Funding Science: The Real Defects of Peer Review and An Alternative To It

The existence of the procedure of peer-review of proposals (as distinguished from review of papers or completed works) is an extraordinary phenomenon. It has survived for some 30 years because of three factors. First, the inherent elitism of the sciences and its arcane linguistic barriers have enabled some scientists to claim that science should play by special rules. The rules that evolved, without any published analysis or forethought, then became a Kuhnian ruling of the science policy community and have been ritually affirmed as correct by most scientists and policymakers. Second, is now a generation of scientists who have experienced no other means of obtaining research funding and hence feel their entire research career to be at risk when any questions are raised about the peer review system. Third, the social scientists occasionally commissioned to examine the system have been co-opted by the paradigm of the hard science community and have yet to formulate even the most obvious questions that should be asked about any public system for distributing funds. From the perspective of national policy, their research has addressed trivial issues. In this article, therefore, I will first summarize the major criticisms of the procedures actually used by many proposal peer review systems. I will then show that, contrary to many scientists' assertion that there are no alternatives, many alternative systems do exist and are in use in this country and abroad. Moreover, such systems disburse at least 90% of the total money spent on