Hard-working business innovator Daymond John has been known to say that he is "retired" because hes doing what he loves - helping other people succeed. But in July 2012, Nosek received an email from an institution whose name he didnt recognize: the Laura and John Arnold Foundation. He started working at Enron four days later. Luce's career in natural-gas storage includes leading roles with energy and utility company Sempra Energy and with NGS Energy, a developer backed by billionaire energy trader John Arnold's Centaurus Advisors hedge fund. For two years he had sent out grant proposals for his software project. 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.. THE ARNOLDS had been dabbling in philanthropy for years, supporting a few handpicked programs in education, criminal justice reform, and other areas that were important to them. It was just a way for us to just all be under one umbrella, and everybody does what he or she needs to do in furtherance of one mission. 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. 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. As a general rule, the incentives related to quantitative research are very different in the social sciences and in financial practice, says James Owen Weatherall, author of The Physics of Wall Street. [39], Arnold Ventures LLC has invited criticism with its involvement in many controversial areas. John Arnold, co-founder of the Laura and John Arnold Foundation, was dubbed the King of Natural Gas in the nascent days of online energy trading at Enron. 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. 1. In 2012, the Arnolds joined the Giving Pledge, an oath made by billionaires such as Bill Gates and Warren Buffett to donate at least half of their wealth. World No. 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. Were looking to create an organization of thoughtful failure and fantastic success., Arnold is, in at least one respect, trying to make science a little more like finance. NET WORTH: $3.3 billion . 1 manager, John Arnold, offers a tricky model to follow because he trades only energy futures, and my guess is he's a very short-term trader. 1 Jon Rahm is a heavy favorite to win his fifth PGA Tour title in 2023 this week at the Mexico Open. His mother was an accountant (she would later help manage the books at his hedge fund). [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. Of 1,576 researchers who responded to a recent online survey from Nature, more than half agreed there is a significant crisis of reproducibility. [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. It is the essential source of information and ideas that make sense of a world in constant transformation. [9], After college, he began his career at Enron as an oil analyst, but soon was promoted to assistant trader. In everything they do, they want to be evidence-driven, says Stuart Buck, vice president of research integrity at the Arnold Foundation. Previously, Mr. Arnold founded and was CEO of Centaurus Energy, a multi-billion dollar energy commodity hedge fund. 12 -- John Arnold, Centaurus Advisors. [3][8] His father was a lawyer and died when Arnold was 18. I would buy up all the premium hockey cards and send them to Canada or upstate New York. He called the company Blue Chip Cards. The foundation aims to foster a culture in which individuals have the best chance to succeed and prosper, while encouraging a sense of responsibility, compassion and reinvestment toward their communities and society as a whole. "[13][14] When Enron collapsed, he was not accused of any wrongdoing. NGI Archives On Fishbowl, you can share insights and advice anonymously with Centaurus Advisors employees and get real answers from people on the inside. [8] In 1996, a year after starting at Enron,[8] he moved to oversee the trading of natural gas derivatives at the Natural Gas Desk upon the departure of Jeff Bussan. Follow the topics you want and receive the daily emails. 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. So there is already widespread concern about reproducibility in the field. . are the four most dangerous words, Arnold wrote on Twitter. [44][45], Arnold has been accused of pushing for pension reform in response to a lawsuit the California state pension system, CalPERS, filed against Enron. In 2010 the Arnolds had signed the Giving Pledge, promising to give away at least half their wealthand he wanted to be as strategic about that goal as he had once been about trading. She is a graduate of Harvard College, Yale Law School, and has a Master of Philosophy degree in European Studies from the University of Cambridge. 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? Theyve given millions of dollars to nonprofits that advocate for charter schools, anti-obesity charities, criminal justice groups aiming to reduce recidivism rates, efforts to reform government pension systems, and conservative think tanks including the Texas Public Policy Foundation and Alabama Policy Institute, both of which are members of the center-right State Policy Network. Closing [23] Arnold has also given to The City Fund, an organization focused on growing the number of charter schools in the USA, and its political arm, Public School Allies. Nosek was so taken with the importance of redoing old experiments that he had also rallied more than 50 like-minded researchers across the country to participate in something he called the Reproducibility Project. Arnold is still quiet. 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. 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. But if you look at the studies that cant be reproduced and other issues facing science, you start to think: What is evidence? The centers replication efforts, in turn, have inspired economists and even tropical ecologists to plan reproducibility projects of their own. Donate today to assist in promoting the principles of individual liberty in America. He was an entrepreneurial kid, earning some $50,000 before leaving high school by marketing collectible sports cards in the internets early years. John Arnold managed to walk away from Enrons 2001 collapse with a seven-figure bonus and no accusations of wrongdoing attached to his name. [38], In 2020, Arnold was one of ten billionaires who had given away at least 20% of their wealth. Late on Saturday, September 16, Amaranth's senior energy trader Brian Hunter asked John Arnold, Centaurus CEO, whether the hedge fund would like to make a bid for some of Amaranth's positions. 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. LLCs dont have foundations 5 percent annual spend-out requirements or strict investment rules. 19-2616 (3d Cir. Or is Wall Street just an easy target while cancer researchers and universities are not?, So its no surprise that, in practice, the Arnolds approach to giving has a lot in common with John Arnolds approach to investing. 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. Its probably too big a lift for us to expect were going to change researchers who have been around for decades, he says. [3] [8] At 14, he started his first company selling collectible sports cards called Blue Chip Cards. Hide Background LAURA AND JOHN ARNOLD FOUNDATION Family foundations [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. Whole Early the next morning, Mr. Arnold offered a bid after making the following observations: "I . 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. Featured groups, golf odds, expert picks plus matchups and props with information you can bet on. (Arnold was not involved in the fraud.) 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. In 2011 Centaurus Energy Master Fund LP was fined $75,000 by the New York Mercantile Exchange for violating position limits in natural gas trading (see Daily GPI, Dec. 28, 2011). 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. John Arnold President Houston, Texas, United States 12 followers Join to view profile Centaurus Capital Experience President - President Centaurus Capital View John's full profile See who. Since April 2011, Mr. Gibson has served as the Chief Investment Officer of Centaurus Capital LP (Centaurus), a private investment partnership with interests in oil and gas, private equity, structured finance, and the debt capital markets. Were looking to create an organization of thoughtful failure and fantastic success., If John Arnold does have an identifiable ideology, it is that of a lifelong trader and quant: unsentimental, metrics-focused, interventionist. Together with Taubes work, Arnold was also reading Ioannidis and Goldacres equally devastating analyses. The NAACP and ACLU have criticized the Arnold PSA because they believe risk assessment tools actually increased the number of prisoners under the guise of criminal justice reform. But as it happens, Nosek is just one of many researchers who have received unsolicited emails from the Arnold Foundation in the past few yearsresearchers involved in similar rounds of soul-searching and critique in their own fields, who have loosely amounted to a movement to fix science. In the War on Bacteria, Its Time to Call in the Phages. 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. And so, at age 38, Arnold walked away from it all. After making millions for Enron, launching his own hedge fund, and becoming a billionaire, John Arnold retired at 38. [52], , "Centaurus scoops up National Coal shares", Institute for Clinical and Economic Review, "The Young Billionaire Behind the War on Bad Science", "John Arnold Is Said to Close Hedge Fund and Return Investor Money", "When a billionaire trader loses his edge - The Term Sheet: Fortune's deals blogTerm Sheet", "Houston billionaire trader John Arnold retiring at 38 - Houston Chronicle", "Legendary Energy Trader John Arnold to Retire", "Hedge Fund Billionaire John Arnold's Fund Was Up When He Announced He Was Getting Out", "Ex-Trader at Enron to Retire From Hedge Fund", New York Times: "CORPORATE CONDUCT: THE TRADER; Enron Trader Had a Year To Boast of, Even If" By DAVID BARBOZA, "A speculator who is in for the long haul", "Centaurus's John Arnold: The king of natural gas - Nov. 24, 2009", "Meet the Texas billionaire who backed Philly soda tax and now is funding attack ads in N.J. Senate race", "Smart trades that made this a good year for some", "Centaurus scoops up National Coal shares", "John D. Arnold's CFTC (U.S. Commodity Futures Trading Commission) speech", "Houston's World Cup bid adds a power player in John Arnold", "A Thirtysomething Billionaire Couple Take on Tough Issues Via Giving", "The City Fund has given out over $100 million to support charter and charter-like schools", How a billionaire couple greased the skids for Nancy Pelosis drug pricing bill, "Why this billion-dollar foundation is becoming a corporation", "Changemakers: The Leaders Reshaping Communities Around the World", "Two Texas Billionaires Think They Can Fix Philanthropy", "A Billionaire Pledges to Fight High Drug Prices, and the Industry Is Rattled", "Obscure Model Puts a Price on Good Healthand Drives Down Drug Costs", "How a Billionaire Couple Greased The Skids For Nancy Pelosi's Drug Pricing Bill", "Laura and John Arnold Foundation to Restructure as LLC", "Why one billionaire is calling out Silicon Valley's favorite philanthropic loophole", "Are Donor Advised Funds Good for Philanthropy? The IRS strictly regulates foundations and nonprofits engaged in political work, such as lobbying and voter registration. Prior In Charlottes Biggest Labor Protest In Two Decades, 450 American Pilots Decry Slow Pace Of Contract Talks, Yellen Urges Congress To Raise Debt Limit Immediately, Warning U.S. Could Run Out Of Money By June, Singer Kelly Lang Reflects On Music, Battling Cancer & Her Friendship With Olivia Newton-John, E.J. CRC respects confidentiality and will not share your e-mail address. Brian Nosek had pretty much given up on finding a funder. On the contrary, Arnold says he believes that most researchers go into their work with the best of intentions, only to be led astray by a system that rewards the wrong behaviors. Inside the Secretive Life-Extension Clinic. He has also served as the Investment Manager for the Laura and John Arnold Foundation since 2011. [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. NGI All News Access. He also created Arnold Ventures, a philanthropic investment firm focused on health . In 2007, Arnold became the youngest billionaire in the U.S.[1] His firm, Centaurus Advisors, LLC, was a Houston-based hedge fund specializing in trading energy products that closed in 2012. Philanthropist John Arnold is pictured in this photo provided by the Laura and John Arnold Foundation on July 10, 2018. . 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.. Denis Calabrese, the Arnold Foundations president, says they dont expect immediate results. Gerrymandering endangers democracy. Believing that transparent markets empower businesses, economies, and communities, Natural Gas Intelligence (NGI) provides natural gas price transparency and key news, insights and data for the North American energy markets. In finance, meanwhile, at least when one is trading with ones own money, there are strong incentives to work to that stronger standard. 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. Media reports have declared the field of psychology, if not all of science, to be in a state of crisis. Plus, systems of prestige and advancement die hard. 4. It was the largest cash bonus ever distributed by the company. Now He's Declared War on Bad Science. The problem even had a name: the file drawer effect. John Arnold, filntropo multimillonario, dirige una empresa que ofrece gratis programas informticos para la reforma de las fianzas. A former executive at Salomon Brothers later told The New York Times that there were very few incidents in the history of Wall Street comparable to Arnolds success that year. We support the principles of individual liberty, a free market economy and limited constitutional government: These are the cornerstones of American society. 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. The Arnolds have a multiple-decade timeline to work on problems. Yet the most remarkable thing about the Arnold Foundations research integrity projects is that they already appear to be paying off. John Arnold. Centaurus Advisors Awards & Accolades. He . John Arnold got his start as a natural gas trader at Enron. 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. The Center for Open Sciences next big undertaking is another reproducibility projectthis one for cancer studieswhich recently revealed its initial findings (two of five studies yielded the same results the second time around). Science is built like a building, Arnold says. 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. As a pipeline company, Enron had a direct view onto many of the factors that influence gas prices. But thats not what this project was about. The No. But figuring out which organizations were most effective turned out to be vexing. For a look . founded Houston-based hedge fund Centaurus Advisors but retired in 2012 . Weve always wanted to improve peoples lives. [51] They have three children. "[36], In 2019, Arnold spoke out against donor-advised funds (DAF), criticizing them for delaying charitable giving and promoting giving to institutions that are less likely to need the money. John Arnold: The most prolific philanthropist you may not have heard of. That way, it would be harder for them to go back and cherry-pick their sexiest data after the factand easier for other researchers to come in and replicate the experiment later. Musicians from the New York Philharmonic geek out about their favorite John Williams scores. 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 . In 2013 they donated $10 million to keep Head Start, the early-childhood education program for low-income kids, running through the federal government shutdown, and many of the issues theyve taken on, from criminal justice reform to making prescription drugs more affordable, are decidedly progressive. Arnold Ventures will likely fund the same formula of political and charitable causes that the Arnold Foundation supported. According to Forbes, Arnold has a personal fortune of $3 billion as of March, putting him at No. They are on record as agreeing with some of the critiques and focus on partnering with organizations to maximize their impact without undue influence. Fix terrible science. 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.. Private, non-publicly traded companies are not obligated to do any of those things. 123. The journals Science and Nature have started bringing in statisticians to review their papers. [10] Using their new Internet-based trading network, EnronOnline,[citation needed] [11] he is credited with making three quarters of a billion dollars for Enron in 2001 and was rewarded with the largest bonus in Enron history, some $8 million. Ludwig is a native of Orange County, California,. At the Center for Open Science, Nosek has already begun to experiment with new incentives for scientists. While. All rights reserved. John Arnold shocked the hedge fund world in 2012 when, at just 38 years old, he announced he would no longer manage other people's money. 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? 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. At least, not exactly. Bruce Kovner, Caxton Associates . The Centaurus founder could probably point to trades that made him a ton of money but you really can't put a price on avoiding the humiliation that would've come from . As co-founders, Laura and John actively engage in the organization's overall direction and daily execution. Returning Arnold grew up in Dallas. Gregg Fleisher, who taught him calculus in high school, recalls an occasion when Arnold instantly solved a math puzzle that had been known to stump PhDs. Hockey cards didnt have much of a market in Texas, he tells me. 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. Written. The next year the Arnolds promised $35.5 million more. They internalize the risk of mistaking correlation for causationnot because theyre smarter than scientists but because they have money riding on the outcome. John Arnold, Centaurus Energy . In Wall Street circles Arnold, who is in his late 30s, has been known to some as the king of natural gas.. If Arnold decided he wanted to beat hunger, DAgostino says, I wouldnt want to bet on hunger., For all the swagger of that description, Arnold himself has virtually none. The more you read the research, the less you know, Arnold says. 1. Charles Butt, San Antonio $290 million. Centaurus entered the public eye in 2006 when Arnold bet against the enormous hedge fund Amaranth Advisors, which predicted that natural gas prices would rise and lost $5 billion when the market proved otherwise. 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. We are Centaurus. Subscribe now. Thirty-seven year old John Arnold, one of the world's youngest billionaires, had the worst year of his hedge fund career. For now it's John Arnold. 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. Of course, this new LLC model comes with the cost of losing the Arnold Foundations tax exemption. Laura and John established the Laura and John Arnold Foundation in 2010 with a straightforward mission: to improve lives through evidence-based solutions. Former Enron Corp. energy trader John Arnold is closing down his flagship Centaurus Energy Master Hedge Fund. New clinical trials could more effectively reach solutions. Rank: 590. In a glass conference room at the Arnold Foundations officeswhich occupy the same space as the old Centaurus trading floor, a 15-minute drive from the glass tower whose entrance was once adorned with Enrons famous EArnold explains that his and Lauras initial plan had been to simply locate the most effective organizations and write them checks. The United States is almost alone worldwide in granting tax deductions for charitable donations (Sweden also enacted such a policy in 2019), which were established with the Revenue Act of 1917. What makes this even more special is that John rarely gives interviews or does podcasts. What's Fishbowl. 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. 2023 Cond Nast. Billionaire philanthropists John and Laura Arnold committed Monday, April 5, 2021, to donate 5% of their wealth annually as part of an effort to . [23] Other multi-million gifts followed to other education programs, for example to Washington, D.C. city schools for merit pay, to Teach for America, and to StudentsFirst. Wealth: $3.3 billion. In exchange for forgoing those revenues, the government requires a certain standard of public accountability for nonprofits, delivered through public disclosure of annual Form 990 filings and limits on political activities.
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