[rpedela]

One of things I like about the Howard Hughes Medical Institute (HHMI) is that they find great scientists and just fund them. The scientists can research whatever they want as long as they keep producing. I always wondered if a hybrid approach to funding would work well at the government level. The current, permission-based process would remain in place for new researchers to prove themselves, and then an HHMI-style process for researchers who have proven themselves. There would be checks in place and if the funded researchers stop performing then they have to go back to the normal process. There are several details that would have to be worked out to guard against politics, etc. I think this may overcome the government agencies tendency to reject truly new ideas especially when they contradict the prevailing theory.

[WalterBright]

Reminds me of Lockheed's Skunkworks. I've heard lots of businessmen say they're going to recreate skunkworks, but with improvements.

The improvements, of course, make it not a skunkworks and these efforts never deliver skunkworks performance.

Could the government create a skunkworks? Not likely, because they fought against Kelly Johnson constantly over how he ran it.

I bet Paul Allen could have done it, because he had a track record of funding competent people and letting them do what they wanted.

[iscrewyou]

I’m in the midst of listening to the Skunk Works audiobook. And it’s fascinating. It had been on my list of things to read but I just couldn’t wait. I bit the bullet and bought the audiobook. It’s worth every penny.

[WalterBright]

That's a great read. There's also "Kelly":

https://www.amazon.com/Kelly-More-Than-Share-All/dp/08747449...

[Lutzb]

The book by Leo janos?

[iscrewyou]

Yes, him and Ben R. Rich.

[untilHellbanned]

Disagree vehemently. HHMI funds what’s fashionable. Find me a HHMI investigator without a recent CNS paper. As with Nobel prizes, the true innovators always seem to make their discoveries outside the power circle.

[gameswithgo]

How do the many innovations of bell labs fit your hypothesis?

[neuromantik8086]

He (or she)'s not disagreeing with the notion that unfettered funding produces innovation, he (or she)'s disagreeing with the notion that HHMI provides unfettered funding.

Part of the beauty of Bell Labs was that it wasn't necessarily all about fame and grandstanding- a lot of folks who were working there were just normal, unassuming New Jersey folk who put in a good days work messing around with whatever they were tasked with. The only analogous example to that sort of dynamic today might be amongst the workers at large government agencies like NIST and the NIH; it's unlikely that many of them will ever become rockstars in today's research climate, but they dutifully carry out experiments nonetheless.

[JumpCrisscross]

> The only analogous example to that sort of dynamic today might be amongst the workers at large government agencies like NIST and the NIH

Drop into a DoE research facility. (Most will give tours to U.S. citizens.) Same playful approach to tinkering with whatever.

[sjg007]

HHMI is more about biology and Medicine then about telecom and computing.

[untilHellbanned]

Holds true for biomedical sciences, which is what hhmi focuses on.

[amelius]

> The scientists can research whatever they want as long as they keep producing.

How is that different from (publication pressure in) academia?

[rpedela]

There isn't a grant process as far as I know. They don't have to worry about money.