Perfection from a simpler time

The feature article “A perfect proposal” by Daniel Kleppner and Paul Horowitz (Physics Today, January 2016, page 48 ) is enough to make a scientist cry. An entire field of science proposed in 800 words with a six-line equipment budget.

I suspect that proposal would not fare well today. It included no salary or fringe-benefits budget, no tuition budget, and no indirect cost recovery. No environmental impact statement was prepared, even though the antenna surely changed the aesthetics of the lab building, and it wasn’t vetted by a grounds committee.

No bibliography was offered, no curriculum vitae were attached, and no figures were enclosed. The submission did not contain a “broader impacts” statement; since the impact was obvious to author and reviewer, why waste words?

The proposal included no mention of outreach or demographics. It gave deference to individual competitors rather than assembling a multi-investigator, cross-disciplinary team or demeaning the work of others. And the submitter had a reasonable expectation of a two-month review cycle and a high probability of funding.

Perhaps that’s the point of the article: Much that attracted prior generations to science is now unfundable! If we came up with a proposal to fix what is so obviously broken with the grant and funding system, to whom would we send it?