I am in Washington DC this week, reviewing grant proposals for the NIH (National Institutes of Health). The scientific peer review process really is a wonderful thing. It can be depressing to contemplate the state of the world and the working of a huge bureaucracy like the federal government, but scientific research dollars really are allocated in a very careful and thoughtful way. A bunch of experts get together and read every part of every proposal, discuss them at length, and decide together which ones have the most scientific and technical merit. It makes me feel good about the infrastructure we have built to support science in this country.
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