"Think tanks make ideas. They are more often acting orthogonally to the scholarly literature than downstream of it."

"[They] are idea creators for the world as it is, not as we romantically wish it might be."

This is a really interesting list, including some things I found quite surprising! For all that growth has slowed everywhere since 2008 (esp “everywhere ex-US”), I do wonder if the UK’s multiply dismal performance is cause for hope. Catch-up growth is easier than frontier growth!

Thanks for the discussion - I'm always happy to answer questions about this or other funding partnerships we have. You're absolutely right that I have a duty to be open about what we're doing. :-)

But I worry that a req to publish a detailed analysis of the value that our partners (of whom we have 000s - not limited to cofunders), all of whom inherently have their own agendas, would be (a) time consuming and (b) would likely never be probing enough to satisfy critics of any given partner

And as you'd imagine, we follow careful rules when engaging with commercial entities or when giving organisations public money.

I agree with you that it's important to be clear about partnerships - and I feel I am pretty open about our partnerships with OP (and Sloane and other co-funders) - not least because I'm proud of them and think they're valuable.

They’re not funding us, if that’s what you mean; they’re funding projects from a call that we collaborated with them on, a call from which we also funded projects, in a similar way to how we’ve worked with other statutory and philanthropic funders.

(b) the excellent input they and their communities brought to the grant review process, which contributed valuable cognitive diversity to the discussions, leading what is IMO a really better set of funded projects than we might have funded on our own.

The hope is that the field of applicants includes experts in the field in question. (So this possibly would not work well for, eg some types early career awards)

As far as I can tell - unlike degrees - there are no rules at all on who can award professorships or on what basis. So you could award yourself one - or even better, two!

Is the anecdotal evidence perhaps a bit stronger than that? Spoken to a couple of people who work with HNWs who say they’ve seen an increase in departures and planned departures. Plus the top end of the London property market seems to have lots for sale, at what look like reduced prices.

Just read the relevant chapter. I don’t think it’s measurement they’re objecting too (the metascience movement they praise does lots of measurement!) but rather a particular form of overbureaucratised funding allocation that elevates process over judgment and encourages incrementalism