A new nonprofit aims to spur the US National Institutes of Health and the National Science Foundation to be more efficient and support more daring research, Stat News reports.
Stat News notes that unlike other research funding and advocacy groups, the Good Science Project is not focused on boosting the agencies' budget but is instead interested in ensuring they get the most bang for their buck. The nonprofit's executive director Stuart Buck tells Stat News that researchers spend too much time on bureaucratic tasks and that funding agencies wind up encouraging researchers to work on incremental research rather than work that has more potential to be groundbreaking. Stat News notes that the new ARPA-H agency — which recently received funding and a home within NIH — follows along the same premise what the Good Science Project is pushing for.
"Everyone is incentivized to play it safe. But playing it safe doesn't get you the best science. Some of the greatest scientific discoveries came from people who were taking chances," Buck tells it.
The nonprofit plans to highlight hurdles preventing effective funding strategies as well as focus on boosting data transparency and addressing scientific reproducibility, it adds.