Is there a need for a Research Futility Score like the one below?
Can Ethics Boards use this kind of scale to help choose appropriate research and avoid unnecessary waste of resources?
Can you suggest alternative scales/ refinements?
Faz Research Futility score
FRF Score
4 elements: score 0-5 on each element
Element 1: Applicability to Life
Grade 0: Highly applicable and useful on a daily basis
Grade 1: Can be used monthly
Grade 2: Can be used quarterly
Grade 3: Can be used 2x Per year
Grade 4: Can be used 1x per year
Grade 5: Never can be used
Element 2: Use of research funds
Grade 0: No research funds used
Grade 1: Used 0- 10 USD or equivalent currency
Grade 2: Used 11- 100 USD or equivalent currency
Grade 3: Used 101- 1000 USD or equivalent currency
Grade 4: Used 1001- 100 000 USD or equivalent currency
Grade 5: Used > 100 000 USD or equivalent currency
Element 3: Numbers of research staff used:
Grade 0: None, except for researcher
Grade 1: 1-2
Grade 2: 3-10
Grade 3: 11-50
Grade 4: 51-100
Grade 5: >100
Element 4: Potential for Harm
Grade 0: Harms None, except for researcher
Grade 1: Harms Individuals only
Grade 2: Harms families
Grade 3: Harms communities and villages
Grade 4: Harms cities
Grade 5: Harms countries and continents
0-5: Acceptable
6-10: Needs minor changes
11-15: Needs essential re-think
16-20: Futile
Thank you for your suggestions. I have never seen such a scale, mainly, I would think, because applying it would rule out at least 75% of all grant applications. I would be interested to see what other respondents make of your proposed scale!
ps - I would add a few zeros to your costs. No research project capable of assessment under your other conditions is going to cost less than USD 10K.
Your scale focuses strongly on applied research. Fundamental research with no direct application is not futile. It often leads to other important ideas and much of it is useful for the sake of advancing our understanding of life (astronomy and much of basic physics might be examples). Nevertheless, there is a great deal of research that needs not be and should not be done. You might add to your metric some measures such as: (a) extent of political or popular influence in funding decision (as opposed to technical merit) - this generally is bad, (b) reason to belief there will be success if past efforts have failed (this is good if there are good reasons), (c) tendency to require an infrastructure that will continue to need support after the project is over (this is bad), (d) extent that success will provide new insight into fundamental ideas (this is good and is the justification to basic research).
https://www.medicalbrief.co.za/archives/gently-stroking-babies-provides-pain-relief/
Could they not have asked their Grandparents for advice? Why waste this research money?
https://edition.cnn.com/2019/01/16/health/new-diet-to-save-lives-and-planet-health-study-intl/index.html
Latest contributor to this discussion.
It is already known that meat production has a very large carbon footprint and that vegetarian diets are healthy.
So much money wasted on something we know already.
The ethics board that approved this useless study should be made to pay an equivalent sum of money to WHO or UN or Gift of the Givers. As compensation for their inanity
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