Hmm I sort of agree with this. I think when I run back-of-the-envelope calculations on the value of information that you can gain from “gold standard” studies or models on questions that are of potential interest in developed-world contexts (eg high-powered studies on zinc on common cold symptom, modeling how better ventilation can stop airborne disease spread at airports, some stuff on social platforms/infrastructures for testing vaccines, maybe some stuff on chronic fatigue), it naively seems like high-quality but simple research (but not implementation) for developed world health research (including but not limited to the traditional purview of public health) is plausibly competitive with Givewell-style global health charities even after accounting for the 100x-1000x multiplier.
I think the real reason people don’t do this more is because we’re limited more here on human capital than on $s. In particular, people with a) deep health backgrounds and b) strong EA alignment have pretty strong counterfactuals in working or attempting to work on either existential biorisk reduction or public health research for developing world diseases, both of which are probably more impactful (for different reasons).
Hmm I sort of agree with this. I think when I run back-of-the-envelope calculations on the value of information that you can gain from “gold standard” studies or models on questions that are of potential interest in developed-world contexts (eg high-powered studies on zinc on common cold symptom, modeling how better ventilation can stop airborne disease spread at airports, some stuff on social platforms/infrastructures for testing vaccines, maybe some stuff on chronic fatigue), it naively seems like high-quality but simple research (but not implementation) for developed world health research (including but not limited to the traditional purview of public health) is plausibly competitive with Givewell-style global health charities even after accounting for the 100x-1000x multiplier.
I think the real reason people don’t do this more is because we’re limited more here on human capital than on $s. In particular, people with a) deep health backgrounds and b) strong EA alignment have pretty strong counterfactuals in working or attempting to work on either existential biorisk reduction or public health research for developing world diseases, both of which are probably more impactful (for different reasons).