Examined here are models of resource allocation adopted by Australia’s premier biomedical research funding council, the National Health and Medical Research Council (NHMRC), since pressure to make research more ‘relevant’ has been exerted. For a council that disburses its funds chiefly to high-impact fundamental research, allocating resources to priority-driven research that contributes directly to population health and evidence-based health care is a challenging transition. It is contended that while the NHMRC has attempted to accommodate a ‘rationalist’ user-driven approach to resource allocation, it has moved only marginally away from a highly decentralised (investigator-driven) model to a mixed-mode system that resembles ‘muddling with some skill’.