KISTEP held the 15th KISTEP Wednesday Forum in the KISTEP international conference room in Yangjae-dong on December 10th on the topic of 'Assessment Scheme of the Spirit of Challenge/Creativity of Government R&D'.

The forum started with the topic presentation by Professor Soyoung Kim, Graduate School of Science and Technology Policy of KAIST, which was followed by the panel discussion of Head Kyungman Yoo of the National Research Facility Promotion Center, Korea Basic Science Institute, and Head Jooyoung Ko of the Division of Strategy and Cooperation, Korea Research Institute of Chemical Technology.
 
Professor So-young Kim proposed the direction the assessment system should be headed, saying "As there is a tendency where precision of assessment is recognized as 'professionalism' of the assessment system, and accuracy of assessment as 'fairness' of the assessment system, a concern on precision of the assessment as well a concern on accuracy may grow in the case of false positive. It is important to study how to apply the spirit of challenge and creativity to the assessment index in order to improve such a side effect." He also added, "Highly risky studies are not always connected to the high spirit of challenge of study, and having a high spirit of challenge does not necessarily yield a good result. Accordingly, as high risk does not guarantee a good result, change in the recognition of researchers is also required." Also, saying that sorting out sincere failures from insincere failures is the matter to which the assessment system should pay attention to, he added that assessment on 'proper failures' not yielding any good results should also be carried out.

In the subsequent panel discussion, Center Head Kyungman Yoo made his position clear by saying, "Prior to assessment, the term 'Challenge' should be clearly defined as 'the will to overcome expected difficulties', and 'Creativity' as 'implementing or thinking of new things breaking away from fixed ideas." Also, saying, "The term 'sincere failure' is very ironic because 'sincerity' represents a process while 'failure' represents a result", he
expressed his doubt as to whether a failure can be recognized as a sincere failure under the Korean sentiment where emphasis is put on the result. Presenting 'Good Failure' and 'Bad Failure' as the alternatives, he said 'Good Failure' is the failure which becomes a lesson that can be accepted, and 'Bad Failure' is the failure caused by carelessness or misjudgment. He proposed that, we, accordingly, have to accurately aim for 'Good Failure', and should arrange an acknowledgement criteria for 'Sincere Failure', that is to say, the assessment index for 'Good Failure'. Finally, he said, we should not forget that failure is the process to success."
 
Next, Division Head Jooyoung Ko said that he was in agreement with the opinion of Center Head Kyungman Yoo and the establishment of concept is the most important. Division Head Jooyoung Ko explained about the importance of phased assessment, saying, "The relation between a project planning stage and project selection should be close. It is required to continue checking whether the study is maintained similarly to the plan." He said that a challenging/creative study should be uniformly equipped with three elements: ▲ The goal should be challenging and creative; ▲ Assessment should be carried out in the aspect of quantity internally and in the aspect of quality externally; and ▲ The planning stage should be reinforced, and predicted a positive effect saying, "If we come up with a method of assessing not only the result but also the research note or the research process, researchers may be greatly motivated." He repeatedly emphasized that continuous studies should be carried out on phased assessment indexes above all.