The US is currently facing a series of key technology challenges that require coordinated and cross-disciplinary pursuits to fill gaps at the boundary of research and engineering. Yet this type of work is often not adequately supported by traditional research and development models. Tight-knit collaboration and engineering progress are minimally rewarded in the academy, and public goods with multi-year development timelines and little value-capture are rarely feasible in industry.
Focused Research Organizations (FROs) have been proposed as a new research model for addressing these types of problems. FROs are envisioned as standalone, time-limited non-profit organizations organized like a startup to solve well-defined technical challenges that are neither profitable nor publishable. Their goal is to produce vital public goods: processes, tools, and datasets that are actively translated into use by others, to enable new methods and accelerate the pace of scientific research.
We believe that expected value forecasts present a promising approach to evaluate FROs. Along with our partners at the Federation of American Scientists, we are evaluating five FRO proposals in the life sciences sourced by Convergent Research. This effort will provide (a) quantitative assessments of the risk-reward profile of each FRO proposal that can inform agency decision-making, (b) actionable insight to proposal authors regarding their approach, and (c) new metascientific understanding of forecasting in scientific review.
This is a public tournament consisting of 30 questions, with 20 in groups, that will compile forecasts from both the Metaculus community and subject-matter experts identified by FAS. Three Metaculus Pro Forecasters will be participating in this tournament and sharing their predictions and reasoning with the community.
If funded, each of the following five FROs would receive approximately $50 million and five years to achieve ambitious milestones. The FRO proposals are:
Each of the below FRO proposals includes a research proposal and a supplementary forecasting guide. We recommend reviewing these before you begin. Find them on each FRO proposal's project page: