Ian, are you going out of your way to be vague and noncommittal?
Let's put it another way. Imagine you just got into an elevator with NASA director Charles Bolden. He turns to you and says: "Astrophysics is in trouble. All of this dark-energy whatnot isn't really coming together and we need to shake it up. I'm looking to fund promising-but-overlooked ideas that might get us out of this hole. I hear you're involved with some sort of cosmoplasma electroverse community---maybe they're on to something.
Tell me what looks worth funding in your business. Name two or three people who might be onto something big. Point me to a recent paper that will give me an idea of what they'd do with a $2M 3-year grant."
You're in an elevator. You've been asked for a
pitch. You don't have time to correct him on the terminology. You don't have time to complain about Galileo, Alfven, dark energy, reconnection. You have just enough time to give Bolden a
precis of the most-scientific, best-developed topics that you know of---the things that you think make
whatever you're doing worth doing.
You have to go straight for the best you've got. No crackpots, no dead people; current work, not old stuff; positive developments, not truisms or vague objections to mainstream theory.
"My field, _____, is studying how space plasmas could be effecting _____, and we think that this works better than ______ and could be a paradigm shift. One line of inquiry you should fund is Dr. _______, who wrote this paper _______ on a model of _________ that's got great potential but needs funding to finish ______. Another big triumph of ________ is the idea that ______ explains ______; you'll be impressed by Dr. ______ who wrote ______ and who may be poised to _________. Here's my card if you want to follow up."
Ready, set, GO.
