Preliminary results are results from a previous experiment that already had to be funded. And yeah, you don't want to throw funding at researchers who are only getting weird results because they are bad at conducting research.

Literally every preliminary result I got was from an experiment that was explicitly not funded for the purpose it was requested for. That is, by year 2 of my grant, I was spending my monies on stuff I hadn't proposed, to prepare for the next grant proposal.

I guess part of the reason I exited academia was because I was bad at conducting research :)

The chicken-and-egg problem illustrated in this thread seemed like the most appropriate place to highlight: So (see disclaimer at the end) there is a publication I appreciate called Seeds of Science. My understanding is that it is (in part) intended to offer a pathway to work around structural failure in comventional peer review; As its web page describes:

" What is a 'Seed of Science'? It is a speculation, an idea for an experiment, a novel observation, a thought-provoking question and discussion, the highlighting of an under-appreciated problem, or an unorthodox research study"

They got an ACX Grant last year from AstralCodexTen to pursue this.

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CoI Disclaimer: My work is published in SoS.