Supporting Insect Welfare Science through a Dedicated Fund

Welcome to The Nonlinear Library, where we use Text-to-Speech software to convert the best writing from the Rationalist and EA communities into audio. This is: Help Fund Insect Welfare Science, published by Bob Fischer on June 14, 2024 on The Effective Altruism Forum.
The Arthropoda Foundation
Tens of trillions of insects are used or killed by humans across dozens of industries. Despite being the most numerous animal species reared by animal industries, we know next to nothing about what's good or bad for these animals. And right now, funding for this work is scarce. Traditional science funders won't pay for it; and within EA, the focus is on advocacy, not research. So,
welfare science needs your help.
We're launching the
Arthropoda Foundation, a fund to ensure that insect welfare science gets the essential resources it needs to provide decision-relevant answers to pressing questions. Every dollar we raise will be granted to research projects that can't be funded any other way.
We're in a critical moment for this work. Over the last year, field-building efforts have accelerated, setting up academic labs that can tackle key studies. However, funding for these studies is now uncertain. We need resources to sustain the research required to improve the welfare of insects.
Why do we need a fund?
We need a fund because we need a runway for high-priority research. Scientists need to make plans over several years, not a few months. They have to commit now to a grad student who starts next year and finishes a project two years after that. The fund helps guarantee that resources will be there to support academics in the long-term, ensuring that entire labs can remain devoted to this work.
We need a fund because we need to let researchers be researchers, not fundraisers. A fund doesn't just buy critical research; it buys the ability of the world's few insect welfare scientists to focus on what matters.
We need a fund because funding scientific research on insect welfare isn't easy for individual donors. First, it's hard to know what to fund. As some of the few researchers who have worked on these issues in EA, we're lending our expertise to vet opportunities. Second, universities take overhead that reduces the impact of your donations; an independent fund can use the board's volunteer labor to make the many small reimbursements that are required to cover costs directly.
Third, if you're a donor who's giving below the amounts required to support entire projects, your opportunities are extremely limited. This fund smooths over such hurdles, ensuring that everyone can support the highest value research.
This fund gives a brand new field some time to get established, it gives that field the resources required to produce essential science, and it keeps that research as cost-effective as possible.
Please support welfare science.
Team
Bob Fischer is a Professor at Texas State University and the lead project manager and author of the
Moral Weight Project, a research project to build comparative models of moral weight across animal species.
Daniela Waldhorn is the Director of Animal Welfare research at Rethink Priorities, a board member of the Centre for Animal Ethics at Pompeu Fabra University, and
lead author on the largest initial EA project focused on studying invertebrate welfare.
Abraham Rowe is the Principal of Good Structures, a nonprofit operations service provider, and was previously the COO of Rethink Priorities, and the co-founder and Executive Director of Wild Animal Initiative, an academic field-building and grantmaking organization supporting research on wild animal welfare.
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