Results for “fastgrants”
9 found

Will open science matter?

by  Tyler Cowen in

Yesterday I posted this link, about how federally funded science will have to be made open access right away.  I’m all for this, as it has some upside and no downside that I can see.  Still, at the margin I am not sure it will make a huge difference.

Who says when the research is “ready” to be posted?  No matter what you put in the fine print, de facto that is a decision made by the scientists.  If scientists wish to delay open access publication, I doubt if this will stop them.  “The paper simply isn’t finished yet.”  The law cannot in practice dictate otherwise.  Of course scientists already put plenty of works on-line and open to the public, and this private calculation will continue, but with only modest changes.

The actual main effect will be to enable scientists to resist commercial attempts to monopolize publication rights in closed access form.  Presumably such contracts now will be illegal.  But think about the new equilibrium: there will be a final, published, canonical version of the article published in The Journal of Botchagaloup.  There will be an open access, not yet published, non-canonical (no proper pp. at the very least) version on the scientist’s home page.  And very often there will be an illegal copy of the canonical version on SciHub, the pirate site for scientific papers.  Plus the data copies that circulated before the commercial publisher made the authors take them down.

How is that so different from the status quo?  Some scientists who didn’t get a crack at the data the first time around won’t have to wait as long to access it.  And maybe scientists will make more of an effort for the open access version of their papers to be closer to the canonical versions published in commercial journals.  This could prove a modest benefit, though you, as an outside scientist, wishing to cite “p.43” just won’t know how canonical the open access version will be.  And presumably for-profit commercial journals will add extra stages to the final production process, if only to keep interest in the product they are selling, relative to the open access versions on-line.  So I don’t think it will “do under” for-profit scientific publishing, not to mention that many articles are not federally funded by the U.S. government.

A more radical policy change would have been to require the journals to make their final versions of the papers open to the public, and in the final, canonical versions.  That would create greater benefits, but also run the risk of putting those journals out of business.  As I understand the new dictate, it does not do this.

The new law also will give scientists leverage against private companies that wish to buy up the research rights and not publicize the results.  Probably this is a benefit, though that doesn’t hold a priori, as it does raise the cost of private sector involvement by forcing them to share the information more.  And some unscrupulous scientists might try to get a better deal from the companies by releasing a different and inferior version of “the public research results” to the open access community.  Still, on net I expect these are benefits.

Addendum: You may recall that Fast Grants had its own version of an open access requirement.  I think this worked quite well!  But it is interesting why it might have proven effective.  I think we credibly signaled that people with open and early good results would be plausible candidates for additional funding, and soon, and indeed some of them were.  To the extent that the federal government can signal the same, good incentives will be all the stronger.  But this new OSTP order does not coordinate future funding decisions per se, and I don’t see any clauses that the NIH, NSF, and others are bound to revise their funding policies accordingly, to favor researchers who come out with speedy, open results.  So the benefits here could be much greater if the entire federal science apparatus could signal its prioritization of speed and openness.  We are still quite far from this.  Nonetheless, this policy is a marginal improvement and a step in the right direction and its creates some preconditions for matters getting better yet.

Apply for an ACX grant

by  Tyler Cowen in

From Scott Alexander:

I want to give grants to good research and good projects with a minimum of paperwork. Like an NIH grant or something, only a lot less money and prestige.

How is this different from Marginal Revolution’s Fast Grants, Nadia Eghbal’s Helium Grants, or EA Funds‘ grant rounds?

Not different at all. It’s total 100% plagiarism of them. I’m doing it anyway because I think it’s a good idea, and I predict there are a lot of good people with good projects in this community who haven’t heard about / participated in those, but who will participate when I do it.

How much money are you giving out?

ACX Grants proper will involve $250,000 of my own money, but I’m hoping to supplement with much more of other people’s money, amount to be determined. See the sections on ACX Grants + and ACX Grants ++ below.

Here is further detail, including a link to the application form.

In Praise of Tyler Cowen and Patrick Collison

by  Alex Tabarrok in

Here’s a great video on FastGrants, the fast funding-institution started by Tyler and Patrick Collison to fund COVID research at a speed that could make a difference on the ground. And it did.

Lots of other people stepped in with funding including Arnold Ventures, The Audacious Project, The Chan Zuckerberg Initiative, John Collison, Crankstart, Jack Dorsey, Kim and Scott Farquhar, Paul Graham, Reid Hoffman, Fiona McKean and Tobias Lütke, Yuri and Julia Milner, Elon Musk, Chris and Crystal Sacca, Schmidt Futures, and others.

The list of funded people and projects is long and impressive and while the grants were fast, the payoff is going to last well beyond the pandemic.

Thanks, Tyler and Patrick!

Blood Money

by  Alex Tabarrok in

NYTimes: Around the world, scientists are racing to develop and mass produce reliable antibody tests that public health experts say are a crucial element in ending the coronavirus lockdowns that are causing economic devastation. But that effort is being hamstrung, scientists say, by a shortage of the blood samples containing antibodies to Covid-19, the disease caused by the virus, that are needed to validate the tests.

Recognizing a rare opportunity, some companies are seeking to cash in on the shortages, soliciting blood donations and selling samples at rich markups in a practice that has been condemned by medical professionals as, at the very least, unethical.

“I’ve never seen these prices before,” said Dr. Joe Fitchett, the medical director of Mologic, one of the British test manufacturers that was offered the blood samples. “It’s money being made from people’s suffering.”

I am reminded of Walter Williams who asks his students whether it is wrong to profit from the misfortune of others:

But I caution them with some examples. An orthopedist profits from your misfortune of having broken your leg skiing. When there’s news of a pending ice storm, I doubt whether it saddens the hearts of those in the collision repair business. I also tell my students that I profit from their misfortune — their ignorance of economic theory.

A price is a signal wrapped up in an incentive so if you want a strong signal and a strong incentive you need to let prices rise. The prices in this case don’t even seem that high:

From March 31 to April 22, prices asked by Cantor BioConnect for its cheapest samples — always sold by the milliliter, the equivalent of less than a quarter of a teaspoon — rose more than 40 percent, to $500 from $350.

Bear in mind the costs of collecting the sample, including nurse time and PPE. Some samples which are especially rich in antibodies, do sell for prices that are well above cost which is not surprising as those samples are in high demand as they may offer a cure.

Do the firms willing and able to pay the highest prices necessarily have the best science? No, not necessarily, but on balance the decentralized allocation process offered by markets and civil society will likely be far more effective than centralized, political allocation. We also know from field experiments around the world that higher prices for blood increase supply, a key consideration.

As Hayek said the moral rules of the tribe which appear natural to us–like don’t profit from misery–cannot maintain a civilization so we struggle between what we think is right and what actually works to prevent misery.

There can be no doubt that our innate moral emotions and instincts were acquired in the hundreds of thousand years—probably half a million years—in which Homo sapiens lived in small hunting and gathering groups and developed a physiological constitution which governed his innate instincts. These instincts are still very strong in us. Yet civilization developed by our gradually learning cultural rules which were trans­mitted by teaching and which served largely to restrain and suppress some of those natural instincts.

Rapid progress from Fast Grants

by  Tyler Cowen in

I was pleased to read this NYT reporting:

Yet another team has been trying to find drugs that work against coronavirus — and also to learn why they work.

The team, led by Nevan Krogan at the University of California, San Francisco, has focused on how the new coronavirus takes over our cells at the molecular level.

The researchers determined that the virus manipulates our cells by locking onto at least 332 of our own proteins. By manipulating those proteins, the virus gets our cells to make new viruses.

Dr. Krogan’s team found 69 drugs that target the same proteins in our cells the virus does. They published the list in a preprint last month, suggesting that some might prove effective against Covid-19…

It turned out that most of the 69 candidates did fail. But both in Paris and New York [where the drugs were shipped for testing], the researchers found that nine drugs drove the virus down.

“The things we’re finding are 10 to a hundred times more potent than remdesivir,” Dr. Krogan said. He and his colleagues published their findings Thursday in the journal Nature.

The Krogan team was an early recipient of Fast Grants, and you will find more detail about their work at the above NYT link.  Fast Grants is also supporting Patrick Hsu and his team at UC Berkeley:

And the work of the Addgene team:

Fast Grants update

by  Tyler Cowen in

Fast Grants has now made over 100 grants and contributed over $18 million in funding biomedical research against Covid-19, all in a little over two weeks’ time since project conception.  If you scroll down the home page, you can see a partial list of winners (we are more concerned with getting the money out the door than keeping the list fully updated, but it will continue to grow).

Fast Grants is part of Emergent Ventures, a project of the Mercatus Center, George Mason University.  And I wish to thank again all of those who have contributed to this project, either financially or otherwise.  A partial list of financial contributors can be found at the above link as well.

Partial list of gift recipients from Fast Grants, Emergent Ventures, against Covid-19

by  Tyler Cowen in

Here is part of the list of winners, there are more to follow soon, and I am happy to cite Mercatus Center, George Mason University as home to the project.

I would again like to thank everyone who helped to make this possible, most of all those who have offered very generous financial support.

To date Fast Grants has made 67 awards to support biomedical research.  Fast Grants did not exist as recently as twelve days ago and it already has distributed more than $12 million.

Fast Grants, a project of Emergent Ventures against Covid-19, status update

by  Tyler Cowen in

As you may recall, the goal of Fast Grants is to support biomedical research to fight back Covid-19, thus restoring prosperity and liberty.

Yesterday 40 awards were made, totaling about $7 million, and money is already going out the door with ongoing transfers today.  Winners are from MIT, Harvard, Stanford, Rockefeller University, UCSF, UC Berkeley, Yale, Oxford, and other locales of note.  The applications are of remarkably high quality.

Nearly 4000 applications have been turned down, and many others are being put in touch with other institutions for possible funding support, with that ancillary number set to top $5 million.

The project was announced April 8, 2020, only eight days ago.  And Fast Grants was conceived of only about a week before that, and with zero dedicated funding at the time.

I wish to thank everyone who has worked so hard to make this a reality, including the very generous donors to the program, those at Stripe who contributed by writing new software, the quality-conscious and conscientious referees and academic panel members (about twenty of them), and my co-workers at Mercatus at George Mason University, which is home to Emergent Ventures.

I hope soon to give you an update on some of the supported projects.

Fast Grants against Covid-19, an extension of Emergent Ventures

by  Tyler Cowen in

Emergent Ventures, a project of the Mercatus Center at George Mason University, is leading a new “Fast Grants” program to support research to fight Covid-19.  Here is the bottom line:

Science funding mechanisms are too slow in normal times and may be much too slow during the COVID-19 pandemic. Fast Grants are an effort to correct this.

If you are a scientist at an academic institution currently working on a COVID-19 related project and in need of funding, we invite you to apply for a Fast Grant. Fast grants are $10k to $500k and decisions are made in under 48 hours. If we approve the grant, you’ll receive payment as quickly as your university can receive it.

More than $10 million in support is available in total, and that is in addition to earlier funds raised to support prizes.  The application site has further detail and explains the process and motivation.

I very much wish to thank John Collison, Patrick Collison, Paul Graham, Reid Hoffman, Fiona McKean and Tobias Lütke, Yuri and Julia Milner, and Chris and Crystal Sacca for their generous support of this initiative, and I am honored to be a part of it.

Meanwhile, elsewhere in the world (FT):

The president of the European Research Council — the EU’s top scientist — has resigned after failing to persuade Brussels to set up a large-scale scientific programme to fight Covid-19.

In contrast:

During World War II, the NDRC accomplished a lot of research very quickly. In his memoir, Vannevar Bush recounts: “Within a week NDRC could review the project. The next day the director could authorize, the business office could send out a letter of intent, and the actual work could start.” Fast Grants are an effort to unlock progress at a cadence similar to that which served us well then.

We are not able at this time to process small donations for this project, but if If you are an interested donor please reach out to [email protected].