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1/ We believe science is a catalyst for human progress.
But a publishing monopoly and funding monopsony inhibit our ability to improve research.
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2/ Papers serve as proof of work in research.
But the industrialization of science makes papers / proposals too specialized and too numerous to evaluate prima facie.
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3/ We rely on centralized peer review today to distill scientific signal from noise.
But as a result, research incentives have become distorted in two major ways: prestige capture and reviewer misalignment.
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4/ Prestige capture occurs because journals are the sole arbiters of papers.
Like regulatory capture, prestige capture causes public and scientific interest to be directed towards the regulators of prestige.
Publishers have exploited this to become scientific rent-seekers.
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5/ Reviewer misalignment occurs because peer review lacks skin-in-the-game.
There is little upside or downside for researchers who volunteer to review papers / proposals, as most reviews are single-blinded (reviewer identity is undisclosed) and closed (review is not published).
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6/ These distorted incentives affect 3 core tenets of research progress:
- science friction: research is slower and costlier
- science quality: research faces issues with reproducibility and bias
- science variance: research is more risk-averse and short term-oriented
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7/ We intend to improve incentives with smart research contracts.
They enable a diverse array of scientific activities to be explicitly rewarded with reputational and financial benefits.
Peer-to-peer review networks will be designed to help evaluate proposals and publications.
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8/ Beyond utilitarian reasons, there is a moral imperative for scientific knowledge to be collectively shared, reviewed, and funded.
A decentralized and tokenized ledger may be the best data and economic structure for guaranteeing that in perpetuity.
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9/ Smart research contracts serve as scaffolds for building, testing, and improving new models for science.
Future applications will prosper on top of this platform and help accelerate research progress.
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10/ Alan Kay once shared an important sign from Bell Labs: “Either do something very useful, or very beautiful.”
But then Kay lamented: “Funders today won’t fund the second at all, and are afraid to fund at the risk level needed for the first.”
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Fin/ We hope to build a world where both useful and beautiful research flourish.
Join us: bits@atoms.org
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