“I think that the NSF is too oriented toward incumbents, and incumbents are standing in the way of progress. It is hard for young minds and heterodox thinkers to get grants.”
Indeed. According to the Browser, the NIH awards 7 times more funding to scientists >65, than to those 35 and younger.
And here is a new organization for building institutions of basic science I learned about today, also affiliated with Tyler Cowen:
A good NSF - and even a good ANSF - would not fund research activities per se. Instead, it would select from among published, peer-reviewed reports deemed significant in the national interest (by specific agencies or other gov't authorities) and use a lottery system to assign them to one or more registered independent verification and validation laboratories for fully funded replication. It would make the results public.
One suggestion to keep the foundation from going off the rails is for it not to have a large endowment. With a large endowment whoever controls the endowment no longer needs to stay in touch with reality. They can spend the money on any crazy ideas they want to. If the foundation is dependent on donations, it will need to spend the money in such a manner as to keep the donations flowing.
A local charity that I support has now adopted the full DEI routine. I may not be able to stop them, but at least I can stop them from using my money.
Whitepapers, business plans, detailed proposals… they are not the one true way. The one true way is to give Magellan or Columbus or Newton a bunch of money earmarked for “You clearly really want to sail around in dangerous uncharted waters. Here’s a bunch of ships and cash. If you find anything interesting let us know but for now just get out of our hair!”
As a tech entrepreneur I have no clue specifically what I want to make. The invisible hand has given me the thumbs up a few times in the past so I feel like my future odds are decent. I just need time and resources to explore uncharted seas hoping I land on India, but I know I will probably (hopefully) land on America instead. But statistically speaking I am likely to wind up in the Bermuda Triangle.
So from my point of view, a science grant system that pays “the right explorers” money to just wander around and curiously explore makes a whole lot of sense. The grant institution would be in charge of betting on “the right people”, not “the right whitepaper”. I know they do a combination of these already, but a system that has 0 expectations as to specific results could be really cool. I'm not really in the science world so maybe this exists already.
"white paper proposals here, with the winners getting cash prizes. " -- My main alternative idea is for LESS on proposals, and more cash prizes for results. Including small results.
Insofar as the "the right explorer" is more often the more persistent, rather than the more brilliant, we should be evaluating prototypes of various persistent thinkers/ tinkerers able to make something work, and rewarding those with the best results with more money.
MacArthur Genius Grants seems a bit like this trying to support the best "right explorers".
I also think gov't money going to organizations that help reduce some problem or other should have smaller starting budgets and more rewards for better results.
A huge reason market capitalism is so successful, over time, is that the people peacefully choosing (= "market") products based on quality+price, relative to current budgets, usually rewards the best value products & services.
There is already a model for ANSF that has ossified in some or many respects: privately funded universities. Many donors contribute funds to universities with earmarks for supporting research. However, the ethics of university donations is for donors not to interfere with how their donations are used once the earmark is determined, for example, broadly for research on cancer treatments. I mention these points not to criticize or laud universities but as a caution that ANSF over time could succumb to the same pressures that universities have. The structure of ANSF should have to be very, very thoughtful to prevent future ossification.
To me this comes close but does not exactly hit the problem on the head. The problem with existing science funding establishments (not only NSF but also CDC, EPA, NASA, universities, etc. and their counterparts in other countries) is that they effectively form a "woke" monopoly, thus effectively denying funds, journal publication, and other resources to anyone who doesn't support the political narrative of each agency's masters. As long ago as the '70s, Reason did an in-depth story of how EPA maliciously ruined the career of a scientist who had dared suggest that the cause of acidity in lakes was acid soil rather than acid rain.
My solution to this situation would be to apply anti-trust law to publicly funded science agencies and break up their monopoly on any field where this kind of corruption is discovered.
“I think that the NSF is too oriented toward incumbents, and incumbents are standing in the way of progress. It is hard for young minds and heterodox thinkers to get grants.”
Indeed. According to the Browser, the NIH awards 7 times more funding to scientists >65, than to those 35 and younger.
And here is a new organization for building institutions of basic science I learned about today, also affiliated with Tyler Cowen:
https://newscience.org/
A good NSF - and even a good ANSF - would not fund research activities per se. Instead, it would select from among published, peer-reviewed reports deemed significant in the national interest (by specific agencies or other gov't authorities) and use a lottery system to assign them to one or more registered independent verification and validation laboratories for fully funded replication. It would make the results public.
One suggestion to keep the foundation from going off the rails is for it not to have a large endowment. With a large endowment whoever controls the endowment no longer needs to stay in touch with reality. They can spend the money on any crazy ideas they want to. If the foundation is dependent on donations, it will need to spend the money in such a manner as to keep the donations flowing.
A local charity that I support has now adopted the full DEI routine. I may not be able to stop them, but at least I can stop them from using my money.
Whitepapers, business plans, detailed proposals… they are not the one true way. The one true way is to give Magellan or Columbus or Newton a bunch of money earmarked for “You clearly really want to sail around in dangerous uncharted waters. Here’s a bunch of ships and cash. If you find anything interesting let us know but for now just get out of our hair!”
As a tech entrepreneur I have no clue specifically what I want to make. The invisible hand has given me the thumbs up a few times in the past so I feel like my future odds are decent. I just need time and resources to explore uncharted seas hoping I land on India, but I know I will probably (hopefully) land on America instead. But statistically speaking I am likely to wind up in the Bermuda Triangle.
So from my point of view, a science grant system that pays “the right explorers” money to just wander around and curiously explore makes a whole lot of sense. The grant institution would be in charge of betting on “the right people”, not “the right whitepaper”. I know they do a combination of these already, but a system that has 0 expectations as to specific results could be really cool. I'm not really in the science world so maybe this exists already.
This has good insight from the technology side of things: http://www.dtc.umn.edu/~odlyzko/doc/decline.txt
"white paper proposals here, with the winners getting cash prizes. " -- My main alternative idea is for LESS on proposals, and more cash prizes for results. Including small results.
Insofar as the "the right explorer" is more often the more persistent, rather than the more brilliant, we should be evaluating prototypes of various persistent thinkers/ tinkerers able to make something work, and rewarding those with the best results with more money.
MacArthur Genius Grants seems a bit like this trying to support the best "right explorers".
I also think gov't money going to organizations that help reduce some problem or other should have smaller starting budgets and more rewards for better results.
A huge reason market capitalism is so successful, over time, is that the people peacefully choosing (= "market") products based on quality+price, relative to current budgets, usually rewards the best value products & services.
There is already a model for ANSF that has ossified in some or many respects: privately funded universities. Many donors contribute funds to universities with earmarks for supporting research. However, the ethics of university donations is for donors not to interfere with how their donations are used once the earmark is determined, for example, broadly for research on cancer treatments. I mention these points not to criticize or laud universities but as a caution that ANSF over time could succumb to the same pressures that universities have. The structure of ANSF should have to be very, very thoughtful to prevent future ossification.
To me this comes close but does not exactly hit the problem on the head. The problem with existing science funding establishments (not only NSF but also CDC, EPA, NASA, universities, etc. and their counterparts in other countries) is that they effectively form a "woke" monopoly, thus effectively denying funds, journal publication, and other resources to anyone who doesn't support the political narrative of each agency's masters. As long ago as the '70s, Reason did an in-depth story of how EPA maliciously ruined the career of a scientist who had dared suggest that the cause of acidity in lakes was acid soil rather than acid rain.
My solution to this situation would be to apply anti-trust law to publicly funded science agencies and break up their monopoly on any field where this kind of corruption is discovered.