I used to work in academia and was involved in NSF and DOE grants. I’ve been in industry (IC then manager) since then.
My sense is that grant funding was less merit based than industry funding. I’m not saying it’s so corrupt that it should be completely torn down, but there’s just less accountability in academia - you can get a grant, fail to deliver on what you promised, and still get another grant after that and that can be your whole career if you know how to play the academic social game and are good at writing proposals.
The whole point of many of these grants is to invest in research on the leading edge where, by definition, nobody knows whether what they're trying to do is going to work, because it's actually new.
Of course that can be gamed, and of course we need good faith oversight, but if none of the research projects we're funding were to ever fail, that would be evidence that we're being massively too conservative in the avenues for new discoveries that we're investing in exploring.
I used to work in academia and was involved in NSF and DOE grants. I’ve been in industry (IC then manager) since then.
My sense is that grant funding was less merit based than industry funding. I’m not saying it’s so corrupt that it should be completely torn down, but there’s just less accountability in academia - you can get a grant, fail to deliver on what you promised, and still get another grant after that and that can be your whole career if you know how to play the academic social game and are good at writing proposals.