Innovative Science
Abstract
Sir, We write as senior scientists about a problem vital to the scientific enterprise and prosperity. Nowadays, funding is a lengthy and complex business. First, universities themselves must approve all proposals for submission. Funding agencies then subject those that survive to peer review, a process by which a few researchers, usually acting anonymously, assess a proposal's chances that it will achieve its goals, is the best value for money, is relevant to a national priority and will impact on a socio-economic problem. Only 25% of proposals received by the funding agencies are funded. These protracted processes force researchers to exploit existing knowledge, severely discourage open-ended studies and are hugely time-consuming. They are also new: before 1970, few researchers wrote proposals. Now they are virtually mandatory.
Cite
@article{arxiv.1510.02385,
title = {Innovative Science},
author = {Donald W Braben and John F Allen and William Amos and Richard Ball and Hagan Bayley and Tim Birkhead and Peter Cameron and Eleanor Campbell and Richard Cogdell and David Colquhoun and Steve Davies and Rod Dowler and Peter Edwards and Irene Engle and Felipe Fernandez-Armesto and Desmond Fitzgerald and Jon Frampton and Dame Anne Glover and John Hall and Pat Heslop-Harrison and Dudley Herschbach and Sui Huang and H Jeff Kimble and Sir Harry Kroto and James Ladyman and Peter Lawrence and Mark Leake and Armand Leroi and David Logan and Angus MacIntyre and Julian Marchesi and John Mattick and Colin McInnes. Tom McLeish and Graham Medley and Thomas Miller and Randolph Nesse and Gerald Pollack and Beatrice Pelloni and Douglas Randall and David Ray and Sir Richard J Roberts and Ken Seddon and Colin Self and Harry Swinney and Chris Thomas. William Troy and Robin Tucker and Claudio Vita-Finzi and David Wild},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:1510.02385},
year = {2015}
}