You’d have to overhaul the funding system drastically.
Measuring scientific output by publications and citations is useless at best, but it’s easy so that’s how you’re measured.
Writing grant proposals is 95% useless bullshit, there’s no useful content in the proposals, but it gives a false sense of objectivity and competitiveness, so that’s how you’re funded.
Thing is, most of the world operates like that. Corporations measure useless KPIs and demand empty reports. There’s an entire caste of administrators whose entire existence is founded on this overhead to exist. I don’t see a way to change that without a very very serious disruption (that is, a major war, not a startup).
Dadifer@lemmy.world 1 week ago
It’s obvious how to make it better: spend as much money on scientific progress as we do on figuring out how to blow brown people up.
ArbitraryValue@sh.itjust.works 1 week ago
I wouldn’t be opposed to more funding but there would still have to be some way to decide who to fund and making a good case that one’s research is worthwhile is always going to take a long time.
greenskye@lemm.ee 1 week ago
Maybe pay people who’s only job it is is to talk to the researchers and write the proposal for them? Someone smart enough to get stuff explained to them, but with the communication skills to boil that down into something the money people can understand?
It’s a pretty common position in software engineering because programmers and business people are pretty bad at communicating with each other.
BugleFingers@lemmy.world 4 days ago
Create gov science centers for each major branch of science, provide funding. Allow them to delegate within their narrower and narrower fields with loose requirements such as x-y% is salary a-b% is resources, and maybe something like each new study can get no less than $z and no More than $r.
I’m not saying this is perfect but spending more money towards it in general and allowing some branch delegation of funding would hopefully at least resolve the grant writing part and ensure salary. Though I’m not sure how one would ensure that they are being productive and not doing frivolous things on purpose. Perhaps q amount of hours a year must go to a gov decided research project and the rest is up to the researcher.
Maybe funding for a project is aquired through hours contributed to projects the gov deems with a standard for high social benefit? I.E. You help with the research on this new hydro electric tech (regardless of outcome because we feel it’s an important study topic) and we pay ($p per hour spent on hydro tech) towards a study of your choice.
Dadifer@lemmy.world 1 week ago
No, it only takes a long time because there’s so little to go around. Do you think defense funding takes months and years to award grants? No.
halcyoncmdr@lemmy.world 1 week ago
There are literally decades-long proposals, initial R&D and prototyping for big defense contracts.
No, they aren’t taking years to award a new contract for the paper provider, but they are for new weapons and vehicles.
Kusimulkku@lemm.ee 1 week ago
I wonder what you’d might call that “figuring out” thing
Dadifer@lemmy.world 1 week ago
I sure wouldn’t call it scientific progress, if that’s what you’re implying.
Kusimulkku@lemm.ee 1 week ago
Science isn’t just about nice stuff