Prachee Avasthi

We talk a lot about experimentation and sharing our learnings at @AsteraInstitute. That can be even more valuable for things that are tough.

Compared to other private funders, our open science policy (zenodo.org/records/178732…) is more extreme. The nice thing about that is that we find out a bunch of things about applying it in practice that can inform other funders about how they want to shape their own policies.

But something new has been top of mind on how policies and incentives (stick or carrot) can be limiting.

New blog post on my hope that we can do much better than our policies dictate:

pracheeac.substack.com/p/a-policy-can…

I like the idea of a truly integrated team science funding opportunity. Two threats to success of this new mechanism NIH will have to grapple with:

1) traditional journal publishing
2) fractional time by participants

Winner-take-all first author/last author haggling is incompatible with team science. When you stop playing the journal game as we have done, focus on utility of your research outputs, and focus on responsibility (not just credit) in authorship, you realize how much more smoothly and faster science operates when there’s no implicit bandwidth allocation based on credit ranking.

For similar reasons, having people on the project that operate in a winner-take-all regime with another fraction of their work creates mixed incentives that can starve the collaborative work of maximal tailwind. That liability is in addition to purely operational liabilities from split attention. So I’d recommend most participants on these awards having full-time effort on the collaborative project. Maybe the tangible advancements that are only possible in a collaborative setting and full participation in this collaborative effort could make these team contributors eligible/likely to receive a specific type of follow-on funding or something?

Anyway I applaud the new mechanism and want it to succeed because I think society’s greatest challenges often require the joint contributions of scientists across disciplines. If you have been trying to do research in a truly team setting leveraging diverse expertise (more commonly outside academia), you’ve grappled with this and have seen the upside first hand.

grants.nih.gov/news-events/ni…

I was born in India but moved to the US when I was 5, so much of what I know about Indian traditions I’ve learned since, and largely feel connected to at some remove.

What resonates about Diwali is its celebration of light through knowledge, renewal, truth, and hope. More understanding, more sharing, and more optimism. I feel that in my bones tbh

Wishing everyone a little more light, joy, and possibility in the year ahead. And hoping we can all be a source of some of that light.

Happy Diwali! 🪔✨

For no reason at all

LOL