This is an interesting sub thread, a lot of the threads here seem to have the wrong idea about how funding really works. I've been involved in DARPA programs an

This is an interesting sub thread, a lot of the threads here seem to have the wrong idea about how funding really works. I've been involved in DARPA programs and EU programs and sat on national committees allocating research funding an I think that there is a much more progressive and critical stance than folks portray here. A good example is the Semantic Web movement - big excitement 20 years ago, big funding, big community... no results really....then no funding, community switches to other things real fast. There is a lot of griping about this in Comp Sci with people from the Semantic Web groups rightly saying that the funding bodies bought the hype and misallocated the funds on short term silly projects and that if just a fraction of the money had been provided in a structured and long term way a great deal more would have got done. But what is really clear is that there is no real institutional effort to do what you suggest above - folks are not really tracking how well the funding system is working or what has worked and what hasn't. All of the reviews that I have seen are forward looking and driven by science insight, administrative change seems to be done by MBA fashion - or inertia.