Defined Benefit Funding, - prizes for results

[El_Machinae]

Ordinarily science is funded by the experiment (results not guaranteed) or by the investigator (nothing guaranteed). The use of prize money for particular scientific achievements will play greater roles.

There have been a host of prizes created though, with an attempt to speed research and development in certain areas. Do people see this as beneficial? Will this achieve results in the long run, or is it a short term boost?

What happens is that a host of people invest private money looking for a solution to the prize, and then winner-takes-all. This means that much more money is spent than is ever received. Compare that to our current system of giving grants to researchers a few dollars at a time.

The economics of this boggles my mind - I cannot make a long-term prediction.

[El_Machinae]

There's something that just doesn't sit right. My hunch is that prizes will only be sought by people who think they can solve the puzzle, and solve it first - this means that some people who might have had the intelligence to solve the issue will not start in the first place. However, if you just paid the researcher ahead of time, he would be willing to work on the puzzle.

Does that make sense? I guess I'm thinking we need both grant-funded research and prize-funded research in a balance.

[Matador]