For 80 years, American science has operated under the Vannevar Bush model that was established in the wake of World War II. In his 1945 report, Science, the Endless Frontier, Bush argued that the government should fund “curiosity-driven basic research,” with panels of peer scientists choosing which projects deserved financial support. His goal was not merely to subsidize scientists’ intellectual whims without regard for visible applications, but to secure American technological supremacy by developing fundamental knowledge before its practical uses were apparent. In practice, however, Bush’s vision mutated into a bloated, risk-averse bureaucracy split between government and universities, stifling the very innovation it was designed to foster.
After eight decades, the weaknesses of Bush’s project-grant model are clear. As the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy (OSTP) points out in its new report, academic researchers spend up to half their time writing, formatting, and defending grant proposals rather than actually doing science. Moreover, because review panels naturally gravitate toward proven concepts, researchers are incentivized to propose incremental work that is guaranteed to succeed, often because they have already accomplished it.
