Oh, hmm, I think we rarely request feedback from more than one or two experts, so I would be somewhat surprised if this has a large effect. But yeah, definitely in biorisk and policy, I think if the expert we ping tends to have a negative take, we probably don’t fund it (and now that you say it, it does feel a bit more like we are asking more experts on policy grants than other grants, so there might be some of the effect that you are describing going on).
If these experts regularly have a large impact on these decisions, that’s an argument for transparency about them. This is a factor that could of course be outweighed by other considerations (ability to give frank advice, confidentiality, etc). Perhaps might be worth asking them how they’d feel about being named (with no pressure attached, obviously).
Also, can one volunteer as an expert? I would—and I imagine others (just on this post, perhaps Ian and Sam?) would too.
Oh, hmm, I think we rarely request feedback from more than one or two experts, so I would be somewhat surprised if this has a large effect. But yeah, definitely in biorisk and policy, I think if the expert we ping tends to have a negative take, we probably don’t fund it (and now that you say it, it does feel a bit more like we are asking more experts on policy grants than other grants, so there might be some of the effect that you are describing going on).
If these experts regularly have a large impact on these decisions, that’s an argument for transparency about them. This is a factor that could of course be outweighed by other considerations (ability to give frank advice, confidentiality, etc). Perhaps might be worth asking them how they’d feel about being named (with no pressure attached, obviously).
Also, can one volunteer as an expert? I would—and I imagine others (just on this post, perhaps Ian and Sam?) would too.