The Search for Long Covid Treatments Takes a Promising Turn. What does that say about American philanthropy? In recent decades, math and science whizzes like Arnold have invaded Wall Street, bringing a level of scientific precision to trading and often making fortunes in the process. In the 1830s, French writer Alexis de Tocqueville famously compared Americans penchant for civic association with that of France and England: Everywhere that, at the head of a new undertaking, you see the government in France and a great lord in England, count on it that you will perceive an association in the United States.. His estimated net worth is $3.3 billion as of writing. [3][4][5][6][7], In 2019, Arnold became the chairman of Houston's 2026 bid for the FIFA World Cup. John Ioannidis was put in touch with the Arnolds in 2013. To revist this article, visit My Profile, then View saved stories. [34] Arnold also has been an influential supporter of Democrats efforts to pass a drug-price reform bill. What's Fishbowl. ), The backlash against Teicholz also furnished one of the few occasions when anyone has raised an eyebrow at the Arnolds funding of science critics. Arnold says that now, unless he trusts a researchers work, he no longer believes the findings of any scientific study until he or someone on the staff carefully vets the paper. Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg and his wife, Priscilla Chan, launched a similar LLC (the Chan-Zuckerberg Initiative) in 2015, with Zuckerberg transferring some 99 percent of his shares in the social media company to the LLCan amount reportedly exceeding $45 billion. McGoverns quip about Enron, a company that hasnt existed in 15 years, was a bit of a potshot. [24], The Laura and John Arnold Foundation was a private foundation founded by Arnold and his wife Laura. Centaurus Capital LP - Company Profile and News - Bloomberg Markets Bloomberg Connecting decision makers to a dynamic network of information, people and ideas, Bloomberg quickly and accurately. Arnold figures that some of his specific grants might not work out as planned. While. They have personally donated to numerous Democratic campaigns, the Democratic Partys leading congressional political action committee (House Majority PAC), and both of Barack Obamas presidential campaigns. [39], Arnold Ventures LLC has invited criticism with its involvement in many controversial areas. At Enron, a company famous for its brash, testosterone-laced cowboy culture, the perennially boyish-looking trader was reportedly so soft-spoken that his colleagues had to gather in close to hear him at restaurants. Mr. Arnold is also Founder of Centaurus Capital LP, a family office investment fund with a specific focus on the energy industry. In 2014 he partnered with the journal Psychological Science to offer colorful Open Data and Open Materials badges for papers that met specific criteria for sharing. [29] The Foundation is focused on evidence-backed giving for systematic change. Theres no fake it until you make it with General John Shaw, the Guardians who serve with him sleep better knowing hes at the helm. John Arnold. 5. Mr. Arnold serves on the boards of Breakthrough Energy Ventures, an investor-led venture capital firm dedicated to funding transformational technologies that will reduce global greenhouse gas emissions; Civica, Inc., a nonprofit generic pharmaceutical company; and The City Fund, a nonprofit dedicated to supporting new governance models in K-12 education. Researchers say viruses can kill antibiotic-resistant microbes and help treat infections. Now He's Declared War on Bad Science. All rights reserved. John Arnold, a former Enron trader and hedge fund honcho known as the "king of natural gas", . That's what the Arnold Foundation did last week, when it announced that it would be combining its philanthropy and political giving under Arnold Ventures. Laura Arnold, 43, and John Arnold, 42 Co-founders of the Laura and John Arnold Foundation The Houston couple with three children work full time to give away John's $2.8 billion fortune. Hide Background LAURA AND JOHN ARNOLD FOUNDATION Family foundations New research shows that the cells garbage-clearing function deteriorates with ageand opens the door to reversing the process. Like a number of up-and-coming researchers in his generation, Nosek was troubled by mounting evidence that science itselfthrough its systems of publication, funding, and advancementhad become biased toward generating a certain kind of finding: novel, attention grabbing, but ultimately unreliable. Resource #6: John D. Arnold runs Centaurus Energy Advisors, LLC, a Houston, Texas based hedge fund that specializes in trading energy products. [49], Arnold is married to Laura Elena (Muoz) Arnold. info@naturalgasintel.com Because investigating and replicating research begins with having the data and materials necessary to do so, he is particularly focused on making science more transparent. Is there something special about frauds in the securities biz that they should be penalized infinitely more harshly than other business frauds? he went on. Still, Arnold, an intense worker with a wide network of. Arnold's summary of his big-hearted plans reads as could only be written by a trader, particularly points 2 and 3: . [28] From 2010-2013, the Arnolds were heavily involved in the Innocence Project which led to their interest in criminal reform. InfluenceWatch Podcast #267: Weingarten Will Not Be Apologizing. His ~$3 billion fund, Centaurus, was down 4% in 2010 YTD, according. Centaurus, which started in 2002 with just a handful of traders and now has 70 employees, focuses on this virtual kind of trading. But as many Wall Street veterans can testify, betting against John Arnold is usually a bad idea. Arnold, 46, was raised in a middle-class family and worked her way through Harvard, she wrote in a July 2010 letter announcing her decision to sign The Giving Pledge. A 2016 study to determine the effectiveness of the badges showed that the number of articles that reported publicly available data had increased tenfold. Yet the foundation is also focused on reforming what the Arnolds see as a broken public pension systema project that, in practice, usually means cutting payments to retirees, raising retirement ages, and switching new workers to 401(k)-style plans. But Shankman recognized that he and Arnold were different in one key respect: Arnold had a greater appetite for risk, a quality that seemed at odds with his quiet demeanor. Date Recorded: 1/12/2022 | Run-Time: 1:12:33 Science Has Its Problems, But the Web Could Be the Fix, Psychology Is in Crisis Over Whether Its in Crisis, Why Most Published Research Findings Are False.. He holds a B.A. We talk about the . [35], In 2019, the organization was transformed into a limited-liability company composed of the former foundation, a donor-advised fund, and the Action Now Initiative advocacy organization, effectively combining philanthropy, research, policy, and advocacy efforts. People would read into it, and they would say hes just being cagey, DAgostino says. [30] The former foundation was sued over a pre-trial web tool by the family of a victim who was murdered, but the District Court and a U.S. Appellate Court dismissed the complaint. Part Following an incredibly successful trading year in 2001, Arnold was awarded an $8 million bonus, which he used to kick off Centaurus . Arnold has said that the first phase of his life was 100 percent trying to make money and that its now 100 percent trying to do good. As The Wall Street Journal noted, in US history, there may have never been a self-made individual with so much money who devoted himself to philanthropy at such a young age.. To be fair, the Arnolds are far from wild-eyed leftists. Arnold Ventures is a group of more than 100 passionate people from all walks of life who feel a deep urgency to help people in need. Returning Nonprofits are very good at reporting their success rates and citing the science behind their interventions, but dig into their claimsas the Arnolds would try to doand you find that they often omit relevant context or confuse correlation with causation. FILE - In this Aug. 5, 2009, file photo, John Arnold, then head of the hedge fund Centaurus Advisors of Houston, testifies before the The Commodity Futures Trading Commission in Washington,. Just weeks before the federal guidelines were due for an update, Teicholzs blistering report appeared in the prominent medical journal The BMJ, charging that the governments panel of scientists had failed to consider evidence that would have done away with long-held worries about eating saturated fat. As far as big dollar donors go, John Arnold and his wife, Laura, are not well known to conservatives. By law, natural gas pipelines had to make much of their information public, and around the time Centaurus was forming, more of that information began to appear online. All rights reserved. By the following year, Nosek was cofounding an institution called the Center for Open Science with an initial $5.25 million grant from the Arnold Foundation. | In Charlottes largest labor demonstration in two decades, about 450 American Airlines pilots protested the slow pace of contract talks near an entrance to Charlotte Douglas International Airport on Monday. In a 2014 tweet, Harvard psychologist Daniel Gilbert referred to researchers who had tried and failed to replicate the findings of a senior lecturer at the University of Cambridge as shameless little bullies. After Nosek published the results of his reproducibility initiative, four social scientists, including Gilbert, published a critique of the project, claiming, among other things, that it had failed to accurately replicate many of the original studies. If John Arnold . The 13 Best Electric Bikes for Every Kind of Ride, The Best Barefoot Shoes for Walking or Running, Palantirs Plan to Decipher the Mysteries of Long Covid. Ioannidis, whose name is almost synonymous with scientific skepticism, says he has seen immense progress in recent years. NGI Archives Constitutionalists would add that the entire relationship is hedged in by the First Amendments guarantee of free speech, lest disclosure rules encompass an individuals right to support lawful causes of their choosing without facing public backlash for holding unpopular opinions. Capital Research Center (CRC) was established in 1984 to promote a better understanding of charity and philanthropy. Wealth: $3.3 billion. But some experts are critical of this shift away from traditional giving, seeing in it a worrying trend in modern philanthropy. The guest that day was science journalist Gary Taubes, and he was talking about how the prevailing dietary wisdom of the past 40 yearsthat eating too much fat leads to obesity and heart diseasearose from the flimsiest of scientific evidence. He also created Arnold Ventures, a philanthropic investment firm focused on health . If we want to attack an issue, we will do whatever it takes. In the War on Bacteria, Its Time to Call in the Phages. Laura and John Arnold, co-founders and co-chairs of Arnold Ventures. For a look . You dont shift a culture overnight, Nosek says. We are Centaurus. By the time he was 14, Arnold was running his first company, selling collectible sports cards across state lines. In 2016, John Arnold gave $250,000 to an unsuccessful effort to lift the cap on charter schools in Massachusetts, and they poured more than $500,000 into a PAC that helped bolster Governor Charlie . So there is already widespread concern about reproducibility in the field. Get access to 100,000+ more news articles & industry data. John D. Arnold is the founder and the only shareholder of Centaurus Energy Advisors, a hedge fund specializing in trading of energy. During the podcast, he mentioned that he was raising money in the hope of funding experiments that might deepen our understanding of the root causes of obesity. By the time he was 14, Arnold was running his first company, selling collectible sports cards across state lines. Arnold funds Institute for Clinical and Economic Review (ICER), a nonprofit that created a formula to price drugs. Flagship The problem even had a name: the file drawer effect. Given our enormous appetite for policy change, and given the fact that we thankfully are not constrained by one structure, we dont have resources channeled only to the C3. Weve always wanted to change policies. After that Arnold started his own hedge fund, Centaurus Energy, where he became, in the words of one hedge fund competitor, the best trader that ever lived, full stop. Then Arnold had abruptly retired at the ripe age of 38 to focus full time on philanthropy. A person who answered NGIs call at Centaurus said the firm was not making any comments or talking to reporters. The Supreme Court has come under intense scrutiny lately over a series of reports suggesting potential conflicts of interest. Laura and John Arnold, Houston $285 million. ISSN 1532-1231 The development of regulation around the philanthropic sector throughout the 20th century may have formed the modern nonprofit organization, but it only codified what had been thriving in America since before the American Revolution. NGI All News Access. The centers replication efforts, in turn, have inspired economists and even tropical ecologists to plan reproducibility projects of their own. Arnold and his wife, Laura Munoz, together run the John and Laura Arnold Foundation, a major private grantmaking foundation.In early 2019 he and his wife Laura started Arnold Ventures, a for-profit limited liability company (LLC) and grantmaking organization. 4. Fight back. [3][8] At 14, he started his first company selling collectible sports cards called Blue Chip Cards. Weve always defined success as sustainable change through policy. In 2012, after growing his firm, Centaurus Advisors, from an initial $8 million to $5 billion in less than a decade, he announced that he was walking away to pursue other interests. In 2019, the Arnolds announced they were switching their philanthropy from its current modela private foundation, 501(c)(4) nonprofit, and a donor-advised fundto a single limited liability company (LLC). Insofar as the LLC form allows donors to treat the categories as just so many rooms for a tiresome accounting game of hide-and-seekthe view that Arnold seems to take herewe may come to regret the growing popularity of that form among those with the largest appetites for change. The WIRED conversation illuminates how technology is changing every aspect of our livesfrom culture to business, science to design. John Douglas Arnold (born 1974) is an American philanthropist, former Enron executive, and founder of Arnold Ventures LLC, formerly the Laura and John Arnold Foundation. in 2017. Usually the division of labor in most of our work is that I talk, Laura Arnold says in a phone interview. Michael Maggi is a former Enron trader who then spent time at Centaurus Capital, the hedge fund founded by noted Houston philanthropist John Arnold, before founding Goldfinch Capital. Republished And though the fund bounced back the next year, tighter regulations on trading and a far less volatile marketthanks to a growing supply of natural gas from shale rockmade it unlikely that Arnold would again see the astonishing returns of only a few years earlier. At its peak Centaurus managed some $6 billion before Arnold closed the fund and retired in 2012 at the age of 38, establishing the Laura and John Arnold Foundation with his wifea former oil executivesoon after. [30][31], In 2013, the Arnolds donated $10 million as a private donation to the National Head Start Association after the United States federal government shutdown of 2013 had closed the pre-K Head Start programs. NatGas Conference Call Schedule, This article is part of NGI's Daily Gas Price Index. Joseph (Rusty) Walter III and Paula Walter . 1. These critiques of science amounted to a deep philosophical quandary for the Arnolds, philanthropists who had dedicated their lives to a data-based approach to giving. John Arnold is Founder and Co-Chair of Arnold Ventures. Were not looking to create an organization of safe success, she says. It became one of the biggest science stories of the year. At age 38, Texas billionaire John Arnold decided to step away from high finance. Brian Nosek had pretty much given up on finding a funder. Aiming to defend the science behind the guidelines, McGovern suggested that the doubts that had been cast over Americas nutrition science were being driven by a former Enron executive. I dont know what Enron knows about dietary guidelines, McGovern said. Its a stupid little badge, Nosek says, but it works. And Noseks project was an attempt to head it off at the pass. | Sam Apple (@samuelapple) teaches science writing at the University of Pennsylvania. Arnold is 5'10", trim, and blandly handsome, his unusually youthful appearance now somewhat concealed by a salt-and-pepper beard. Founded in 1992, Centaurus was formed with a singular focus - to provide unparalleled service, support, technology, and education to independent financial advisers in the securities industry. But among hedge funders and energy traders, Arnold is a legend. Centaurus Advisors - John Arnold assets under management (13F Holdings), latest news, 13D/G filings, and investor letters provided by Insider Monkey In everything they do, they want to be evidence-driven, says Stuart Buck, vice president of research integrity at the Arnold Foundation. 2020)", "A divided federal appeals court rules Baltimore's surveillance plane is constitutional, cites city's struggles", "Billionaire-Funded Criminal Justice Reform Actually Expands Carceral System", "Officials Got a Windfall Before Enron's Collapse", "How a billionaire couple greased the skids for Nancy Pelosi's drug pricing bill", "Storied Texas Mansion Completely Demolished: The Bulldozer Brings Down Houston's Greatest Architect", "Big and Modern on Lazy Lane: John Arnold Tries House Trading | Swamplot", Baylor College of Medicine: "Laura Arnold named to BCM Board of Trustees" by Lori Williams, "Meet Laura Arnold, the billionaire philanthropist taking on the parole system with Jay-Z and Meek Mill", "Our Team | Laura and John Arnold Foundation", https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=John_D._Arnold&oldid=1150152010, This page was last edited on 16 April 2023, at 16:09. Arnold was described as unapologetic for his success in Enrons final days. Theyve also lavishly supported the Reproducibility Project, a science reform group formed to combat the rise of politicized, ideologically driven junk science afflicting so much research, particularly in climate science. [22], Arnold started donating to the Knowledge Is Power Program (KIPP) in 2004 with a gift of $30,000 which was then based in Houston, and two years later he and his wife pledged $10 million to help KIPP expand to other cities. In a sense, thats the strongest weapon that we have. When Mr. Arnold, 31, created Centaurus in 2002 with $8 million of his own money, the energy trading industry was on its knees, incapacitated by the fraud and irrational exuberance at Enron.. In episode 386, we welcome our guest, John Arnold, arguably the best natural gas trader of all-time and now one of the largest philanthropists in the US, giving away almost half a billion dollars a year. On some days at Enron, Arnold would trade more than a billion dollars worth of gas contracts. John Arnold's tweet, "A new study shows " are "the four most dangerous words," is a perfect crystallization of the philanthropist's skeptical attitude toward a lot of scientific research. Put a Stake in "Zombie Charity.". He is unapologetic about having worked at Enron, and he can be defensive about the moral standing of Wall Street in the public mind. Nosek says that the cash offers were Arnolds idea. Form 990s and Section 501(c) of the U.S. Tax Code were created in 1954, followed by rules governing private foundations in 1969. Hayden Ludwig is the Director of Policy Research at Restoration of America. The next year the Arnolds promised $35.5 million more. But consider the ramifications of a Soros Ventures, or Steyer Ventures, or Buffett Ventureslimited liability companies that could field virtually unlimited resources to lobby on foreign policy, abortion rights, illegal immigration, or health care, with almost no public transparency. John, Nosek learned, had made his first millions as a wunderkind natural gas trader at Enron, the infamous energy company, and hed managed to walk away from Enrons 2001 collapse with a seven-figure bonus and no accusations of wrongdoing attached to his name. Bruce Kovner, Caxton Associates . He . The extent of that individuals ability to freely support causes may be magnified by using an LLC instead of a nonprofit, but it also further blurs the already faded line between philanthropy and politics. His mother later would work as an accountant at Centaurus. Longevity evangelists are injecting people with experimental gene therapies. Directors E.J. The aim was to redo about 50 studies from three prominent psychology journals, to establish an estimate of how often modern psychology turns up false positive results. The problem, they claim, isnt that scientists dont want to do the right thing. Science is built like a building, Arnold says. Projects that Nosek had once envisioned as modest efforts carried out in his lab were now being conducted on an entirely different scale at the centers startup-like offices in downtown Charlottesville, with some 70 employees and interns churning out code and poring over research. 1.800.427.5747 He and a graduate student were developing an online system that would allow researchers to keep a public log of the experiments they were running, where they could register their hypotheses, methods, workflows, and data as they worked. The comedian John Oliver spent 20 prime-time minutes on HBO last May mocking the reign of terrible science on TV news shows and in public debate: After a certain point, all that ridiculous information can make you wonder: Is science bullshit? Consent As a kid, Arnold's earliest trades included buying hockey cards in Texas and selling them in Canada. Arnold was raised in Dallas, Texas, and he was the younger of two sons. Stem Cell Junk Yards Reveal a New Clue About Aging. For one thing, the problems plaguing scientific research are now increasingly well known. FILE - In this Aug. 5, 2009, file photo, John Arnold, then head of the hedge fund Centaurus Advisors of Houston, testifies before the The Commodity Futures Trading Commission in Washington, D.C. The National Institutes of Health is moving forward with new requirements for data sharing; starting as early as this year, all NIH-funded training programs must include plans for teaching researchers the principles of reproducibility. Gerrymandering endangers democracy. The more you read the research, the less you know, Arnold says. He was an entrepreneurial kid, earning some $50,000 before leaving high school by marketing collectible sports cards in the internets early years. The listings let him see that the same cards were sold at different prices in different parts of the countrywhich presented an opportunity for arbitrage. In my conversations with Arnold and his grantees, the word incentives seems to come up more than any other. Legendary natural gas trader John Arnold is closing down his flagship Centaurus fund, sources said o n Wednesday, ending an era in which the former Enron wunderkind defined the high-risk, big . The BMJ investigation, in turn, met with angry denunciations from nutrition experts who had worked on the US Dietary Guidelines; a petition asking the journal to retract Teicholzs work was signed by more than 180 credentialed professionals. The Arnold Foundation has been the Medici of meta-research, Ioannidis says. After initially working on the Crude Oil desk, John moved over to the Natural Gas Desk upon the departure of Jeff . Foerster and Marny Eng and musician John Oates on the way that music and imagery can combine to drive narrative, the dramatic heart at the core of the new independent comedy/drama 'Gringa' and the level of difficulty involved in post-pandemic independent film distribution. In Hedge Hogs, a 2013 book about hedge fund traders, Jeff Shankman, another star trader at Enron, is quoted describing Arnold as the most thoughtful, deliberate, and inquisitive person he worked with on the gas floor. A hugely successful energy trader, Arnold once worked. For the rest of us, we can only hope that he continues to inspire us with his unique blend of starry-eyed optimism and rocket expertise. View Subscription Options Plus, systems of prestige and advancement die hard. John Arnold got his start as a natural gas trader at Enron. But he should loom larger on the conservative radar considering that the two nonprofits associated with this billionaire couple poured out nearly $1 billion in grants between 2008 and 2018. En 2002, us su bonificacin para financiar Centaurus . To promote preregistration, the Center for Open Science offered the first 1,000 scientists who preregister their studies with the organization $1,000 each. The skeletal software behind the data-sharing project became a slick cloud-based platform, which has now been used by more than 30,000 researchers. Hes nowhere near as rich as he boasts, nor as poor as his critics claim. There are no guaranteesand no refunds. From its ashes, Arnold built his own hedge fund, Centaurus Advisors. Arnold is a board member of Breakthrough Energy Ventures. Updated March 10, 2017 5:18 pm ET. Whether all this momentum will lead to transformational change decades from now is impossible to know. "Looking back what I was doing was geographic arbitrage.". Redistributed Washington DC | New York | Houston | Pittsburgh | Mexico City Calgary | Chile. [emphasis added]. His net worth of $10.2 billion landed him at No. Ad Choices, John Arnold Made a Fortune at Enron. She and her husband John,. Sign in to get the best natural gas news and data. Let us know if we're missing any workplace or industry recognition - Add Awards. Then, one day in November 2011, he was listening to the podcast EconTalk, hosted by libertarian economist Russ Roberts. But if you look at the studies that cant be reproduced and other issues facing science, you start to think: What is evidence? Previously, Mr. Arnold founded and was CEO of Centaurus Energy, a multi-billion dollar energy commodity hedge fund. Compared with the IRS-mandated transparency of a private foundation, 501(c)(3) public charity, or 501(c)(4) social welfare organization, private companies are black holes for public disclosure. In May 2012, John announced his retirement from Centaurus Energy to concentrate on philanthropic activities. Dr. Andrew Nerlinger is a physician, venture capital investor, and social impact innovator. Closing So he ran his projects on a shoestring budget, self-financing them with his own earnings from corporate speaking engagements on his research about bias. While this private company, Arnold Ventures, is structurally indistinguishable from any other for-profit corporation, its purpose is strictly philanthropicbut it comes with key advantages. A 2017 interview with Wired magazine characterized him this way: Arnold says that now, unless he trusts a researchers work, he no longer believes the findings of any scientific study until he or someone on the staff carefully vets the paper. Of course, this new LLC model comes with the cost of losing the Arnold Foundations tax exemption. But given the long history of deep-pocketed business interests sowing doubt in research, his underlying question was a fair one: Who is John Arnold, and why is he spending so much money to raise questions about science? All Rights Reserved. For two and a half hours, a roomful of testy representatives asked why certain nutrition studies had been privileged over others. At the Center for Open Science, Nosek has already begun to experiment with new incentives for scientists. Hardly anyone in the world of nutrition science seemed willing to question the science behind the low-fat diet, even after Americans grew fat and diabetic in record numbers. The Arnolds had already decided that, with decades of life ahead of them and almost unlimited resources, they had the time and money to evaluate charitable programs properly, even when that meant paying for expensive randomized controlled trials that could take years to complete. To which the answer is clearly no, but theres a lot of bullshit masquerading as science. (Some of the background footage in the segment came from the Arnold Foundation.). . Follow the topics you want and receive the daily emails. But now, with their stepped-up ambitions, the couple entered a new realm. He's decided to shut down his firm Centaurus Advisors and return investor money, retiring at the ripe old age of 38, according to The New York Times.Arnold rose to prominence at now disgraced Enron for his natural gas trading prowess. Arnold was raised in Dallas, Texas, and he was the younger of two sons. John Arnold, filntropo multimillonario, dirige una empresa que ofrece gratis programas informticos para la reforma de las fianzas. But compared with the benefit of near-total anonymity, wealthy elites like the Arnolds are forgoing the tax advantages of a foundation or traditional nonprofit to further withdraw from public scrutiny.
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