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There's been an explosion of excitement around grants to enable new research, but grants can only go so far. I wrote an essay outlining the limits of grants, why research management matters, and some potential alternatives.

benjaminreinhardt.com

Grants Only Go So Far

I’ll be blunt: I’m worried that because of how easy and humble grants are, enabling research through grants will crowd out enabling research through more definite ways. The optimism embodied in...

"Grants filter for people who know what the right thing to work on. However, not everybody who could potentially do good work knows the right thing to work on". 💯 project management seems like one of the hardest things for any project. Money is insufficient

"Patronage/Fund people not projects" I am intrigued by this idea! it's like "what if grants topped out someone's patreon/open-collective"

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One thing I wonder about the patronage proposal: "it takes less than a thousand people each giving $10 a month"… yes, but to avoid shadows of the future, you really want a multi-year commitment. Having many hundreds of patrons spreads the risk, but I still feel the shadows!!

6:18 PM · Dec 16, 2021Twitter Web App

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is this a call for UBI I hear? ;D

honestly I know a lot of people who moved to e.g. berlin to extend their research runway. which is both amazing and sad

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Yeah - I meant to gesture at that with the “indefinite” time piece but should have gone deeper. Its tough because financial circumstances can change and good people can become bad. I’m not sure where the right balance is.

do we need to bring back the concept of pensions?