An administrative structure has been set up to mount the effort. Of the utmost importance is assurance that top-level administrators are fully committed to the principles outlined here. Evidence of commitment includes a track record of paradigm-shifting efforts and/or a record of espousing the value of such efforts.

 

The administrative structure consists of an Executive Director, who reports to a Board of Directors. Beneath the Executive Director are a series of Associate Directors, each responsible for a particular phase of the operation. Each Associate Director hires staff to assist with operations.

 

The Board of Directors will periodically review operations and make recommendations to the Executive Director for implementation. In developing those recommendations the Board will solicit advice from an Advisory Panel, comprising distinguished figures from science, industry and government, chosen for their experience and vision.

 

Future Board members will be appointed in consultation with the major donors. Ideally, the Board will comprise a mixture of seasoned, respected individuals from science and industry, all of whom recognize the value of operating on the fundamental working principles (Section 3). Rotations may occur after overlapping six-year periods to assure continuity. New members will be selected with input from all grantees, who should be in good positions to judge which candidates might be most committed to the principles espoused herein. Because Board members are expected to be high-level people, devoting appreciable time and energy to overseeing the Institute’s operations, attracting the best people may require meaningful compensation.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Details of the administrative operations are elaborated next, and schematized in Fig. 1.

 

Invitations to submit proposals: Administrators will broadly advertise the new program, casting the net as widely as possible. Announcements will contain unambiguous guidelines as to what kinds of applications are welcomed and what kinds not. Applications must address big issues.

 

Pre-proposals: Pre-proposals should be required in order to discourage submissions that fail to address big issues, and for offering feedback, which can be useful for helping to shape full proposals. This strategy will reduce the number of full proposals that need review. The feedback may also help shift the scientific culture to one that is more receptive to unconventional approaches rather than suspicious of them.

 

Proposals:  Not to exceed 20 pages, a proposal will detail the problems with the prevailing school of thought, present an alternative; it will offer detailed evidence and/or reasons why this alternative might be superior. The proposal should also include a brief outline of how to proceed initially. The material should be presented in a way that is understandable to non-experts. Included with the proposal could be a limited number of letters from scientists in support of the proposed idea.

 

Screening: Applications are first screened for seriousness. Three reviewers from outside the applicant’s field, reviewing independently, assume responsibility for this initial gate-keeping function. Applications dealing with issues of very narrow significance, or of obvious flakiness, are to be turned back. Split vote warrants discussion, and a majority vote then prevails. Written comments from each administrator are returned to the applicant, who may challenge the panel’s negative decision. In that case, a panel of out-of-the-field scientists chosen from the reviewer pool reconsiders the gate-keeping decision and decides one way or the other. Admitted applications move to the review stage.

 

Reviewer Pool: Since the review principles differ qualitatively from ordinary grant review, special care needs to be exercised in choosing reviewers. Broad and experienced “generalists” are desirable, particularly those who command the respect of the scientific community. The most important qualification, however, is openness to the notion that revolutions are still possible in our day and age, and willingness to entertain promising ideas that may seem radical. Those who, themselves, have posed major challenges to prevailing orthodoxies may be particularly well suited, for they are well acquainted with the obstacles faced by challengers and may therefore be especially able to judge the merit of challenges in other fields.

 

Identifying such reviewers can be challenging. A preliminary list of qualified candidates has already been constructed. That list can be amended and vetted through an evaluation process set up by administrators to assure that candidates have the proper qualifications and outlook. Later, members of the reviewer pool could nominate others to succeed them. Cronyism should not be a serious review concern because the proposals to be evaluated will lie exclusively outside the reviewers’ respective fields. Hence, nominating a friend to assure favorable future consideration should prove to be of limited efficacy.

 

Recent retirees might be especially suitable. Retirees might be attracted to this program as a means of reasserting their otherwise waning influence; meanwhile, the Institute could capitalize on their long experience, perspective, and mature judgment.

 

Reviewer Recruitment Incentives:  Quality reviewers are not easy to recruit; everyone is busy. Yet, recruiting reviewers with suitable outlook, experience, and devotion will make or break the program. Since reviewing can require very substantial commitments of time, incentives should be considered. One simple incentive is to shape the position into a special honor. Another is to offer compensation. Meaningful compensation similar to what a consultant might earn should be considered. This puts pressure on the reviewer to invest seriously in the review rather than considering it yet another burden on a busy agenda. Even handsome annual compensation would amount to less than 1% of the annual grant monies under consideration — a modest investment to help ensure success.

 

Proposal Review: The goal is for a panel of say, five to seven open-minded scientists to hear challenger and defender in an impartial setting, and determine whether the challenge has a reasonable chance of prevailing. The first phase of the debate is written. The panel sees the proposer’s evidence and invites written responses from the field’s leading defendants. Defendants’ responses should be signed: Not only does this promote responsibility, but it also confirms his or her leadership position in the field — an incentive for their participation. The proposer is then invited to prepare a written response. This debate is made available on the web, for interested members of the community to digest and consider.

 

In examining both sets of arguments, panel members may have questions. These questions could concern the applicant’s proposal and/or the defenders’ comments. Any question that arises should be promptly communicated and promptly answered, the answers made available to all relevant parties and posted on the web. This process should quickly clear up questions whose answers might make a major difference in the evaluation.

 

The panel may then move to evaluation; or, if it feels that amplification is needed, it may request oral debate, either as a forum or by video conferencing. Again, such debate should be made available to the public on the web, stimulating attention to the challenge. Indeed, the vetting process itself may be considered the first stage of public alert to the possibility of meaningful challenge to the status quo. Fierce community debate would be a sure sign of progress, for, as Claude Bernard put it, “Controversy is the lifeblood of science.”

 

Decisions: The challenge paradigm need not be proven better than the prevailing one, only of reasonably high potential to be proved better. Hence, the panel’s decision should not be taken by the public as an on-high pronouncement on which school of thought is correct — a scenario that carries the danger of inciting backlash. It is merely an evaluation of potential. Each panel member awards two scores, higher numbers indicating higher quality: 1 – 10 for potential impact and 1 – 10 for the strength of current evidence and hence the likelihood of prevailing. The two scores are multiplied to obtain the total score, which will range from 1 to 100. Reviewer scores are then averaged. A single outlier might invite additional panel discussion and possible re-scoring. In order to diminish the possibility that a single biased reviewer could tilt the result unfairly, any reviewer’s total that remains more than one standard deviation from the mean is removed from consideration, and the remaining scores are averaged to yield the final panel score.

 

All applications are scored in this manner.  Funding begins from the highest score and continues until available funds are exhausted.

 

Funding amounts and durations: To ensure a critical mass of activity, each funded idea must come with a substantial commitment to fund multiple groups; otherwise, the idea is unlikely to take hold no matter how promising it might be. The review panel might suggest the appropriate funding level for the applicant, as well as for the overall effort. As a rough guideline, a minimum of ten standard-size grants would be reasonable, and for those proposals that warrant, more groups could accelerate the pace. For example, funding of a dozen groups at, say, $500K direct costs per year per group would amount to $6M; with overhead included, the level might amount to roughly $10M. Smaller amounts should suffice for theoretically oriented research, such as mathematics and theoretical physics – with grand totals amounting to perhaps only $1 - $2M. Larger amounts might be needed for projects requiring expensive investments such as super-colliders or ventures into space. Special consideration should be given to the applicant, who is, after all, the main driving force.

 

As for duration, a reasonable minimum would be five years. Five years should be long enough to determine whether the challenge is making headway. The five-year grant should come with the understanding that success in gaining substantial influence on the field would create a reasonably low threshold for follow-up funding, to continue any necessary buildup of momentum. Advance knowledge of the low threshold should help entice otherwise reluctant investigators to enter into the high-risk arena with understanding that funding cutoff would not be arbitrary. This second-period funding would be evaluated similarly to the initial evaluation, the initial document being a report of progress. Evaluation should not be based solely on the number of publications and/or journal-impact factors, which are not necessarily measures of influence; rather, it should be based primarily on signs of increasing influence on the field, which may be best judged not only by increasing citations in the field, but mainly by interviews with the fields’ scientists.

 

Selection of participating investigators: The investigator responsible for the grant, hereafter referred to the “lead investigator” or LI, will evidently be one of the participating investigators. As the main driving force, he/she should play some role in selecting the other participants. Important is to guard against applicants feigning interest merely to obtain funding. A good judge of this issue is the LI, who may have first-hand knowledge of scientists who genuinely value the proposed approach, and who has much to gain by identifying those who are genuinely interested.

 

Nevertheless, some checks and balances are necessary to avert cronyism, or even the appearance of cronyism. A reasonable approach is for the lead investigator to nominate participants. Each nominated participant would then draft a five-page outline of his or her proposed plan, along with a budget and justification. An assigned program manager and the LI would read these applications and discuss their strengths and weaknesses. The administrator will decide on funding, with the advice and consent of the LI. If the number of participating groups is too small, then additional five-page applications can be solicited. These would undergo similar vetting. The topic could be kept open for substantial periods until the budget allocation has been exhausted, the expectation being that promising initial results and public discussion will inevitably attract additional qualified investigators.

 

Coordination, Reporting, etc.: The burden of reporting should be kept to a minimum in order to preserve the investigators’ free time for thinking. On the other hand, periodic checks for progress are necessary, and should these checks reveal that the money awarded to any one group is not being spent effectively, or if the research direction has shifted thematically, then the administrator has the capacity to terminate funding and direct it instead to another group. Such action would follow a probationary notice, with final action taken by a high-level board. It is understood that a result that disagrees with the proposed idea is not a reasonable basis for discontinuation so long as it provides additional insight. On the other hand, an important goal of the program is to extend visibility of the selected school of thought, so it is reasonable that funds committed to this goal be used as intended.

 

For maximizing visibility, coordination among participating groups is important, and it would be up to the LI and the program manager to coordinate this effort. Meetings twice per year could be effective vehicles for sharing data, and discussing future strategies.

 

With the critical mass of activity achieved through this program, challenge paradigms would quickly rise to competitive status. Challenge and prevailing paradigms would become rivals, vigorously debated at meetings and argued in the literature. Such debate will inevitably sharpen both sides’ arguments, building inexorably toward a winner. In this way, the process should generate paradigm shifts and breakthroughs in ample number and with reasonable speed.