As willbradshaw and Ozzie commented, it seems to me that the COI policy can benefit from categorizing more of the cases as “requiring the fund manager to recuse themselves from casting a vote”.
I can’t imagine myself being able to objectively cast a vote about funding my room-mate / close friend / partner’s boss / someone who I had a substantial romantic relationship with that ended 2 years ago (especially if the potential grantee is in a desperate financial situation!). I’m skeptical that humans in general can make reasonably objective judgments in such cases.
If fund managers that recuse themselves from casting a vote can still provide their analysis and final recommendation to other fund managers, it seems to me that the downsides are mitigated to a large extent.
One of the things that I am most concerned about if you were to just move towards recusal, is you just end up in a situation where by necessity the other fund members just have to take the recused person’s word for the grant being good (or you pass up on all the most valuable grant opportunities). Then their own votes mostly just indirectly represent their trust in the fund member with the COI, as opposed to their independent assessment. This to me seems like it much further reduces accountability and transparency, and muddles a bunch of the internal decision-making.
These considerations indeed seem important! Perhaps the problem of muddling internal decision-making can be mitigated by making the voting anonymous (or having the final discussions and voting process being visible only to the fund managers who cast a vote).
As willbradshaw and Ozzie commented, it seems to me that the COI policy can benefit from categorizing more of the cases as “requiring the fund manager to recuse themselves from casting a vote”.
I can’t imagine myself being able to objectively cast a vote about funding my room-mate / close friend / partner’s boss / someone who I had a substantial romantic relationship with that ended 2 years ago (especially if the potential grantee is in a desperate financial situation!). I’m skeptical that humans in general can make reasonably objective judgments in such cases.
If fund managers that recuse themselves from casting a vote can still provide their analysis and final recommendation to other fund managers, it seems to me that the downsides are mitigated to a large extent.
You commented:
These considerations indeed seem important! Perhaps the problem of muddling internal decision-making can be mitigated by making the voting anonymous (or having the final discussions and voting process being visible only to the fund managers who cast a vote).