How can we encourage researchers to join the EA movement without making it seem as though we might be condemning some of their research for being too low-impact?
Nice questions. I think academia is moving in a promising direction in thinking about impact more. This affects funding, and means that individual academics are encouraged to engage with the question of the routes from their work to impact. How to measure the impact of research is a hard question, though, and the academic community is still learning how to do that. We can help people to take a big-picture perspective on choosing impactful research questions, rather than just choosing the most interesting questions.
I think it’s important to collaborate with researchers here rather than to judge from outside. They will know their area better than outsiders, and this expertise should help them identify the best questions. Most academics I know genuinely want their research to be high-impact, so would be open to this if framed properly.
The increased focus on impact from funding bodies may also provide a good opportunity for us to liaise with them about how we can most appropriately assess impact. If we can improve the practices that drive funding decisions, that will help make academic incentives line up even more with finding the most valuable research.
Nice questions. I think academia is moving in a promising direction in thinking about impact more. This affects funding, and means that individual academics are encouraged to engage with the question of the routes from their work to impact. How to measure the impact of research is a hard question, though, and the academic community is still learning how to do that. We can help people to take a big-picture perspective on choosing impactful research questions, rather than just choosing the most interesting questions.
I think it’s important to collaborate with researchers here rather than to judge from outside. They will know their area better than outsiders, and this expertise should help them identify the best questions. Most academics I know genuinely want their research to be high-impact, so would be open to this if framed properly.
The increased focus on impact from funding bodies may also provide a good opportunity for us to liaise with them about how we can most appropriately assess impact. If we can improve the practices that drive funding decisions, that will help make academic incentives line up even more with finding the most valuable research.