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: 2346645
• 负责人: Carl Bergstrom
• 金额: $ 21.28万
• 依托单位: University of Washington
• 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=2346645&HistoricalAwards=false
• 关键词: 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.

科学探究涉及冒险。每一次实验、每一次分析、每一次合作都需要走上一条目的地不确定、终点可能是死胡同的道路，但科学家们在选择工作内容时都面临同样的风险。适当的高风险可以带来高回报，而过度的谨慎会阻碍科学进步。因此，科学家和公众都有兴趣鼓励研究人员进行适当风险的项目，但研究人员往往回避采取大的行动。可能产生的风险该项目揭示了研究人员在选择在其科学生涯中承担多少风险时面临的激励因素，并阐明了为什么研究人员可能会回避最有前途但风险最大的想法，并询问科学规范和机构如何能够做到这一点。进行修改，以激励研究人员追求最有前途的想法，同时仍然保护他们的生计免受科学机会变迁的影响。这种理解有助于加快科学发现的步伐，提高公众对科学研究的投资回报。研究人员开发、分析。 ，并传达如何的数学模型这些模型将经济学和决策理论的工具应用到科学研究实践中，并通过专门关注科学家的冒险及其风险来开辟新天地。该研究的一个组成部分研究了科学家优先发表成功项目的传统如何鼓励或阻止冒险，以及科学出版的替代模式如何改变科学家对风险的容忍度。组件建立在理论的最新数学发展之上研究人员与资助者、研究管理者、期刊编辑和出版商以及其他利益相关者密切合作，以指导研究并分享其结果，从而对科学家如何应对科学前沿工作的巨大不确定性形成更广泛的看法。该奖项反映了确保研究成果用于促进高风险、高回报的科学。该奖项反映了确保 NSF 的法定使命，并通过使用基金会的智力价值和更广泛的影响审查进行评估，被认为值得支持标准。