Kelvin McQueen Thank you for the comment! I have read your essay and given it a rating. I will appreciate it if you do the same to mine?

    Amitabha Lahiri

    Yes, I have definitively well-rated your essay as a concrete proposal to circumvent the present ostracism against those who propose new ideas in science.

    Note that a simple but very important step in this direction would be for arXiv to respect the peer-review response and related cataloging for those controversial articles if already accepted for journal publication (at least Q1 and Q2) upon submission, as proposed in my essay.

    In fact arXiv openly admits that it cannot enter into the scientific merits of the articles. This is the basic aspect of the scientific method which must allow authors the possibility of defending their theses from possible criticisms.

        Donatello Dolce Thank you for the comments. I agree with you that arxiv's policies are too opaque and too subjective, dependent on the whims of individuals. It would help everyone if something were to be done about that.

          This Essay deserves a high rating because it is very interesting and original. The problem of funding the scientific research is complex and, in my opinion, the Author discussed it in a general and complete way.
          I have been both a researcher who attempted to obtain funds and a Referee for funds applications. From my point of view, the approach of no-proposal could be an interesting solution which could remove various bureaucracy problems

            Christian Corda

            Dear Tan Aardwolf,

            I agree that it's quite an interesting thought to get rid of the proposal, but, as the Peach Hippopotamus, I have also experienced rejections for interdisciplinary proposals and I am not sure whether not requiring proposals would help for such endeavours. While the approach could be viable for continuing on an existing path having established one's name, how about entering a field as a newbie? I sincerely doubt that people would like to give someone funding who is appreciated for making progress in field X to now abandon that and explore field Y if it is unclear whether that person could make any progress in that field as well.
            Having a permanent position usually allows you to do such things without having to hand in any proposals, too and recently, programs like PIVOT from the Simons Foundation also allow individuals to explore new fields. On the whole, however, do you think that tax payers would like to put money in a "black box" without knowing in advance how it could be spent? For me, the idea has some advantages and should partly be pursued, for sure, but as the sole remedy, I doubt it would resonate well with a lot of investors and the mixture of funding individuals vs. funding specifically planned project has moved science forward so far.

            What do you think?

            Bests,
            Beige Bandicoot.

              Christian Corda Thank you! It will also help save a lot of time, for both researchers and reviewers, so they can spend more time doing science. It will also save money for funding agencies, money required for maintaining an elaborate grant submission and review process. Of course the bureaucrats (including scientists who think like bureaucrats) may not like it -- they like obfuscation, in triplicate -- they tend to like the power they exert over the money given as research grants. So there will be a lot of resistance if any agency tries to implement this idea.

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