Unlike the EU, DARPA is very fond of contract extensions, so you get “ok, we’ll pay you to do phase 1 of this, and if it works and we like it we might think about negotiating a contract extension for phase II” … which possibly reduces the need for PIs to adopt the Soviet Union Five Year Plan strategy, (like, you might really not have done phase I at the point where you’re negotiating a contract to do it).
There is an argument to the effect that if you can write down in advance what you’re going to discover by doing an experiment, then it is not, in fact, scientific research....
Unlike the EU, DARPA is very fond of contract extensions, so you get “ok, we’ll pay you to do phase 1 of this, and if it works and we like it we might think about negotiating a contract extension for phase II” … which possibly reduces the need for PIs to adopt the Soviet Union Five Year Plan strategy, (like, you might really not have done phase I at the point where you’re negotiating a contract to do it).
There is an argument to the effect that if you can write down in advance what you’re going to discover by doing an experiment, then it is not, in fact, scientific research....