[pcrh]

You forgot to include the 1-1.5 years of pilot data needed for a typical biomedical science (wet lab) grant proposal.

Essentially, the overall return on research investment for academic biomedical researchers themselves as a whole is negative. Which is why a substantial subsidy in the form of underpaid students, etc, is needed.

There are a few top performers who achieve a positive return from grant applications. A more streamlined and less fickle review process would be indeed improve matters, though I very much doubt LLMs in their current state of development will help this process.