[teamonkey]

> Tenure committees, grant committees and budget administrators are in a position to elect which paths of research are selected.

True, but their work is still subject to external scrutiny and you don't need tenure to do that.

[raverbashing]

From my experience in the research department of my university you are quite mistaken.

"External scrutiny" usually means "publish N papers per year and don't get into trouble". Hence the most conservative projects get funding (also because they're more likely to be successful - or better said, easier to do)

And by the way, the majority of the work is done by the graduate/PhD students, and of course their advisor's name is on every paper they publish.

[teamonkey]

No, external scrutiny means that the quality of the papers are vetted by scientists the world over. Once the papers are published they are read, reviewed, checked and, especially for important stuff, the experiments are repeated. It still has to be good science.

Sure some interesting stuff is overlooked, but any research is progress. If your university chooses to be conservative, that just means less risk on their side, but also less chance of a major breakthrough, press, status and patent rights. It's the road they've chosen but not the only road.

And everyone knows that the grad students are doing the actual grunt work. Outside of academia there are also bosses whose function seems to be solely to grab credit of those doing the actual work (but more often this is just a myopic view of what their actual job entails).