There is a very clear rationale for the streamlining, especially if one considers the past experience where given that R&D was the buzzword some departments put forward ‘wonderful’ proposals to capture some more cash some of which ultimately went on things they were doing anyway or things that had little or no return (Niskanen model).

In any case the current practice could easily lead to a situation where a good project in one area is not funded because the money has run out while a relatively worse project does get funding because there is money left in that area. From that point of view it is better if all projects compete for funding from one source. Of course this leaves the issue of the appropriate selection criteria and who does the selecting but that has been an issue in the current system too so the board snip proposal would seem like a clear improvement to me.

Do you have any evidence that good and bad researchers have differing levels of motivation to seek out money? Just curious.

And don’t get me started on judging that ‘good’ from ‘bad’. I saw, for example, the Libertas types mockig EU jellyfish research as ‘waste’. Of course, as with the volcano monitoring that their US Republican brothers mocked not so long ago and came to regret it (Google “Bobby Jindal Volcano”), this is actually a very valuable and urgent matter of research in the maritime field. So, who gets to decide- economists? Please.

I wonder also though how to build an effective central agency with the appropriate expertise to appropriately evaluate the tenders from such a diverse range of research topics. The balance of these panels would be important and no doubt contentious for those groups who fair poorly in the ‘tendering phase’. Not a major problem though.

Also with regard to applied research, I believe that perhaps the opportunities and recogniised value of applied work will benefit from the current crises. In some ways funding of applied research can yield savings by displacing the need for other forms of outsourcing for government agencies.

JAK

Who does the earmarking now? Perhaps it would be better to have accountability to the earmarker rather than “tendering” which if it was misspent would simply be written off.