Biology subjects

Meirmans, S.

Publications and source records attributed to Meirmans, S..

3 recordsLinked to original sources

bioRxiv2022

How researchers experience the impact of consortia and ERC funding schemes on their science

Policy makers push for consortia science geared towards addressing important issues. Such consortia are expected to target societal problems, be international, to engage in trans- or interdisciplinary research, to involve stakeholders and have specific plans for implementation. For example, Horizon Europe focuses on five missions that are being targeted by such type of consortia. This, however, does not seem to be the type of funding that active researchers appreciate the most: a recent letter signed by over 24.000 researchers clearly shows their preference for ERC grants. What are the underlying reasons for this difference? Here, we share insights on how natural science and medical researchers experience the impact of these funding schemes using interviews. Our findings highlight that the two different types of funding schemes have a different performative effect on research, and that ERC-type funding aligns most with how scientists think research should best be conducted.

scientific communication and education↗

bioRxiv2022

How competition for funding impacts scientific practice

In the research integrity literature, funding enters in two different ways: as elevating questionable research practices due to perverse incentives, and as being a potential player to incentivize researchers to behave well. Other recent studies have emphasized the importance of the latter, asking funding experts. Here, I explored how the impact of competitive research funding on science is being perceived by active researchers. More specifically, I have conducted a series of group sessions with researchers in two different countries with a different degree of competition for funding, in three disciplinary fields (medical sciences, natural sciences and the humanities), and with researchers in two different career stages (permanent versus temporary employment). Researchers across all groups experienced that competition for funding shapes science, with many unintended questionable side effects. Intriguingly, these questionable effects had little to do with the type of questionable research practices (QRPs) typically being presented in the research integrity literature. While the notion of QRPs focuses on publications and assumes that there would essentially be a correct way to do the science, researchers worried about the shaping of science via funding. According to my session participants, rather than ending up as really being wrong, this shaping could result in predictable, fashionable, short-sighted, and overpromising science. And still, this was seen as highly problematic: scientists experienced that the projectification of science makes it more and more difficult to do any science of real importance: plunging into the unknown or addressing big issues that would need a long-term horizon to mature.

scientific communication and education↗

bioRxiv2017

Sex in the wild: why field-based studies play a critical role in resolving the problem of sex

Why and how sexual reproduction is maintained in natural populations, the so-called \"queen of problems\", is a key unanswered question in evolutionary biology. Recent efforts to solve the problem of sex have often emphasized results generated from laboratory settings. Here, we use a survey of representative \"sex in the wild\" literature to review and synthesize the outcomes of empirical studies focused on natural populations. Especially notable results included relatively strong support for mechanisms involving niche differentiation and a near absence of attention to adaptive evolution. Support for a major role of parasites is largely confined to a single study system, and only three systems contribute most of the support for mutation accumulation hypotheses. This evidence for taxon specificity suggests that outcomes of particular studies should not be more broadly extrapolated without extreme caution. We conclude by suggesting steps forward, highlighting tests of niche differentiation mechanisms in both lab and nature and empirical evaluation of adaptive evolution-focused hypotheses in the wild. We also emphasize the value of leveraging the growing body of genomic resources for non-model taxa to address whether the clearance of harmful mutations and spread of beneficial variants in natural populations proceeds as expected under various hypotheses for sex.\n\nAuthor contributionsSM and MN conceived the paper idea, SM, PM, MN, and TS designed the review strategy, reviewed and analysed the literature, and wrote the manuscript. All authors gave final approval for publication.\n\nData archival locationThe results of our literature survey are provided as electronic supplementary material.

evolutionary biology↗