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

科学研究需要承担风险。每一次实验、每一次分析、每一次合作都需要踏上一条目的地不确定、终点可能是死胡同的道路。然而，并不是所有项目都有同样的风险。在选择要从事的工作时，科学家可以自由地接受或避免。适当的高风险可以带来高回报，而过度谨慎则会阻碍科学进步。因此，科学家和公众都有兴趣鼓励研究人员从事适当风险的项目，但研究人员往往回避承担可能产生最具生产力的科学的大风险。这个项目揭示了研究人员在选择在他们的科学职业生涯中承担多大风险时所面临的激励。该项目阐明了为什么研究人员可能会回避最有希望但有风险的想法，并询问如何修改科学规范和制度，以激励研究人员追求最有希望的想法，同时仍然保护他们的生计不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、分析和交流数学模型，说明科学家如何平衡他们在构建和追求研究项目时面临的相互竞争的激励和约束。这些模型将经济学和决策论的工具应用到科学研究的实践中，并通过专门关注科学家的冒险行为及其对科学辩论和形成科学共识的后果，开辟了新的天地。这项研究的一个组成部分考察了科学家优先发布成功项目的传统如何鼓励或阻止冒险行为，以及科学出版的替代模式如何改变科学家的风险容忍度。第二个组成部分建立在不精确概率理论最近的数学发展基础上，以更广阔的视角看待科学家如何驾驭定义科学前沿工作的厚重不确定性。研究人员与资助者、研究管理人员、期刊编辑和出版商以及其他利益相关者密切合作，指导研究并分享其结果，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.