Stian Westlake

AI investment to transform global policy with scientific evidence An £11.5 million AI-driven evidence synthesis project will turbocharge policymakers’ ability to quickly understand scientific evidence on important issues.

Excited to launch ESRC's major investment in METIUS, led by @qubelfastofficial.bsky.social, with a host of global partners.

METIUS will harness AI to provide timely, reliable evidence synthesis on major societal challenges to policymakers across the globe.

www.ukri.org/news/ai-inve...

'Health is always high on the political agenda, but at this moment, our mission has never been more urgent. We are therefore thrilled to welcome Karen, Kim, and Stian to our Board of Governors.' Dr Jennifer Dixon, Chief Executive at the Health Foundation

We are pleased to announce the appointment of three new governors.

Karen Reid, Kim Graham and @stianwestlake.bsky.social​ bring experience spanning public service, academia, and policy innovation, reinforcing our commitment to building a healthier UK.

Read more⬇️
https://bit.ly/3Ie9Mhg

Cover 'On the necessity of gardening' Botany and Cultivation.

Book pages with floral drawings in the middle of two columns of text

Page with text and tessellating pattern

Abstract illustration of horse with detail

Designers!

We're looking to hire a graphic designer and typesetter based in London to oversee and do the production of our upcoming print edition at Works in Progress magazine.

If you like this work below, you might be the person for us!

More detail: www.worksinprogress.news/p/were-hirin...

UKRI announces first UK-wide birth cohort study in 25 years A ground-breaking UK-wide scientific study will help improve the lives of future generations by studying 30,000 children born in 2026.

Announcing Generation New Era: the first UK-wide birth cohort study in 25 years.

It will study 30,000 children born in 2026 across the four nations of the UK.

Watch out for upcoming opportunities for researchers and other stakeholders to engage with the study team via @clscohorts.bsky.social

This is a really interesting list, including some things I found quite surprising! For all that growth has slowed everywhere since 2008 (esp “everywhere ex-US”), I do wonder if the UK’s multiply dismal performance is cause for hope. Catch-up growth is easier than frontier growth!

Promoting economic growth Some thoughts on ESRC's role and ambitions

An important element of the new ESRC strategy we are working on is to make the promotion of economic growth an explicit goal of our work.

I've written a short piece about why we're doing this, and what that might involve.

magicsmoke.substack.com/p/promoting-...

Thanks for the discussion - I'm always happy to answer questions about this or other funding partnerships we have. You're absolutely right that I have a duty to be open about what we're doing. :-)

But I worry that a req to publish a detailed analysis of the value that our partners (of whom we have 000s - not limited to cofunders), all of whom inherently have their own agendas, would be (a) time consuming and (b) would likely never be probing enough to satisfy critics of any given partner

And as you'd imagine, we follow careful rules when engaging with commercial entities or when giving organisations public money.

I agree with you that it's important to be clear about partnerships - and I feel I am pretty open about our partnerships with OP (and Sloane and other co-funders) - not least because I'm proud of them and think they're valuable.

They’re not funding us, if that’s what you mean; they’re funding projects from a call that we collaborated with them on, a call from which we also funded projects, in a similar way to how we’ve worked with other statutory and philanthropic funders.

There is much enthusiasm, in principle, for adversarial collaborations (ACs), a scientific conflict resolution technique that encourages investigators with clashing models to collaborate in designing studies that test competing predictions. Adversarial collaborations offer the promise of breaking deadlocked debates, resolving disputes, and providing a deeper, more comprehensive understanding of a research domain. In practice, however, adversarial collaborations are more the exception than the rule, and there is almost no evidence on how scholars who have ventured into ACs assess the experience. To understand these perspectives, we surveyed and interviewed 29 scholars who participated in 13 AC projects. The data revealed that interpersonal conflicts were generally minor, that these projects required more upfront effort than typical collaborations, but benefited from high-quality results and more thoughtful post-publication debates. Rather than producing a clear “winner,” the most common outcome was a deeper understanding of the problem space through the integration of opposing perspectives. Although the generalizability of these findings is limited by a sample consisting only of scholars who completed an AC, they nonetheless highlight the value of ACs as a tool for advancing scientific inquiry and offer practical guidance for scholars and journals exploring this approach.

29 scholars reflect on their participation in adversarial collaborations:

“Rather than producing a clear 'winner,' the most common outcome was a deeper understanding of the problem space through the integration of opposing perspectives”

Open Access: doi.org/10.1007/s111...

#MetaSci #Methodology 🧪

(b) the excellent input they and their communities brought to the grant review process, which contributed valuable cognitive diversity to the discussions, leading what is IMO a really better set of funded projects than we might have funded on our own.

Open Philanthropy have been a terrific partner in the work of the UK Metascience Unit. Two things I’d mention in particular: (a) the very high quality of the metascience work OP do on their own account (eg Matt Clancy’s thoughtful articles)…

The hope is that the field of applicants includes experts in the field in question. (So this possibly would not work well for, eg some types early career awards)

How to speed up peer review: make applicants mark one another ‘Distributed peer review’ of grants makes process more than twice as fast — and includes some cheat-prevention measures.

Nice write-up in @nature.com of the UK Metascience Unit's experiments with Distributed Peer Review.

www.nature.com/articles/d41...

Hanging out with the ESRC’s founder in Huddersfield, ahead of today’s Y-PERN conference - a great chance to discuss how innovation and devolution can help Yorkshire flourish!

As far as I can tell - unlike degrees - there are no rules at all on who can award professorships or on what basis. So you could award yourself one - or even better, two!

Is the anecdotal evidence perhaps a bit stronger than that? Spoken to a couple of people who work with HNWs who say they’ve seen an increase in departures and planned departures. Plus the top end of the London property market seems to have lots for sale, at what look like reduced prices.

Delighted to see @ESRC's brilliant Executive Director of Research, Jen Gold, recognised in today's King's Birthday Honours for her contributions to metascience, evidence and research. Congratulations on the very well deserved honour!

Just read the relevant chapter. I don’t think it’s measurement they’re objecting too (the metascience movement they praise does lots of measurement!) but rather a particular form of overbureaucratised funding allocation that elevates process over judgment and encourages incrementalism

So I wrote a thing.

Here is the gist. My provocation was a bit of heresy aimed at my own tribe of decent, evidence-driven, apolitical policy wonks who quite sensibly worship at the altar of the arms-length institution, the predictable rule, politics-free decisions and so on ... 1/

Really interesting, very in-depth on how open science and replication efforts were funded and gradually grew more influential.

Great example of what thoughtful philanthropy can accomplish.

goodscience.substack.com/p/metascienc...

Something you don’t see any more: Tulameen raspberries. 10 years ago UK raspberries were Driscoll’s maravilla (sp?) out of season and Tulameen in season. Now they seem to be maravilla or Driscoll’s reyna all summer.

Can any soft fruit experts on here explain what changed?

EXTREMELY BAD NEWS for economic research, per former BLS Commissioner @ericagroshen.bsky.social on LinkedIn.

BLS is suspending access to its restricted data "for the forseeable future." Applies to projects through the Federal Statistical Research Data Centers & onsite projects with BLS.
#EconSky

Another reminder I need to read Abundance. One issue is that research funders aren’t as mindful as we could be about what the “odds of our gambles” even are (which no doubt contributes to the problem you mention)

One of my niche views is that a culture of better data will reduce the power of the culture of evaluation and one-off reports, which I'd argue is worse. But I haven't read what EK has to say about this (is it in Abundance?).

(I see it is co-authored by @paulnightingale.bsky.social, so no wonder it is good.)

Generating coherent and effective R&D and innovation policies Given the important role innovation plays in productivity growth, policies to support R&D, technology and innovation are vital components of any effective economic strategy. This paper outlines five c...

Good to see this new, short, readable report on innovation policy from @britishacademy.bsky.social - and that its top recommendation is investing in "how we measure research and innovation inputs and outputs", something we are busy working on!

www.thebritishacademy.ac.uk/publications...

Trump's 'act of self-harm' could accidentally save UK universities The US President’s clampdown on foreign students could rescue British universities facing tighter restrictions on their own overseas recruits

Could Trump's decision to go to war with US universities inadvertently save the UK's cash-strapped higher education sector?

UK uni sources have told me they are already seeing foreign students who had intended to go to the US coming here instead inews.co.uk/news/politic...

My @theipaper.com read: