Background

1Day Sooner is an advocacy nonprofit working in public health and pandemic preparedness. We especially focus on human challenge trials and market shaping for vaccine development. Some of the staff are interested in possible uses of forecasting in institutional governance—for example, in the future, we might explore funding indoor air quality research using forecasting models that are based on the results of previous studies. We're trying to find a low-cost test case.

We're soliciting ideas for a forecasting tournament, and are especially interested in ideas that might be informative about one of the following areas:

• How the results of vaccine or infectious aerosols research might be predictive for further research or impact.

  • (e.g: "If Study A achieves [b] result, will Study C achieve [d] result?" or "If Study A achieves [b] result in a lab, will the effect be at least [c]% as strong in a real-world environment?" This is tricky, since we’d want the studies in question to already be funded or in progress!)

• How the results of vaccine or infectious aerosols research might impact technological development.

• Questions related to Project NextGen that could serve as a template for predictive processes around public health investments.

The listed areas are promising focuses, and questions in those areas are more likely to be used, but feel free to submit other suggestions as well. Originally, we wanted to run a forecasting tournament based on a paper we commissioned about hepatitis C vaccine challenge trials, but after several rounds of feedback, decided that there were too many obstacles. To demonstrate the kind of thing we’re going for, here’s a doc outlining our first idea, including a list of objections/problems. 

Resolution

RESOLUTION: This resolves YES if, within the next three months (ie by this date in September), we are working on a forecasting project based on an idea submitted by someone from outside 1Day Sooner.

BOUNTY: In addition to the M$1000 subsidy on the market, I’ll send you a manalink with up to M$3000 if we use your idea. 

Clarifications

Q: What form should submissions take?

A: You can frame your idea as a doc (similar to the one I linked above) with mechanics included, if there might be anything complicated about resolution (e.g. not clear when resolution information will become available, some specialist insight possibly required, etc), or just a question/set of questions if the resolution would be relatively obvious. 

Q: Who decides whether a suggestion gets used? How likely is it?

A: Final decisions will be made by the head of the org. He says that he’ll have a high bar for spending money and staff time on a forecasting project—he wasn’t optimistic about anything coming out of this market, so aside from the mana bounty, you can also aspire to prove him wrong.

Q: What counts as using someone’s idea?

A: Since we’re going to wind up discussing suggestions among ourselves and might change some elements even if we use the core of a submitted idea, resolution is going to be subject to the opinion of the relevant staff. Of course I’ll try to use an intuitive and generous interpretation.

You can comment your ideas or send them to me at gavriel.kleinwaks@1daysooner.org. I'll post any suggestions I receive here in the comments so that people can make educated bets, but I can anonymize emailed suggestions if you request it.