Tenure was designed to stop controversial ideas being avoided. It has been an utter failure at that. Best to scrap it entirely.
I'm not sure this is all of it. I think it was intended to benefit not just controversial ideas but unsexy or unprofitable ones, too. The idea is that after a certain point an individual who proved himself would be set free of basically oversight in the hopes that him taking his research any direction he wanted would benefit science more than research done with more supervision. The idea is that managers don't know what line of investigation might yield useful results. That people who have proved themselves to have scientific acumen know this better on their own.
Of course this isn't working either with professors now chasing grants and trying to work on whatever they can profit from at a startup.
I'm not sure this is all of it. I think it was intended to benefit not just controversial ideas but unsexy or unprofitable ones, too. The idea is that after a certain point an individual who proved himself would be set free of basically oversight in the hopes that him taking his research any direction he wanted would benefit science more than research done with more supervision. The idea is that managers don't know what line of investigation might yield useful results. That people who have proved themselves to have scientific acumen know this better on their own.
Of course this isn't working either with professors now chasing grants and trying to work on whatever they can profit from at a startup.