David Farrar: The $800,000 lotto draw for researchers

I blogged a few days ago on how the Royal Society on behalf of MBIE (taxpayers) gets paid to hand out 40 fellowships with $800,000 each. They of course do it through identity politics eyes, so their criteria are 20% must go to Māori, 10% to Pacific and 50% to women.

Now you would have thought that even with those criteria, the 10 women, 8 Māori and 4 Pacific researchers selected for these fellowships are the best of the best within their grouping.

But no. The Royal Society selects them through the equivalent of a random lotto draw!!!

I understand that of the 300+ applications they get, they merely reject 2% of them, and the other 98% then just go into a random ballot.

Why do we pay the Royal Society to allocate $32 million of fellowships, when all they do is divide them into ethnic and gender groups – and then conduct a random ballot.

Time for the Government to act!

David Farrar runs Curia Market Research, a specialist opinion polling and research agency, and the popular Kiwiblog where this article was sourced. He previously worked in the Parliament for eight years, serving two National Party Prime Ministers and three Opposition Leaders.