Comment by ModernMech

> I am against bad research.

Most people are against bad research, but not everyone agrees with you on what bad means. Maybe the research you label "bad", I label "good". Your opinion has just as much weight as mine. So where does that leave us on the question of who gets research funding? Or did you have a different definition of "bad" in mind that doesn't consult your biases?

> One's desire to do research into irrelevant questions

Who decides what's a relevent question? The president? Political parties? B/Trillionaires? Big Tech / Oil / Pharma ? You?

> Well, I proposed one way (which you completely ignored, in order to accuse me of being biased): just fund stuff at random.

Sorry I ignored it, but you only included it as a footnote to your reply, so I wasn't sure you were actually serious. You gave two ideas really: fund stuff at random and fund continuations at random but holding a minimum objective bar. I'll take them in turn:

> just set some minimum objective bar for competency (degrees, institution, basic review for research viability, etc.) then fund whomever passes the bar at random.

This is more or less how the system operates now. You get a PhD, you go to a good institution, get some results, publish some papers, submit a proposal, and then it's a dice roll from there whether it gets funded or not. You said you had a career in research so you know this. How do you do "basic review for research viability" to your liking that's different from what's done now? Because now it's done by experts in their respective fields. You seem to think that means "bias is built into the system", yes? How do you evaluate basic research viability without consulting people specifically for their biases to determine that viability?

But funding continuations at random means that good research and bad research, whatever that means, would have a random chance of just not continuing. How does a country build long time-horizon research programs if they can just be defunded at the roll of the dice despite good results? How does that improve the system if good research can just randomly die and bad research can continue randomly as a matter of policy?

> just fund stuff at random.

Doesn't prevent bad research from being funded, as you admit. So to me, since both of your ideas aren't really designed to eliminate bad research but do work to eliminate biases, it seems like you're less concerned with not funding bad research, and more concerned with how biased you perceive the funding process to be.

> you've stumbled upon a legitimate class of argument: how does anyone separate their personal bias from objective evaluation of science?

That's my whole point, you can't. The system we've built is a compromise because so many people have an opinion on what should / should not be funded. You and I are biased and will never agree, so we leave it up to experts who are biased and will also never agree, but at least they know what they're talking about. So at the end of the day some things we both don't like get funded from a very small pot. Maybe a dice roll improves the whole process, but given the system has been wildly successful in producing technological breakthroughs despite inefficiencies and biases and disagreements, we shouldn't just go throwing wrenches in it just because it's biased.