Incidentally, this is exactly what I've seen described as the strength of the fragmented US science funding strategy. The US has the National Science Foundatio

Incidentally, this is exactly what I've seen described as the strength of the fragmented US science funding strategy. The US has the National Science Foundation, but that is only a portion of our basic science budget. Basically every government agency -- each branch of the military, the NIH, the DOE, the Department of Agriculture -- also funds science research independently, and for any given field there are six or twelve major funding agencies you could apply for a grant with. And each of these funding agencies has different people evaluating and they are all appointed and operate independently, and appointed so far down the chain of command that it's hard to tie their appointment to a particular President or Congress. This means that you occasionally get oddballs who will throw money at stupidly heterodox notions, but even when that happens they don't control all the funding for the agency, let alone any of the funding for any of the other agencies. And hey, sometimes some of the weird stuff they'll fund turns out to be interesting.