michael_nielsen

Indeed, it creates a sense that science _must_ be done this way. We must have PIs, a group is composed in such-and-such a way, scientists have a particular career path, are of a particular age, have a certain type of mentoring, produce a certain kind of output, etc.

But we could change each (or every!) one of these in radical ways.

Furthermore, it produces apathy. Every scientist has ideas for how to do things differently at the institutional level. But without a growth model for the best ideas, it's easy to feel it's not worth it, that things are forever stuck.

If you start a better grant agency, it's not going to displace the NIH. But perhaps it should.

A few ideas I like (no implied endorsement by Patrick, or originality on my part). Very telegraphic & incomplete - lots of nuance missing, and obvious problems that need to be addressed.

Figure out how new fields are produced. At the moment there's a _lot_ of inhibitory forces that slow the rate of production of new fields. Can we programmatically 2x or 10x or 100x the rate of new field production?

Tenure insurance. For a relatively small additional piece of the benefits package, tenure-track faculty are guaranteed a large payout should they fail to get tenure. It's a cheap way to de-risk the tenure process, and to encourage more risk-taking.