As far as I can tell, the main criticism is that the more cyclical and bursty science funding is, the worse it is for the health of the talent pipeline (during

As far as I can tell, the main criticism is that the more cyclical and bursty science funding is, the worse it is for the health of the talent pipeline (during high-funding times, lots of PhDs are trained up and brought into the field; in low-funding times, grants are incredibly hard to find, the field gets very selective, and many trained researchers exit) I don't think the author had any arguments against trying to reduce cancer deaths, just injecting tons of money into one-off initiatives to achieve that.