I intended this a bit more broadly than you seem to have interpreted it; I’m trying to include exploratory research groups in general.
gain any value from it (other than as a cautionary tale)
That is essentially what this post is: looking in detail at one specific way I think things went wrong, and thinking about how to avoid this in the future.
I expect tradeoffs around how much you should prioritize external communication will continue to be a major issue for research groups!
Fair enough. I admit that I skimmed the post quickly, for which I apologize, and part of this was certainly a knee-jerk reaction to even considering Leverage as a serious intellectual project rather than a total failure as such, which is not entirely fair. But I think maybe a version of this post I would significantly prefer would first explain your interest in Leverage specifically: that while they are a particularly egregious failure of the closed-research genre, it’s interesting to understand exactly how they failed and how the idea of a fast, less-than-fully transparent think tank can be salvaged. It does bother me that you don’t try to look for other examples of organizations that do some part of this more effectively, and I have trouble believing that they don’t exist. It reads a bit like an analysis of nation-building that focuses specifically on the mistakes and complexities of North Korea without trying to compare it to other less awful entities.
I intended this a bit more broadly than you seem to have interpreted it; I’m trying to include exploratory research groups in general.
That is essentially what this post is: looking in detail at one specific way I think things went wrong, and thinking about how to avoid this in the future.
I expect tradeoffs around how much you should prioritize external communication will continue to be a major issue for research groups!
Fair enough. I admit that I skimmed the post quickly, for which I apologize, and part of this was certainly a knee-jerk reaction to even considering Leverage as a serious intellectual project rather than a total failure as such, which is not entirely fair. But I think maybe a version of this post I would significantly prefer would first explain your interest in Leverage specifically: that while they are a particularly egregious failure of the closed-research genre, it’s interesting to understand exactly how they failed and how the idea of a fast, less-than-fully transparent think tank can be salvaged. It does bother me that you don’t try to look for other examples of organizations that do some part of this more effectively, and I have trouble believing that they don’t exist. It reads a bit like an analysis of nation-building that focuses specifically on the mistakes and complexities of North Korea without trying to compare it to other less awful entities.