As someone who worked in HPC Projects in the EU, I'd say the vast majority of the grants is wasted. E.g. on
- obscure software and programming paradigms/libraries
- one-off's
- projects that create only reports, papers and recommendations
- endless recreations of the same software over the years and decades
- plain dumb projects
- attempts at recreating other people's software (e.g. U.S.)
There is also a large amount of overlap in work/content between projects, and lots of time is appropriated for unrelated work e.g. employees working on their PhDs.
On the other hand the industry takes a lot more money and plays similar games.
Project partners do not take the right path, because it's not conducive to fulfilling a grant, getting the next grant or increasing your citation count. The incentives are wrong.
- obscure software and programming paradigms/libraries
- one-off's
- projects that create only reports, papers and recommendations
- endless recreations of the same software over the years and decades
- plain dumb projects
- attempts at recreating other people's software (e.g. U.S.)
There is also a large amount of overlap in work/content between projects, and lots of time is appropriated for unrelated work e.g. employees working on their PhDs.
On the other hand the industry takes a lot more money and plays similar games.
Project partners do not take the right path, because it's not conducive to fulfilling a grant, getting the next grant or increasing your citation count. The incentives are wrong.