The usual way you call an instiution of where researchers work together is an research institute or on a bigger scale an university.
In the west academic researchers are not payed by the outcome of their research. Grants work differently. I don’t see how what you are proposing would work inside our system.
Grants-by-outcome are rare today, but not unknown. Part of what made Mary Lasker’s cancer philanthropy so effective was that she insisted cancer researchers be paid based on outcome, not grant application.
Prizes, outcome-based grants, and bringing IP to market are all possible, and I think have advantages relative to grants.
I think a research syndicate would work best in collaboration with a highly outcome-oriented donor who’s interested in “hits-based giving” (in OPP’s words) but for science. These people exist—any wealthy donor who’s interested in curing a disease is going to want to fund science the same way he invests in companies.
I think that a funder who wants to fund a research syndicate to go after an important goal wants researchers who work together instead of disparate researchers.
I think implicit in my thinking is wondering about different models than our current one. For example could something like kickstarter for research work. Or building a community like effective altruism but for more uncertain prospects, where you can’t know the tractibility of an intervention without having gotten a significant way into researching something.
How might these things work?
Effective Altruism and the rationalist community are generally reliant on the experimental work that is fundable by the current system. If we were to think about how to enable/incentivise different experimental work, what would that look like?
I don’t think that a community that wants to encourage uncertain prospects wants to fund researchers based on the results of their research in a way that they can share the money with other people in your “research syndicate” setup.
It is just supposed to be a mechanism to de-risk an inherently risky endeavour by aggregating a bunch of them together (like a decentralised VC fund). And to make the research landscape a little less competitive so trust can be built between disparate groups.
If those aren’t things the community would want then fair enough, or if they don’t want it in this package, I’m all ears for an alternative.
The usual way you call an instiution of where researchers work together is an research institute or on a bigger scale an university.
In the west academic researchers are not payed by the outcome of their research. Grants work differently. I don’t see how what you are proposing would work inside our system.
Grants-by-outcome are rare today, but not unknown. Part of what made Mary Lasker’s cancer philanthropy so effective was that she insisted cancer researchers be paid based on outcome, not grant application.
Prizes, outcome-based grants, and bringing IP to market are all possible, and I think have advantages relative to grants.
I think a research syndicate would work best in collaboration with a highly outcome-oriented donor who’s interested in “hits-based giving” (in OPP’s words) but for science. These people exist—any wealthy donor who’s interested in curing a disease is going to want to fund science the same way he invests in companies.
I think that a funder who wants to fund a research syndicate to go after an important goal wants researchers who work together instead of disparate researchers.
I think implicit in my thinking is wondering about different models than our current one. For example could something like kickstarter for research work. Or building a community like effective altruism but for more uncertain prospects, where you can’t know the tractibility of an intervention without having gotten a significant way into researching something.
How might these things work?
Effective Altruism and the rationalist community are generally reliant on the experimental work that is fundable by the current system. If we were to think about how to enable/incentivise different experimental work, what would that look like?
I don’t think that a community that wants to encourage uncertain prospects wants to fund researchers based on the results of their research in a way that they can share the money with other people in your “research syndicate” setup.
It is just supposed to be a mechanism to de-risk an inherently risky endeavour by aggregating a bunch of them together (like a decentralised VC fund). And to make the research landscape a little less competitive so trust can be built between disparate groups.
If those aren’t things the community would want then fair enough, or if they don’t want it in this package, I’m all ears for an alternative.