Whichever way they sliced the data, Azoulay, Manzo and Zivin found evidence that the more open-ended, risky HHMI grants were funding the most important, unusual, and influential research. HHMI researchers, apparently no better qualified than their NIH-funded peers, were far more influential, producing twice as many highly cited research articles. They were more likely to win awards and more likely to train students who themselves won awards. They were also more original, producing research that introduced new "keywords" into the lexicon of their research field, changing research topics more often, and attracting more citations from outside their narrow field of expertise.
The HHMI researchers also produced more failures; a higher proportion of their research papers were cited by nobody at all. No wonder: The NIH program was designed to avoid failure, while the HHMI program embraced it. And in the quest for truly original research, some failure is inevitable.
