I thought I’d work through how my reasoning goes for the provided examples.
Many of these examples are grants that have later been funded by other grantmakers or private donors.
In my judgement, most of these (very helpful) concrete examples fall under either a) this deserves a public statement, or b) this represents a subjective judgement call where other funders should make that call independently. It’s not that I think a private communication is never the right way to handle it, it’s just that it seems to me like they usually aren’t, even in the examples that are picked out.
The first three examples all involve subjective judgement calls, by a scientist, by yourself, and by an acquaintance, and it would be bad if these judgement calls (especially by just an acquantance!) propagated via a whisper network instead of other people making an independent decision.
The next two examples, which involve grantees not delivering on promises, if they involve sufficiently large grants...well, I think a grantmaker ought to state what the impact of their grant are, and if a grant didn’t have impact then that should be a made a note of publicly. This should not be an attack on the grantee, this is transparency by the grantmaker about what the impact their grant had, and bad grants should be acknowledged. However, I guess in the scenario where the grantee is intended to remain anonymous, then it is fair to propagate that info via whisper network but not public statement, but I would question the practice of giving large grants to anonymous grantees. For small grants to individuals, I guess if someone failed to deliver once isn’t it best to let it go and let them try again elsewhere with someone else, the way it would be in any other professional realm? If they failed to deliver multiple times a whisper network is justified. If they seem to be running a scam then it’s time for a public statement.
The rest of the examples save the last, which involve concerns about character...I mean, outright plagiarism and faking data absolutely should be called out publicly. When it’s about less substantial and more vague reputational concerns, I can see the case for private comms a bit more, although it’s a goldilocks scenario even then because if the concerns aren’t substantially verified then shouldn’t others independently make their judgement calls?
(The final example is valid for a private check, but tautologically so—yes of course, if the rational for a grantmaker is “LTFF would probably fund it” they ought to check if LTFF did in fact evaluate and reject it.)
In summary I think for the majority of these examples, I think either the public statement should be made, or the issue should be dropped, and it’s only the very rare borderline case where private communications such that all grantmakers are actually secretly talking to each other and deferring to each other are the way to go.
In general, I think the bar for sharing (alleged) competency judgements to be a lot higher for sharing potential character issues.
And just so we’re on the same page, I consider the first example a character issue, not a competency issue. The second and third examples are kind of borderline between character vs competency issues; I think my anonymized description does not make the assessment clear to onlookers and more details are necessary.
I thought I’d work through how my reasoning goes for the provided examples.
In my judgement, most of these (very helpful) concrete examples fall under either a) this deserves a public statement, or b) this represents a subjective judgement call where other funders should make that call independently. It’s not that I think a private communication is never the right way to handle it, it’s just that it seems to me like they usually aren’t, even in the examples that are picked out.
The first three examples all involve subjective judgement calls, by a scientist, by yourself, and by an acquaintance, and it would be bad if these judgement calls (especially by just an acquantance!) propagated via a whisper network instead of other people making an independent decision.
The next two examples, which involve grantees not delivering on promises, if they involve sufficiently large grants...well, I think a grantmaker ought to state what the impact of their grant are, and if a grant didn’t have impact then that should be a made a note of publicly. This should not be an attack on the grantee, this is transparency by the grantmaker about what the impact their grant had, and bad grants should be acknowledged. However, I guess in the scenario where the grantee is intended to remain anonymous, then it is fair to propagate that info via whisper network but not public statement, but I would question the practice of giving large grants to anonymous grantees. For small grants to individuals, I guess if someone failed to deliver once isn’t it best to let it go and let them try again elsewhere with someone else, the way it would be in any other professional realm? If they failed to deliver multiple times a whisper network is justified. If they seem to be running a scam then it’s time for a public statement.
The rest of the examples save the last, which involve concerns about character...I mean, outright plagiarism and faking data absolutely should be called out publicly. When it’s about less substantial and more vague reputational concerns, I can see the case for private comms a bit more, although it’s a goldilocks scenario even then because if the concerns aren’t substantially verified then shouldn’t others independently make their judgement calls?
(The final example is valid for a private check, but tautologically so—yes of course, if the rational for a grantmaker is “LTFF would probably fund it” they ought to check if LTFF did in fact evaluate and reject it.)
In summary I think for the majority of these examples, I think either the public statement should be made, or the issue should be dropped, and it’s only the very rare borderline case where private communications such that all grantmakers are actually secretly talking to each other and deferring to each other are the way to go.
In general, I think the bar for sharing (alleged) competency judgements to be a lot higher for sharing potential character issues.
And just so we’re on the same page, I consider the first example a character issue, not a competency issue. The second and third examples are kind of borderline between character vs competency issues; I think my anonymized description does not make the assessment clear to onlookers and more details are necessary.