Prize/buyout systems encourage secrecy – leading to wasted innovation and duplicative research

The other problem with a prize system is that it encourages secrecy in the research process before the prize is awarded. In order to have the best claim to getting a prize, researchers would not share their results until they have a patentable product. This could lead to much duplicative research and many pointless dead-ends. By contrast, if a condition of getting upfront funding is that all research results are made public as soon as practical then research should be able to advance far more quickly.