The way grants are doled out leads researchers to play it safe -- and that's why there has been little progress in the "war on cancer," writes Gina Kolata in the New York Times. Incremental research is chosen by reviewers because "with too little money to finance most proposals, they are timid about taking chances on ones that might not succeed," Kolata writes.
At Respectful Insolence, Orac says that questioning whether the money was well-spent is fine, but that in the article. "Specifically, there is an unspoken assumption that 'riskier' research is inherently more likely to result in 'breakthroughs' than the more incremental model of building on previous results," Orac writes.