Diomidis Spinellis wrote earlier today about the EUs planning priorities for research and how he thinks that’s bad for innovation. I agree with his thesis, but I find his complaint somewhat naïve.

Let me explain myself: If I could only give one reason to the question “What’s wrong with EU Funded Research?”, I don’t believe that ‘central planning’ would be it; sure, there are ‘themes’ that get adopted, promoted and subsequently funded by the Commission every few years in their respective FPs and this may be — as Diomidis claims — wasteful. Yet, historically, the United States, despite its overwhelming superiority in wealth, technology and the — now — more than obvious brain drain effect, has had the most prominent centrally planned academia of all developed countries by far. This goes to show that centrally planned research cannot be examined separately from the multitude of other variables involved when considering research funding, that there’s much more to blame besides planning when criticising EU Research and finally that planning per se is not a determining factor.

While I was at Imperial and in various discussions with colleagues and friends from the States, it was clear to me that research Stateside was prescribed in massive umbrella projects, whose funds trickled down the hierarchy, from professors, to post-docs and Ph.Ds; the freedom to choose what to work upon was severely constrained and the topics of research were more or less decided at a very high level where only the top of the academic hierarchy could have a say. This was especially true in the fields of science and technology where military and government programmes demanded specific outcomes, deadlines and themes.
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