A need for Intellectual Hedge Funds

Mark Buchanan writes:

If more scientists started pushing for a return to independent, curiosity-driven science, then this might also encourage the big funding agencies and the other new sources of private funds such as the Perimeter Institute or the Howard Hughes and Gates Foundations. Indeed, Weinstein suggests, these new structures may have similarities with recent developments in financial engineering with the new structures emerging as “intellectual hedge funds” in response to perceived inefficiencies of more traditional agents, which play the role of more risk-averse mutual funds.