Citations are cheap, and they are being gamed all the time. It's like search engine optimization, but on a smaller scale. Grants are one of the least bad means

Citations are cheap, and they are being gamed all the time. It's like search engine optimization, but on a smaller scale. Grants are one of the least bad means of evaluating a researcher, because the decisions are not made lightly. Getting funded usually implies that experts have spent a nontrivial amount of time judging the merits of the applicant and their ideas and found them particularly worthy.