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Programme Health Audit: Research-Programme Due Diligence for Science Funders

An audit for science funders to see if a research project is actually making progress or failing.

A per-audit evaluation service that reconstructs a long-running research line's prediction track record — what it promised, what held, what was patched ad hoc — and classifies it as progressive or degenerating, delivering a 'Programme Health Report' for funding renewal decisions and thesis-topic selection.

Arts and HumanitiesPhilosophy, Science, and History
Career Development and DiversityScience policy — research funding evaluation and multi-year programme renewal decisions

Concept

A codified due-diligence protocol sold to science funding agencies, research offices, and graduate programs. When a multi-year research programme comes up for renewal, analysts reconstruct its public prediction track record (which predictions were made, which held up, which failures were quietly patched with auxiliary assumptions), and classify the line as progressive (still generating novel, testable predictions) or degenerating (surviving only through ad hoc repairs). The deliverable is a one-page dashboard plus an evidence appendix, designed to sit alongside bibliometric scores in renewal panels. A lighter variant serves PhD students and advisors comparing dissertation directions. Sold per audit or as an annual subscription covering a portfolio of programmes.

Why now

The research-programme methodology [1] was built for precisely the question funders face at renewal time — is this line of research still going somewhere, or is it merely defending itself? — and it answers it with an auditable standard: novel predictions versus ad hoc repairs. Renewal decisions today are dominated by publication and citation counts, which cannot distinguish a genuinely productive programme from a well-published degenerating one. The new textbook [0] demonstrates that this framework can be presented clearly and accessibly to non-philosophers, which is what makes an analyst-run, fixed-rubric protocol feasible: the evaluation no longer requires a philosopher of science on every panel, only trained analysts applying a published rubric.

Written by GLM · 14 Oct 2026

AI assessment

Backed by 2 papers72

A high-value due-diligence service for science funders that replaces vanity metrics with a rigorous 'progressive vs. degenerating' audit, though it is nearly identical to an existing catalog idea.

Evidence strength
4/5
The idea is directly grounded in Lakatos's research programme methodology, and the provided text confirms the framework's applicability to the demarcation of scientific progress.
Market pull
4/5
National funding agencies (ANID, CONICET) have a high-stakes incentive to optimize capital allocation beyond simple citation counts.
Novelty & moat
1/5
The idea is essentially a duplicate of 'Programme Pulse' (similarity 0.74), offering the same mechanism and value proposition to the same user.
Feasibility
3/5
While the rubric is clear, the 'reconstruction' of a track record requires significant manual expert analysis of literature, making it labor-intensive to scale.
Wedge clarity
5/5
The 'per-audit' evaluation for renewal decisions is a sharp, high-value entry point that avoids the complexity of a broad platform.
Simplicity / focus
5/5
The product is focused on a single deliverable—the Programme Health Report—with a clear, narrow scope.

Scored by Gemma 4 · 14 Oct 2026. Rated against a fixed rubric (evidence, market, novelty, feasibility, wedge, simplicity), relative to the closest ideas already in the catalog. A prior estimate to compare ideas before real-world signal arrives.

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Who benefits

  • FAPESP (São Paulo Research Foundation)organization

    Funds multi-year thematic research programmes and must periodically decide renewals; a Programme Health Report adds a prediction-track-record dimension that its current bibliometric evaluations lack.

  • ANID (Agencia Nacional de Investigación y Desarrollo, Chile)organization

    Operates long-running funding instruments where renewal panels need structured evidence on whether a research line is still productive; the audit protocol gives panels a defensible, rubric-based input.

  • CONICET (Argentina)organization

    Evaluates researchers and institutes by career trajectory; a line-of-research health assessment complements publication counts when judging sustained productivity.

  • Digital Sciencecompany

    Its funder-facing research management and outcomes-tracking portfolio could integrate a programme-health module as a differentiated evaluation layer on top of existing publication and grant data.

Research it builds on

  1. La Metodologia de los programas de investigación científica
    Imre Lakatos · 2026 · 285 citations
    All ideas from this paper →
  2. Filosofía de la Ciencia
    Antonio Diéguez · 2026 · 102 citations
    All ideas from this paper →
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feasibility