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

科学探究需要承担风险。每一次实验，每一次分析，每一次合作都需要踏上一条不确定的道路，其终点可能是死胡同。然而，并不是所有的项目都有同样的风险。在选择研究对象时，科学家们有接受或回避的自由。适当的高风险可以带来高回报，过度的谨慎会阻碍科学的进步。因此，科学家和公众都有兴趣鼓励研究人员从事具有适当风险的项目，然而研究人员往往回避承担可能产生最具生产力的科学的重大风险。这个项目揭示了研究人员在他们的科学事业中选择承担多大风险时所面临的动机。该项目阐明了为什么科学家可能会回避最有希望但有风险的想法，并提出了如何修改科学规范和制度，以激励科学家追求最有希望的想法，同时保护他们的生计不受科学机遇变迁的影响。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投资的回报。研究人员开发、分析和交流数学模型，以说明科学家如何平衡他们在构建和追求研究项目时所面临的竞争激励和约束。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，通过特别关注科学家的冒险行为及其对科学辩论和科学共识形成的影响，开辟了新的领域。该研究的一个组成部分考察了科学家优先发表成功项目的传统如何鼓励或阻碍冒险，以及科学发表的替代模式如何改变科学家对风险的容忍度。第二个部分建立在不精确概率理论的最新数学发展上，以更广泛的视角来看待科学家如何在定义科学前沿工作的巨大不确定性中导航。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，指导研究并分享其成果，确保研究产生的发现用于促进高风险、高回报的科学。该奖项反映了美国国家科学基金会的法定使命，并通过使用基金会的知识价值和更广泛的影响审查标准进行评估，被认为值得支持。

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.