Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

What we learned doing Fast Grants

future.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

61–70 of 107 posts

Re: What we learned doing Fast Grants

#61

Post by dang »

nickthemagicman wrote: post #45
cbsmith wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> There's a difference between people who don't think vaccines are good as a whole...and people who question a rushed vaccine developed with no FDA oversight or testing by companies who have absolutely no liability if things go wrong for a disease that has 99.99% survival rate for most people. > > And then there are questions about it even WORKING fully and one still has to wear a mask and you can still be contagious…

> Covid chance of death in general population (Deaths / US population): 100 - (600000/350 million) = 99.9982857143% survival rate > "Currently, no coronavirus vaccine is fully approved by the FDA, but three were given emergency use authorization by the agency" https://www.nbcchicago.com/news/coronavirus/are-covid-vaccin... > The demand on our healthcare infrastructure is potentially crippling, as we've seen Completel…

We've had to ask you multiple times before not to break the site guidelines like this. You've been posting lots of flamewar comments lately. I don't want to ban you but you're not making this easy. Would you please review https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and fix this?

Re: What we learned doing Fast Grants

#62

Post by fuzzfactor »

draklor40 wrote: post #9

Individuals are more ready to take risks than institutions. To me this was the most damning indictment of all. Once founders leave a compnay (or an institution), as BalajiS says, they become a shell of their former selves,with the individuals mostly in for self-preservation rather than set out fulfill the purpose of the institution.

>Individuals are more ready to take risks than institutions.

"There's a place in the world for a gambler"

-- Dan Fogelberg

Re: What we learned doing Fast Grants

#63

Post by fuzzfactor »

TheCanuckster wrote: post #23
rattray wrote: post #4

This is worth reading all the way through for anyone with an interest in science and innovative projects.

Thank you for your thoughtful comment. At the risk of drawing a conclusion too strong from the article, I would add that that Fast Grants' referee panel of 'earyl-career individuals from top universities' with [responses] given out within '48 hours' warrants thoughtful contemplation on its own. Hiring great people, then giving them both autonomy and authority to make effective decisions seems to be a missing ingredie…

Seems like funding awarded by a panel of 'early-career individuals from top universities' would be a success-prone screening process.

But compared against the rigid and bureaucratic obstacles to conventional funding, it is actually closer to being a random application of criteria than what was otherwise available to the grantees.

The sad part about the mainstream academic institutions is that a more random award process is more sensible than what most researchers are normally facing these days.

No doubt 'late-career individuals who did top things even though they went to schools that were not well-known' would be a good qualification for a different success-prone panel, but you would expect the outcome to be vastly different.

Either way it gives some researchers a chance who would not otherwise have any near-term or appropriate opportunities.

Just different researchers.

Re: What we learned doing Fast Grants

#64

Post by fuzzfactor »

haskellandchill wrote: post #3

We need to fix our economy to encourage the flow of money to productive ideas and individuals.

Too bad the most productive ideas and individuals are mostly not in the path of this money flow, instead pushed aside by the very clamor of the uniform hordes who seek nothing else.

>alternative models of science funding can work.

>The macro conclusion is that we don’t yet know what works or which combination of structures would make most sense.

One thing we all know is the type of things that don't work, when it comes to making the most of those researchers having the greatest talent for out-of-the-box experimentation & discovery.

Over a lifetime of effort tackling this exact problem, proven elements can be isolated and combined in ways that are not possible using any other approach.

So it's good that there are actually those who long ago foresaw today's sad situation, and who know lots of things that do work, even if those individuals are not in the mainstream.

Re: What we learned doing Fast Grants

#65

Post by esyir »

mchusma wrote: post #58
cbsmith wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Keep in mind that vaccines solve a systemic problem, and a bad vaccine can exacerbate a pandemic. Yes, vaccines can be made in a day or two, but it takes a long time to know if they are effective .

It actually doesn't take long to have high confidence vaccines work. Roughly 30 days. Day 1- inject vaccine. Day 15 - infect virus. Day 30 - know it works. Human challenge studies were a ethical no brainer. Even other studies if we gradually increased the number of people allowed to take them would mitigate almost any real risk. So you let up to 1k people take it month 1, 10k month 2, 100k month 3, and so on. Basical…

I strongly agree with reducing red tape for biomedical testing, but this is a drastic oversimplification of the current scenario, and of vaccine efficacy.

Re: What we learned doing Fast Grants

#66

Post by boxed »

Retric wrote: post #15
Kydlaw wrote: post #10

Fast Grants, but to fight climate change?

New emergencies generally offer more low hanging fruit. I am doubtful that ~50M split into 260 grants would have any measurable impact on climate change. Just as this didn’t have any large wins. Arguably rather than research leveraging that into solar panels or other infrastructure would be a better use of funds. In the end it’s a real gamble. One or more of those 4,000 applications was likely a great use of funds, b…

Your argument is short time and defeatist. Good science can totally chance the game. You're talking about playing the existing game.

Re: What we learned doing Fast Grants

#67

Post by teclordphrack2 »

nickthemagicman wrote: post #43
teclordphrack2 wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The only reason I like this idea is that we know a certain political segment of society would of been killed off by dumb decisions in this area via hydroxychloroquine.

Didn't that turn out to work? https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2021.05.28.21258012v...

No, it did not.

Please explain how you think the link you provided backs your opinion. Give me your analysis of the data presented. Let me know you actually understand it.

This is one paper on one hospital and only looking at data after the fact.

Across the USA if you were hospitalized more than 10 days you had a much higher chance of survival. It did not depend on any medication given. That is a stat that runs across the board. This study only includes patients that were given a treatment AFTER 10 days of hospitalization. Most of those that were going to die did so before this study would show they would of been treated.

Re: What we learned doing Fast Grants

#68

Post by wolverine876 »

xyzzy123 wrote: post #35
buu700 wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've thought the same thing and generally agree with it. Why shouldn't I be able to walk to CVS and pick up a bottle of heroin and various prescription drugs? I'm an adult; I shouldn't even owe anyone an explanation. At the same time, I think we would need to concurrently ban drug advertisements as other countries have. To me, that seems like a better balance between treating individuals as adults with autonomy and m…

The reason you can't go to CVS and pick up heroin or crack is: Inevitably, lots of people would become addicted and there would be many deaths. Very critical news stories would run. People neglecting their children to use drugs. Testimonies of loved ones and shattered families. Politicians would be inundated with calls to regulate these dangerous substances. Politicians who refused to do anything would be mired in co…

> lots of people would become addicted and there would be many deaths

This is the reason. It doesn't require cynically blaming politicians. It's not wrong for politicians to act to prevent death, and to be responsive to their constituents. Those are good things.

Re: What we learned doing Fast Grants

#69

Post by wolverine876 »

gpm wrote: post #22
nickthemagicman wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What about taking health advice from the NEWS MEDIA.

Screaming isn't necessary... Taking advice directly from the reporter is as ridiculous as taking advice from celebrities. Taking advice from the health officials/professionals the reporter is quoting... well as long as you trust the reporter to be quoting them accurately that's about as reasonable as taking advice directly from the health officials/professionals. Advice can roughly speaking be evaluated as [probabili…

> Taking advice directly from the reporter is as ridiculous as taking advice from celebrities.

Agreed, though I don't see reporters offering health advice. They do what you say.

Though a health reporter probably knows far more than a random famous person, having spent a career learning about health care and days/weeks/months studying the specific issues at hand. Look at the amount of research involved in a serious news publication - often many experts interviewed, studies reviewed, and that's just what made it into print.

Re: What we learned doing Fast Grants

#70

Post by wolverine876 »

Andreessen Horowitz created Future to bypass journalists, as I understand it, and have actively tried to discredit journalists who are critics. This essay is the first I've seen in Future, and it fits what one might expect:

It's highly critical of others, the authors portray themselves as heroes and avoid almost all criticism of themselves. There are almost no sources and it doesn't show or attempt to show other points of view, and makes no attempt to address bias and self-interest.

In a sense, it works perfectly. Let's be aware of what it is: self-promotion from people trying to avoid scrutiny.

Post reply on HN