LOL Vox didn't speak to a single university sponsored research administrator, OSP rep, experienced PI, or research facility manager for this absolute horseshit piece that spends most of its time blowing smoke up absolute fraud Tyler Cowen's ass.

Oh boy we gave out $12 million in total dollars which when you back out 60% F&A leaves $7.5 million for a bunch of horseshit, slapped-together projects that will mostly just fund a few months of faculty effort while they write real grants for real money.

We already know from Yglesias that Vox doesn't fact check, but here are some questions an enterprising reporter or editor might ask if they just bothered to call up someone at a local university could have asked:

Is $12 million a lot?

With 67 total awards, what sort of research can really be funded?

Oh, so if that means that, after overhead, you're talking maybe $110-120K per award, does that mean that talk about testing and vaccine development is probably not the sort of research that's actually happening?

No, I mean, seriously, what sort of virology can you fund with a hundred grand?

Oh, so you mean that these grants are probably just going to people who do econometrics and modeling, for whom a hundred grand probably covers some sweet, sweet summer salary?

What's a "protocol"? What is an "IRB"? How long does it take to get one of those, anyway?

Do researchers really spend 9 months on their proposals? Oh no?

When you say "bad ideas can’t be rejected quickly and good ideas can’t be published quickly," what does that have to do with speed of research proposals and awards? Isn't that a function of the period of performance of the research followed by journal submission and peer review?