, then such grant grubbing will become less
important. Being able to attract venture capitalists to invest in your
research might be more important. 1/2 ;-)
[snip]
But I'm wondering about more "recent" psychologists whom we would all agree
are
extremely impactful.
Do you mean "influential" when you say "impactful"? And are you referring
to a "popularity contest" or "name recognition" (in which case "Dr. Phil"
wins)
or do you mean citation counts of journal articles? And how "recent" is
"recent"?
last 20 years? Last 40 years (i.e., since 1970)? Ask when did universities
start to pressure faculty to (a) have a productive research program and
(b) get grant money for such programs? Off the top of my head, I'd say
this started in the 1950s when the Dept of Defense and NIH started to
invest in science (pre- and post-sputnik). So, a particular cut-off date
would
be useful.
Here is my naïve question: Is there some easy (or if not,
complicated) way of finding out whether a given psychologist ever received
federal funding?
Yes. Read the Author Note, usually on the first page of the published
article.
For example, consider George Miller's "Magical Number Seven" paper which,
according to PsycInfo has 2464 citations while Web of Science has 6,258
hits.
His author note contains:
Preparation of the paper was supported by
the Harvard Psycho-Acoustic Laboratory under
Contract NSori-76 between Harvard University
and the Office of Naval Research, U. S.
Navy (Project NR142-201, Report PNR-174).
During the 1950s the Office of Naval Research and other parts of the Dept of
Defense supported research in experimental psychology and artificial
intelligence
and it is not unusual to see ONR acknowledged as a source of funding.
NOTE: If you use PsycInfo, you will see that there is a field term
"Grant/Sponsorship". If you use, say, "National Science Foundation"
as a search term with "Grant/Sponsorship" in the APA PsycNET (not
the ordinary PsycInfo) you will get 28,727 hits and in the listing for the
article you see all of the funding sources for the research being reported.
For example, search for:
Assessing selective sustained attention in 3- to 5-year-old children:
Evidence from a new paradigm.
doi: 10.1016/j.jecp.2012.07.006
By Fisher, Anna; Thiessen, Erik; Godwin, Karrie; Kloos, Heidi; Dickerson,
John
Journal of Experimental Child Psychology, Vol 114(2), Feb 2013, 275-294.
The "Full Record Display" contains the following:
Grant/Sponsorship
Sponsor:
Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health and Human
Development, US
Recipient:
No recipient indicated
Grant Number:
1RO3HD060086-01A1
Sponsor:
US Department of Education, Institute of Education Sciences, US
Recipient:
Fisher, Anna
Grant Number:
R305A110444
Sponsor:
National Science Foundation, US
Recipient:
Kloos, Heidi
Grant Number:
DRL 723638
However, it is unclear how far back such info is available. The Miller
"Magic Number
Seven" paper does not have a "Grant/Sponsorship" listing.
[snip]
So, for example, is there some way of finding out (short of reading
detailed
biographies) whether Skinner, Tolman, Allport, Festinger, Asch, Schachter,
Neisser, Rock, J.J. Gibson, Loftus, Tversky, or George Miller (I'm just
throwing out some quasi-random names of people we'd all agree are extremely
influential and creative - not saying we'd all agree with everything they
wrote...) received federal grant funding for their research (I believe that
Skinner received some funding from the defense department for applications
of
his work but I'm not sure whether that should count) and if so, how much?
(as
an aside, the smartest psychologist I've ever known, Paul Meehl, received
virtually no grant funding over the course of his career).
See:
Golden, R. R., & Meehl, P. E. (1979). Detection of the schizoid taxon with
MMPI
indicators. Journal of Abnormal Psychology, 88(3), 217.
The Author Note contains the following:
This research was supported in part by National
Institute of Mental Health Grant MH 24224 and
grants from the Psychiatry Research Unit, the
Scottish Rite Schizophrenia Research Program, and
the University of Minnesota Computer Center.
It is unclear whether the grant funding is to Golden or Meehl. However, it
should be noted that Meehl does not list any grant awards on the webpage
that claims to have his vita; see:
http://www.tc.umn.edu/~pemeehl/cv.htm
I think that Albert Ellis is a better example but then again Ellis wasn't
much
of an academic.
So, to summarize:
(1) Define a time frame that will be relevant to current concerns (do you
really
think that a college administration will be interested in the influence of a
psychology
from before, say, 1970?).
(2) Make a list of the researchers that you think are "influential"
psychologists
in the time frame.
(3) All grant funded research tend to acknowledge the source of funding
(especially
if they want to receive future funding). The Author Note should provide
this in most
psychology journals. Use your list of researchers to search PsycInfo and
other sources
(e.g., Medline) articles that contain funding sources associated with a
published article.
You could search for a particular author and funding source (e.g., NIH, PHS,
etc.)
and if you get a hit, check out the article for mention of the specific
grant.
(4) It sucks that universities are now going to require grant procurement as
a criterion in determining tenure and promotion but is it really an
intellectual
requirement or increasing revenue sources? Teaching stopped being important
long ago.
-Mike Palij
New York University
m...@nyu.edu
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