I have never understood it but that’s exactly what they seem to do.
I wrote off to a fund that I had red had got into trouble with a large investment in Cold Fusion. I had a proposal for how you might do pulsed fusion, and I suggested if they had this fund, and the fund was in trouble because this cold fusion project is the third scam that relied on a magical ‘catalyst’ by the same guy, and if they wanted to put a small amount of that into something that might work, then this could restore a bit of confidence. I got a reply back the same day (a bank holiday in the UK) thanking me for my correspondence, but they regretted they could not get involved in any venture that had not been forwarded by their accredited financial consultants.
I was tempted to write back “Great! And you got here by doing what? Trusting an accountant to say what physics is good? Serves you right”. But I think these people are truly incapable of self-doubt.
