Here's a zany idea: what if research proposals were funded by some kind of ranked-choice voting, and then as a separate step, research teams were assigned to th

Here's a zany idea: what if research proposals were funded by some kind of ranked-choice voting, and then as a separate step, research teams were assigned to the research proposals, based on their track record of whether they were able to carry out past research according to the agreed-up on plan (but not whether the results were the expected ones)? Suppose that there is also a sizeable reward for winning proposals -- enough to make it worth-while to write good ones. There are a number of benefits: (1) prevents scientists from being too attached to their own hypotheses (2) demands that the research plan be described well enough up front that any reasonably capable team should be able to understand it (3) rewards scientists for executing well on the proposals, even if the hypothesis turned out to be wrong.