I agree with the above response, but I would like to add some caveats because I think potential grant applicants may draw the wrong conclusions otherwise:
If you are the kind of person who thinks carefully about these risks, are likely to change your course of action if you get critical feedback, and proactively sync up with the main people/orgs in your space to ensure you’re not making things worse, I want to encourage you to try risky projects nonetheless, including projects that have a risk of making things worse. Many EAs have made mistakes that caused harm, including myself (I mentioned one of them here), and while it would have been good to avoid them, learning from those mistakes also helped us improve our work.
My perception is that “taking carefully calculated risks” won’t lead to your grant application being rejected (perhaps it would even improve your chances of being funded because it’s hard to find people who can do that well) – but “taking risks without taking good measures to prevent/mitigate them” will.
I agree with the above response, but I would like to add some caveats because I think potential grant applicants may draw the wrong conclusions otherwise:
If you are the kind of person who thinks carefully about these risks, are likely to change your course of action if you get critical feedback, and proactively sync up with the main people/orgs in your space to ensure you’re not making things worse, I want to encourage you to try risky projects nonetheless, including projects that have a risk of making things worse. Many EAs have made mistakes that caused harm, including myself (I mentioned one of them here), and while it would have been good to avoid them, learning from those mistakes also helped us improve our work.
My perception is that “taking carefully calculated risks” won’t lead to your grant application being rejected (perhaps it would even improve your chances of being funded because it’s hard to find people who can do that well) – but “taking risks without taking good measures to prevent/mitigate them” will.