We do independent, in-depth research to help foundations and individuals to donate to the most effective policies to solve today’s most important global challenges (e.g. the replication crisis, climate change).
One of our two campaigns is on improving all of hypothesis-driven science by implementing a new publication format called Registered Reports.
We’ve already crowdfunded $75,000 for this campaign (this includes a grant recommendation that the EA Long-term Future fund is currently very strongly considering), but I believe the grantee can productively absorb more money. This would fund a teaching buyout for the grantee, Professor Chris Chambers (who happens to be a fellow Aussie!).
Chris Chambers has already hired assistants to push his Registered Reports advocacy forward and I’m exceedingly excited about his work. There was an editorial in Nature about it a few weeks ago, but in brief, he has implemented the new Registered Reports publication format at more than 200 journals now (including PLoS Biology, a top biology journal). More promisingly, he is also lobbying PNAS, generally considered to be the best journal after Nature and Science, to implement the format through an open letter signed by 250 other scientists.
If he is successful and scientists realize that they can get a publication in PNAS just by submitting a paper with exceptional methodology, but independent on whether the results are positive, then it might cascade into changing science in a fundamental way in the near future. I think Chris is very driven and can productively use additional funds.
I’m the co-founder of Lets-Fund.org.
We do independent, in-depth research to help foundations and individuals to donate to the most effective policies to solve today’s most important global challenges (e.g. the replication crisis, climate change).
One of our two campaigns is on improving all of hypothesis-driven science by implementing a new publication format called Registered Reports.
You can find our in-depth write-up on this here:
Lets-Fund.org/Better-Science
We’ve already crowdfunded $75,000 for this campaign (this includes a grant recommendation that the EA Long-term Future fund is currently very strongly considering), but I believe the grantee can productively absorb more money. This would fund a teaching buyout for the grantee, Professor Chris Chambers (who happens to be a fellow Aussie!).
Chris Chambers has already hired assistants to push his Registered Reports advocacy forward and I’m exceedingly excited about his work. There was an editorial in Nature about it a few weeks ago, but in brief, he has implemented the new Registered Reports publication format at more than 200 journals now (including PLoS Biology, a top biology journal). More promisingly, he is also lobbying PNAS, generally considered to be the best journal after Nature and Science, to implement the format through an open letter signed by 250 other scientists.
If he is successful and scientists realize that they can get a publication in PNAS just by submitting a paper with exceptional methodology, but independent on whether the results are positive, then it might cascade into changing science in a fundamental way in the near future. I think Chris is very driven and can productively use additional funds.
There has also been some recent interest in global development about Registered Reports (see: https://blogs.worldbank.org/impactevaluations/pre-results-review-journal-development-economics-lessons-learned-so-far ) so I feel like this could prevent another Worm Wars situation (see https://blog.givewell.org/2017/12/07/questioning-evidence-hookworm-eradication-american-south/ ) , and so this grant opportunity would also work for someone interested in improving global development.
Let me know if you have any questions at (happy to jump on a call):
Hauke@Lets-Fund.org