The 100 experts and officials were met "to identify the three most important research areas within each [of these five] "challenge[s]".

 

 

Australia's Chief Scientist, Professor Ian Chubb who is chairman of the Australian Research Committee -- which in fact is top heavy with Commonwealth departmental bureaucrats --  told Mr Ross that "he expected a proportion of research funding - possibly 50 per cent - would be focused on the new priority areas, but as he told the Universities Australia conference last week: "It doesn't mean out with the old and in with the new - it's a rolling process... [but] I want to know that we're not missing anything that's important. And I want to know that what we're doing in those areas is quality work, so that ultimately at the academic end of the program you would see a shift in citation rates. It is a question of how you bring all that together. The most important thing is for us to understand what we're doing, and to know how much of that is aligned with areas of critical importance."

 

Of course as US researchers and their peer reviewers determined long ago it is a matter of trying to determine which are the best research proposals and are they being presented by those competent to pursue them with facilities appropriate to the task. Once determined, in so far as was able, it's then a matter of fitting those proposals into one of the prioritised pigeon holes.

 

It's not an approach you can always get away with, but on the whole it serves the nation reasonably well.