Why many funding schemes harm rather than support research
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Access through your institution Buy or subscribe TO THE EDITOR — Researchers are spending an increasing fraction of their time applying for funding. However, despite extensive efforts
invested in applications and evaluations, the current funding system appears to largely fail in its task of reliably ranking the relative research quality of proposals1,2,3. Hence, the
current funding system to a considerable degree represents a lottery — and a strikingly inefficient one at that4,5,6. These observations raise a more general question: of whether the
benefits of current funding schemes outweigh their costs, on both the individual and societal level. At first glance, any initiative that provides resources for research seems to be
beneficial to research and society. However, writing grant proposals reduces the time that is available for research, and the sum of these opportunity costs has to be weighed against the sum
of awarded funding. This is a preview of subscription content, access via your institution ACCESS OPTIONS Access through your institution Access Nature and 54 other Nature Portfolio
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calculated during checkout ADDITIONAL ACCESS OPTIONS: * Log in * Learn about institutional subscriptions * Read our FAQs * Contact customer support REFERENCES * Kaplan, D., Lacetera, N.
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INFORMATION AUTHORS AND AFFILIATIONS * Die Junge Akademie, Berlin, Germany Martin Dresler, Eva Buddeberg, Ulrike Endesfelder, Jan Haaker, Christian Hof, Robert Kretschmer, Dirk Pflüger &
Fabian Schmidt * Radboud University Medical Center, Nijmegen, The Netherlands Martin Dresler * Goethe University, Frankfurt, Germany Eva Buddeberg * Rheinische Friedrich Wilhelms
Universität Bonn, Bonn, Germany Ulrike Endesfelder * University Medical Center Hamburg-Eppendorf, Hamburg, Germany Jan Haaker * Technical University of Munich, Freising, Germany Christian
Hof * Friedrich Schiller University, Jena, Germany Robert Kretschmer * University of Stuttgart, Stuttgart, Germany Dirk Pflüger * Max Planck Institute for Astrophysics, Garching, Germany
Fabian Schmidt Authors * Martin Dresler View author publications You can also search for this author inPubMed Google Scholar * Eva Buddeberg View author publications You can also search for
this author inPubMed Google Scholar * Ulrike Endesfelder View author publications You can also search for this author inPubMed Google Scholar * Jan Haaker View author publications You can
also search for this author inPubMed Google Scholar * Christian Hof View author publications You can also search for this author inPubMed Google Scholar * Robert Kretschmer View author
publications You can also search for this author inPubMed Google Scholar * Dirk Pflüger View author publications You can also search for this author inPubMed Google Scholar * Fabian Schmidt
View author publications You can also search for this author inPubMed Google Scholar CORRESPONDING AUTHOR Correspondence to Martin Dresler. ETHICS DECLARATIONS COMPETING INTERESTS The
authors declare no competing interests. RIGHTS AND PERMISSIONS Reprints and permissions ABOUT THIS ARTICLE CITE THIS ARTICLE Dresler, M., Buddeberg, E., Endesfelder, U. _et al._ Why many
funding schemes harm rather than support research. _Nat Hum Behav_ 6, 607–608 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41562-021-01286-3 Download citation * Published: 31 January 2022 * Issue Date:
May 2022 * DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/s41562-021-01286-3 SHARE THIS ARTICLE Anyone you share the following link with will be able to read this content: Get shareable link Sorry, a
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