Chief Scientist Grants: a Waste of Public Money

The chief scientist program is designed to support Israeli technological projects. The level of subsidization, as revealed in JIMS' position paper, is much higher than the level used by OECD members. In fact, the Chief Scientist office distributes freely taxpayers' money without filtering and sorting the best projects. Usually, the bulk of the budget is given to large companies with extended public relations budgets. In the past 10 years, national expenditure on civilian R&D as a percent of GDP has more than doubled, from 2.2% in 1995 to 4.7% in 2008.