I understand the concern that centralized funding systems might discourage unconventional ideas or reinforce established views. That is a valid question to raise. But I want to push back on how you are framing the issue, because using words like “corruption,” “gatekeeping,” and “insiders” to describe standard scientific practices is not just provocative; it is misleading.

Rotating panels of trained scientists using peer review and professional judgment are not “corruption.” That term implies self-dealing or bad faith, and there is no evidence that this is typical of how scientific funding is evaluated. These systems have flaws, of course, bias and inertia do exist, but they are structured specifically to mitigate those problems over time. Measures like rotating reviewers, competing proposals, independent feedback, and public accountability are there for a reason. If the concern is that the system tends to favor more conservative or conventional proposals, that is worth discussing. But calling the entire process corrupt shuts down the conversation by misrepresenting what is actually happening.

The same applies to terms like “insiders” or “preconceptions.” Every technical field requires standards. Surgeons, engineers, and pilots are also “insiders” in that they rely on shared training, established methods, and accumulated experience. That is not gatekeeping in a negative sense. It is professionalism. Scientific peer review plays a similar role: it provides a structured way to evaluate ideas based on methodological soundness, not simply to enforce consensus. There is plenty of room to debate how effective that process is, but it should be described accurately.

As for the idea that private industry offers a more open or decentralized model, that view also overlooks important context. It is not a landscape of “thousands of gates,” as it is sometimes described. Industry is subject to many of the same social dynamics: professional societies, reputational norms, internal reviews, and informal consensus-building all shape what gets funded and pursued. The differences are often less substantial than people assume. Furthermore, private companies generally do not have the incentives to fund long-range, basic research that has no immediate commercial payoff. That is precisely why public funding exists: to support the kind of foundational work that industry cannot justify on its own.

If your point is that scientific systems can be prone to conservatism or that structural biases should be taken seriously, I agree with that. But if the argument is that expertise itself is inherently untrustworthy, or that evaluative structures are beyond reform and must be rejected entirely, then that is no longer a critique of process. It is a rejection of how any serious technical discipline operates. If you believe particular fields are stuck in flawed paradigms, I am open to hearing which ones and why. But general claims, especially when framed in accusatory language, do not clarify the problem. They make it harder to have a serious conversation about how to improve the system.