After UK Biobank the progress on that front seems to have stalled (i.e. in the last ten years). A comparable US Biobank would probably hit the right size to get real predictive power for intelligence.
This made me curious how much the UK Biobank cost. Remarkably, apparently only about $150 million. (Their funding page says their “core funding” has been £133 Million.)
In terms of impact on genomics, I subjectively think it’s on a scale comparable to a particle accelerator or space telescope, but it has received more than an order of magnitude less funding.
I wonder whether there’s a EA case for funding biobanks, given that they seem underfunded compared to other big science projects.
There is such a biobank in the US being formed right now. It’s called “All of Us”, and it will probably have more genomes from Africans and American Natives than any other biobank in existence.
Unfortunately, it has two problems:
They have made it very hard to actually access the data. Getting an application for access actually approved is a huge slog, and researchers themselves actually have to pay for some of the costs.
They aren’t investigating intelligence at all
It would be incredibly helpful to have a large biobank (or even just a consumer genetics company like 23&Me) that was interested in intelligence. One such organization could triple or quadruple the accuracy of our current intelligence predictors.
After UK Biobank the progress on that front seems to have stalled (i.e. in the last ten years). A comparable US Biobank would probably hit the right size to get real predictive power for intelligence.
This made me curious how much the UK Biobank cost. Remarkably, apparently only about $150 million. (Their funding page says their “core funding” has been £133 Million.)
In terms of impact on genomics, I subjectively think it’s on a scale comparable to a particle accelerator or space telescope, but it has received more than an order of magnitude less funding.
I wonder whether there’s a EA case for funding biobanks, given that they seem underfunded compared to other big science projects.
There is such a biobank in the US being formed right now. It’s called “All of Us”, and it will probably have more genomes from Africans and American Natives than any other biobank in existence.
Unfortunately, it has two problems:
They have made it very hard to actually access the data. Getting an application for access actually approved is a huge slog, and researchers themselves actually have to pay for some of the costs.
They aren’t investigating intelligence at all
It would be incredibly helpful to have a large biobank (or even just a consumer genetics company like 23&Me) that was interested in intelligence. One such organization could triple or quadruple the accuracy of our current intelligence predictors.