Is anyone aware of/​planning on doing any research related to the expected spike in interest for pandemic research due to COVID?
It would be interesting to see how much new interest is generated, and for which types of roles (e.g. doctors vs researchers). This could be useful to a) identify potential skilled biosecurity recruits b) find out what motivated them about COVID-19 c) figure out how neglected this will be in 5-10 years
I’d imagine doing a survey after the pandemic starts to die down might be more valuable than right now (maybe after the second wave) so that we’re tracking the longer-term impact rather than the immediate reactions.
An MVP version could be just looking at application rates across a variety of relevant fields.
Having done some research on post-graduate education in the past, it’s surprisingly difficult to access application rates for classes of programs. Some individual schools publish their application/​admission rates, but usually as advertising, so there’s a fair bit of cherry picking. It’s somewhat more straightforward to access completion rates (at least in the US, universities report this to government). However, that MVP would still be interesting with just a few data points: if any EAs have relationships to a couple relevant programs (in say biosecurity, epidemiology), it may be worth reaching out directly in 6-12 months!
A more general point, which I’ve seen some discussion of here, is how near-miss catastrophes prepare society for a more severe version of the same catastrophe. This would be interesting to explore both theoretically (what’s the sweet spot for a near-miss to encourage further work, but not dissuade prevention policies) and empirically.
One historical example might be, for example, does a civilization which experienced a bad famine experience fewer famines in a period following that bad famine? How long is that period? In particular, that makes me think of MichaelA’s recently excellent Some history topics it might be very valuable to investigate.
Is anyone aware of/​planning on doing any research related to the expected spike in interest for pandemic research due to COVID?
It would be interesting to see how much new interest is generated, and for which types of roles (e.g. doctors vs researchers). This could be useful to a) identify potential skilled biosecurity recruits b) find out what motivated them about COVID-19 c) figure out how neglected this will be in 5-10 years
I’d imagine doing a survey after the pandemic starts to die down might be more valuable than right now (maybe after the second wave) so that we’re tracking the longer-term impact rather than the immediate reactions.
An MVP version could be just looking at application rates across a variety of relevant fields.
Having done some research on post-graduate education in the past, it’s surprisingly difficult to access application rates for classes of programs. Some individual schools publish their application/​admission rates, but usually as advertising, so there’s a fair bit of cherry picking. It’s somewhat more straightforward to access completion rates (at least in the US, universities report this to government). However, that MVP would still be interesting with just a few data points: if any EAs have relationships to a couple relevant programs (in say biosecurity, epidemiology), it may be worth reaching out directly in 6-12 months!
A more general point, which I’ve seen some discussion of here, is how near-miss catastrophes prepare society for a more severe version of the same catastrophe. This would be interesting to explore both theoretically (what’s the sweet spot for a near-miss to encourage further work, but not dissuade prevention policies) and empirically.
One historical example might be, for example, does a civilization which experienced a bad famine experience fewer famines in a period following that bad famine? How long is that period? In particular, that makes me think of MichaelA’s recently excellent Some history topics it might be very valuable to investigate.
In the UK could you access application numbers with a Freedom of Information request?