[ThePhysicist]

The thing about science is that it's quite unpredictable. While I'm sure we can increase the efficiency of the system I'm not sure where the efficiency ceiling lies, as even with great processes it's simply not possible to know beforehand which approaches will be successful (if you did it would not require research).

I mean, look at the proportion of software projects that fail, which I'd estimate to be 50 % at least. And software engineering operates with much fewer unknowns compared to research.

Physics research is similar: Much of the research does not yield world-changing technology, or anything useful at all. I wouldn't say it's useless though, as unsuccessful projects still can provide inspiration for new research avenues and even if the research fails, the researcher (hopefully) gets better at doing research in the process, so the chances of producing something good the next time he/she tries increase.

I think the most promising avenue of increasing research productivity is to make it possible for more people to do quality research. Talent is everywhere but opportunity is not, so let's create more opportunity.