The results of the 2009 Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada’s Discovery grant competition were announced on Friday. Generally the results are released in mid-March, so the delay was part and parcel of a series of odd events for this competition.

Rob Annan provided a very good summary of some of these issues in his blog. To summarize:

1) The results were announced by the Right Honourable Gary Goodyear himself (Canadian Minister of State, Science and Technology). Usually the DG program doesn’t rate ministerial announcement. See the press release here.

2) The second news release put a slightly different spin on the “good news” reported by Goodyear. For example:

  • the success rate has declined
  • the total amount of funding for the program was flat over the last two competitions ($349.3 million), however, the average award has increased by $4,000 per year. Technically speaking, the total number of applicants has been declining over the past three years, but the variance in total applicants in 2007 and 2008 was largely due to fewer new applicants. (Email me if you want the 2007 and 2008 detailed competition statistics.) In any event, the increase of funding per applicant is more related to the fact that fewer people applied and even less were successful.
Year Total Applicants Success Rate Average Award
2007 3592 70.2% Data not avail.
2008 3405 71% $29,818
2009 3210 63.5% Est. $34,000

Apparently, NSERC will be presenting more comprehensive stats on the competition soon. This is significant because detailed analysis of the Discovery competition doesn’t usually get released until September.

(I wonder if the delayed announcement is due to an attempt to provide competition analysis with competition results?)

Of course, it makes sense (to try) to be more transparent in this competition in anticipation of the heightened scrutiny related to the partial implementation of the new peer review process.

The new process attempts to disconnect the scientific merit of the applications and applicants from the award of funds through a scorecard system. Theoretically, this will reduce cronyism by funding applications based purely on relative score versus less qualitative factors.

I am looking forward to seeing the detailed statistics.