I like that this article includes suggested changes: > For starters, every scientist should know how being part of a group can affect their opinion. Grants sho

I like that this article includes suggested changes: > For starters, every scientist should know how being part of a group can affect their opinion. Grants should not be awarded based on popularity. Researchers who leave fields of declining promise need encouragement, not punishment because their productivity may dwindle while they retrain. And we should generally require scientists to name both advantages and shortcomings of their hypotheses. The first and last points look good to me. The middle two, not so much. They certainly sound reasonable, but what does a grant system not based on "popularity" mean? How is it different from what we have now, where we find some (putative) experts in the area, put it in front of them, and ask what they think? We need some way of deciding what to fund and what not to fund, and who exactly is better equipped to make those decisions than existing researchers? Similarly, I like the idea that people should be able to switch fields. But the implicit argument seems to be that the emphasis on publications makes this difficult, so publications should be de-emphasized in assessing researcher quality. But what is better? Asking a researcher's peers? Then it is a popularity contest again. Weighting publications differently, i.e. "what are your 5 best papers?" rather than "how many papers do you have?"? Then who judges the 5? For all the criticism heaped upon bibliometrics: they get used because assessing the quality of most research is difficult, so even noisy filters like conferences (in CS) or journals are taken as a useful signal. It's not clear to me what better options exist, especially when trying to choose between many options. It's just not possible for one person or even a small group of people to truly familiarize themselves with the bodies of work of all 100 candidates for a faculty position/grant/fellowship/etc.