New Science

.@JacobTref runs the science program at Open Philanthropy, directing about $100m/year in philanthropic funding. For @newscienceorg, we ended up talking about academia, peer review, grant-making; and also about love, the meaning of life, and our personal histories. Enjoy! Timestamps 0:00:00 - Introduction 0:01:11 - On Open Philanthropy's decision process 0:06:48 - Is it possible to make expected value calculations for basic scientific research? 0:16:27 - Non-profit funding vs for-profit funding 0:17:19 - Why the NIH rejects grants 0:19:39 - Jacob's "PhD" working side-by-side with biochemists for 5 years 0:25:22 - Today's system of federal funding are not supporting generalists 0:28:34 - How will AI affect the pace of scientific progress? 0:41:53 - AI Baumol Disease 0:54:41 - Can AI speed up aging research? 0:58:20 - The wisest people Jacob & Alexey know 1:13:31 - The future of science in academia 1:19:26 - How Open Philanthropy uses neglectedness to make funding trade-offs 1:35:16 - Jacob's advice for a talented 20 year old watching this 1:45:24 - Jacob's favorite joke

A 2024 update from New Science! New fellows, new writings, and updates from previous fellows and grantees... open.substack.com/pub/newscience…

"Peer review...for centuries the standard tool to determine an academic paper’s suitability for publication". nature.com/articles/d4158… No. The term is only a few decades old and Nature itself didn't it routinely until the 1970s. 1/3

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I think if you're a v busy founder trying to learn technical topics, it's sooo silly not to use Anki - i.e. you have 10 hrs/week to learn stuff, and they're off hours (nights + partial recovery wknds) (would love counterexamples / other suggestions!)

OK one of my favorite interview questions, which trips up 95% of top undergrads from top schools that I interview, has fallen to Claude

Are you a recent college grad or early career researcher who is looking to get more mol bio/biochemistry experience in the lab? New role open for a Research Associate @ArcadiaScience, please share 🙏 jobs.lever.co/arcadiascience…

Some thoughts on the recent SF election and the importance of coordination

happy February from New Science! Our updates from January -- we launched our site for research results, shared bios + project descriptions of our most recent fellows, and a bit about where we are headed next. (link in thread)

Our updates for September 2022, including new grants. 👀 newscience.substack.com/p/september-20…

Can we tear chloroplasts from their eukaryotic hosts and enable them to flourish, on their own, once again? This summer, a Fellow explored tools to transfer DNA into the organelle's genome, thus making progress toward a "free-living chloroplast." newscience.substack.com/p/free-living-…

Pathogens constantly evolve. We funded a fellow to design small peptides that target various sites on SARS-CoV-2 & fuse them to nanobodies. The goal is to build a "universal immunotherapy" that retains efficacy against new viral strains. Our second essay: newscience.substack.com/p/universal-im…

Studying organisms in isolation — as in cell culture — destroys the myriad signals, from neighbors and surroundings, that maintain a cell's identity.🧫 Our historical focus on individual cells has led to amazing discoveries, but we can do better. newscience.substack.com/p/a-call-for-c…

We funded five young scientists this summer. Each joined a lab in Boston or Berkeley. Their high-risk biology projects explored the potential for free-living mitochondria, universal immunotherapies, and more. This week, we're sharing their projects with you. 🎉

To improve academic science, let's study the law. New essay by @NikoMcCarty explains how Consequences, Evidence, and Adversaries could all bolster reproducibility. #AcademicTwitter newscience.substack.com/p/laws-of-scie…

In the dozen years after solving DNA’s structure, all but one of the 18 scientists who received a Nobel Prize in molecular biology were supported by Rockefeller Foundation funds. Learn more about their funding principles and history in our latest essay: newscience.substack.com/p/rockefeller-…

Thanks for reading the essay, which can be cited using doi: 10.56416/480pmz. If you have ideas for an essay about the history of science, please email us: newscience.org/team/ // newscience.substack.com/p/rockefeller-…

This essay by @SamirUnni includes advice for modern science philanthropies, like @ArcadiaScience, @Convergent_FROs and ourselves. It draws directly from Rockefeller archives, program officer diaries, and a slew of other materials.