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Nintil - Book review: Scientific Freedom, the elixir of civilization

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In the science policy world a term often heard is "high-risk, high-reward" activities; funding initiatives, projects, or researchers that individually are likely to fail but that also hold potential for truly radical, breakthrough discoveries. But what about "low-risk, high-reward", wouldn't that be nice? One more of Stripe Press' beautifully edited tomes, Scientific Freedom: the elixir of civilization, is Donald Braben's theoretical case for the existence of such scientific opportunities as well an account of his own experience running a funding program—Venture Research (VR)— that proves that the author is not merely cheap-talking us. I won't go into the details of how VR came to be, focusing instead on the theory and discussing a few examples of projects they funded. The book itself fits the adage that most books should be blogposts; while insightful, a lot of the content could have substantially compressed, with the exception of the final chapter that details individual Venture Rese

In the science policy world a term often heard is "high-risk, high-reward" activities; funding initiatives, projects, or researchers that individually are likely to fail but that also hold potential for truly radical, breakthrough discoveries. But what about "low-risk, high-reward", wouldn't that be nice? One more of Stripe Press' beautifully edited tomes, Scientific Freedom: the elixir of civilization , is Donald Braben's theoretical case for the existence of such scientific opportunities as well an account of his own experience running a funding program—Venture Research (VR)— that proves tha

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