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and although the reviewers agreed the proposal was “ambitious”, the panel funded it anyway, on the condition that every milestone be renamed a deliverable. What follows is an account of where dementia research money goes once it arrives, and how quickly it leaves.

Public and philanthropic investment in dementia research has risen every year since 2022, yet the timing of spending has barely moved. Across the 41 programmes we followed, the fourth quarter has come to claim the largest share of the year (Figure 2), a pattern the finance office describes as seasonal and every postdoc recognises as the race to spend what is left before it is clawed back.

We find no evidence that December procurement improves scientific output, though it is strongly associated with new centrifuges, conference travel booked in a hurry, and a reserve of pipette tips that will, by our estimate, outlast the programme. First-quarter spending, by contrast, is limited less by need than by the six weeks it takes to raise a purchase order.

The more consequential trend is scale. Funding for prevention and early-detection trials has more than doubled, and with it the number of cohorts large enough to separate a genuine signal from the habits of a single clinic. Smaller, longer grants outperformed larger, shorter ones on every measure we could define, including the one we added after seeing the results.

We recommend that funders spread disbursement across the year, that institutions approve purchase orders within a week, and that Reviewer 2 be given a hobby. Each would cost less than a single December freezer.