Collaborative Research: Understanding and overcoming the impediments to high-risk, high-return science

合作研究：理解并克服高风险、高回报科学的障碍

• 批准号: 2346644
• 负责人: Kevin Gross
• 金额: $ 20.03万
• 依托单位: North Carolina State University
• 依托单位国家: 美国
• 项目类别: Standard Grant
• 财政年份: 2024
• 资助国家: 美国
• 起止时间: 2024-04-15 至 2027-03-31
• 项目状态: 未结题
• 来源: https://www.nsf.gov/awardsearch/showAward?AWD_ID=2346644&HistoricalAwards=false
• 关键词: Collaborative; Research; Understanding; overcoming; impediments; Collaborative; Research; Understanding; overcoming; impediments

Scientific inquiry involves taking risks. Every experiment, every analysis, every collaboration entails embarking on a path whose destination is uncertain and whose terminus could be a dead end. Yet, not all projects are equally risky. In choosing what to work on, scientists have the latitude to embrace or avoid. Appropriately high risk can bring high return, while excessive caution hampers scientific progress. Thus, scientists and the public alike have an interest in encouraging researchers to pursue suitably risky projects, yet investigators often shy away from taking the big risks that may generate the most productive science. This project unpacks the incentives that investigators face when choosing how much risk to take on in their scientific careers. The project illuminates why researchers may shy away from the most promising but risky ideas, and asks how scientific norms and institutions can be modified to motivate researchers to pursue the most promising ideas while still protecting their livelihoods from the vicissitudes of scientific chance. This understanding can help accelerate the pace of scientific discovery, enhancing the public’s return on its investment in scientific research.The researchers develop, analyze, and communicate mathematical models of how scientists balance the competing incentives and constraints that they face when constructing and pursuing their research programs. These models apply the tools of economics and decision theory to the practice of scientific research, and blaze new ground by focusing specifically on scientists’ risk-taking and its consequences for scientific debate and the formation of scientific consensus. One component of the research examines how scientists’ tradition of preferentially publishing successful projects encourages or discourages risk-taking, and how alternative models for scientific publication might shift scientists’ tolerance for risk. A second component builds on recent mathematical developments in the theory of imprecise probability to develop a more expansive view of how scientists navigate the thick uncertainty that defines work at the scientific frontier. The researchers engage closely with funders, research administrators, journal editors and publishers, and other stakeholders to direct the research and share its outcomes, ensuring that the discoveries that the research yields are used to promote high-risk, high-return science.This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.

科学询问涉及冒险。每个实验，每个分析，每个协作实体都踏上了目的地不确定且终点站可能是死胡同的路径。但是，并非所有项目都有同样的风险。在选择工作的过程中，科学家有纬度可以拥抱或避免。适当的高风险会带来高回报，而过度警告会妨碍科学进步。这就是科学家和公众对鼓励研究人员购买适当风险的项目的兴趣，但是调查人员常常回避承担可能产生最有生产力科学的大风险。该项目打开了调查人员在选择科学职业中承担多少风险时面临的激励措施。该项目阐明了为什么研究人员可能会回避最有前途但有风险的想法，并询问如何修改科学规范和机构，以激励研究人员购买最有前途的想法，同时仍然保护他们的生计免受科学机会的侵害。这种理解可以帮助加速科学发现的步伐，增强公众对科学研究的投资回报。研究人员开发，分析和传达了科学家如何平衡他们在构建和追求研究计划时面临的竞争激励和约束的数学模型。这些模型将经济学和决策理论的工具应用于科学研究的实践中，并通过专门关注科学家的冒险及其对科学辩论的后果和科学共识的形成来奠定新的基础。研究考试的一个组成部分是科学家优先发布成功项目的传统如何鼓励或劝阻冒险，以及科学出版物的替代模型如何改变科学家对风险的容忍度。第二个组成部分是基于最新的数学发展，即对科学家如何在科学领域定义工作的厚实不确定性的不可能的理论。研究人员与资金，研究管理员，期刊编辑和出版商以及其他利益相关者紧密接触，以指导研究并分享其结果，确保发现研究产量被用来促进高风险，高返回科学的发现。本奖反映了NSF的法定任务，并通过使用基金会的智力来评估了NSF的诚实，并通过评估诚实地进行了智力效果。