Snow Leopard
Senior Member (Voting Rights)
But I don't think just asking for £20M to be put on the table is the answer. It will be swallowed up by the next set of -babblers before you can say Jack Robinson. The funding bodies are right to put the bar high. The scientist need to meet it.
This is making the assumption that the underlying demand for funding by high quality proposals/teams is not there. But what concrete evidence do we have that this is true?
All research proposals are inherently risky - there is no guarantee there will be a groundbreaking result. Given a lack of understanding of the fundamentals, it seems we need a broader range of research in this field, including research that some people would consider 'risky'.
Perhaps high quality proposals are not being made because they require higher amounts of funding than would usually be granted? Perhaps scientists would rather make proposals in areas that are less controversial and thus more likely to get funded. Who wants to spend a lot of time on an ME research proposal when you're likely to be knocked back even if it is of high quality?
The answer to the question is what I have proposed before, namely we have to actually study scientists choices and behaviour. Why do scientists choose particular fields of study? Why aren't very many young scientists choosing to study ME? Why aren't sufficient high quality research proposals being made, or if they are, why are they not being funded?
We should not merely speculate about these issues, we need to study them directly.