But thats not what this project was about. LAURA AND JOHN ARNOLD FOUNDATION | Foundation Directory | Candid Private, non-publicly traded companies are not obligated to do any of those things. [30] The new entity is known as Arnold Ventures LLC with the charter "to remove barriers between data and decisive action, working swiftly across the policy-change spectrum. Like Nosek, Taubes had to Google Arnold to learn who he was. John DAgostino, former head of strategy of the New York Mercantile Exchange, says that in Arnolds heyday, people in the industry would discuss him in hushed and reverent tones. In 2006, Centaurus reportedly saw returns of over 300 percent; the next year Arnold became the youngest billionaire in the country. Thirty-seven year old John Arnold, one of the world's youngest billionaires, had the worst year of his hedge fund career. 5. And Noseks project was an attempt to head it off at the pass. 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. CRC respects confidentiality and will not share your e-mail address. [18][19], In 2009, Arnold gave a public speech to the U.S. Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC), in which he opposed limits on financially settled trading positions but supported limits in the physical energy futures as they near expiration. 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. ISSN 1532-1231 Those were the early days of the internet, and he managed to gain access to an online bulletin board intended only for card dealers. We asked ourselves, What is the point of having two separate entities? Washington DC | New York | Houston | Pittsburgh | Mexico City Calgary | Chile. That same hunger would make large-scale philanthropy far more challenging than he had anticipated. Following an incredibly successful trading year in 2001, Arnold was awarded an $8 million bonus, which he used to kick off Centaurus . In May 2012, John announced his retirement from Centaurus Energy to concentrate on philanthropic activities. The Billionaire Behind the Fight for Lower Drug Prices A number of the Arnolds reform efforts have focused on fixing nutrition science. A person who answered NGIs call at Centaurus said the firm was not making any comments or talking to reporters. Arnold was not criminally charged with any wrongdoing at Enron, but he was named in a bankruptcy lawsuit by other Enron staff. The problem even had a name: the file drawer effect. (After an external and internal review, The BMJ published a correction but chose not to retract the investigation. Billionaire John Arnold backing energy-focused credit fund - sources Weve always defined success as sustainable change through policy. The Center for Open Science's replication efforts have inspired economists and even tropical ecologists to plan reproducibility projects of their own. 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. 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. Laura and John Arnold didnt start the movement to reform science, but they have done more than anyone else to amplify its capabilitiestypically by approaching researchers out of the blue and asking whether they might be able to do more with more money. 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. People who did, didnt know how to clean it up and analyze it as well as we did.. [39], Arnold Ventures LLC has invited criticism with its involvement in many controversial areas. Laura and John Arnold, Houston $285 million. 4. Centaurus Advisors Awards & Accolades. In the War on Bacteria, Its Time to Call in the Phages. A month after legendary natural gas trader Arnold abruptly announced that his Houston-based Centaurus would wind down its $2 billion master fund following a decade of unrivalled gains, Whalley. Stockpickr: The Top 10 Hedge Fund Managers - TheStreet They internalize the risk of mistaking correlation for causationnot because theyre smarter than scientists but because they have money riding on the outcome. Amaranth, which was gambling with money from large pension funds, suffered a $6 billion loss and collapsed. Featured groups, golf odds, expert picks plus matchups and props with information you can bet on. 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. 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. Centaurus Hedge Fund Fined $75,000 for Nymex Violations 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. Mr. Arnold is also Founder of Centaurus Capital LP, a family office investment fund with a specific focus on the energy industry. Now He's Declared War on Bad Science. In recent years Arnold has invested in solar farms and deepwater oil developments in the Gulf of Mexico. (Arnold was not involved in the fraud.) Bothersome bureaucracy notwithstanding, tax exemption and tax deduction are tangible benefits that acknowledge that compact. More generally, it may not be possible to truly reform a system where the incentives are already so deeply embedded. The foundational studies, Taubes said, looked at the diets and disease rates in various countries, then essentially guessed at which items in the diet were responsible for the countrys good or bad health statistics. But some experts are critical of this shift away from traditional giving, seeing in it a worrying trend in modern philanthropy. 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. Former Enron Corp. energy trader John Arnold is closing down his flagship Centaurus Energy Master Hedge Fund. He is also the Co-founder of PandemicTech, an Austin-based venture philanthropy launched in 2016 that supports health security innovators on the . The articles have to appear methodologically sound, but this is generally a lower standard than being completely convincing. [3] [8] At 14, he started his first company selling collectible sports cards called Blue Chip Cards. Rank: 590. 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. 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. 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. [1], A 1995 graduate of Vanderbilt University, he completed a degree in mathematics and economics in three years. NGI Archives And those are just a few of the people who are calling out iffy science with Arnold funding. Arnold says he wasnt sure if he could match the success hed enjoyed as a futures trader at Enron. Philanthropy Is for the Living. Subscribe now. 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. She joins other singers on an Olivia Newton John duets album out this week. By the time he was 14, Arnold was running his first company, selling collectible sports cards across state lines. Wealth: $3.3 billion. Houston's Laura and John Arnold use philanthropy to help balance The Search for Long Covid Treatments Takes a Promising Turn. In some cases, they may even have more favorable tax deductions when donating appreciable securities to a 501(c)(3) public charity. We can feed off that. Figuring out exactly which rewards work best and how to simultaneously change the incentives for researchers, institutions, journals, and funders is now a key area of interest for Goodman and Ioannidis. [8][12] His former colleagues dubbed him "king of natural gas. The tech giant is helping researchers and clinicians decipher vast amounts of data generated by people with persistent symptoms. And its true that, when it comes to political leanings, they are somewhat hard to pin down. John Arnold Centaraus | Elite Trader John Arnold, the billionaire manager of the Houston hedge fund Centaurus Advisors, told investors and employees Tuesday that he plans to retire, according to people familiar with the . No. info@naturalgasintel.com (WIRED wrote about NuSI in issue 22.09). Ask a Question. Our Team | Arnold Ventures Allen Gibson Salary Infomation 2022 | ERI Economic Research Institute [47], John Arnold and his brother Matthew[48] tore down historical homes in the River Oaks neighborhood of Houston which led to criticism by architectural conservationists. Now, with multiple grants from the Arnolds, he is leading an effort to build an open, searchable database that will link all publicly available information on every clinical trial in the world. [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. Theres little evidence to prove how necessary or helpful many of the accepted norms in psychedelic-assisted therapy areand some could even harm patients. She is co-founder of Arnold Ventures LLC. 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. Laura and John established the Laura and John Arnold Foundation in 2010 with a straightforward mission: to improve lives through evidence-based solutions. But figuring out which organizations were most effective turned out to be vexing. 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. 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. If they wanted to embark on truly transformational change, as their foundation literature states, it wouldnt be enough to properly evaluate this or that education or criminal justice program. His mother later would work as an accountant at Centaurus. [32], In October 2018, it was reported that Arnold had spent more than $100 million in health-care related grants since 2014, with a particular focus on reducing pharmaceutical drug costs. Mr. Arnold is also Founder of Centaurus Capital LP, a family office investment fund with a specific focus on the energy industry. Sign In, Listen to the latest episode of our newest podcast, 2023 North American Pipeline, LNG & Market Hubs Map, 1Q23 N.A. The problem, they claim, isnt that scientists dont want to do the right thing. Together with Taubes work, Arnold was also reading Ioannidis and Goldacres equally devastating analyses. From its ashes, Arnold built his own hedge fund, Centaurus Advisors. It became one of the biggest science stories of the year. Top 12 Most Big-Hearted Billionaires - TheStreet Bachelor of Arts/Science, Vanderbilt University. 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 . Get access to 100,000+ more news articles & industry data. [emphasis added]. We are Centaurus. They would also have to take on a far more ambitious project: The Arnolds would have to try and fix science itself. These wealthy Houstonians were named to Forbes' list of the - KPRC More importantly, private corporations may spend unlimited sums influencing elections, legislation, and political issues under the Constitutions First Amendment right to free speech with none of the limitations on lobbying and election interference the IRS imposes upon nonprofits (in exchange for limited tax exemption). His next act? [51] They have three children. Centaurus Energy Master Fund LP, a Houston-based energy hedge fund that was founded by John D. Arnold after the collapse of Enron Corp., was fined $75,000 by the New York Mercantile Exchange . 6. 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. Centaurus Capital | Bernard Opetit | Hedge Fund Notes 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. 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. [28] From 2010-2013, the Arnolds were heavily involved in the Innocence Project which led to their interest in criminal reform. Fix terrible science. NatGas Conference Call Schedule, This article is part of NGI's Daily Gas Price Index. Abandoning traditional nonprofits in favor of LLCs may be the ultimate expression of donor privacy under the First Amendment, but it also means rejecting our philanthropic institutions at a time when so much of the nonprofit landscape is made up of policy groups. 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. [17] August 2008, Centaurus acquired around 10% of the shares of National Coal Corporation (NCOC). Yellen warned inaction could have wide-ranging financial repercussions, including on taxpayers and the federal governments credit rating. While. 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. He . The IRS strictly regulates foundations and nonprofits engaged in political work, such as lobbying and voter registration. At age 38, Texas billionaire John Arnold decided to step away from high finance. 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. Worse yet, whenever evidence came along that contradicted the consensus about the dangers of eating fatoften evidence that was much stronger than the evidence for the dangersit was ignored or not even published. Now, much of the discussion has shifted . 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. The preceding news reportmay not be republished or redistributed, in whole or in part, in anyform, without prior written consent of Intelligence Press, Inc. 2023 Natural Gas Intelligence. 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. But he also stood out for his skepticism. Ad Choices, John Arnold Made a Fortune at Enron. Fight back. Billionaire donors Laura and John Arnold support far more in Maryland 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. Arnold funds Institute for Clinical and Economic Review (ICER), a nonprofit that created a formula to price drugs. That focus led Rolling Stone to call Arnold a young right-wing kingmaker with clear designs on becoming the next generations Koch brothers. (In 2015, Bloomberg suggested that Arnold may have somehow managed to become less popular as a philanthropist than he was as a billionaire trader. He was widely quoted for his viewpoints on the industry by a government commission. To revist this article, visit My Profile, then View saved stories. 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. 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. Arnold was raised in Dallas, Texas, and he was the younger of two sons. 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. Billionaire philanthropists John and Laura Arnold committed Monday, April 5, 2021, to donate 5% of their wealth annually as part of an effort to . [38], In 2020, Arnold was one of ten billionaires who had given away at least 20% of their wealth. [3] [8] His father was a lawyer and died when Arnold was 18. In 2011 the science journalist Gary Taubes received an email from Arnold himself. 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. 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. Regulators have to figure out how to get them on the market. As Nosek tells it, John Arnold had read about the Reproducibility Project in The Chronicle of Higher Education and wanted to talk. Once the foundation has identified areas where they believe they can make the biggest difference, they go all in. 2023 Forbes Media LLC. Hayek, Deirdre McCloskey, Elinor Ostrom, Walter Williams, or some of the other economists Ive profiled. Laura and John Arnold, co-founders and co-chairs of Arnold Ventures. Of 1,576 researchers who responded to a recent online survey from Nature, more than half agreed there is a significant crisis of reproducibility. Enron billionaire frets about public pensions' solvency 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. But when I visit the Arnold Foundations Houston headquarters in June, Laura has been called away on a family emergency, leaving John to do the talking. Joseph (Rusty) Walter III and Paula Walter . John Arnold - Texas Business Hall of Fame What does that say about American philanthropy? 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. It completely transformed what we could imagine doing, Nosek says. Musicians from the New York Philharmonic geek out about their favorite John Williams scores. 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. At the time, his net worth was estimated to be around $3 billion. Laura and John Arnold | Arnold Ventures It was little wonder, then, that funders didnt come running to support Nosek: He wasnt promising novel findings, he was promising to question them. John Arnold - Forbes ), The backlash against Teicholz also furnished one of the few occasions when anyone has raised an eyebrow at the Arnolds funding of science critics. [33] At the Center for Open Science, Nosek has already begun to experiment with new incentives for scientists. ioneer Ltd has gained a substantial shareholder in Centaurus Capital L.P, which now holds a 7.84% stake with more than 131.5 million shares.This status was reached after US-based Centaurus . Weve always wanted to change policies. [24], The Laura and John Arnold Foundation was a private foundation founded by Arnold and his wife Laura. Hayden Ludwig is the Director of Policy Research at Restoration of America. Unlike Tom Steyer, a billionaire who earned his wealth investing in oil and natural gas and now hypocritically blames those commodities for devastating the planet, John Arnold says little about climate change. John Arnold, then head of the hedge fund Centaurus Advisors, testifies before the Commodity Futures Trading Commission in Washington, August 5, 2009. All Rights Reserved. All told, the foundations Research Integrity initiative has given more than $80 million to science critics and reformers in the past five years alone. Arnold's hedge fund thrives as Amaranth falls - MarketWatch Arnold is careful not to lump all researchers together when he talks about the problems in science. There are no guaranteesand no refunds. John Arnold, filntropo multimillonario, dirige una empresa que ofrece gratis programas informticos para la reforma de las fianzas. 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. [49], Arnold is married to Laura Elena (Muoz) Arnold. [3][4][5][6][7], In 2019, Arnold became the chairman of Houston's 2026 bid for the FIFA World Cup. W hen former Enron trader and billionaire hedge-fund manager John Arnold and his wife, Laura, announced plans to donate 5 percent of their net worth to charity every year, they may have. Philanthropist John Arnold is pictured in this photo provided by the Laura and John Arnold Foundation on July 10, 2018. . 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. Much of the Arnolds philanthropy has funded causes favored by the Left, such as ranked-choice voting, litigation against supposed Republican gerrymandering in congressional maps, and the eco-Right, groups infiltrating the conservative movement with a left-wing global-warming agenda. Texas billionaire quietly steered millions toward groups linked to . . But among hedge funders and energy traders, Arnold is a legend. By kindergarten, Arnolds talent for math was apparent. 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. Hide Background LAURA AND JOHN ARNOLD FOUNDATION Family foundations At least, not exactly. Those who support ICERs formula believe it could lower prices while critics argue that the formula is discriminator toward the elderly and those with disabilities or rare diseases. Centaurus Advisors - John Arnold assets under management (13F Holdings), latest news, 13D/G filings, and investor letters provided by Insider Monkey 4 Houston tycoons join prestigious Texas Business Hall of Fame WIRED may earn a portion of sales from products that are purchased through our site as part of our Affiliate Partnerships with retailers. He also created Arnold Ventures, a philanthropic investment firm focused on health . Resource #6: John D. Arnold runs Centaurus Energy Advisors, LLC, a Houston, Texas based hedge fund that specializes in trading energy products. It was the largest cash bonus ever distributed by the company. Laura Arnold has served on the boards of the Innocence Project[29] and the REFORM alliance. 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.