Just when you finally figure out the way to write a perfect grant application, the procedure will no doubt be changed and you'll have to start all over again. Here are some predictions for the future review process for scientific grant applications in the United States.

Sometime Next Year

Taking a cue from a radical terrorist group, a review panel will barricade itself in a hotel meeting room in Bethesda, Maryland. They will demand that 50 percent of their applications are funded. After nine weeks the FBI will cut the electricity, but the reviewers will survive on cold coffee and stale bagels. The impasse will finally end when the government threatens to cut the $150-per-day stipends, which have accumulated to over $10,000 by the end of the standoff.

In About 5 Years

To cut costs, the government will experiment with ways to eliminate the actual meeting. In one experiment, reviewers will attempt telepathic dreams about the applications, and in the morning will write down scores based on their dreams. In place of the government officials in charge of the review process, preliminary tryouts will use leading psychics. These trials will be extremely successful, with the results very similar to the current method of grant review. However, attempts to expand this approach to all review panels will fail when it is discovered that officials who have been in government more than five years have lost the ability to dream.

In About 10 Years

To make the review process more open, grant reviewing becomes a show on cable TV titled Who Wants a Million Dollar Grant? The studio audience, made up of students and postdocs, helps by cheering on their favorite professor. The winner is simply handed a million dollars in cash, reducing both government administrative costs and university overhead. An unexpected benefit is that most winners do not reapply and quickly drop out of sight.

In About 20 Years

The attention span of reviewers becomes extremely short once study sections are composed entirely of kids raised on MTV. Also, funding becomes extremely tight due to eight years of the fiscal policies of President Jesse Ventura. To solve both problems, and to help raise money rather than spend money on the review process, grant reviewing becomes an annual televised event that is a cross between the Miss America pageant and the Academy Awards. Applicants submit grant videos that are reviewed by a panel composed of both scientists and celebrities from music and film. Scores are given Olympic style, immediately following the presentation of the video. The process is a big hit and becomes a top-rated show once the cohosts, who are initially government officials, are replaced by the team of Beavis and Butthead.

In About 50 Years

All the major scientific problems have been solved by computers, and science has become an abstract exercise in doing something novel. The various funding agencies for science and art are combined into one new agency. But most scientists are unable to sing, dance, draw, paint, or otherwise compete in "traditional" art fields, and their only alternative is to become conceptual artists. Aside from a few controversial exhibits, like the genetic code spattered with elephant dung, the process is a big success and, surprisingly, satisfies everyone. Old-time conceptual artists welcome the increased interest (and funding) for their previously underappreciated art form. Scientists welcome the opportunity for creativity to finally be relevant when applying for funding. The general public welcomes the elimination of unpopular research areas. Most of all, politicians appreciate the new system because the scientists remain occupied with trivial details regarding their grant applications and don't enter politics, which would drastically alter the intellectual level of government that has been the status quo since the Reagan administration.