What is some RP research that you think was extremely important or view-changing but got relatively little attention from the EA community or relevant stakeholders?

What are some of your proudest 'impact stories' from RP's research? E.g. you did research on insects and now X funders will dedicate $Y million to insect welfare 

Doing some napkin-math:

• Rethink published 32 pieces of research in 2022 (according to your database)
• I think roughly (?) half of your work doesn't get published as it's for specific clients, so let's say you produced 64 reports overall in 2022.
• Rethink raised $10.7 million in 2022.
• That works out to around $167k per research output.

That seems like a lot! Maybe I should discount a bit as some of this might be for the new Special Projects team rather than research, but it still seems like it'll be over $100k per research output. 

Related questions:

• Do you think the calculations above are broadly correct? If not, could you share what the ballpark figures might actually be? Obviously, this will depend a lot on the size of the project and other factors but averages are still useful! 
• If they are correct, how come this number is so high? Is it just due to multiple researchers spending a lot of time per report and making sure it's extremely high-quality? FWIW I think the value of some RP projects is very high - and worth more than the costs above - but I'm still surprised at the costs.
• Is the cost something you're assessing when you decide whether to take on a research project (when it's not driven by an external client)? Do you have some internal calculations (or external tool) where you try to calculate the value of information of a given research project and weigh that up against proposed costs?

Meta-comment: For the future, it might be better for GPI to not post several summaries/working papers at the same time. I can currently see four GPI posts on the EA Forum homepage and this makes it a bunch less likely that I will read all 4 (personally, I can only handle so much academic global priorities research at once). A suggestion is that spreading this content out over e.g. 4 weeks might increase uptake/reading but just my personal opinion!

To what degree is the content on OWID decided by OWID vs influenced by donors?

For example, I vaguely remember seeing that Longview had donated to OWID then also noticed OWID’s newer work on longtermism. Was there any relation between these and generally how do you try to maintain editorial independence when soliciting donations from foundations/donors who have specific objectives?

Small relevant bump that if anyone is interested in hearing more about this work, we're actually organising a webinar about it! It'll be on Monday 5th of June, 6-7pm BST and you can sign up here.

Social Change Lab is hosting a webinar on Monday 5th of June around our previous research that radical tactics can increase support for more moderate groups. If you want to hear more about our research, some slightly updated findings and ask questions, now is your time!

It’ll be on June 5th, 6-7pm BST and you can sign up here.

I'm hiring for a new Director at Social Change Lab to lead our team! This is a hugely important role so if anyone is at all interested, I do encourage you to apply. Any questions, please feel free to reach out as well. 

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Social Change Lab is a nonprofit conducting and disseminating social movement research to help solve the world’s most pressing problems. We’re looking for a Director to lead our small team in delivering cutting-edge research on the outcomes and strategies of social movements, and ensuring widespread communication of this work to key stakeholders. You would play a significant role in shaping our long-term strategy and the programs we want to deliver. See more information below, the full job description here and apply here.

• Application deadline: 2nd of June, 23:59 BST. Candidates will be considered on a rolling basis so early applications are encouraged. Apply here.
• Contract: Permanent, working 37.5 hours/week. 
• Location: London or UK preferred, although fully remote or overseas applications will also be considered.
• Salary: £48,000-£55,000/year dependent on experience. 

If anyone is interested or knows someone who might be a good fit, please share the job advert with them or let me know. You can also see some more context on the leadership change here.

This is only somewhat related but I would be keen to get your thoughts Brian on this talk and related paper on positive wild animal welfare? They argue that wild animal welfare isn't necessarily so clear cut to be negative and there are some positive elements as well that we often don't discuss. I'm no expert and you've probably thought about wild animal suffering more than most people so I would be very curious to hear what you think.

There's a lot in the talk but I found the slides below particularly interesting to think about (timestamp: 30:13) as it implies that even with heavily r-selected species, the deaths and suffering of juveniles may not dominate overall suffering.

Thank you for the kind words and great feedback! This initially slipped our mind but tanks to your comment, we're now doing so :)