On the other hand, I believe that researching how animals think, behave and "work" in general, is a very important part of being human. They're alive, too, and they defy tons of prejudice we have about them over and over. We need to revise tons of knowledge about animals and other living things, in general.
[0]: https://www.ias.edu/sites/default/files/library/UsefulnessHa...
I think if there's a large corpus of research supporting a hypothesis, any research retrying that hypothesis in an insignificant way can be disqualified from funding. If you challenge the hypothesis, or adding something significant to the dark areas of that hypothesis, you could be funded.
Moreover, if your research fails to prove that hypothesis, or proves the exact opposite, that should be also printed/published somewhere, because failing is equally important in science.
In short, tell us something we don't know in a provable way. That's it. This is what science is.
This is what I think with about your question with my Sysadmin/Researcher/Ph.D. hats combined.
And what happens when the primary means of funding is attached the volume of papers and not the quality or impact, as is what I believe to be the case generally here in the US?
At the end, if something is not reproducible, and you're testing reproducibility of that thing, it's illuminating a dark area of that hypothesis.
Measuring the quality of the research and its impact is not something I'm very familiar with to be honest, and I'm not from US, so I can't tell how universities push their people, however publish or perish is a real problem everywhere in the world.
We used to see citation numbers important, then cite-rings cropped up. We valued paper counts, then professors started to lend their names to papers in their areas for "free" advisory. Now we have more complex algorithms/methods, and now I'm more of a research institute person than an academic, and I don't know how effective these things are anymore.
But hey, I do research for fun and write papers now and then. Just to keep myself entertained to find reasons to learn something new.
In short, the value proposition for a piece of research is very different depending on the lens you're looking through to that research.
But the fact that we aren't even allowed to ask questions without immediately being shut down as dissenters of all publicly funded research is problematic.
Public research should absolutely be at least partially evaluated by the very people funding it to begin with.
You seem to be pushing an agenda, not asking questions in good faith.
Sure, but asking asking non-experts on some web forum to make guesses at the answers, and insulting the people whose job it is to do this work based on your assumptions of how it works, is a bad way to go about answering that question.
In a way, I think this is what joshmcginnis is guilty of here...but I want to believe that he's aware that he's being provocative, but being provocative is the entire point. Your initial response of deference and the overall response that his comments are receiving from others are decent representations of how the mere questioning of certain institutions (online, pseudonymously, through relatively obscure channels) can be seen as problematic.
It is something like social science as performance art. Or the other way around?
If they're lucky, someone who actually knows what they're talking about will walk them through how it's actually a very complex topic, and what looked like an obvious problem is actually just a visible imperfect outcome of what is the best way we've managed to optimize the problem space. Others in this thread are taking this approach. Bless 'em.
But, I think it would be better if people didn't do this in the first place. Research funding is a super complicated topic involving hundreds of people and processes. No, it's not perfect, but it's the best approach we've got. If you want to improve a complex system, you need to go engage with it, understand how it works, understand how the problem occurred (if it even is a problem!), and find a way to fix it without making things worse. This is really hard work! Just busting into a topic and loudly complaining on some random web forum doesn't accomplish anything, except if you're lucky making someone else spoon-feed you the answers you could've found yourself.
Usually it's just ignorance, but sometimes it's more sinister, as it is also a useful approach for pushing an agenda to other non-expert readers. "Look how much money we waste on public science funding! We should reduce that funding. Look at these corrupt self-serving bureaucrats! We should put someone else in charge, and I know just who it should be." Hmm...
I can also see how any perceived conflict in the top-down relationship between authoritative institutions and the general population can frustrate a person (i.e., a member of the general populace), especially when the institutions are portrayed as vague identities ("the experts") and the complexities that they operate under are a part of a broader network of institutions and entities that themselves seem to thrive under incongruence with respect to the said top-down relationship.
So to draw attention to an issue in a frustrating matter, can be seen as a natural human response. At times it may even be necessary. If not, then we reach a point where we wind up denying of their natural inclination to be frustrated with what they perceive to be (and quite often) an injustice to society, irrespective of class distinctions. And a person does not necessarily need to be an "expert" to point or argue against that.
Not everyone is willing to resign themselves to "it's the best we've got", if that's not what they believe and resignation, or willful engagement with a system perceived to be corrupt, is tantamount to affirming the system itself, which is unimaginable and even more frustrating (read: insanity-inducing).
I say all of this, assuming good faith and not from the perspective of ill intent or ignorance that you've presented (which again, I agree with in principle).
Pardon the commas.
IIRC, many if not most EU countries employ similar methods.