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!