A recent paper suggest that revolutionary research can be stimulated to a larger extent than currently by large-scale prizes for projects that have initiated such revolutions. This is especially relevant for young scientists, as they have to establish themselves in an appropriate niche within the scientific community, and one of the most promising (yet usually very risky, and thus not popular) strategies to create such niches is to remodel significant parts of the scientific landscape by questioning (with the support of relevant empirical or theoretical arguments). This also generally creates opportunities for a whole generation of scientists, and so the scientific community should have an interest in rewarding its revolutionaries.

The paper appeared as an editorial (Bruce G. Charlton and Peter Andras: Stimulating revolutionary science with mega-cash prizes) in Medical Hypotheses 70:709-713 (2008) and is available online via
http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.mehy.2008.01.001 (subscription required).

Another blog entry on it has been posted at
http://mostimpartial.blogspot.com/2008/03/using-mega-cash-prizes... .