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.