Little Friday metascience treat: We've launched the UK Research and Innovation Data Sandpit for Metascience It gives metascience researchers an opportunity, for the first time, to access sensitive UKRI administrative data in a secure way, to power research into how R&D funding works.

Inspired by this viral meme about DOGE: Research the US government has supported that can be made to sound silly, but that has contributed to human progress. Valuable work can often be framed as absurd out of context. That doesn’t make funding research any less important.🧵

New post on the big two U.S. science funders: the NIH and NSF. Here are 5 reforms that don't require more money, & could be implemented now. The arguments/evidence lean on the metascience community & personal lessons over the years in science philanthropy blog.jacobtrefethen.com/nih-and-nsf/

New post! Looking at three recent papers on the productivity impacts of government funded research, both in the US and OECD. Across different methods, all find positive impacts.

Zoogle! Our new tool from @arcadiascience for picking research organisms. Even if you’re not a scientist, you should care that we spend >$50B/yr on clinical trials based on organismal models (>90% failure rate). Read more about Zoogle here: arcadiascience.com/blog/zoogle

Metascience and AI news (part 2): we're proud to announce 23 new metascience research projects, funded in partnership with Open Philanthropy, on how we can make science and science funding work better. Details of the projects here: ukri.org/opportunity/uk…

Exciting update: Open Philanthropy is doubling down on our YIMBY, innovation, and metascience success by launching a >$120m Abundance & Growth Fund to accelerate economic growth and boost scientific & technological progress. Funding from Good Ventures, Patrick Collison, + others. Why now? 🧵

Very excited that we're launching Open Philanthropy's $120M Abundance and Growth Fund to accelerate economic growth and make essential goods like housing and infrastructure more affordable! (1/n)

🚨 We're hiring! Join IFP's metascience team to rethink how science gets funded and organized. Fellow & Senior Fellow roles open — $3K referral bonus if we hire your recommendation. Apply by May 11: ifp.org/come-work-with…

we made a map! gap-map.org is a tool we built to help you explore the landscape of R&D gaps holding back science - and the bridge-scale fundamental development efforts that might allow humanity to solve them, across almost two dozen fields

We The Navigation Fund are looking for proposals on how to move scientific publishing into the future. If you think we can do better, stop complaining and come build by applying AI towards open science os.nav.fund/ai-for-os/

🚨 I4R released my experiment with a new academic-literary form, a “replication opinion.” I made myself judge in a debate and wrote an opinion that is more credible than either party could muster. Piece: econstor.eu/handle/10419/3… Post: davidroodman.com/blog/2025/05/0… 🧵 follows

LAUNCH DAY 🚀 Today I’m launching a new podcast, Hard Drugs, with Jacob Trefethen (Jacob Trefethen) Our first episode is about lenacapavir — a new HIV drug that blocks infections with an efficacy rate of nearly 100%, and which could completely change the fight against HIV worldwide.

What’s the return on government support for R&D? To try to get a credible answer, Open Philanthropy and Sloan Foundation are committing up to $1 million to trying something new: we call it a Pop-Up Journal. Today, we’re inviting organizations to bid on a five-year contract to

The Abundance and Growth Fund at Open Philanthropy is hiring! We’re looking for 2-4 people to help expand this new $120+ million program to accelerate economic growth and reduce the cost of living through strategic grantmaking and research. (1/4) openphilanthropy.org/research/annou…

Some professional news: after nearly twelve years at Vox, I'm going to be joining Open Philanthropy, working with Matt Clancy and Jordan Dworkin on the Abundance and Growth Fund

No, look at *this* distribution of z-values from medical research! (329,601 z-values from Cochrane database)

I finally read the Kosmos "AI Scientist" paper from FutureHouse. Here is a bit about what they did and what I think about it. > The general idea behind this paper, and others like it, is that science follows a series of steps and that much of these steps can be automated. Those