50 Years ago in the UK the government funded most non-industrial research without knowing much about the subjects of the research they were paying for. They relied on committees to select the research proposals for funding. In practice this meant that established researchers got a lot of the funding but in those days anyone with a 1st or upper 2nd class degree was automatically awarded a grant to do a PhD. All you had to do was find someone to take you on. Some research was highly focused, some was loosely focused and some was not focused at all. The last two groups included a lot work that would never have any economic or intellectual value but was also the source of a number of unplanned, unexpected and serendipitous discoveries.

As soon as economists started worrying about growth the government started trying to direct research towards economic goals, despite a continuing almost complete lack of understanding of what research can achieve. The result was a negligible impact on economic growth, a drying up of serendipitous discovery and the emergence of a new class of researcher – PR-savvy and able to talk a good talk about what (s)he could deliver.

This trend accelerated as Universities were squeezed and began to rely increasingly on research contracts rather than research grants. The careers of academic scientists depended increasingly on how much money they could bring in. Despite its evident economic failure the policy was maintained but accompanied by agonised conferences about the failure of industry to benefit from the vast Research Budget.

During the 1980s many industries, facing another financial squeeze, greatly reduced their R & D expenditure. In 1980 some 50+% of the audience at the R&D Society meetings comprised active industrial R&D Managers. By 1990 there were none left and the audience consisted of consultants, journalists and a few civil servants from the then Department of Industry. Since then even contract R&D labs like Battelle have closed down. This is not surprising. Between 1968 and 1987 I worked in three industries, none of which had any business strategy that might have assisted in deciding whether R&D was necessary in order to implement the strategy or provided a direction for R&D.

There are, of course, exceptions – pharmaceuticals, electronics, automobiles etc. but many middling industries simply gave up on R&D.

In the 1990s charities began to fund research on a larger scale and the NHS also set up its own organisation to fund research. Charities focus on particular conditions and most of them want to find “a cure” for the condition they were established to study. The trouble is that most of these conditions – cancer, Alzheimer’s, Parkinson’s, genetic disorders etc. - tend to be intractable and for most of them “ a cure” is unlikely. Too little is known about the mechanisms underlying the neurodegenerative diseases even to know where to look for a cure. Nevertheless charities collect money to “find a cure” and seem to feel that this is what they should do. Researchers therefore write proposals for research that aim to find a new therapy rather than improving our knowledge of the condition. Most projects selected for funding have negative or ambiguously encouraging results but add little to our knowledge of the condition. Worse – the standard of research is falling and poor quality control undermines the value of the research that is done (see for example, http://www.plosmedicine.org/article/info%3Adoi%2F10.1371%2Fjournal.pmed.0020124).

We can conclude that:

1. For political reasons and because their administrators mostly have no strong background in R&D management, the Funding Agencies are not able to develop coherent strategies for research and operate with too low an intellectual horizon;

2. A desire to ensure that R&D contributes to economic and social welfare leads to a neglect of long term speculative research, whose value and importance are both underestimated;

3. The failure of £ several ’00,000,000 to achieve very much over the last 25 years is both a consequence of, and evidence of, a failure of the current policies and the mechanisms for their implementation.

4. Improving the outlook and prognosis for patents depends on a very good and comprehensive understanding of the causes and mechanisms of the conditions that impair their quality of life, which, for Alzheimers and the NDDS does not exist.

5. The current R&D funding structures seem unlikely to improve this. Industry cannot be expected to pay for speculative research and this must be a task primarily for government although charities could contribute – indeed if they do not they might in future be accused of taking money under false pretences since they cannot deliver their promise (or aspiration) of “a cure” without it!

John - you ask a very interesting question but I fear it is too broad to answer without some preliminary analysis. You could try asking it again but specifying government-funded research but including non-science research (NSR). In my off-the-cuff response above I did not address this and I hope I can be forgiven for doing so now.

Research gives university teaching its vitality and immediacy. Government is the only possible source of funds for NSR on the necessary scale but the number of universities in the UK is so large that there would have to be a degree of specialization so that all universities did not seek to teach at the highest level, with a significant research activity in all subjects. There is a bigger economic return on NSR than is appreciated but this is incidental. Govt should decide on the total budget and leave it to an apolitical advisory group to allocate the money. This, I guess, is what you call a zero-sum game.

A similar approach could be used for scientific research (SR) and for the same reason but SR is much more expensive and the NSR budget would have to be protected in some rigorous way, The subjects of SR change and evolve on very short timescales and the system for allocating funds would need to be flexible enough to adapt at the same pace. A steady increase in govt funding would not be sustainable and this too would be a zero-sum game.

In addition govt should contribute to international scientific research facilities that are beyond the resources of a single country. This is not necessarily a zero-sum game. Finally govt should contribute to international programmes to a address common issues such a dementia, agricultural productivity, sustainable energy etc. This would not be a zero-sum game and would be difficult as some countries might wish to preserve their independence and right to commercial exploitation of their discoveries.

Govts should not involve themselves in development activities and politicians should not try to decide on priorities. They could, however, set up an oversight committee or commission a group of experts to review priorities.

Govt laboratories nearly always become less responsive and more resistant to change as time goes on. If there is an overwhelming justification for one it should be staffed largely be researchers on secondment or on contract.

There should be enough here to irritate people into responding!

Good leaders create opportunities for colleagues and get everybody involved on a project; results may be amplified for these particular types of researchers. Funding established scientist reduces the impacts of cuts for these very reasons. Many of these established scientist employ many other researchers and typically have better outcomes with getting studies published. Even if 2 researches have the same project idea; one may be better at getting others involved.

The academic grant funding system has become corrupted to the point where it is not fulfilling its intended purposes. Take NCI, created as a war on cancer. Most of the research is not reproducible because of a false incentive system. The "top researchers" are not the top because they have the best Ideas or highest aptitude to design a useful new drug. They are for the most part con artists who game the system and defraud the American taxpayer. If a researcher truly performed useful research they would be able to self-fund from patent revenue after a few years. We must excommunicate the con men from the system and award the best ideas first! We are at war with cancer so focus on curing it, not "researching" someone's pet side molecule.