In April Nature Genetics poured heaps of praise on a granting body that that awards grants only to 2.2% of all applicants. Let's recap: In 2007, there were about 9200 young scientists in Europe anxiously waiting for an opportunity to start their own labs. They applied to the ERC starting grant. Today, about 9000 of them still don't have their own labs and Nature thinks this is just fantastic! After this first thrilling piece of ERC propaganda, I read the more detailed article by Geoff Brumfiel in the same issue on some of the few lucky winners. And what can I read in one of the comments to the article: one of the featured scientists didn't even need the grant, he was already well equipped, staffed and funded my the Max-Planck society!I would like to shortly but firmly state that in my case the German Max-Planck Society and the Max-Planck Institute for Biogeochemistry in Jena, had already been offering excellent research opportunities for me since 2006, when I was appointed as Independent Junior Research Group leader, via a Max-Planck-wide funding mechanism that is quite comparable to the ERC scheme. So I was definitely not frustrated before getting the ERC grant, but on the contrary, the excellent infrastructure and intellectual environment at the Max-Planck-Institute for Biogeochemistry highly motivated me and built a strong basis for such a successful proposal, where also intensive within-institute collaboration is foreseen. So I look up some of the other winners and sure enough, many of them have long-standing research projects with funding, graduate students, post-docs and technicians. So not only is the ERC starting grant ridiculously underfunded, it doesn't even deserve the name "starting grant"! This whole thing is wrong on so many levels, and yet, Nature uses at least two of its outlets to advertise the ERC starting grants as the best invention since sliced bread!
What kind of journalism is this? What if anything does Nature stand to gain from such gung-ho, get-with-the-program reporting?
Some more quotes:The ERC's founders deserve great credit for their determination to keep it independent of political and economic considerations, so that it can award its grants on the basis of scientific excellence alone. I see how this is positive. In a "hurray, I got running water" kind of way.
The prestige of the ERC makes it relatively easy to defend; its champions will have little difficulty in obtaining vocal, high-level support if its drive for unmitigated excellence is threatened. Indeed, the avoidance of this threat — so far — has been one of its most notable achievements. Ah, nobody dare to criticize the ERC or the evil member states will take it right back from us. How about improving on the ERC, seeing it as an important first step that still leaves much to be desired? How about using the abysmal funding rate to argue for more funding?
And even more important in the meantime is the need to streamline the European Commission's remarkably inflexible bureaucratic arrangements for ERC awards, which threaten to undermine the council's success. Hey, if time and bureaucracy is really your only major criticism, I have a solution for you: just ask for publication lists (this will narrow it down to the already established researchers) and then make it a lottery. saves a lot of time, hassle and paper. Less traveling required and basically no referees. The outcome is probably not much different from the current situation.
Overall, the ERC is off to a running start, says May. “The critical hurdles have been cleared,” he says. Kafatos agrees: “It's not everyday that you get more than 9,000 applications for a first call. It has been an amazing experience.” Well, it may have been amazing for you, I'm sure it hasn't been so amazing for the other 97.8% of the involved...
UPDATE: Using the Nature search function (thanks Maxine!), I actually found one paragraph in the June Editorial of Nature Cell Biology (10, 629; 2008), which Maxine posted to Nautilus, where my main points of criticism actually are brought up:For its first round of awards, the ERC dedicated its entire budget to 'Starting Grants' for young scientists (that is, anyone holding a PhD for two to nine years). The number of applicants far exceeded expectations and less than 3% were succesful. For the Molecular, Cellular and Developmental Biology panel, 18 of 720 applicants received the 1 million award (as of February 2008). Panel member Kai Simons (Max Planck Institute, Dresden) comments that "one of the missions of the ERC is to set up a 'European Label of Scientific Quality' so that it can aim to double its budget for the next framework in 2013". Only then can the award rate match the demand in a more reasonable way. For now, each panel has had to make tough decisions as to how to allocate the available funding. The stated aim of the scheme is to help researchers to start their own laboratories. However, given the sheer number of candidates, young principal investigators with established independent groups and several senior-author publications, stood a better chance. For example, only 25% of the Molecular, Cellular and Developmental Biology awards went to candidates who have had their own laboratory for less than two years; 75% of the successful applicants had already published at least two papers as senior author. From 2009, applications will be restricted to scientists with three to eight years of postdoctoral experience, a limit selecting for 'freshly minted' principal investigators. Nevertheless, it could still penalize seasoned postdocs just starting their group if they have to compete with established principal investigators solely on the basis of publication record.
So the ERC hype-score at NPG since the first announcement of ERC starting grant winners so far is three articles to one paragraph. 
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Duncan Hull
