Although the council tried to spread funding cuts around fairly, nuclear physics was pared to the bone, with just £30 million for the next 5 years.
"Everybody in the biomedical community realizes how tough it is these days and the need to spread funding around," Greenberg tells ScienceInsider.
Because of thinly spread funding, it has taken this long to get the first couple of Army squadrons equipped with the Longbow version, and they are only now starting final testing.
On the other hand, if a negative synergistic effect occurs where each additional dollar spent leads to proportionally smaller results, the optimal strategy would be to spread funding across cancers more equitably, regardless of societal burden.
By spreading funds across a variety of investments, no single ignorant decision I make can sink my savings.
Second, they invest according to "portfolio theory", trying to get the best balance of risk and return by spreading funds over a basket of assets.
Instead of spreading funds across 15 direct delivery programmes, EveryChild will fund the sharing and amplifying of members' expertise so that they can improve their own programmes and collectively have more influence.
And while some traditional investors might say that the startup studio model spreads funds too thinly, huge success from startups like Giphy, Dots, bit.ly, Chartbeat, and betaworks acquisitions such as Digg and Instapaper beg to differ.
The work of the council's scattered institutes is said to be poorly coordinated; its funding policies have been criticized for spreading funds too thinly; and the 15 national committees, each covering a field such as mathematics or chemistry, are seen as too isolated from each other.
