We are excited to announce a new co-funding partnership with Kaitlyn Trigger and her fiancé Mike Krieger (co-founder of Instagram). They have committed to learning with us and supporting the Open Philanthropy Project’s work over the next two years. It’s an opportunity for us to experiment with a new type of partnership and a lower-volume,…
The GiveWell Blog
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Science policy and infrastructure
We’ve tried to approach scientific research funding – focusing initially on life sciences – by looking for gaps and deficiencies in the current system for supporting scientific research. We’ve identified several possibilities, including a set of systematic issues that make it difficult to support attempts at breakthrough fundamental science. One way to respond to a…
Breakthrough fundamental science
We’ve been looking for gaps in the world of scientific research funding: areas that the existing system doesn’t put enough investment into, leaving potential opportunities to do unusually large amounts of good with philanthropic funding. We previously wrote about the alleged “valley of death” that makes it challenging to translate academic insights about biology into…
Translational science and the “valley of death”
As we’ve looked for potential gaps in the world of scientific research funding – focusing for now on life sciences – we’ve come across many suggestions to look at the “valley of death” that sits between traditional academic research and industry research. Speaking very broadly, the basic idea is that: The world of life sciences…
The Most Good You Can Do
The Most Good You Can Do is a new book by Peter Singer. It is an introduction to effective altruism, which we’ve previously defined as “trying to do as much good as possible with each dollar and each hour that we have.” It emphasizes the importance of giving both generously and effectively – highlighting the…
Investigating neglected goals in scientific research
A major goal of the Open Philanthropy Project is to explore the topic of scientific research funding, starting with life sciences. This post discusses the process we’ve used so far, including some of the challenges we’ve faced and changes we’ve made in our investigation methods: We first discuss some of the general challenges of finding…