Every year, federal agencies assess over a hundred thousand proposals that they never fund. Treating those peer review as public infrastructure could help unlock much more philanthropic capital for American research.
The National Institutes of Health (NIH) and the National Science Foundation (NSF) together run the most prolific scientific evaluation operations on the planet. Every year, they collectively review 110,000+ proposals, spanning everything from fundamental biology to quantum computing. While there is not wide agreement regarding how reviews should be conducted or how funding decisions should be made, no other process exists that applies rigorous, standardized review on such a comprehensive set of proposals.
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