At the risk of drawing a conclusion too strong from the article, I would add that that Fast Grants' referee panel of 'earyl-career individuals from top universities' with [responses] given out within '48 hours' warrants thoughtful contemplation on its own.
Hiring great people, then giving them both autonomy and authority to make effective decisions seems to be a missing ingredient in high-uncertainty activities (and no wonder, how is someone supposed to take risks when failure is harshly penalized). It is also a telling demonstration that questions and challenges requiring domain expertise need not be subject to endless advisory reviews or require sophisticated statistical modelling/complicated decision processes.
Regarding the statistical modelling/decision processes, I by no means am suggesting such modelling is always unnecessary, just that it seems it can often be used to justify inaction, or simply to cover one's arse. I am reminded of the Challenger incident [1] where engineers at Morton Thiokol were deeply suspect of launching, but were unable to decisively prove that a launch was inadvisable for want of adequate evidence. The rich irony of the situation was that several engineers were suspect of the launch AND had domain expertise shared a "gut instinct" about something each had superior tacit knowledge about. Granted, going with one's "gut" generalizes poorly outside of a domain of expertise. However, twenty scientists saying 'yay' or 'nay' to an activity is compelling evidence if all are dispassionate, third parties with no vested interest.
I suspect such skilled, domain-aware groups with the necessary capacity to make important decisions would generalize well to high-uncertainty, risky activities.
Seems like funding awarded by a panel of 'early-career individuals from top universities' would be a success-prone screening process.
But compared against the rigid and bureaucratic obstacles to conventional funding, it is actually closer to being a random application of criteria than what was otherwise available to the grantees.
The sad part about the mainstream academic institutions is that a more random award process is more sensible than what most researchers are normally facing these days.
No doubt 'late-career individuals who did top things even though they went to schools that were not well-known' would be a good qualification for a different success-prone panel, but you would expect the outcome to be vastly different.
Either way it gives some researchers a chance who would not otherwise have any near-term or appropriate opportunities.
At the risk of drawing a conclusion too strong from the article, I would add that that Fast Grants' referee panel of 'earyl-career individuals from top universities' with [responses] given out within '48 hours' warrants thoughtful contemplation on its own.
Hiring great people, then giving them both autonomy and authority to make effective decisions seems to be a missing ingredient in high-uncertainty activities (and no wonder, how is someone supposed to take risks when failure is harshly penalized). It is also a telling demonstration that questions and challenges requiring domain expertise need not be subject to endless advisory reviews or require sophisticated statistical modelling/complicated decision processes.
Regarding the statistical modelling/decision processes, I by no means am suggesting such modelling is always unnecessary, just that it seems it can often be used to justify inaction, or simply to cover one's arse. I am reminded of the Challenger incident [1] where engineers at Morton Thiokol were deeply suspect of launching, but were unable to decisively prove that a launch was inadvisable for want of adequate evidence. The rich irony of the situation was that several engineers were suspect of the launch AND had domain expertise shared a "gut instinct" about something each had superior tacit knowledge about. Granted, going with one's "gut" generalizes poorly outside of a domain of expertise. However, twenty scientists saying 'yay' or 'nay' to an activity is compelling evidence if all are dispassionate, third parties with no vested interest.
I suspect such skilled, domain-aware groups with the necessary capacity to make important decisions would generalize well to high-uncertainty, risky activities.
[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26380822