What can increase fairness in research funding?

In its Experiment! funding line, the Volkswagen Foundation has introduced partial randomization in addition to the review process and has had the whole process monitored empirically. Applications that are not suited for funding are excluded in advance, and of the remaining excellent applications, some are selected for funding by review and some by lottery. The authors of the accompanying study (in German) now come to the conclusion: against the background of the overburdened review system, this can be a good addition, for example to improve the perceived equality of opportunity.  

One advantage seems to be that there is more room for high-risk research, which otherwise traditionally tends to be poorly evaluated by reviewers. In order to specifically address this problem, the Volkswagen Foundation is once again supporting young researchers and their unusual, risky projects with the Freigeist Fellowships.