One issue among others is that the kind of work you end up funding when the funding bureaucrats go to the funding-seekers and say, “Well, we mostly think this is many years out and won’t kill everyone, but, you know, just in case, we thought we’d fund you to write papers about it” tends to be papers that make net negative contributions.
I think this is a pretty poor model of the attitudes of the relevant staff at the time. I also think your disparaging language here leads to your comments being worse descriptions of what was going on.
Well, there sure is a simple story for how it looked from outside. What’s the complicated real truth that you only get to know about from the inside, where everything is, like, not ignorantly handwaved off as incredibly standard bureaucratic organizational dynamics of grantees telling the grantmaker what it wants to hear?
I think this is a pretty poor model of the attitudes of the relevant staff at the time. I also think your disparaging language here leads to your comments being worse descriptions of what was going on.
Well, there sure is a simple story for how it looked from outside. What’s the complicated real truth that you only get to know about from the inside, where everything is, like, not ignorantly handwaved off as incredibly standard bureaucratic organizational dynamics of grantees telling the grantmaker what it wants to hear?