PDF(Pubmed)
Abstract：
Scientific research requires taking risks, as the most cautious approaches are unlikely to lead to the most rapid progress. Yet, much funded scientific research plays it safe and funding agencies bemoan the difficulty of attracting high-risk, high-return research projects. Why don\'t the incentives for scientific discovery adequately impel researchers toward such projects? Here, we adapt an economic contracting model to explore how the unobservability of risk and effort discourages risky research. The model considers a hidden-action problem, in which the scientific community must reward discoveries in a way that encourages effort and risk-taking while simultaneously protecting researchers\' livelihoods against the vicissitudes of scientific chance. Its challenge when doing so is that incentives to motivate effort clash with incentives to motivate risk-taking, because a failed project may be evidence of a risky undertaking but could also be the result of simple sloth. As a result, the incentives needed to encourage effort actively discourage risk-taking. Scientists respond by working on safe projects that generate evidence of effort but that don\'t move science forward as rapidly as riskier projects would. A social planner who prizes scientific productivity above researchers\' well-being could remedy the problem by rewarding major discoveries richly enough to induce high-risk research, but in doing so would expose scientists to a degree of livelihood risk that ultimately leaves them worse off. Because the scientific community is approximately self-governing and constructs its own reward schedule, the incentives that researchers are willing to impose on themselves are inadequate to motivate the scientific risks that would best expedite scientific progress.
摘要：
科学研究需要承担风险,因为最谨慎的方法不太可能导致最快的进展。然而，受资助的科学研究很安全，资助机构哀叹吸引高风险人员的困难，高回报的研究项目。为什么科学发现的动机不足以促使研究人员进行此类项目？在这里，我们采用经济契约模型来探索风险和努力的不可观测性如何阻碍风险研究。该模型考虑了隐藏动作问题，科学界必须以鼓励努力和冒险的方式奖励发现，同时保护研究人员的生计免受科学机遇的影响。这样做的挑战是激励努力的动机与激励冒险的动机相冲突，因为失败的项目可能是冒险的证据，但也可能是简单懒惰的结果。因此,鼓励努力积极阻止冒险所需的激励措施。科学家们通过开展安全项目来做出回应，这些项目可以产生努力的证据，但不会像风险较高的项目那样迅速推动科学向前发展。一个重视科学生产力高于研究人员福祉的社会规划师可以通过奖励足以引发高风险研究的重大发现来解决问题，但是这样做会使科学家面临一定程度的生计风险，最终使他们的状况变得更糟。因为科学界大约是自治的，并建立了自己的奖励时间表，研究人员愿意强加给自己的激励措施不足以激发最能加快科学进步的科学风险。
