Would anyone like a reasons to feel optimistic about @CIHR_IRSC funding? I found some that I am frankly astonished they have not made a point of sharing with community.

The scariest graph, to me, about the damage done first by flat funding and second by the Reforms disaster is this one, which shows the growth and contraction of Canadian health research as the number of PIs (labs, basically) funded each year through open programs.

There are 3 phases: growth/stability when success rates were above 20%, slow decline after success rates dropped below 20%, and faster decline when 3 competitions were cancelled to pay for Foundation.

This wasn't supposed to happen, because Foundation was supposed to take PIs who had accumulated many grants out of the regular competition pool. The problem was those PIs didn't really exist. There is no evidence of an impactful increase in multi-grant PIs in the OOGP.

But anyway. We've now had 5 competition in a row on the regular schedule...something that hasn't happened 2013. And LOOK! Stability has led to a bounceback.

I haven't looked, but these are mostly a mix of 1) First grants for the ECI (many now MCI) pool shut out by the Reforms and 2) Defunded labs regaining funding. This is FANTASTIC. Bringing back stability in competitions--made possible by killing Fdn--had very fast returns.

This is why the current cancellation freaks me out. Yes--instead of using the money to lard up a handful of SCIs it's going to be used for extensions and rolled forward. That's good. But. But....

It has the the same effect of stomping on ECIs in the hunt for their first grant and labs already in their no-cost extension year and running out, neither of whom are getting any support. And it's worse because these are submitted grants.

And I think a big part of why cancellations cause chaos is they drive application pressure through the roof because of anxiety and lack of trust. And this is one cycle before Fdn PIs start coming back in, with no promises that all of the freed up money will stay in Project.

So kudos to CIHR and Mike Strong's leadership... they steered us out of the maelstron and brought back stability to the open programs, with immediate measurable results. But this success is what makes it so clear that cancelling Spring 2020 was the wrong decision.