One challenge here is that GOF research is a charged ethical issue, and if you look at the papers, a lot of them are on the ethical concerns. Another chunk is looking at gain of function mutations in cancer, which is irrelevant. Researchers engineering gain of function mutations in pathogens don’t necessarily put that language in the title or abstract. For example, the infamous avian flu GOF research by Fouchier in ferrets didn’t use the term “gain of function” in the title or abstract.
There’s a baseline growth rate for research generally, and output doubles about every 17 years. Given the charged nature of GOF research and the recent moratorium, I’d expect its publication pattern to diverge from the general rate. And since it’s a small field, I’d also expect that noise from irrelevant findings to swamp any signal from the kind of potential pandemic enhancing research we are worried about.
One challenge here is that GOF research is a charged ethical issue, and if you look at the papers, a lot of them are on the ethical concerns. Another chunk is looking at gain of function mutations in cancer, which is irrelevant. Researchers engineering gain of function mutations in pathogens don’t necessarily put that language in the title or abstract. For example, the infamous avian flu GOF research by Fouchier in ferrets didn’t use the term “gain of function” in the title or abstract.
There’s a baseline growth rate for research generally, and output doubles about every 17 years. Given the charged nature of GOF research and the recent moratorium, I’d expect its publication pattern to diverge from the general rate. And since it’s a small field, I’d also expect that noise from irrelevant findings to swamp any signal from the kind of potential pandemic enhancing research we are worried about.