Funding original ideas

On the other hand, under a peer review system, we do get critical examination of what people want funding for (and often projects need critical examination) and then projects are “graded” to fit the available money. But remember, peer review funding would have supported long masks for preventing plague; Ptolemaic cosmology, however flawed it was; conventional theory about the causes of fatal puerperal fever; acid and not infection as the cause of peptic ulcers.

Official bodies give people project money for not challenging existing paradigms. The people who are asked to act as peer reviewers are themselves the “experts” in any area, the very people who might have invented prevailing theories or the people whose own work is based on prevailing theories.

Spinoza was excommunicated by the Jewish community of Amsterdam for having heterodox ideas (Russell, B., A History of Western Philisophy, George Allen and Unwin Ltd, London, 1948) and many others have suffered rejection and ridicule because their ideas were too radical. Authorities have generally not been comfortable with new and different ideas.

People who get project funding do make advances, but they are often incremental advances only. New bricks in old walls are worth having. It is a safe way of proceeding. It is risk averse but it is not world altering.

The opposite of peer-reviewed project funding might be called block funding where money is given to an institution, or a laboratory, or even to one person, and they are told to go away and think. Whenever one is given “tenure” at any institution of higher learning, one’s salary is guaranteed and one is expected to do some teaching and research and thinking in return.

The advantage of this system is that people are more willing to think in unorthodox ways, to develop new paradigms, to come from “left field” and to make some real progress. New walls are built for others to work on. Salaries are not at risk and it is “safe” to think in different ways.

The weaknesses of this system of block funding relate especially to how you pick institutions, or laboratories, or people, to support, and the means that institutions use to recruit new employees. Nepotism, or favouritism, or group attitudes (especially to the “other”) are potential problems; as is the possibility that selected people might not deliver the outcomes you hope for.

In the peer reviewed model there is less suggestion of partiality, or nepotism, or favouritism, or risk of ineffective appointments, (but not “no” - there are sometimes limited numbers of people in an area and all are known to all) all dangers with block funding.

One potential negative of the block funding model is that people might spend too much time down at the local pub and not enough time thinking. But, on balance, if only one was available, the block funding model seems better because it is essential for making the big advances. Luckily, both kinds of funding are available.

Some of my own academic colleagues were doing meaningless research. It was possible to challenge them with questions like: “How will the world be different if your work succeeds?” and “When you finish your research life, which part of your work will be remembered?” And they, too frequently, could not answer either question, partly because they had never considered either question.

There is no point counting the numbers of grains of sand on any beach. Such work would be original - but worthless.

The NHMRC disburses funds made available for biomedical research by the government of the day. It has processes which are transparent and thorough. But it did not give project funding to two people who went on to get the Nobel Prize. This should have led to a public, open and critical self examination of its methods - their validity and their robustness. One wonders did such an examination occur or whether the response was to apply a band-aid and hope the problem would not recur. You see, it is not that the NHMRC did nothing. What it did was the minimum and it did nothing to address the underlying problem. The belief seems to have been that the system is satisfactory, when, clearly, it is not.

Governments have been giving more and more support for project funding and have moved away from block funding. Project funding, alone, is a recipe for mediocrity and conformity.

If we want a nation that develops original ideas then we need to support people over projects.