Knowledge policy differs from conventional science policy by recognizing that policy is always being made, even when the status quo is maintained, or, as Popper (see kuhn, popper and logical positivism) might say, induction rules. In the case of science, such institutional inertia can have significant consequences. It underlies the self-organizing, self-selecting and self-stratifying processes associated with the various levels at which peer review occurs in science. Originally, peer review was limited to the publication of completed research but in the twentieth century, once science was subsumed under the state, peer review spread to cover the funds required even to be eligible to do research. The result is an ever expanding and interlocking system of elites, for which Robert Merton coined the euphemism “the principle of cumulative advantage”, whereby you cannot do research unless you have been part of a group that has done research. It is tantamount to a providential vision of history of science that would have been familiar to the early modern purveyors of what Max Weber called the “Protestant Ethic”: the dominant strands of scientific research would not be so well resourced and efficacious if they were not doing something right – even if we cannot as yet specify their target realities. In this context, the maxim that scientific research does not experience diminishing marginal returns on investment acts as an article of faith with trivially true consequences, since any research funded for enough time will yield some benefit.