Mason  🏃‍♂️ ✂️

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.

I honestly believe the paperwork is in part a gatekeeping mechanism because there is a finite amount of referee time and this limits the number of applications people have to review. It sucks!

Yes, it does suck. It sucks to file paperwork to people who implicitly think your time is worth less than their referees', who don't know you and don't really care much about the particulars of your work, and to whom you are a statistic waiting to happen and little else.

But at least we don't have scientists accepting money directly from individuals who believe in their work, amirite

I'm trying to discuss this in as much good faith as I possibly can. Is your belief that direct funding has fewer potential pitfalls than the current system?

Yes, absolutely. For one thing, I think academic tracking turns off a lot of creative thinkers, and the aggregated funding tends to therefore go to a particular kind of mind and personality. Eliminating that constraint alone would unlock inestimable value.