At present, peer review is the most common method used by funding agencies to make decisions about resource allocation. But how reliable, efficient, and fair is it in practice? The ex ante evaluation of scientific novelty is a fundamentally uncertain endeavor; bias and chance are embedded in the final outcome. In the current study, I will examine some of the most central problems of peer review and highlight the possible benefits of using a lottery as an alternative decision-making mechanism. Lotteries (...) are driven by chance, not reason. The argument made in the study is that the epistemic landscape could benefit in several respects by using a lottery, thus avoiding all types of bias, disagreement, and other limitations associated with the peer review process. Funding agencies could form a pool of funding applicants who have minimal qualification levels and then select randomly within that pool. The benefits of a lottery would not only be that it saves time and resources, but also that it contributes to a more dynamic selection process and increases the epistemic diversity, fairness, and impartiality within academia. (shrink)

The purpose of grant peer review is to identify the most excellent and promising research projects. However, sociologists of science and STS scholars have shown that peer review tends to promote solid low-risk projects at the expense of more original and innovative projects that often come with higher risk. It has also been shown that the review process is affected by significant measures of chance. Against this background, the aim of this study is to theorize the notions of academic judgment (...) and agonistic chance, and to present and analyze situations in which expert reviewers are faced with the challenge of trying to decide which grant proposals to select when there is strong disagreement. The empirical analysis is based on ethnographic observations of ten panel groups at the Swedish Research Council in the areas of natural and engineering sciences. By focusing on disagreement, the study provides a more in-depth understanding of how agonistic chance creeps into the peer review process and becomes part of the consensus that is created. (shrink)

A critical debate has blossomed within the field of research policy, science and technology studies, and philosophy of science regarding the possible benefits and limitations of allocating extramural grants using a lottery system. The most common view among those supporting the lottery idea is that some form of modified lottery is acceptable, if properly combined with peer review. This means that partial randomization can be applied only after experts have screened the pursuit-worthiness of all submitted proposals and sorted out those (...) of lowest quality. In the present paper, I will argue against the use of partial lotteries or partial randomization and instead promote use of a _pure lottery_ in combination with a radical increase in block funding. The main reason for holding this position is that a partial lottery cannot solve the problems inherent in the current funding system, which is based on grant competitions and peer review. A partial lottery cannot decrease the enormous time-waste, reduce the uneven distribution of time between researchers, neutralize expert biases or mitigate academic power asymmetries. Instead, we need a stronger focus on improving general time management in academia by implementing a more holistic model for organizing research opportunities in the future. (shrink)