No one is suggesting that all grants be replaced by prizes. Even research projects which are ultimately unsuccessful are valuable and need to be paid for. But d

No one is suggesting that all grants be replaced by prizes. Even research projects which are ultimately unsuccessful are valuable and need to be paid for. But does it really seem like a bad idea to pay the research team a bonus at the end if they manage to actually _solve the problem_ definitively? And if we're already doing that, then why not also offer the bonus to everyone else who can solve the problem, regardless of whether we gave them a grant in the first place? This is a tiny fraction of the budget, and it seems to me like it's worth doing some experimentation to see what works.