I think people have recognized that the current research grant system tends to reward safe, status quo ideas, and discourage potentially revolutionary risky long shot ideas. Its been talked about for a long time now. Maybe even decades at this point.
There isn't an infinite amount of grant money to go around, and of course handing it out to any crackpot that comes along is going to be a nonstarter. It seems to me that the solution is somewhere in between the two extremes.
The hard part is what to do about it.