Talking to biosecurity researchers has made me significantly update as to how much a single funder (in this case Open Phil) can influence the direction and focus of a research field. How much should we expect this to be a bad thing?
The link is for an article by Filippa Lenzos (a well-established biosecurity researcher at King's College London) that is skeptical of Open Phil's impacts. It doesn't outline a lot of concrete negatives, but says:
Heavy investments in one area of biosecurity risks may irreversibly transform the field’s collective thinking, scope of inquiry, and policy responses... The speed with which Open Phil has emerged as a significant power-player in international biosecurity policy has, by and large, outrun academic scrutiny of its impacts.
This makes me wonder if it would be valuable for Open Phil to fund some outside analysis of their current and expected impact in biosecurity. In general, people established in a field offering critiques of new EA/philanthropic entrants seems like a very useful thing.
I would break down Dr. Lenzos' concerns (and underlying assumptions) as:
- Open Phil is funding a narrow set of concerns (GCBRs), causing many researchers to redirect their focus to those concerns (and a diversity of perspectives and research focuses is good for the field)
- Open Phil is offering large grants to a few carefully-selected parties, giving them outsize impact (and a diversity of perspectives and research focuses is good the the field)
- Open Phil is a large actor entering the international bio/health security space that is not accountable to state governments (who are at least nominally accountable to their citizens) (and independence of international organizations (like the BWC and WHO) from concerns other than those of state governments is important)
- Open Phil has become able to influence biosecurity research and policy more quickly than people have been able to produce analysis of their priorities (and it's doubtful that analysis would show that Open Phil's priorities are a good overall focus for biosecurity research and policy)
I'd have liked to see more argument in favour of those assumptions, but I suspect Dr. Lenzos' goal may just be to establish common knowledge that it's possible to criticize Open Phil without negative repercussions.
I'd be interested in what people on this forum think:
- Does the critique seem reasonable?
- How important is a diversity of research focuses in biosecurity? What might be lost by directing more attention to GCBRs?
- Is it important for international organizations to be accountable to state governments? Should the bioweapons convention accept philanthropic donations to cover its implementation costs?
- Should we generally be skeptical of large funders (such as Open Phil) steering the direction of an already-established research field?
- Should EAs interested in biosecurity take any different actions as a result of this article?
This seems like a reasonable piece to me, laying out the basic groundwork for more future scrutiny on philanthropy's impact on the biosecurity field, but not more than that. ('Establishing common knowledge' seems like a good summary to me.)
A large influx of money can significantly change a field, and generally speaking, it is much harder for sudden big changes to improve the state of affairs than to make them worse. That said, sudden large changes, even if net positive overall, will often have some negative side effects, and I would expect more money for a 'do good-ing' field to lead to more good overall.
Something that might be interesting to see would be a survey of top people in the biosecurity field how this has changed their field and whether they view this change as positive. Generally speaking, I would expect them to have a much better grasp of empirical prioritisation questions in biosecurity than a few people at a large foundation, no matter how careful they are and how much work they put in. The more work large foundations put into being in touch with people in the field, the less concerned one needs to be I think.
Similar criticisms also exist in other fields, e.g. about the Gates foundation drowning out primary health care work by focusing on vaccinations and specific diseases and inadvertently causing some harm this way. I have not investigated the merits of this criticism, but it seems like a worthwhile thing to do.