Funding by lottery . . . and other stories
BMJ 2022; 379 doi: https://doi.org/10.1136/bmj.o2395 (Published 13 October 2022) Cite this as: BMJ 2022;379:o2395
Allocating funding for research
Anyone who has ever written a research proposal knows that success depends on more than the quality of the application. Luck and the biases of the review panel also play a large part. The British Academy, the UK’s national academy for humanities and social sciences, has tacitly acknowledged this by introducing a lottery to determine which applications will be funded when they are judged of similar quality (https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-022-02959-3).
Ockham’s razor
Ockham’s razor is often quoted by doctors when struggling to come up with a diagnosis: try to find a single explanation for a multiplicity of signs and symptoms. An intriguing re-interpretation argues that the razor shouldn’t be thought of …
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