Should research funding be allocated at random?
Earlier this week, a group of early-career scientists had an opportunity to quiz Jim Smith, Director of Science at the Wellcome Trust. The ECRs were attending a course on Advanced Methods for Reproducible Science that I ran with Chris Chambers and Marcus Munafo, and Jim kindly agreed to come along for an after-dinner session which started in a lecture room and ended in the bar. Among other things, he was asked about the demand for small-scale funding. In some areas of science, a grant of £20-30K could be very useful in enabling a scientist to employ an assistant to gather data, or to buy a key piece of equipment. Jim pointed out that from a funder’s perspective, small grants are not an attractive proposition, because the costs of administering them (finding reviewers, running grant panels, etc.) are high relative to the benefits they achieve. And it’s likely that there will be far more applicants for small grants. This made me wonder whether we might retain the benefits of small grants...