I am confused by part of this. Under “Most Grant Applications are Bad,” the primary piece of evidence for that assertion is that only about 25% of grant applications get funded, therefore 75% are bad. That could be because the government splits its pool of money among all the “good” ones, or it could be because there’s only enough money to fund 25% of the projects. If the government decided to double its budget for psych research, would it then appear that only 50% of grant proposals are bad?
Furthermore, we should expect grants to go to those projects that show the most promise for publishing. “Publishable” does not mean “good,” and publication bias is one of the biggest pathologies of modern science. This is a lousy metric.
I am confused by part of this. Under “Most Grant Applications are Bad,” the primary piece of evidence for that assertion is that only about 25% of grant applications get funded, therefore 75% are bad. That could be because the government splits its pool of money among all the “good” ones, or it could be because there’s only enough money to fund 25% of the projects. If the government decided to double its budget for psych research, would it then appear that only 50% of grant proposals are bad?
Furthermore, we should expect grants to go to those projects that show the most promise for publishing. “Publishable” does not mean “good,” and publication bias is one of the biggest pathologies of modern science. This is a lousy metric.
And can we even trust the government to choose the best grant proposals?