Not GP, but science is becoming increasingly hierarchical in it's funding mechanisms, placing bigger bets on bigger projects that reflect the perspective of older scientists and the status quo. This pulls funding away from up and coming scientists with new ideas they'd like to try out. Classic increase of risk aversion.
And note, too, that the rule change made decades ago in the US, banning universities from imposing a mandatory retirement age on faculty members has had a devastating impact on the development of younger scholars and the funding of new ideas, including my own field. This is in stark contrast to places like South Korea, where mandatory retirement at 65 years for faculty at state universities has kept the pipeline of scholarship open and flowing.
A significant part of the problem lies in the issues presented by you and the parent comment.
"Science advances one funeral at a time". Make this premise obsolete and we will have a massive roi in science, probably keeping expenditure within the same order of magnitude. I am not speculating, I am truly convinced of it.
Open and flowing, but to the US. A high quality researcher, nobel price winner (etc.) does not have its intrinsic value turn to 0 once the clock reaches 65y.
As we innovate more than SK, I welcome their generous gift of talented researchers.
Not in my field, where superannuated faculty members in the late 70s rehash ideas from their postdoc days. Nobel laureates are few, but every tenured faculty member can hang on forever. The pace in SK and the research authority given younger scholars is invigorating to those few outsiders who sample it.
