Is the Scientific Enterprise Too Risk-Averse?

Science has given us gene editing, life-saving vaccines, and a glimpse at the origins of the universe. But is the system that produced these breakthroughs now holding itself back? The scientific method depends on skepticism, replication, and evidence. But conversely, history's greatest discoveries often began with impossible ideas and big risks. Critics argue that the pressure to publish, competition for funding, and lack of public communication reward short-term thinking and safe, non-controversial work. Yet others argue that that a careful review process and rigorous methodology inherent in the system are not barriers, but necessary and foundational for paradigm-shifting discoveries. So now, Open to Debate, in partnership with the Stavros Niarchos Agora Institute of Johns Hopkins University, as part of the Hopkins Forum series, brings you the question: Is the scientific enterprise too risk-averse? This is Open to Debate. I'm John Donvan. Today we are debating: Is the scientific enterprise too risk-averse? We're here at Johns Hopkins, America's first research university, in Shriver Hall at the Homewood campus in Baltimore, Maryland, and we're asking this question in partnership with the Johns Hopkins University and the Stavros Niarchos Foundation SNF Agora Institute. The question is, is the scientific enterprise too risk-averse? And I would like to welcome to the stage our CEO at Open to Debate, Leah Mathau, and Hari Han, the director of the SNF Agora Institute.

Good evening, John.

Good evening. It's lovely to be back at Hopkins, is it not?

It's wonderful to be here. It's always a privilege to be on the stage with Hari, and our 6th installment together. I know, it's been such an exciting partnership for 2 years, and we're delighted to have you guys back on campus.

And I talked a little bit about our goals, but if you want to expand a little bit, what we try to do here?

Well, we're all about civil discourse. We're bringing people with very different views together, and we're here to listen, and we're here to learn. And I think this is where our missions really align. Yeah, the SNF Agora Institute, we are an academic and public forum that's dedicated to trying to strengthen global democracy through a focus on civic engagement and civil discourse. And for us, it's really important to have events like this where we can really model the ability of people to deliberate about big, important questions, but to do it respectfully and thoughtfully, and to really advance our thinking on some of the most pressing questions that face our society. And President Daniels is with us tonight. We are so grateful for your intellectual leadership in this endeavor and bringing civil discourse to the campus.

Thank you so much. And we look forward to the topics we're going to hear about tonight.

We're gonna hear about medicine and healthcare and the wonder of discovery. So, it should be a spectacular evening.

Let's get started.

Great.

Thank you. All right, thanks for coming up on stage. And part of getting started, I wanna say that I'm thrilled now to welcome President Daniels. He is one of the nation's fiercest champions of the thing we're gonna be talking about and doing here, a civil exchange on campus. He also recognizes debate's indispensable role in promoting democracy. He's the co-author of What Universities Owe Democracy, and we are honored to have him saying a few words tonight. President Daniels.

Thanks, John, and thanks to all of you for being here. It's great to be able to welcome you back to the Hopkins campus and to be able to celebrate this sixth installment in the collaboration between SNF Agora and Open to Debate. I'm, of course, thrilled to be here today, just given what was said earlier by John and others, it's obvious that the importance of debate and dialogue is central to what it means to be a strong, open university. And we know that, at least in other parts of society, the kind of debate, dialogue, the opportunities for mutual exploration of difficult issues across the divides doesn't happen as easily. And it's one of the things that we felt has been really important to be able to cultivate, to encourage at Johns Hopkins. And this debate series, which we've been able to forge between Open Debate and Essa and Agora, is just a wonderful way in which we can take that broad abstract idea that debate, dialogue, this kind of interaction matters, and make it concrete and real for members of our community. I would say for me, the other reason why this is exciting to be here is not only the opportunity for the first time ever to to participate live at one of these events, but it's also because, of course, the topic is one that is very meaningful to me. And as someone who has been out in a number of different settings for the last several years, but with particular passion and intensity for the last several years, arguing on behalf of the importance of the relationship between the federal government and America's research universities, it won't surprise you that a discussion around the quality of the research that is produced through that relationship is something that is of very keen interest for me. And it won't surprise you that I already have a view about where this debate is going, and I voted, and at least insofar as things are concerned at Johns Hopkins, my view is that the research enterprise is not too risk-averse. But having said that, I think that one's commitment to the importance of the research enterprise, the impact that in particular the relationship between the federal government and American research universities have had over 70 years, all the bounty that has come from that, and the belief that the continuation of public investment and public support for research is fundamental to the success, continued success of the country. Having said that, I'm really open to the discussion, to the debate around whether there's ways we could do this better, and so as much as As I feel deeply committed to the research enterprise, I think people in my position and other leaders of universities in this country, industry leaders and government officials, we should always be open to the possibility that we don't have this entirely right and there might be a better way to create incentives to improve the strength of the research we produce and the impact that it has on the national wheel. So having said that, that I'm delighted to be here for the series and particularly excited about this particular conversation. I thank you again all for being here and look forward to the opportunity to continue the conversation with all of you, particularly the students and faculty colleagues who are here after this debate is over so we can continue to consider ways in which we can make our research enterprise stronger. So again, thanks for being here, and I turn it back to you, John.

Thank you. We are here at Johns Hopkins tackling the question, is the scientific enterprise too risk-averse? And let's welcome our debaters to the stage. First, please welcome Tyler Cowen, Brandon Obunu, Kate Biberdorf, Sethuraman Panchinathan. Welcome all. I'd like to just take a minute to introduce you a little bit more in depth. First up with you, Tyler. You teach economics at George Mason University. You have a hugely popular podcast. You're also well known for your New York Times bestselling book called The Great Stagnation. You have also been called America's hottest economist by Bloomberg Businessweek. Just curious, how do you feel about that word?

That was some while ago.

Thank you for that clever answer. But I want to introduce your partner, Brandon Obono. Brandon, you're a biologist. You teach at Yale and the Santa Fe Institute. You run your own lab at Yale also. You have argued that science needs to embrace the ideal of what you call style. How would you describe your scientific style, if in just 3 words?

Oh boy.

I would say generosity, creativity, and rigor.

Wow, I think we're gonna hear more from that as the debate unfolds. Thanks very much. Now on the other side of the debate, I wanna welcome Kate Biebedorf. Kate, welcome to the program. You're also known as Kate the Chemist. Kate, you teach chemistry at Notre Dame, and one of your missions there, and across the nation actually, is to increase public understanding of science. You have a huge social media following. Social media following, where often your fans love to watch you do experiments which often end in an explosion. What have you blown up lately?

Oh, lately? I had a 2-liter soda bottle that I filled with liquid nitrogen, blew it up, put about 1,500 bounce house balls on top of it, made a massive explosion. It was awesome.

What was proved?

That science is great and how vapor pressure works. It was all in a shtick to try to get students to come to Notre Dame. So I think it worked.

I think it probably did work. And your partner, I want to welcome last but not least, we have Sethuraman Panchinathan. You go by the name Ponch. You said I can call you Ponch.

That's right, John.

I really want to thank you for that. Ponch.

We don't debate that.

So you're at Arizona State where you're a professor and an engineer and a scientist, but you also served as the 15th director of the National Science Foundation. Is there one project that stands out out to you from your time there that kind of captures what we're talking about, and I can give you 10 seconds on that.

Thank you, John. I think we launched the Technology Innovation Partnership Directorate during my tenure, and the Regional Innovation Engines Program really to me stands out as how do you honor the ideas, talent, and innovation that is all across our country, in every part of the geography of our country. I'm so proud of that.

In some ways, I already see common ground between the two sides with what Brandon had to say, but we are here to debate. We are here to argue. Divided on the question that we're debating is whether the scientific enterprise has become risk-averse. Our audience here at Hopkins, I want to explain, is playing a critical role tonight. They are being asked for their opinion on the topic both before and after the arguments have been heard. We're going to get those results in real time, and at the end we're going to see which side might have changed the most minds. So that makes this a competition, but it's a friendly competition. That also means we have some rules which I enforce: no personal attacks, stay on topic, and actually listen to what your opponent is actually saying. The debaters are here to show that we can disagree with each other in good faith and learn from one another. So let's get started. It's time for our opening statements. Our opening statements, each debater has 4 minutes to tell you why they are answering yes or no to our question. And first up is Brandon Obono. You are arguing the scientific enterprise is too risk-averse. The floor is yours. That's an applause moment.

Thank you. Thank you.

Thank you, distinguished Thank you, distinguished guests, fellow debaters. Really, really honored to be here and to be able to participate in this endeavor in this time. I'll start with a claim that I make, and I make it not infrequently: science is the greatest knowledge creation tool in the history of the world. I owe everything good in my life to science. And I come here not as an outsider, not as a gadfly, not as a social commentator. I come here as a basic scientist, a computational biologist who runs my own laboratory. And like many of us, I'm devastated by what's happening to the scientific enterprise. Institutions have been attacked, free speech is under attack, money has been taken away. But what I'm here to argue is that now is the time to think deeply about what science is, how we can do it better, more rigorously, more creatively, more inclusive, and do it in a manner where we are closer to one another, and most importantly, close to the taxpaying public. Now, what I'd like— the case I would like to make, however, starts with our interaction with the public. We like to demonstrate to the world this idea that science is run by a bunch of cavalier, intrepid people or renegade geeks who are trying to figure out the nature and the mysteries of the universe and cures for diseases. And that's true. But as someone on the inside, who really is in the middle of his career and recently went through promotion, I can tell you that it actually works a lot different from the inside. It resembles something that's kind of like a circus and much more like a fiefdom.

Okay.

Now, like fiefdoms, forces like rituals and power and hierarchy, these are the things that really kind of dictate the way a lot of science works, and these are the things that require rethinking. And like fiefdoms, like a lot of fiefdoms, they run on an aversion to risk, a lack of creativity, an inability to experiment. Now, before going on, let me tell you what I mean by risk, and I'll tell you what risk is not. Risk is not irresponsibility. It's not doing sloppy or imprecise science. Risk is not trying to subvert scientific institutions. Risk is not a disbelief in science. Risk is not empowering the merchants of misinformation. Risk is something very simple but very profound. And it is only that you reflect on your practices, your rituals, and your incentives, you question them deeply, and if they don't work, you experiment and/or change them.

Right?

That is what risk really, really is. And what I found is that a lot of science is kind of— has this real, real reluctance to embrace that kind of risk. Now I articulate this, and one of the things I say when I make this argument to myself is, "Well, Brandon, aren't there a lot of really wonderful people doing a lot of wonderful science?" And the answer is yes, but so many of us do it despite the way science works and not because of it. So today what I'm here to say is there's a possibility for a new and exciting science. One that survives the attacks that it's going under, one that is much more inclusive and much more creative. So when I ask you to vote yes to the notion that science is risk-averse, I'm only asking you to vote not for to maim and harm science or even to criticize it, but because we want it to be better. Thank you.

Thank you, Brandon. Next arguing science is not too risk-averse, we have Sethuraman Panchananthan Panch, Let's hear your argument.

Thank you so much. Great to be here. And thank you all for showing up. I mean, on an evening at 6 o'clock. President Daniels, thank you. And thank you to Open Debate, Robert. Thank you to my wonderful moderator, John, and my wonderful colleagues here, Tyler and Brandon. Great they're joining. But I will tell you, the exciting part is who gets to have a partner called Kate the Chemist. Isn't that cool? So with that, let me— in fact, it's very interesting because I would say amen to some of the things that Brandon said, but yet I would differ with him because all of that is because of the fact that we still continue to have a vibrant scientific enterprise that is founded on the principles of recognizing, rewarding, and investing in risk. As a faculty member myself, scientist, researcher, as a vice president of research, and then going on to lead the National Science Foundation, there is no evidence to say that somehow we have become risk-averse. Where is the evidence? Because if you look at the granting process that we use today, it's not changed. In fact, it gives a lot of empowerment, even more empowerment, to the people who are funding the science right where it happens, namely the program officers, who come in and do an unbelievable job investing in highly risked projects. The programs that fund high-risk projects, like the NSF Career Award— I'm taking NSF as an example because that is something that is close to my heart, and I can say firsthand knowledge, having been at the agency for the last 5 years— every program there looks for high-risk ideas. But to the point that was made We want to make sure that we are promoting and rewarding risk, but not where the risk becomes the risk of the lack of evidence, or the risk of not having the rigor. And when such a thing is being presented, people often confuse it as we are risk-averse. It is not the case. Let me tell you a story. There was a graduate student named Jennifer Doudna. She then came and became, with funding that she was provided for her research, a fantastic doctoral student, graduated, got a job as a faculty member, won the NSF Career Award. NSF invested in her ideas, frontier ideas. The CRISPR was an outcome of such amazing work that she did. And then subsequently, NSF even awarded her one of the most prestigious awards called the Waterman Award in honor of the first director of NSF. And then she won many other awards and won something small called the Nobel Prize later on in 2020. This is sustained investment in risky science that was made, and that's not just one person. NSF prides in the fact that we have been able to invest in over 270 Nobel laureates. There is no agency on planet Earth that matches that. In fact, people across the globe, when I go and talk to all the science ministers and funding agency heads, they will tell me, "How can we create an NSF in our country?" We pride in the fact that investment in high-risk, high-reward research actually provides the unbelievable outcomes. So the data speaks for itself. It's not only just the Nobel Prize that people win. The Fields Medalists, the Turing Awards, the Nobel-quality work that may not even achieve that level of awards, but still is Nobel-quality work right here at Johns Hopkins University and all across the nation. It still is vibrant. Programs like Career Awards, programs like EAGER, INSPIRE, all of these are investing in high-risk, high-reward. I would argue even the programs that are investing in translational research, research actually invests in high risk, and I will have a chance to probably talk about that later on in this debate. So I just want to assure all of you that the scientific enterprise, yes, there are ups and downs that we face, and so let's not look at the narrow window of a 6-month or a 9-month and suddenly conclude that somehow we have reached a point where we are risk-averse. We are not.

Panch, I'm sorry, I have to jump in. Thanks very much. Thank you, Panch.

So we've heard 2 opening statements so far.

Next up, we're going to hear from Tyler Cowen, who is arguing the scientific enterprise is too risk-averse.

You have 4 minutes, Tyler.

I'm delighted to see how much respect there is for science on the other side of the debate. But the one thing they're not doing is looking at what science itself tells us on the question, is science too risk-averse? So if I look at the leading researcher in this area, Pierre Azoulay at MIT, who's published numerous papers on this question, he concludes that science is indeed too risk-averse. There is a bias against novel papers. If I look at the definitive study so far on this question by Michael Park and co-authors in Nature, they look at 4.5 million scientific papers using data, statistics. What do they conclude? Again, this is science speaking. Quote, "Papers and patents are becoming less disruptive over time." If you look at principal investigators, it is now the case they have to spend, by their own account, over 40% of their time raising money. That is too cumbersome a process. They should be doing science. Print the average age of a winner of a scientific grant in 1995 was 40 years old. Today it is 44 years old. That is because we are taking fewer chances on youth. There's yet another study by Bloom, Nicholas Bloom, Michael Webb, and some other co-authors. They look at the rate of scientific progress recently compared to the 1930s. What has happened is we have increased the number of scientists by 23x, which is great. It's wonderful. I love that. But at the same time, the rate of scientific progress has not increased. So we're doing too many small things. We're not investing enough in big breakthroughs because there is risk aversion. Let me give you another truth from science. And now I mean social science. If you look at big enterprises, take bureaucracies, take governments, Take large corporations. Dare I even say, take universities. As they grow larger and more mature, they all become more risk-averse. Indeed, they become too risk-averse. That is a fundamental principle of theories of bureaucracy spanning the social sciences. If you try to deal with a big corporation and get them to act in a discretionary manner, you will encounter this bureaucracy. If you try to deal with the government and try to get something done in a discretionary manner, you encounter the same bureaucracy. If you apply that same basic reasoning to science and the scientific enterprise, which is in part inside universities, inside governments, inside the private sector, of course, that is also too bureaucratic and too risk-averse. So our side of the debate All we're asking you to believe is what is a pretty self-evident truth in the social sciences. You would be very hard-pressed to find a social scientist who would not agree with the general point. Just one or two anecdotes I'd like to raise. So the other side of the debate mentioned Jennifer Doudna and her wonderful work in the biosciences. That's great. I would cite Catalin Currico, who is essentially the most important person behind mRNA vaccines. For 20 years, she did not get a regular academic post with guaranteed funding because people thought the idea was too weird, too strange. It paid off. So you could say right now our science is 1 for 2. Yes on Dowdner, eh, not such a great performance on Carrico. Can America do better than 1 in 2? Is that our standards for the scientific enterprise? Or should we have been taking the chances and funded Caudill and Carrico earlier in her career with more money, more status, a regular tenured post? Since millions of people have died from COVID I think the answer to that question is obvious. Finally, to consider COVID just for a bit more. So COVID arrives in this country, you could say January 2020. The NIH is still taking grant proposals and requiring 6 to 9 months to adjudicate them. So thousands of Americans, you know, by the time you get to March, are dying each week. The bureaucracy is still slow. Finally, at the very end of April, they accelerated the process for some of the grants. So maybe they would only take a few months instead of 6 to 9 months. I will point out the NSF was way ahead of them there. They were quicker to adapt. But the NIH is much larger than the NSF. And if they're taking so long to adjudicate grant proposals when so many Americans are dying, clearly they are afraid, too afraid of doing the wrong thing, and thus I conclude that American science, yes, is too risk-averse. Thank you.

Thank you, Tyler. And rounding out this opening round, I want to welcome Kate Biedendorf to tell us why science is not too risk-averse.

Perfect. Well, hello. Thank you very much for having me. It's quite an honor to be here. At Johns Hopkins. Gentlemen, I'm very looking— very much looking forward to an academic debate. And Pon Chu-King, I'm so excited to be partnered with you. So he did a great job kind of identifying our situation in industry and with NSF, and I'm gonna focus more on academia. So I work at Notre Dame, and I want to share a story of one of my colleagues. His name was Tom O'Sullivan. He is an electrical engineer, a brilliant researcher. His students love him. 6 weeks before his wedding, his wife was diagnosed with breast cancer, and for the sake of time, I'm just gonna kind of cut to the punch. The chemotherapy kicked her ass, and so what he decided to do is go back to lab, just like any romantic nerd, and try to figure out if he could invent something that would minimize her suffering. And he did. He invented something that could kind of track tumor growth. So you have chemotherapy, after 5 days you're able to use this instrument using light and see if the tumor responded to the chemo. And so if it is, great, continue on with the path, but if it's If it's not, you can stop and pivot and go on a completely different project in a pathway. Specifically kind of limiting 12 weeks of excess chemo, so getting rid of that from people so they don't have to take it. Now, he works at a university, so he was able to come back to our university and start working on this problem immediately. And I would argue that universities have the opportunity, and dare I say the responsibility, to take these risks. We are set up to go after these scientifically possible but challenging problems. And there's an entire funding model to support that. So we heard all about NSF, and I'm gonna hit 3 other ones. So we have DARPA. DARPA is arguably the most successful innovation engine in the history of mankind. They're responsible for the internet, for GPS, for stealth aircrafts. They have this massive budget that they can support for high-risk, high-payoff awards. So they have over $4.4 billion. At any given point in time, they have anywhere between 1,000 and 3,000 projects that they are funding, and each person has about $1 to $10 million to spend. A lot of numbers I just threw at you, but the basics is that they have the funding and they're putting it in to support these risky projects. We also have ARPA-H, which was established in 2022. And had that been around before the pandemic and maybe even 20 years beforehand, they absolutely would have funded the mRNA vaccines. Now, this is kind of a version of DARPA, but for health. They focus on sprints. So they have these research topics that they allow people to go after. 2 I want to highlight. One is the AI way to kind of deal with cardiovascular care. So we all know that the number one killer of men is heart disease. So this is a way to kind of help prolong the life of our male counterparts. They also have one on just women's health. And so they're saying, look at all these different projects that we've done with men. Let's throw hormones at them and see what's going to happen. These are risky projects, something we can go after. Their budget is $1.5 billion, and they fund anywhere between $2 to $20 million per team. This is something that really goes after those risky species— or risky projects. But there's also NIH. And so NIH is known for the high-risk, high-reward awards. And there's 4 different ones I want to highlight for you. So there's the Pioneer Award. This is what's given to scientists who are established in their career, but they want to now take a step to something else, try something else that's a little bit risky. This supports them. There's the New Innovator Award. So these are for people who have a big idea, but they're racing against that academic clock. So they're pre-tenure. So this is a way to kind of relieve some pressure. There's also the Early Independence Award. This is for somebody who's a grad student, wants to jump right into doing research. They get to kind of jump over that postdoc position to something, a way to kind of go after risky research right now. And the last one is why we're here. We're talking about this scientific enterprise being too risk-averse. The NIH has a Transformative Research Award that specifically funds things that are highly unlikely to work or things that are untested. They give 20 to 30 awards every single year, and each one is about $2 million. So it's not that the scientists aren't taking risks. It's not that there's the funding that's not there. Like, both of those things are happening. But my point is that we are not talking about it enough. We are not training our scientists to have solid science communication skills. We need to figure out how to talk about their research, how to get out of the jargon jungle and actually explain their research to the general public, and also talk about the risks that they are taking every single day in the lab trying to make this world a better place. So is the scientific enterprise too risk-averse? No, but we need to be talking about it. Thank you.

Thank you.

So that concludes our opening round, and now we move on to round 2. And in round 2, we have much more of a freewheeling conversation in which the debaters can question one another, even break in on one another if it's done politely, but it's meant to be more robust and free-flowing. But it's gonna kick off with questions from me. But I just want to talk about what I heard in the opening round. If I Listen closely. What I think what I heard people debating is the matter of boldness, that in all of the science being carried out now in the United States, how much of it is bold and how much of it is pioneering? How much of it is big swing stuff? The kinds of work that actually anticipates there is likely to be failure, which is scary to try something novel and then have it hit a brick wall, but when it succeeds, wowza. The outcomes are amazing and worth the risk. So it's a choice that they're saying that funders face. It's a choice that individual researchers need to make because it ends up being about their careers. And we hear Tyler and Brandon arguing that there is just not much bold science happening anymore. We heard the scientific enterprise described as half circus and half fiefdom, as a result of which the rules discourage risk-taking. We've heard it claimed that it's just self-evident that the enterprise overall has become more risk-averse. As Tyler said, you would have a hard time finding any scientist out there who's going to disagree with that. They argued the point from slightly different perspectives, but that's okay. But basically they say the numbers and the culture demonstrate that the enterprise has become risk-averse. Their opponents, Kate and Sethuraman, their response is, "What are you talking about?" And they go through a list of some astonishing scientific scientific productions. They mentioned DARPA. They mentioned what would have been happening with MNRA. They talk about the list of awards that are given out for not only for daring science, but science that is almost expected to fail and to run into problems. So their bottom line is that there is plenty, plenty of bold happening. Sure, there's some stuff that's not so bold, and that's necessary too. But there's notion that risk is running the system is one that they disagree with. So I want to dig into some of what you're all saying, and I'll come to you first, Kate. So your opponents, despite the litany of projects that you ran through, they're both pretty persuaded and maybe persuasive to the audience that everybody agrees that the system is risk-averse. And what you're saying is that that's some sort of illusion. What if that is an illusion? What— how do you explain that illusion?

So I, I kind of go back to the academic structure, right, of tenure and how we are up against an academic clock. And so sometimes people will go for the safer research because they think that'll guarantee them tenure. But if you look at certain places like in France right now, there's a big study going off there, the different types of research that are happening when tenure is available. And so because tenure is immediately given to people, the delta between risky science and not so much science is much, much smaller. Where if you go to place here, like the States, the delta between risky science and kind of gimme, gimme science. If you have tenure available for it, people are shooting for the stars and they are going for it. So I would say here in the States, we have so many different examples of bold research happening. It is— we are going for the stars, we are doing the moonshots, we are developing certain things like a 20-cent centrifuge that can detect malaria without using electricity. So the bold science is happening out there, but maybe you have to look at it. We have to be talking about it.

Brendan.

Yeah, so I find it interesting that you used France as an example. OK, so you actually— we're talking about science risk-averse, and we use an example of an experimental model that actually encourages risk, risk, right? That is not the case here. We talk about these individual kind of instantiations. I was recently promoted 3 or 4 times. OK? At every single point when I was promoted, OK, I ignored the advice that was given to me, which was undeniably to do the things to secure the attention of a small number of people who were elites in my profession. This is what I was told by virtually every single senior collaborator and colleague. Now obviously I did that enough to get by, right, but there's no question, right, that I was steered towards being safe and doing the things that are legible to a small number of people in order to secure employment.

Could you, so we can kind of make this more concrete, can you give an example without confusing us on the science, like what would be safe? What was your like, do this safe thing, and you didn't do that?

So like, for example, at the National Science Foundation, there are calls for awards, which I think is a good thing, right? They have identified areas of interest that I think are exciting areas. The problem is that is where the money is going to be, and you need to secure funds in order to get tenure. So even if I don't study those things, and there's various topics, as you know, Director, right? You have to apply to those things where the pots of money are, independent of how good my ideas are or how creative my ideas are. My success in securing federal funding is because I was able to steer it and couch it in an idea that was legible to the funders, not the things that I thought were the most important mysteries of the universe. I haven't even gotten to work on those yet. And we need to be in a system where I can work on the things that I think are the most important— or me and a small number of colleagues think are the most important, not the ones that are set by an agenda by a bunch of elites. And that is where we are now.

Brandon, I disagree with you because the programs at NSF call for proposals from anyone coming on a topic that is related to that division or directorate. Yes, Yes, there are focus calls, but that's not all of it. A lot of it is open calls for people to submit any idea that they have got towards that particular discipline or a directorate, the focus areas. So there's no evidence to say that we have shut down all of that and everything is focused on either quantum or a very specific climate program or whatever it is. There are a few focused programs, yes, but by and large the funding of NSF of ISF is directed at curiosity-driven, discovery-based, exploratory research. I want this to be clearly understood. There is no backing away from that. There is no evidence to say that we have backed away from that. We may have small cases and examples that we might cite this way, but it is not systemic. That's what we are talking about. Let's be very clear. The topic of the debate— let's not stray away from that— is the scientific enterprise risk-avers. Just because the bureaucracy is more, or the latency to get a grant funded is more, or it takes time, that does not mean that it is not, you know, ready to embrace risks. There is no evidence to show that just because something is delayed means that we are risk-avers. It's not the case. In fact, it can be the contrary. We want to make sure ensure, as I said, that we are not risk-averse, but we are risk-aware. We have a responsibility to ensure that the science that is being proposed is bold ideas but not bad ideas.

All right, let me bring Tyler Cowen in.

Everything I've heard from the other side of the debate is anecdotal. DARPA is very good, but if you look at aggregate measures which have been studied by science, research scientists, they're all pointing in the direction of the system as a whole being too risk-averse. I once did a study of the NSF, speaking of the NSF. I went to the economics program, I wrote a piece on this, and finally I asked the director, "Have you ever done a statistical study of which grants went well and which did not?" Access to all the economic researchers in the country. Do you know what the answer was? The answer was, "No, we've never done that." And you know why they didn't do it? Because they are afraid that Congress will take whatever results they come up with and cut their budget. So if you are not applying science to your own activities because you're afraid of Congress— now I'll blame Congress, not the NSF there— but if there's any proof that the system as a whole is too risk-averse, that is it. People are terrified of Congress cutting their budgets. There was reference to a few NIH programs. One of them has the grand, glorious title, NIH Director's Transformative Research Award from 2007. It sounds so wonderful. Well, two different groups looked at that project, Open Philanthropy and also Heather Young, and they each found that those grants were not more risk-averse, not more transformative, not more big think than the normal things NIH does. So don't be taken in by the rhetoric. Look at what science is telling us. Too much risk aversion. We saw it during COVID Thousands of Americans died when research efforts were stymied for months because of lack of funding. There just is not any real clear way around that reality.

Tyler, I again disagree with you because what you stated as a study not being done is precisely what you're talking about. If you're taking risks, there will be fallout because of risk. We should celebrate the failures as much as we celebrate the successes. That's what risk-taking means. If you start to now walk away and do studies and say, "How many of your projects did you find that failed?" then what is it about risk? Risk is about investing in ideas without the worry about success or failure. That's how it should be, I would argue.

Let me bring in Kate on this question of failure. That's built into the notion of taking a risk, and your opponents are saying that that the funders don't want failure. But talk about failure as part of this process.

Well, I just was at a conference in London called the Failure in Science, and it was at Imperial, and it was maybe 100 different scientists that came together to talk about this specific topic. And I will admit, part of it was a therapy session. We were venting about certain things, that's for sure. But at the end of the day, we were talking about embracing our failures and sharing them and being more upfront about it. And afterwards, there There was this gorgeous article written in Nature. I sent it to you immediately because it was just beautifully well written. And it's something that I encourage everybody to read. It came out a couple weeks ago. It's an editorial in Nature. But it really highlights all the different aspects where we are embracing failure in education. We're embracing failure in advocacy work. And we learn from these mistakes. But if we don't go after these risky pieces, we are never going to get anywhere.

I want to shift a little bit of the focus. We've been talking about government funding, but we have— a community of entrepreneurs doing research in all kinds of fields, AI especially, biomedical. I wanna talk a little bit about entrepreneur-funded research, and I note that Peter Thiel, Marc Andreessen, they are out there complaining like you are that scientific breakthroughs are too few. The Washington Post leaked an email from Andreessen calling the National Science Foundation should receive, quote, the bureaucratic death penalty. Their point being that they would step in, they would do this, we're not risk-averse, we're used to risk. What is your response to the notion of their being involved?

Well, first and foremost, I will never frame the dichotomy as academia versus industry and claim that one is more risk-averse or risk-prone than the other. I think that's kind of a— that's apples to orangutans. I think a lot of companies actually do a good job of taking risk, but they actually can be just as risk-averse as institutions. As a whole, I wouldn't compare those. What I will say is that you talked about Kaitlyn Carico. There's many other examples. John Jumper, who, right, who won the Nobel Prize, right, for AlphaFold, was federally funded as a graduate student, but then took that to DeepMind. That discovery was a collaboration in many ways. Industry was able to pick up in a manner that academia was unable to to properly carry forward. Drug design, as you know, Professor, right, is famously not housed in academic institutions, in part because academic institutions cannot take on that level of risk. So what I'm saying is it's not black and white, like industry's just better or more, you know, more risk-prone. I think that's complicated. But what I do say is there are many instances where we have successful things that were taken across the finish line by companies precisely because that kind of work cannot be supported, right, in academia, in part because it is too risk-averse. I think there's no question about that, and I think the triumph of the mRNA vaccine is evidence of that. AlphaFold is evidence of that. Many of the drugs you take are evidence of that, right? And I think we can use that as evidence that we need to do more risky science.

So Brandon, again, anchor back to the topic. The topic was not Are our federal agencies funding science, which is— are risk-averse to funding science? That was not the question. The question is science funding risk-averse, whether it happens in federal government, industry, or philanthropy. Sometimes this is a tag team. We take these kinds of positions to make sure that we are investing in those things that somebody else is not investing in. And that's a tag team approach. That's how we want this to move forward. Forward. Let me give you data points, if I may. The federal— the total R&D investments in our country is 3.5% of our GDP. It turns out that 0.7 to 0.8% of that is invested in by the federal government. The other 2.7% is invested in by other private investors, whether it is philanthropy or industry or other investors. So So a significant amount of investment in R&D is by those industry and private funders. So let's keep that number in mind. So when you look at the sum total investment in research and development, and you look at the scientific enterprise being risk— risk-averse, you need to factor the entire thing in. All that I have heard so far from my opponents is NIH, NSF, NS— NSF, NIH, and DARPA. It is a collective of everything, and even in that, But I argue that some of the points that are being presented about the agencies is not entirely the case. So I'm— there may be instances. You said that we are taking specific examples. I would argue that the same thing is happening from your side too. There are always examples. I'm not denying that. There is— you will always find a particular investigator upset because their program that they thought was high risk was not funded. It will always happen. It will always happen.

All right.

I want to—

Tyler, you're talking about there being a deficit of risk-averse science.

Where?

I mean, what fields are lying unexplored, dormant?

It's easy to see in our system of biomedical trials. They are so expensive, they take so long, they face so many layers of regulation, mostly because of risk aversion. It is very hard to find a professional scientist in those areas who will tell you anything other than that. And furthermore, you compare it to China, which does biomedical trials much more quickly in much greater number. I'm not saying we should exactly copy their system. We're a different kind of country. But you can see another place getting the job done, basically kicking our butt in drug development.

Are you saying the US system is overly concerned with safety of the patients?

And overly risk-averse. Too many layers of control, regulation, and cost. This is not disputed.

And in China, the people who are in the trials are— they're doing okay?

China is ahead of us in drug development in many, many areas.

Not my question.

There is no evidence I know of abuse of humans, but look, if there is, we could do it better. We can bring advantages of each system to bear. Right now we are stuck.

I would say I didn't get to talk about in my 4 minutes, but ARPA-H was literally invented or established in 2022 as a way go faster and do faster research and literally try to get risky deployable solutions into the hands of surgeons. And so we are— there is, there is evidence showing that we are trying to move in that right direction and be faster. And I'm not going to argue with you, it does take a long time, but for good reason. We need to be safe here.

If I may, I mean, that example— and we don't need China, we can look to Operation Warp Speed. Operation Warp Speed, which is the thing that enabled the mRNA vaccine, was precisely effective because it shrunk the constraints that you usually have to get a medical technology to people. That's precisely why it was successful. So that was a recognition that we're risk-averse. That is precisely why, right, it worked and it saved so many lives. So we have those examples within our own country recently.

How would you respond to that example?

Uh, see, fundamentally, I find that regulations have a role to play. So we cannot just You will find the challenges that you find in other parts of the world. Be careful what you wish for sometimes. We have a country where we try, test, validate, verify, and then deploy. And safety is important. As a consumer, you want things to be safe. You just don't want it to be done in a manner like what happens in a lab. And so there is value and there is a need to be safe, there is a need to have protocols, there is a need to have proper policies and so on. That I think is a very welcome thing. This group in Policy Forum will probably appreciate the importance of policy. All I would say is, in certain situations like AI, for example, the policy framework should work hand in hand with the technological development, not become after the fact. And that becomes the frustrating things like AI, for example. The challenges that we face with AI, with bias, with privacy, with security, all the things that we talk about, or because the policy came after the fact rather than with the fact, with the development of technology. And we are seeing the importance of doing that and we are reconfiguring ourselves. One of the things I want to tell in this context of risk-taking is we are much more interdisciplinary now in terms of research focus areas, where people are willing to go and talk to a humanist, a social scientist, a physicist and a chemist working together. This was not the case before. So this is another thing that we should celebrate. This is a form of risk-taking too. See, we have to understand that risk is not just only about one thing, that, well, my federal funding agency has become so-called risk-averse. It's a lot broader than that. And all of us, let's celebrate the fact that we want the public to trust science. How do you get the public to trust science? Only if you make sure that it is backed with evidence.

OK. I'm going to go to you for questions in just a moment. I just want to remind you there will be a microphone, I believe, in this aisle. And if you line up, we can take your question. We'll be taking a break before that, but please get yourselves in position. But before we do that, I want to bring an example that I think a lot of people are aware of. And that was the Human Genome Project that ran from 1990 to 2003. At the time, there were scientists— more than 50 US scientists signed a letter saying that this was a crazy idea and a waste of money to map the human genome, and yet it turned out to be, I think, a pretty resounding success. And what I'm curious about is the work— how would you compare the work that now relies on the genome versus the search for the genome? Is the work— is there a difference in risk aversion dynamic? In other words, people who are using the genome are doing the non-risky science, and finding it in the first place was risky?

Yeah, I mean, as a child of the Human Genome Project, I think, who was raised in it and raised as a population geneticist in its shadow, I think it has a very deeply complex history. What I will say is that it's, you know, it was founded on these principles of sequencing the human genome, and if you look at the things that it actually was ambitious, its original ambitions, it has not achieved those ambitions, which was to eradicate genetic disease. I think what it was a success— the success was it kind of, it led to all of these new technologies that ended up helping biology as a whole. Now, what ended up happening not long after the end of the Human Genome Project is it just became another target where all these individuals flock to. You have many, many failed iterations of genomics that have taken place in its wake, okay? And you had whole generations. The gene therapy, the first failed iteration of gene therapy in 2004, for example.

Risk-taking.

Risky. Right. Yeah. But the thing is, it was people migrate, whole fields— no, because there was money. People migrated to the popular thing because there was money, and there was attention, and there was glory, right? That's not risk. That's actually doing what the establishment expects you to do. And it failed, and many generations of people failed after that.

I mean, I would say that the Genome Project led to all kinds of wild research now. I mean, if you look at what Beth Shapiro's research is doing, where she's trying to figure out how to change the phenotype of elephants so that with climate change, with what's going on, to see if they can try to get them to grow some mammoth hair. She just did some amazing research with rats, or maybe it was mice, and got them the same thing. So I mean, these little projects that may seem risky or not risky 20, 30 years ago, look at what it's led to now. It's opening up all these doors, and it's transformative what we're learning from this.

And so to your point, the thing that we forget is The Human Genome Project, we are celebrating the success of it several decades later. What is being funded right now will be celebrated several decades later too. I always remind people that the AI of today is sustained investments of 5 to 6 decades by NSF and other agencies. Even during AI winters, we funded them. Today we celebrate them as AI, as if suddenly just came out of nowhere. This is sustained investment. Same thing is true for quantum.. And I often remind people, what NSF is funding today, you will not have labels for another couple of decades. So it's very hard for you to appreciate the fact there is still high-risk, high-reward research that is being funded. Just because you don't see the labels today, you think somehow that we have backed away from that. Not true. So the same thing like Human Genome Project, there are projects in the space realm, in discovering the universe, right? Further understanding the universe. Further understanding the basics of biology, synthetic biology, systems biology. There are still things being invested in. And so we should not forget the fact that this is somehow not happening, it happened two decades ago. That's not true. It's happening, but the labels will be celebrated maybe with, you know, some decades to follow or a few years to follow. So let's keep—

Tyler Cowen, what should be the consequences for a scientist who takes a big risk and then really fails?

Depends on the context. But we need systems that give more funding and more liberty to people and better incentives to take such risks. Here's a very simple example.

So maybe this is your example, but what would be an example of somebody who fails and it doesn't— should not hurt their career?

It depends, you know, why they failed. I've published papers that turned out to be wrong. Did it hurt my career? It's hard to say, but I don't understand what your question is getting at. The point is, if you have 10-year letters and 4 of them are glowing and 1 is negative, you are in deep trouble. And that is the system today. It's not how much the people who like you the most like you. You want everything to be defensible. You write 98-page papers with every possible robustness check. There is extreme risk aversion.

But your opponents call that rigor.

What it leads to is people focusing on the smallest question they feel they can answer in a defensible way, and that is exactly the problem.

Does the other side recognize that as a reality?

I just— if I can, you know, because you're talking about letters, tenure letters, I was chair of the department, the director of the school, and I'm sure the Hopkins leadership here will tell you that we don't reject a tenure case when there are 4 people who say it's a great case and 1 person says it's not. We go and investigate this further. We don't reject that.

Them.

President Daniels is here, he can speak for himself. We don't do that. This is not true. We take a lot of effort and pain. I mean, every young faculty, when I mentored them, I used to tell them, don't worry about tenure, do excellent work. Excellent work will get tenure. You may get tenure, but you may not have felt that you have done excellent work. That's what people get mentored with. I'm sorry, I don't agree with this characterization.

We're going to take some questions from the audience, and if you would like to ask the debaters something please form a line at the microphone. If you can tell us your name and come up, thanks.

Leon, I'm a Hopkins undergrad first year. My question is not about the economic risk, more about the social and existential risk of certain types of research, and also inevitably the role of democracy in this process. Because while we're kind of in like a race against certain countries in technologies like AI, it's true that centralized countries and regimes are better at developing these technologies faster. So I was wondering, what's the role of democracy in managing social and existential risks?

That's to everybody at large. Who would like to take that on first?

I'm a strong believer in the United States as a constitutional republic with plenty of democratic checks and balances. We've been the world leader in science, in part because we're democratic. But the point still remains, Congress is pretty dysfunctional. People across the political spectrum agree with that. Congress has great influence over our society. We just could do so, so much better when it comes to science. And democracy is our greatest blessing. It's partially a curse, and we need to fix it and move ahead with more innovation. You look at, again, aggregate data on scientific innovation, it has not done so great compared to, say, the 1920s or 1930s. And you're not hearing that science, those numbers, rebutted by the other side. You're hearing anecdotes.

So, no, it's very interesting that our opponents are saying we are anecdotes. In fact, they have the anecdotes. I'm giving you the data based on what we do, what we did at NSF, and what's going on in the academic environment. And so I'm happy to talk about the broad concepts too if that is of interest. But you do give anecdotes as examples because oftentimes people People want to trust what you say by giving concrete examples, so you need to do that too. That doesn't mean that we live only by the examples. I just want to be very clear about that. On the issue of democracy, that's one of the greatest blessings that we have. That we can debate like this. We can have a conversation about this. We can agree to disagree, we can agree to, you know, we can disagree without being disagreeable. All of this is because we are in a wonderful democracy. And let me tell you, yes, democracy is messy. But we talked about Congress. The last time I checked, there was a lot of negativity about the fact that science funding will go down, but the NSF funding was mostly retained. But Congress also has a task to do, which is that we have to look at the budget and see how it can be balanced. So we have a role to play, every one of us, which is that science should be thought of not as a spend, but as an investment. And when you talk about investment, you talk about what are the benefits and the impact that the investment accrues. And that's not left to a few people. It's left to every one of us. Every one of us talking about the stories of how scientific investment has a huge impact. This device, for example, this device that all of you are holding up—

To those who can't see, you are holding up your iPhone, I believe.

Yeah, so this device, the iPhone, yes, thank you, has got tens of thousands of projects funded by NSF probably over the years. Including the glass that is there that covers the surface. And everybody uses that. So it's our responsibility to be able to articulate it better.

Thank you.

I often— yeah, go ahead.

Thanks for your question. Let's go on to another question, please.

All right. Hello, I'm Damari. I'm also an undergraduate student at Hopkins. My particular question, I guess, is primarily to the affirmative, but I guess it also merits a response from the negative.

Who specifically is the source of the risk aversion? Is it just the bureaucrats who are in charge of overseeing and determining what does and does not get funding or how much? And what is your proposed solution to that, just to change their minds or have them replace them with something more public or more democratic? And then, I mean, yeah, for the negative, what are the risks for those proposed solutions? Great, great, great question. And that's an opportunity to draw a distinction in terms of where does the risk aversion live? I believe we are risk averse. As Professor Cate said, I don't think the individuals are. I think individual ambition, people really want to do things. I think it's the ecology. It's the system. There's a system that kind of encourages us to do the same thing. So let's talk about data for a sec. The data are overwhelming in this behalf. There's something called the pivot penalty you might have heard of. Researchers incur a formal professional penalty penalty when they choose to do something outside their area of expertise. Major study published by Deshawn Wang and colleagues. We have something, there's big studies on hiring networks. You are more likely to hire people who come from a network familiar to you. We have loads of data on that. We have multiple studies that have demonstrated that. I think that's an ecology problem. I don't think it's an individual who's bad. I don't think it's individuals who aren't trying. I think we are embedded in a system that goes back many, many years and encourages us to pick familiar things. Now how do you do that? I think some of the programs that have been articulated here are good examples. I think there are funding programs that are good examples. I think for me, my most risky projects come from private money or individuals who've actually empowered me to do that thing. That's not a solution, but what that means is we need programs, institutions like where I work at the Santa Fe Institute. That's an independent science kind of organization that does research that when it's completely a field and requires multidisciplinarity. So there are good examples of people who are actually making this happen. Certainly certain departments have been good at this, but we need much more of it so that scientists like you, when you get to the point where you're ready to pick your career, you're not trying to bend your research so that some program officer will give you a grant. I want you thinking deep. I want you challenging nature. I want you being a renegade, and I want you to be employed because of it.

Do you want to respond to that?

No, Kate.

So for me, I keep hearing this perception of the academic clock is kind of what we're coming back to, and which is also anecdotal, right? Because we know people who are extremely, extremely wonderful researchers who are getting tenure. So I will agree with you that the academic system can inhibit it a little bit with risk. I absolutely will get behind that. But I also believe that we are seeing a shift. We can see that people aren't necessarily doing the publish or perish thing anymore. Now if you have something that is actually— you developed an instrument and it's in a hospital, these people are getting tenure. So we are seeing shifts happen across the scope of things. But it's the stereotypical old way of getting tenure, I will agree with you, it may be a little bit too risk adverse. But we are moving in the right direction.

So I respond to the ecology. The NSF has program officers who make the decision. The director, as I was a director, I never got involved in any individual grant, nor do most of the next level of folks that are leading the divisions of directorates. They make sure that the process has been followed. The program officers still make those determinations. In fact, the group of people that review the proposals, sometimes when it is not as risky as they could be, the program officer can in fact fund things even though the community might not have necessarily felt that it is this worthy of investment because they felt that it's worth taking the risk. So when we talk about— I'm specifically focused on ecology of the funding base because you talked about the bureaucracy of the process and the people that are funding. They are not risk-averse.

Now—

I'm going to jump in just because of time. I want to move on to the next question. I just want to note I've done more than 300 of these debates and sometimes the questions are a little bit problematic. These were two great questions. I know I'm at Hopkins.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Sir, thank you for yielding your spot. I think you were first in line and you stepped aside.

No problem.

Thank you.

Jeff Mervis with Science magazine.

I wanted to ask Tyler and Brandon for their definition of risk. I've heard different metrics being used, including what Brandon said, I want to be able to do what I think is important. Not with some bureaucrat. I've heard it say it's success. I've heard you say it's failure.

I'm confused.

What is your definition of risk?

And how do you measure it? There's a formal economic definition of risk, but just intuitively, it's when the scope of possible outcomes is larger rather than smaller. So for instance, if the European Union approves a new medicine or medical device, We will not approve it automatically. We feel that's too much of a risk. We feel the European Union is too risk-loving for us. In my opinion, that is a risk we should take. That would, in the abstract, be more risk. I think it would be quite safe. The European Union regulators, I trust as much as our own regulators. And that's something we don't do because we're too risk-averse.

Could you bring it to the level of the grant-making, Brandon?

Yeah, well, I mean, what I'll say is risk to me is not a number or a metric. It's almost like an algorithm and a process. Risk to me, like I said in the introduction, right, is the rigorous evaluation of all of the processes of science, how we publish, what we publish, what we pursue, the way we hire, the way we promote, the way we teach, and actually experimenting and changing with them. So my view on risk aversion is far deeper than than simply what scientific questions we're asking. It's who gets to ask them and who's sitting in what seat and how we actually construct everything about science. The Human Genome Project was one of these things. It decreased the cost of sequencing the genome from tens of millions of dollars to lower than $1,000, less than $1,000. That's a triumph of science and technology. Here's my question. The processes of science haven't changed at all. We've— how is it that science itself Scientists work hard, we improve, we iterate, and yet the manner that we— the peer review works, which is old and stale, and everybody agrees on that, has not changed at all. So risk to me is experimenting with all of those knobs in the scientific ecosystem.

Kate, I saw you were writing something down.

You— well, I was hoping he wasn't going to ask me what my definition of risk was, but essentially it's if you have an unknown outcome, right? You don't know what's going to happen. You're taking a risk, you're going after something, and that is what the definition is of being a scientist. We ask ask questions and we search for answers. So if we're saying we have to avoid anything where we don't have an unknown outcome or we're doing too much, then we're basically taking away from what a scientist is and what we do.

I'm Jackson, an undergraduate student.

So I kind of—

I wanted to ask a question about a topic that I think has gotten slightly different appraisals from both sides. Kate, you had just said publisher parish is dead.

It doesn't seem to be as much of an agreement from the other side.

Do you think that the current current, uh, publication process in the United States supports risk or crushes it?

I think it's a little bit of both. I'll be honest, it's a little bit of both. I think if you're going to try to publish in our, what, top 10 journals, and you're going for the— they, they publish bold ideas. They want to go after what's referred to as risky science. So I think we're definitely in a space where we're going after that, right, where we're still able to publish in these big places. But I I don't know.

Yeah, I think, I think Kate has a good point. Yeah, that's a point that we have a lot more journals now, right? And so there is a spectrum of the, the risk that the individual journals take, but the top journals still continue to value very risky and bold ideas, but of course with evidence. Because when you publish, you're actually not only publishing the idea, but you're publishing all the studies that go with it. So I would say yes, they are very open to that kind of a risk-based presentation of new ideas and bold ideas.

I think there is overwhelming evidence that the publishing process is stagnant and has not changed. I challenge you to find a basic scientist who will defend the way the peer review process works at the moment, right? I'm the senior editor at a journal which is the journal of record in my field, and I see this. Not only that, we have— there is large amounts of data about how conservatism is rewarded, especially in the large journals. If it's not conservative Criticism, it's like innovation within, it's like putting pineapple on a pizza or something like that. It's still pizza. There's nothing really, really innovative about it. That's the type of innovation we reward in the large journals and you need to publish in the large journals. Contreras said, you do need to publish in eminent journals to get a job. That's just a fact, right? I challenge anybody to debate that. And so the process itself has not been rethought in a long time and needs overhaul tomorrow. So that people like you can operate much more safely.

I'm also an editor for a journal, and so I would fight back on that a little bit. The ones that we approve, the ones that we are publishing, we are definitely leaning into the big ideas and the big things, and we are absolutely publishing work that deserves to be published.

See, the point that you're trying to make here is process can be improved. Everybody will agree with that. Nobody argues with the process being perfect. Process can always be improved. The question is, are we— are there any in journals still publishing high-risk ideas with, of course, supportive evidence? And the answer is yes. Major journals still do that. Here is an editor of Science.

We have time for one more question, I'm afraid, and that's after extending by 5 minutes, so I don't want to keep everybody else standing up there.

Thank you. My question is for Kate on communication.

Communication.

I want to really know, is communication a concern for science to not be risk-averse? I think adding communication to the rigor of scientific research funding, it brings it closer to, what's it called, the risk-adversity of science. So my belief is until scientific breakthroughs or finding failure can be explained and understood by everyone. I think communication should be kept at the journals and scientific paper. So I don't know if you have any—

I would say in general that every scientist that ever has existed needs more science communication skills. We are taught in grad school how to talk to each other using jargon, using vocabulary terms that we learn in grad school, and this has made us kind of, I would argue, we're in, scientists are in this position we're in right now because we don't know how to talk to the general public. And if you talk to social sciences, there are, there's no general public. Like, it's what public are you talking to? What is your audience? And I think if we train our scientists how to talk about research, how to talk about the actual risks that we are taking in lab every single day, then I think this would open up the doors of how we kind of view what's happening inside of a lab. And it is, it is of utmost importance. If you get anything from what I'm saying today, it's the utmost importance to train our scientists how to talk about their science right now because we are in the position we are in because we are not able to connect with the public.

And that is a wrap on our question and answer portion of the program. Now we're coming down the homestretch. It's time to hear closing remarks from each of our four debaters. They each get 90 seconds to make their case one last time. Brandon, you are up first. The floor is yours.

Well, great. Thank you again for spending time with us this evening and hearing our cases. I've argued that science is risk-averse, and it is because a combination of evidence— you've heard multiple sort of antidotes from our lives, but the data, as I've articulated, is overwhelming. I discussed to you the pivot penalty. This is what happens when a scientist decides that, you know what, I have a skill set that can apply to a famine, even though I'm not a famine scientist. I have a skill set that can apply to a pandemic, even though I'm not a pandemic scientist. The spirit of collaboration, right, is penalized. You actually incur a real cost. This is a recent sort of study. We talked about how academic hiring networks— we have data now that we actually are unimaginative about the manner that we're hiring. Look around science to any corner, the way we publish, the way we review grants, the way we hire, the types of questions, and there is ample evidence that we need to start experimenting and doing something original. Science communication, me and you both, Professor Kate, do that, and we find that very central to what we do, and that's right, but guess what? When's the last time we had a job search and we've actively tried to hire somebody who did that? Very, very rarely. Very, very rarely. Very, very rarely, and you're a triumph of that. So the idea is let's experiment with science itself. Let's use the data that we have to kind of come up with ways to make this much more rigorous, much more careful, much more creative, and much more successful. Thank you.

Thank you, Brandon. Kate, you're up next.

Thank you very much. I really appreciate the questions from the audience. You all were incredible. You made me think about things. I'm gonna be thinking about this for the next couple days for sure. So I just kind of want to reiterate the big thing. So our scientists are asking the big questions. I've never met a single scientist who doesn't have that dream, that moonshot, that wants to go after it. It is an inherent— it is part of our culture. It's a part of the way we see the world. There are the funding structures there to support it for those who want to go after it. Yes, we need to change the funding model a little bit, but it is there, and we are there to support it. I started off by saying that academic has a responsibility. Universities have the responsibility to go after and take those risks. But Big Pharma, if you ask them, they're going to say the exact same thing, that they're the ones taking the risk. At any given point in time, they have between 6 to 10 projects that they're running from a variety of risks. One that's gonna guarantee to go so that they can talk and meet their bottom line and talk to their executive board, but they also have the one that's the risky thing that's scientifically possible. It probably won't work, but if it does, it will change the world. And so these type of ways of approaching the world and approaching everything we're doing here kind of sets us up for success. It puts us in a great place, and I think if we continue asking questions, maybe make a couple changes to the funding model, and train our scientists how to talk about their science, we are going to see that the question should in theory never even be asked. Is the scientific enterprise too risk-averse? No, it is not. It is a part of being inheritive of asking those big questions, and we are here to represent that today. Thank you.

Thank you, Kate. Tyler, the floor is yours. The floor is yours.

There's one measure of risk aversion we haven't talked about much, and that is how much do we spend on science? As you heard from the other side of the debate, they were happy that Congress is restoring science funding. That's wonderful, but think how much we're playing defense. If they, as scientists, are happy that Congress is restoring funding, the greatest increase in risk we could take would be to do much more to support science. The federal level, the state level, the corporate level, all over, at every level. We're not doing that. They're defending, they're happy about the fact that we're playing some level of successful defense. I feel they must in some way be ashamed that that's the reality they're living under. I think it's a bad sign about this country. And the truly the really risky thing for our establishment to be doing would be to be expanding support of science, expanding frontiers of science across all these dimensions. You could disagree exactly how we should do it best, but is that what America is doing now in 2026? I really just do not flat out see that. So when it comes to the single most important measure, are we moving toward more science, more financial support of science, more cultural and status support of science and scientists. We are doing the opposite. So I would urge you to vote with the proposition that science today is indeed too risk-averse.

Thank you, Panch. You get the last word.

I just want to anchor us back to the topic of the debate, because you might have gotten confused. We have me and The topic is, is science risk-averse? Should we get funded? Should we have federal government invest more in science? Absolutely yes. We are not convinced that their investment is— I was making a point relative to the Congress and what they did, but I didn't say that there was enough funding for science. That's one thing that we fought for every day when I was at NSF. Funding should be lot, lot more than what it is right now. I would agree with you. I would agree with you that it's process improvements that we need to have. I would agree with you. But that's not what we are talking about here. What we are talking about is, is science risk-averse? And the answer is absolutely not. That's the point that we are debating here. I just want us to be very clear about that. Science is a process, is not a risk-averse process. It's to ensure that we are risk-aware. And we are managing the risks and not running away from the risks. And I would say with confidence that in the organizations that I have been, academic, department level, university level, interacted with many, many folks across academia, industry, and leading an agency, I will say science funding, science investments, and science writ large is not risk-averse. We clearly have a long way to go in terms of improving it and making it serve us better. Folks, let's be very clear. We are looked upon as something that people want to emulate and replicate and they are not able to do that. We have something really good going here. That doesn't mean that we cannot be better. That doesn't mean that suddenly we have become risk-averse. Not true.

Thank you, Panch.

And that is a wrap That's a wrap on the argument portion of the program. And now that you've heard the debaters' arguments, we'd like to hear from you, our audience, again. We're putting up that QR code, and we want to ask you again to submit your response to our question: is the scientific enterprise too risk-averse? Again, the options are yes, no, or undecided. I'm going to give you a minute to get your vote in and wait for you to establish eye contact with me. So while we're waiting for the vote to come in, what I'd love to do is to ask the 4 debaters to step up front with me here.

Good job.

Nice.

Great job.

A real pleasure. Good job.

A pleasure to debate with you.

This is the part of the program where I ask the debaters to shake hands with one another. But you all got to it already.

All right.

Thank you Thank you very much. Can you just tell me your name?

Leon.

Oh, did you— we saw you before, yeah.

I was—

Yeah, okay.

It was a very good question and I really appreciate it. And another round of applause for Leon. Thanks so much. So here is how it went on the question, is the scientific enterprise risk-averse? Before the arguments were heard, 41.9% said yes, 21% said no, and 37.1% were undecided. After the vote, 54.7% said yes, 27.4% said no, 17.9% were undecided. The largest move was towards the side arguing yes. They picked up 12.8 percentage points to 6.4% for the other side. So the yes side proved more persuasive, but we learned a lot from all sides tonight. So thank you.

Great talk.

Thank you.

And thank you everybody for coming. Thank you for being here. We hope to see you again. The next time we do this, we hope that you'll bring your friends. We're gonna look at your notes that you shared with us about your comments on the debate, but you were a wonderful audience and we really, really appreciate it. So we'll see you next time. Thank you.