Neil_Dullaghan🔹

Karma: 2,966

Dr. Neil Dullaghan is a senior research manager at Rethink Priorities. Rethink Priorities is a global priority think-and-do tank, aiming to do good at scale. We research and implement pressing opportunities to make the world better. We act upon these opportunities by developing and implementing strategies, projects, and solutions to key issues. We do this work in close partnership with foundations and impact-focused non-profits or other entities. Neil currently works in the animal welfare team, with an expertise in European Union policy.

Neil is also a fund manager on the EA animal welfare fund.

You can hear my takes here:

https://www.howilearnedtoloveshrimp.com/podcast/episode/7bd09f8a/neil-dullaghan-on-his-research-on-the-importance-of-influencing-eu-policy-and-other-important-research-topics-that-rethink-priorities-have-produced

He holds a PhD in Political & Social Science from the European University Institute, an MPhil in European Politics & Society from the University of Oxford and a BA in International Relations from Dublin City University.

He has volunteered for Charity Entrepreneurship & Animal Charity Evaluators. Before joining Rethink Priorities, he was a political data manager for WeVoteUSA while it participated in Fast Forward’s accelerator for tech nonprofits, held numerous research assistant positions at the University of Oxford, and acted as Strategy Associate for a behavioural science think tank, The Decision Lab.

Neil_Dullaghan🔹 Nov 2, 2021, 6:23 PM
13 points
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on: Annual donation rituals?
I write letters to the future when I give. Sometimes I write what the expected value of the giving was, and future me can reflect on how that panned out. Sometimes I ask my future self how did the world turn out (no replies yet). Present me enjoys getting surprise emails from past me and hearing how excited they were by giving and I get some delight in seeing the through line in my values.

I also get together every few months with a select group of friends and we each give a five minute presentation about an idea we want to share (ranging from serious to silly). Once a year we devote a session to our giving. It works well because it slots into a preexisting ritual we are bought into anyway. Often people offer up their giving record for group review, read out the GiveDirectly Live Newsfeed, do quick fire rounds of the best new opportunities we’ve given to, or run a mini donor lottery.

Neil_Dullaghan🔹 Oct 29, 2021, 9:48 AM
8 points
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on: Cultured meat predictions were overly optimistic
Fwiw, we tasked a couple of people in Singapore to try get the GOOD Meat cultured chicken nuggets from the 1880 member’s club restaurant and they were unable to do so. The restaurant does not serve them directly anymore. It’s only possible to order takeout, and they claim to only have 10 portions/week on Thursday lunches. Our volunteer was unsuccessful on two attempts to order them for delivery. We also heard claims that a specific Marriott Hotel serves the nuggets in person but we were unable to find information online and our other volunteer was unable to get it in person.
What links here?
- Cultured meat predictions were overly optimistic by Neil_Dullaghan🔹 (Sep 15, 2021, 12:32 PM; 195 points)

Neil_Dullaghan🔹 Oct 8, 2021, 8:53 AM
4 points
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in reply to: Linch’s comment on: Linch’s Shortform
For those interested, here are the paragraphs that added new information on the CE Delft TEA that I hadn’t considered or seen in other TEAs or reviews.

Cell growth

“For bacteria, one may generally subculture in the range of 1:10 to 1:100, depending on the bacterium. For stem cells, which are more fastidious, the highest subculture ratio (i.e. the amount of an old culture one uses to seed or start a new culture) is typically 1:5. This is significantly less than the 1:200 cell ratio that is proposed in the TEA. Experience dictates that if stem cells are sub-cultured at the ratio proposed, they will either differentiate and stop growing, or simply will die. ”

Medium costs

“In an analysis of culture medium costs, Specht (2019) used DMEM/F12 medium as a base, with a cost of $62,400 for a 20,000 L batch (or $3.12/L). However, this appears to be the cost for powdered bulk medium (from, e.g., MP Bio), and does not include the cost for labour, USP water, formulation, filtration and testing prior to culture. Given the fact that up to now stem cells require custom media, the price for base medium alone could rise to $822,000 for the same sized (20,000 L)batch. However, it should be noted that a properly developed medium may rely less on growth factor additives” This is also used by Risner, et al (2020) in their “this is where the miracle happens” Scenario 4.

“insulin costs will likely remain as they are due to current and future manufacturing standards and volumes. ”

Contamination

“The building will require air locks with increasing air handling quality, for both materials and personnel. Typically this comprises a Class D corridor, with Class C rooms except where open phase is carried out, which must be Class A in a Class B environment with Class C minimal changing rooms. The TEA document does not take into account this quality standard, nor does it take into account the additional personnel time”

Stability

“Cell pastes or slurries are notoriously unstable and will deteriorate very quickly,losing their cellular structure. Real meat on the other hand is built on a scaffold of blood vessels, interdigitating cell structure and layers of connective tissues,tendons etc., that helps to maintain structure. Even ground meat will maintain some of this structure at the macro level, and is seldom if ever homogenized to a single cell slurry. Given the large yields of CCP [Cell Cultured Product], a process must be devised to ensure that the slurry maintains its structure.”

Monoclonal antibodies

“In summary, Monoclonal antibody yields have seen a 10- to 20-fold increase in the last 10 to 15 years, with 10s of billions of dollars of investment in R&D across multiple industries. In the TEA example, it is proposed that costs will be reduced, with a resulting >1000-fold decrease in costs. Given the experience with monoclonal antibodies, this may be overly ambitious and does not take into account the fact that every cell bank will be different – it is possible that each one will need to be developed independently.”

Batch times

“In this instance, the TEA authors had proposed a 10-day perfusion culture that would use 800 L of media for each 2,000 L of product. . . . For such a short perfusion time, normally the process would be better suited to a high-density fed-batch process (10-12 d). Perfusion generally is reserved for longer-term cultures (20-35 d or more, Bausch et al., 2019)”

Bioreactors

“Large scale bioreactors (>2,000 L) will remain custom built items for the foreseeable future, and thus will be expensive to build and install.Cost savings initiated through process and genetic engineering to increase yields, cell line development . . . is likely not an option for a multitude of regulatory and social reasons”

Capital costs

“The Capital costs appear to only take into account the myocyte cell manufacturing process. Further, a multiplier of tank capital costs is used to extrapolate to the total capital, rather than drawing a concept design and estimating surface area and cost to within a certain margin of error . . . Clearly the capital costs are greater than those estimated by the authors in theTEA, with apparently only a small fraction of the equipment and infrastructure accounted for. It is unclear how the ‘Social Investment Criteria’ would work in this situation, as a factory of this size and complexity will cost several hundreds of millions of dollars to build. Due to the complexity of the manufacturing processes, the requirement to remain as an aseptic process, commissioning and validating the plant, even to food grade requirements, could also cost in the millions of dollars, depending on the final product profile. Generally, these costs would be put against the products coming from the factory over a 10-year depreciation period.”

Personnel costs

“Personnel costs are estimated as $100,000/annum/per FTE in the TEA, fullyloaded. This is likely an under-estimate for the operators in the aseptic areas, as staff experienced in the operation, validation and trouble-shooting of complex bioreactor and down stream process processes would be required. This estimate could be increased to $150,000 and even that may be on the low end depending on where the factory is to be located. ”

There are a bunch of other critiques are basically arguing “this is expensive and nobody will fund it”, but that’s just an intuition, not a hard technical stop.

Here’s the layout provided. I’d love to see more of these, like the one WildType provides here

Neil_Dullaghan🔹 Oct 1, 2021, 7:26 AM
11 points
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on: Cultured meat: A comparison of techno-economic analyses
Fwiw, the Good Food Institute have produced a “Statement addressing techno-economic analyses” and a “Preliminary review of technical assumptions within the Humbird analysis”

Neil_Dullaghan🔹 Oct 1, 2021, 6:33 AM
2 points
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in reply to: Stijn Bruers 🔸’s comment on: Cultured meat: A comparison of techno-economic analyses
Thanks for sharing your perspective.

The prediction “it is only a matter of time” has an effect on how to allocate EA resources depending on how long that matter of time is, even with additional resources going towards it, so I’d be curious what time period you’d assign for this and how you came to think that.

Even without having to construct brains, eyes, ears, tails, feathers, Humbird thinks it will still be very expensive at the moment since creating the immune system is so hard to create- so you need pharma grade standards with are expensive (one can disagree with this assumption or think eventually it won’t be true, as CE Delft do, but I’d be interested in clearer reasoning as to why one thinks it’s likely)

I’m not sure why you assume the production unit for animal-based meat consumes 50% of resources for its construction (growth)?

Neil_Dullaghan🔹 Sep 17, 2021, 8:24 AM
12 points
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in reply to: MichaelStJules’s comment on: Cultured meat predictions were overly optimistic
I don’t think it’s reasonably likely this particular prediction was delayed by COVID-19, given they made this prediction in early 2019 about a product being on offer *in 2019*. I don’t think there is much to suggest any impediments to a product roll-out in 2019 from the pandemic since it only started having major impacts/reactions in 2020.

For other predictions in this dataset made by companies, research institutes, and reported in the media it seems likely the pandemic threw up an unexpected obstacle and delay. However, that would presumably also be true for whatever other tools or sources we might alternatively rely on for cultured meat timelines and so I don’t think it changes the overall conclusion on how much stock to put into the types of predictions/predictors represented in this dataset.

Neil_Dullaghan🔹 Sep 16, 2021, 10:40 PM
6 points
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on: Cultured meat predictions were overly optimistic
My colleague Linch asked me “to include a random sample of 9 predictions that resolved negatively.” I numbered the incorrect market/supermarket predictions and then randomised the list of numbers, and used an online random number generator to select nine numbers.
- March 2019 “JUST, the San Francisco-based company racing to be the first to bring cell-based meat to market, announced in a CBS San Francisco interview last month that they would debut their first product — a cultured chicken nugget — in Asia sometime this year”
- February 2018 “Tetrick claims his startup has finally made the process cost-effective enough to take to market: At the end of this year, he says, Just will officially introduce an as yet undisclosed lab-grown meat, the first time the stuff will hit shelves.”
- March 2018 “Memphis Meats is trying to bring its products to high-end restaurant menus by next year, and, by 2021, bring production costs down to equal grocery store meat products at $3 to $4 per pound.”
- December 2018 “The steak product is expected to be ready to sell within two years.”—Aleph Farms
- January 2018 “It [Supermeat] reckons it is still up to three years away from putting SuperMeat products on supermarket shelves.”
- ACE reported that in February 2017 Mark Post predicted “For small-scale, somewhat expensive products, most companies will have cultured meat products on the market in 3–4 years (i.e., 2020–2021). It will probably take another 3–4 years (i.e., 2023–2025) for the price to come down to the level where it’s acceptable for the broader public.”
- June 2006 Scientist Paul Kosnik: “We believe the goal of a processed meat product is attainable in the next five years if funding is available and the R&D is pursued aggressively.”
- January 2016 (no hyperlink was given in the MotherJones article but they credit GFI as the source and you can see it copy-pasted into at least two media articles on Google Search) ”Memphis Meats is already growing real meat in small quantities using cells from cows, pigs, and chickens. The company’s first products—hot dogs, sausages, burgers, and meatballs—will be developed using recipes perfected over a half century by award-winning chefs. The founders expect to have products to market within five years.”
- August 2009 Jason Matheny of New Harvest said “We think that a technology to produce cultured ground meats—burgers, sausages, nuggets, and so forth—could be commercialized within ten years,”
What links here?
- Cultured meat predictions were overly optimistic by Neil_Dullaghan🔹 (Sep 15, 2021, 12:32 PM; 195 points)

Neil_Dullaghan🔹 Sep 16, 2021, 2:28 PM
13 points
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in reply to: Eleos Arete Citrini’s comment on: Cultured meat predictions were overly optimistic
I don’t think Anders Sandberg uses the EA Forum, so I’ll just repost what Anders wrote in reaction to this on Twitter:

”I suspect we have a “publication bias” of tech predictions where the pessimists don’t make predictions (think the tech impossible or irrelevant, hence don’t respond to queries, or find their long timescales so uncertain they are loath to state them).

In this case it is fairly clear that progress is being made but it is slower than hoped for: predictions as a whole made a rate mistake, but perhaps not an eventual outcome mistake (we will see). I think this is is[sic] a case of Amara’s law.

Amara’s law (that we overestimate the magnitude of short-term change and underestimate long-term change) can be explained by exponential-blindness, but also hype cycles, and integrating a technology in society is a slow process”

Fwiw, I broadly agree. I think those in the industry making public predictions have plausibly “good” reasons to skew optimistic. Attracting the funding, media attention, talent necessary to make progress might simply require generating buzz and optimism- even if the progress it generates is at a slower rate that implied by their public predictions. So it would actually be odd if overall the majority of predictions by these actors don’t resolve negatively and overly optimistic (they aren’t trying to rank high on the Metaculus leaderboard).

So those who are shocked by the results presented here may have cause to update and put less weight on predictions from cultured media companies and the media repeating them, and rely on something else. For those who aren’t surprised by these results, then they probably already placed an appropriate weight on how seriously to take public predictions from the industry.

On how this industry’s predictions compare to others’, I too would like to see that and identify the right reference class(es).

Neil_Dullaghan🔹 Jul 23, 2021, 4:31 PM
4 points
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on: Strategic considerations for upcoming EU farmed animal legislation
See some updates in Lewis Bollard’s latest Farmed Animal Welfare newsletter https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/WF3Dxes2GJ6QhESfW/an-end-to-cages-in-europe

Neil_Dullaghan🔹 Jul 23, 2021, 4:19 PM
18 points
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in reply to: FC’s comment on: An End to Cages in Europe?
As some examples, Open Wing Alliance, Compassion in World Farming, Humane Society International/Europe (HSI), and Animal Protection Denmark (Dyrenes Beskyttelse) have already submitted comments to this feedback period.

For the subsequent public consultation process I would again highlight that Alice DiConcetto, of Animal Law Europe recently published a short manual on how to submit feedback to an EU Public Consultation that I think will be valuable for advocates. IMO, feedback will be more impactful if it sends a consistent message but avoids sending duplicate submissions which the EU civil servants will just batch together as such.

Also worth flagging that the Commission included in its inception impact assessment two options for Animal welfare at the time of killing considering farmed fish (page 7 of the downloadable doc).

“Option 1: In the light of new scientific evidence, add species-specific provisions for the killing of the five main species of farmed fish (Atlantic salmon, common carp, rainbow trout, European sea bass and gilthead sea bream), and review current requirements which cannot be applied to farmed fish (such as individual monitoring and certain definitions) to better ensure the welfare of those species.

Option 2: In the light of new scientific evidence, add species-specific provisions for the killing of European sea bass and gilthead sea bream and review current requirements which cannot be applied to farmed fish (such as individual monitoring and certain definitions) to better ensure the welfare of those species.”

And on Animal welfare at the farm level noted (page 6) considering “New species-specific animal welfare requirements on dairy cows (and possibly on rabbits, pullets, layer breeders, broiler breeders and day-old chicks ) and with empowerments for the Commission to adopt at a later stage further, detailed rules on additional species – such as farmed fish – based on scientific evidence as it progressively becomes available.” This also mirrors recent comments by Commissioner Kyriakides in which she said “we cannot solve every issue by the end of 2023 . .. it is not possible to have updated EFSA opinions for all relevant species, so we must prioritise while paving the way for future actions. This is why when revising the legislation the Commission intends to propose empowerments allowing specific welfare requirements to be introduced to certain species at a later stage . . . we intend to agree a mandate with EFSA for future reports, . . . , allowing us to lay down rules at a later stage, should co-legislators grant us the relevant empowerments”.

Neil_Dullaghan🔹 Jun 11, 2021, 4:39 AM
5 points
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on: A bunch of reasons why you might have low energy (or other vague health problems) and what to do about it
I’m no expert, and appreciate the honest epistemic status, but I quickly asked an IBS R.D. who said:

”like irritable bowel disease, which is much worse”
->It’s inflammatory bowel disease not irritable. There’s irritable bowel syndrome and inflammatory bowel disease. There’s is no irritable bowel disease.

”there’s not that much you can do to diagnose it”
->IBS is diagnosed based off the Rome IV diagnostic criteria

Neil_Dullaghan🔹 May 21, 2021, 8:54 PM
4 points
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on: Three charitable recommendations for COVID-19 in India
Did you consider advocacy, as mentioned in a recent Future Perfect piece (talking about vaccine supply generally, not specific to India): https://www.vox.com/future-perfect/22440986/covax-challenges-covid-19-vaccines-global-inequity

″ Arguably, donors could have a bigger impact by donating to an advocacy group than by donating to Go Give One, though this field is so new that it’s hard to know for sure.

For donors who prefer to invest in advocacy, Dodson and Glassman both recommended three groups: Global Citizen, the ONE Campaign, and the Pandemic Action Network.

“To the extent that advocacy movements help reduce the political cost of doing the right thing and create political benefits, I think it’s a good thing,” Glassman said. “And the amounts of money at stake that they could potentially influence are large, especially in the United States.” ”

Neil_Dullaghan🔹 Apr 21, 2021, 4:53 PM
2 points
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on: Why Animals Matter for Effective Altruism
Just noticed that the Animal Pain and Suffering section on the Wikipedia page on Denialism that you mention was deleted 29 November 2019 after discussion about what constitutes denialism.

Neil_Dullaghan🔹 Apr 18, 2021, 6:30 PM
16 points
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in reply to: 80000_Hours’s comment on: Launching a new resource: ‘Effective Altruism: An Introduction’
Hi, I wrote the cause area EA Survey 2019 post for Rethink Priorities so thought I should just weigh in here on this minor point.

Fwiw, I think it’s more accurate to say 22% of respondents thought Global Poverty should be at least one of the top priorities, if not the only top priority, but when forced to only pick only one of five traditional cause areas to be the top priority, 32% chose Global Poverty.

The data shows 476 of the 2164 respondents (22%) who gave any top priority cause rating in that question selected Global Poverty and “this should be the top priority”. However, 356 of those 476 also selected another cause area as “this should be the top priority”, and 120 only selected Global Poverty for “this should be the top priority”. So 5.5% thought Global Poverty should be the ONLY top priority, and 16.5% thought Global Poverty should be one, among others, of the top priorities. Also note that the subsequent question forced respondents to only chose one of five traditional cause areas as a top priority and there 32% (of 2023) chose Global Poverty.

Neil_Dullaghan🔹 Aug 26, 2020, 2:39 PM
6 points
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on: Reducing long-term risks from malevolent actors
Thanks for this!
I see you referenced Matthews et al. (2018), which I haven’t read, and wondered if you had also seen the Authoritarian Ruling Elites Database, compiled by Matthews (2019): “a collection of biographical and professional information on the individuals who constitute the top elite of authoritarian regimes.” Each of the project’s 18 datasets focuses on a particular regime, such as the military dictatorship that ruled Chile from 1973 to 1990. The biographical data-points include gender, occupation, dates of birth and death, tenure among the elite, and more. (This came to me via the Data Is Plural mailing list fwiw). Apologies if you mentioned it and I missed it.

Neil_Dullaghan🔹 Aug 15, 2020, 9:18 PM
11 points
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in reply to: Chi’s comment on: EA Forum update: New editor! (And more)
+1 that the footnotes issue is quite an inconvenience.

Neil_Dullaghan🔹 Jul 16, 2020, 5:50 AM
1 point
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in reply to: Z’s comment on: EA Survey 2019 Series: Engagement Levels
GWWC membership here refers to anyone who provided a year in response to the question in the EA Survey “If you have taken the Giving What We Can pledge, please note the year:”

Neil_Dullaghan🔹 Mar 5, 2020, 10:14 PM
2 points
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in reply to: sky’s comment on: EA Survey 2019 Series: Community Demographics & Characteristics
Glad to hear that it is a useful resource!

I have updated the summary to include links to all the posts in the series so far (a pingbacks list will also appear at the bottom of the post if one opts into the experimental features on the Forum). The entire list of articles in the EA Survey 2019 Series (plus our other publications) can also be found on our website.

Neil_Dullaghan🔹 Jan 24, 2020, 12:36 PM
2 points
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in reply to: David_Kristoffersson’s comment on: EA Survey 2019 Series: Geographic Distribution of EAs
Good point! Thanks. I have added FHI to the text.

Neil_Dullaghan🔹 Jan 23, 2020, 2:37 PM
12 points
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on: Should EAs be more welcoming to thoughtful and aligned Republicans?
Since you mentioned it in your footnote, the EA Survey 2019 post on geographic distribution of EAs is out. We don’t have information on party identification, but we can see that 2.23% of EAs living in the USA are politically affiliated with the Center Right and 1.19% with the Right (12.76% with Libertarianism & 76.56% with the Left or Center Left). Keeping in mind the caveat that our data only shows where an EA currently lives so an EA reporting both living in the USA and being on the Right-hand side of the political spectrum does not necessarily mean they are a registered Republican.

https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/cvkqyxepf4W2whYSK/ea-survey-2019-series-geographic-distribution-of-eas#Political_affiliation