This is really cool! I liked your approach to the model and I think your big-picture finding is at least moderately likely to be correct. Marshall alluded to this as well, but I think the upper end of your distribution for the average cost-effectiveness of new interventions is pretty unlikely (at least in global health and development), given that we know lots of interventions have already been tried and only a small number are >6x GiveDirectly’s cost-effectiveness. But the general finding that we may be underinvesting in research seems robust even if you exclude the cases where the average cost-effectiveness of new interventions is anywhere close to the current best causes.
I looked at a similar but much smaller issue recently in evaluating whether it would be a cost-effective use of funding to replicate the 1998 deworming trial in Kenya that’s been used to generate GiveWell’s cost-effectiveness estimates of deworming. My finding there was that it was indeed likely to be a good use of funds, and I concluded that we were probably more generally underinvesting in replication research. I think that finding would fit with this one, in that the underinvestment in replication research may be part of an overall underinvestment in research.
This is really cool! I liked your approach to the model and I think your big-picture finding is at least moderately likely to be correct. Marshall alluded to this as well, but I think the upper end of your distribution for the average cost-effectiveness of new interventions is pretty unlikely (at least in global health and development), given that we know lots of interventions have already been tried and only a small number are >6x GiveDirectly’s cost-effectiveness. But the general finding that we may be underinvesting in research seems robust even if you exclude the cases where the average cost-effectiveness of new interventions is anywhere close to the current best causes.
I looked at a similar but much smaller issue recently in evaluating whether it would be a cost-effective use of funding to replicate the 1998 deworming trial in Kenya that’s been used to generate GiveWell’s cost-effectiveness estimates of deworming. My finding there was that it was indeed likely to be a good use of funds, and I concluded that we were probably more generally underinvesting in replication research. I think that finding would fit with this one, in that the underinvestment in replication research may be part of an overall underinvestment in research.