I re-analyzed OpenPhil’s grants data just now (link here), and I noticed that across all your grants since Jan. 1, 2020, scientific research is the focus area with the largest amount granted to, at $66M, or 27% of total giving since then, closely beating out global health and development (chart shown below).
OpenPhil also gave an average of $48M per year from 2017-2020 to scientific research. I’m surprised by this—I knew OpenPhil gave some funding to scientific research, but I didn’t know it’s now the largest cause OpenPhil grants to.
Was there something that happened that made OpenPhil decide to grant more in this area?
Scientific research isn’t a cause area heavily associated with EA currently − 80K doesn’t really feature scientific research in their content or as a priority path, other than for doing technical AI safety research or biorisk research. Also, EA groups and CEA don’t feature scientific research as one of EA’s main causes—the focus still tends to be on global health and development, animal welfare, longtermism, and movement building / meta. (I guess scientific research is cross-cutting across these areas, but I still don’t see a lot of focus on it). Do you think more EAs should be looking into careers in scientific research? Why or why not?
A follow-up question: What would this chart look like if all the opportunities you want to fund existed? In other words, to what extent does the breakdown of funding shown here capture Open Phil’s views on cause prioritization vs. reflect limiting factors such as the availability of high-quality funding opportunities, and what would it look like if there were no such limiting factors?
I haven’t done a systematic analysis, but at a quick glance I’d note that quite a number of the grants in scientific research seem like their outputs would directly support main EA cause areas such as biorisk and global health—e.g. in the last 1-2 years I see a number on malaria prevention, vaccine development, antivirals, disease diagnostics etc.
(Uh, I just interacted with you but this is not related in any sense.)
I think your are interpreting Open Phil’s giving to “Scientific research” to mean it is a distinct cause priority, separate from the others.
For example, you say:
… EA groups and CEA don’t feature scientific research as one of EA’s main causes—the focus still tends to be on global health and development, animal welfare, longtermism, and movement building / meta
To be clear, in this interpretation, someone looking for an altruistic career could go into “scientific research” and make an impact distinct from “Global Health and Development” and other “regular” cause areas.
However, instead, is it possible that “scientific research” mainly just supports Open Philanthropy’s various “regular” causes?
For example, a malaria research grant is categorized under “Scientific Research”, but for all intents and purposes is in the area of “Global Health and Development”.
So this interpretation, funding that is in “Scientific Research” sort of as an accounting thing, not because it is a distinct cause area.
In support of this interpretation, taking a quick look at the recent grants for “Scientific Research” (on March 18, 2021) shows that most are plausibly in support of “regular” cause areas:
Similarly, sorted by largest amount of grant, the top grants seem to be in the areas of “Global Health”, and “Biosecurity”.
Your question does highlight the importance of scientific research in Open Philanthropy.
Somewhat of a digression (but interesting) are secondary questions:
Theories of change related, e.g. questions about institutions, credibility, knowledge, power and politics in R1 academia, and how could these be edited or improved by sustained EA-like funding.
There is also the presence of COVID-19 related projects. If we wanted to press, maybe unduly, we could express skepticism of these grants. This is an area immensely less neglected and smaller in scale (?)—many more people will die of hunger or sanitation in Africa, even just indirectly from the effects of COVID-19, than the virus itself. The reason why this is undue is that I could see why people sitting on a board donating a large amount of money would not act during a global crisis in a time with great uncertainty.
Hey Charles, yeah Sean _o_ h made a similar comment. I now see that a lot of the scientific research grants are still targeted towards global health and development or biosecurity and pandemic preparedness.
Nevertheless, I think my questions still stand—I’d still love to hear how OpenPhil decided to grant more towards scientific research, especially for global health and development. I’m also curious if there are already any “big wins” among these scientific research grants.
I also think it’s worth asking him “Do you think more EAs should be looking into careers in scientific research? Why or why not?”. I think only a few EA groups have discussion groups about scientific research or improving science, so I guess a related question would be if he thinks that there should be more reading groups / discussion groups on scientific research or improving science, in order to increase the number of EAs interested in scientific research as a career.
This seems like great points and of course, your question stands.
I wanted to say that most R1 research is problematic for new grads: this is because of difficulty of success, low career capital, and frankly “impact” can also be dubious. It is also hard to get started. It typically requires PhD, post-doc(s), all poorly paid—contrast with say, software engineering.
My motivation for writing the above is for others, akin to the “bycatch” article—I don’t think you are here to read my opinions.
Thanks for responding thoughtfully and I’m sure you will get an interesting answer from Holden.
I re-analyzed OpenPhil’s grants data just now (link here), and I noticed that across all your grants since Jan. 1, 2020, scientific research is the focus area with the largest amount granted to, at $66M, or 27% of total giving since then, closely beating out global health and development (chart shown below).
OpenPhil also gave an average of $48M per year from 2017-2020 to scientific research. I’m surprised by this—I knew OpenPhil gave some funding to scientific research, but I didn’t know it’s now the largest cause OpenPhil grants to.
Was there something that happened that made OpenPhil decide to grant more in this area?
Scientific research isn’t a cause area heavily associated with EA currently − 80K doesn’t really feature scientific research in their content or as a priority path, other than for doing technical AI safety research or biorisk research. Also, EA groups and CEA don’t feature scientific research as one of EA’s main causes—the focus still tends to be on global health and development, animal welfare, longtermism, and movement building / meta. (I guess scientific research is cross-cutting across these areas, but I still don’t see a lot of focus on it). Do you think more EAs should be looking into careers in scientific research? Why or why not?
A follow-up question: What would this chart look like if all the opportunities you want to fund existed? In other words, to what extent does the breakdown of funding shown here capture Open Phil’s views on cause prioritization vs. reflect limiting factors such as the availability of high-quality funding opportunities, and what would it look like if there were no such limiting factors?
I haven’t done a systematic analysis, but at a quick glance I’d note that quite a number of the grants in scientific research seem like their outputs would directly support main EA cause areas such as biorisk and global health—e.g. in the last 1-2 years I see a number on malaria prevention, vaccine development, antivirals, disease diagnostics etc.
By the way, you’re right 80K doesn’t feature scientific research as a priority path but, they do have a short bit on it in “other longtermist issues”.
Also, Holden wrote about it here (although this is almost 6 years old).
Ah right, thanks!
Hi Brian,
(Uh, I just interacted with you but this is not related in any sense.)
I think your are interpreting Open Phil’s giving to “Scientific research” to mean it is a distinct cause priority, separate from the others.
For example, you say:
To be clear, in this interpretation, someone looking for an altruistic career could go into “scientific research” and make an impact distinct from “Global Health and Development” and other “regular” cause areas.
However, instead, is it possible that “scientific research” mainly just supports Open Philanthropy’s various “regular” causes?
For example, a malaria research grant is categorized under “Scientific Research”, but for all intents and purposes is in the area of “Global Health and Development”.
So this interpretation, funding that is in “Scientific Research” sort of as an accounting thing, not because it is a distinct cause area.
In support of this interpretation, taking a quick look at the recent grants for “Scientific Research” (on March 18, 2021) shows that most are plausibly in support of “regular” cause areas:
Similarly, sorted by largest amount of grant, the top grants seem to be in the areas of “Global Health”, and “Biosecurity”.
Your question does highlight the importance of scientific research in Open Philanthropy.
Somewhat of a digression (but interesting) are secondary questions:
Theories of change related, e.g. questions about institutions, credibility, knowledge, power and politics in R1 academia, and how could these be edited or improved by sustained EA-like funding.
There is also the presence of COVID-19 related projects. If we wanted to press, maybe unduly, we could express skepticism of these grants. This is an area immensely less neglected and smaller in scale (?)—many more people will die of hunger or sanitation in Africa, even just indirectly from the effects of COVID-19, than the virus itself. The reason why this is undue is that I could see why people sitting on a board donating a large amount of money would not act during a global crisis in a time with great uncertainty.
Hey Charles, yeah Sean _o_ h made a similar comment. I now see that a lot of the scientific research grants are still targeted towards global health and development or biosecurity and pandemic preparedness.
Nevertheless, I think my questions still stand—I’d still love to hear how OpenPhil decided to grant more towards scientific research, especially for global health and development. I’m also curious if there are already any “big wins” among these scientific research grants.
I also think it’s worth asking him “Do you think more EAs should be looking into careers in scientific research? Why or why not?”. I think only a few EA groups have discussion groups about scientific research or improving science, so I guess a related question would be if he thinks that there should be more reading groups / discussion groups on scientific research or improving science, in order to increase the number of EAs interested in scientific research as a career.
This seems like great points and of course, your question stands.
I wanted to say that most R1 research is problematic for new grads: this is because of difficulty of success, low career capital, and frankly “impact” can also be dubious. It is also hard to get started. It typically requires PhD, post-doc(s), all poorly paid—contrast with say, software engineering.
My motivation for writing the above is for others, akin to the “bycatch” article—I don’t think you are here to read my opinions.
Thanks for responding thoughtfully and I’m sure you will get an interesting answer from Holden.