Mason  🏃‍♂️ ✂️

It also *might* be worth noting that Epstein had several foundations, and AFAICT did not directly hand anyone cash for science.

Correct, but he handpicked the people his foundations gave money too, and, if you trust Steven Pinker's account, the moment people called him out on his behaviour or his stupidity, he would "vote them off the island". I obviously don't think most ultra rich are like Epstein, but

I genuinely think that having scholars depend on the personal and unmediated favour of the ultra rich (even super smart and generous ones) would have all sorts of negative consequences.

I wonder, Epstein shoehorn aside, if your list of negative consequences would include a lot of things others here might describe as positive?

I think there are potentially a lot of really positive outcomes! Funding bodies, even when they claim they want to fund revolutionary research, are exceedingly conservative. They are exceedingly paperwork heavy - etc, etc.

Most funded academics are little better than expensive university decor. Grant-making mechanisms are not only conservative but profoundly broken, even incapable of making determinations about the basic features of an application, like whether it's essentially truthful.

I agree with the point about being too conservative, but, I completely disagree about the latter point. Have you taken a look at some of the NIH's own published documents about their review process? Most grants that are funded are exceptionally well done.

I'm not saying anyone in particular has a poor grant-making process relative to someone else's grant-making process. I'm saying that paperwork alone cannot enable a particularly good selection mechanism for funding.