Policies to increase the social value of science and the scientist satisfaction

Basic research in the biomedical field generates both knowledge that has a value regardless of its possible practical outcome and that has the per se potential to produce more practical benefits. Policies can increase the benefit potential to society of basic biomedical research by offering various kinds of incentives to basic researchers. In this paper we argue that soft incentives or “nudges” are particularly promising. However, to be well designed, these incentives must take into account the motivations, goals and views of the basic scientists. In the paper we present the results of an investigation that involved more than 300 scientists at Harvard Medical School and affiliated institutes. The study shows that basic researchers’ support for soft incentives is such that the transformative value of fundamental investigations can be increased without affecting the spirit of the basic research and scientists’ work satisfaction. After discussing the findings, we suggest a few examples of nudges and discuss one in more detail. Andrea Ballabeni ( ) Corresponding author: [email protected] Ballabeni A, Boggio A and Hemenway D (2014) How to cite this article: Policies to increase the social value of science and the scientist 2014, satisfaction. An exploratory survey among Harvard bioscientists. [v1; ref status: indexed, ] http://f1000r.es/2iq F1000Research 3 :20 (doi: ) 10.12688/f1000research.3-20.v1 © 2014 Ballabeni A . This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the , Copyright: et al Creative Commons Attribution Licence which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. Data associated with the article are available under the terms of the (CC0 1.0 Public domain dedication). Creative Commons Zero "No rights reserved" data waiver The author(s) declared that no grants were involved in supporting this work. Grant information: Competing interests: No competing interests were disclosed. 21 Jan 2014, :20 (doi: ) First published: 3 10.12688/f1000research.3-20.v1 31 Mar 2014, :20 (doi: ) First indexed: 3 10.12688/f1000research.3-20.v1 1 2