Taken from the finance world, the idea is to support a more diverse spread of research projects, giving money to unorthodox ideas
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The European Commission is experimenting with a ‘portfolio’ approach to funding research, aping financial investors who maximise their returns by backing a diverse basket of investments, including more risky bets.
At the moment, most research funders use a merit-based approach, rating proposals largely on the basis of peer reviewed scientific quality, and fund the best ranked ones.
But there’s concern that this method might be inflexible, and excludes riskier, more unorthodox ideas, because such proposals often divide peer review panels, scoring lower on quality.
Portfolio funding uses mathematical models, or qualitative analysis, to pick a spread of projects. This basket of projects might maximise not just scientific…
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