Please name a specific government grant that was given to a specific researcher based nepotism and favoritism.
The last time I checked when I worked at a Stanford biomedical university department that was substantially NIH-funded, there were 2 full time employee grant writers who had to supply the government grant process with a laundry list of specific data with each carefully-worded proposal because they were regularly competing with other universities to win a specific grant.
Some Stanford guy caused the NIH to deprioritize the infectious etiology theory for Alzheimer’s for decades. It’s not clear why his research was considered better than the others’, but it did receive a lot of attention and became the driving force. Millions have paid the price. His voice was not the only one, it was just the favored one.
The last time I checked when I worked at a Stanford biomedical university department that was substantially NIH-funded, there were 2 full time employee grant writers who had to supply the government grant process with a laundry list of specific data with each carefully-worded proposal because they were regularly competing with other universities to win a specific grant.