{
  "source": "Cooked Index — occupational AI risk register",
  "page": "https://cookedindex.com/jobs/natural-sciences-managers/",
  "methodology": "https://cookedindex.com/methodology",
  "notice": "Verdicts are re-examined as evidence accumulates. Re-fetch before relying on this; the page above always carries the current score.",
  "scored_at": "2026-08-11",
  "model": "claude-opus-5",
  "occupation": {
    "title": "Natural Sciences Managers",
    "soc_code": "11-9121",
    "category": "Management",
    "us_employment": 108690,
    "median_annual_wage": 167220
  },
  "verdict": "EXPOSED",
  "risk_resistance": 53,
  "contested": false,
  "near_boundary": false,
  "dimensions": {
    "task_resistance": 12,
    "embodiment": 8,
    "liability_shield": 5,
    "trust_premium": 12,
    "judgment_accountability": 16
  },
  "reasoning": {
    "task_resistance": "Grant-narrative drafting, quarterly progress reports, literature landscape summaries, and budget rollups are now first-drafted by a model in minutes, but portfolio triage — killing a project because the assay reproducibility is drifting and the PI is defending it too hard — plus headcount decisions and IACUC/IRB negotiation stay manual, which lands this at mixed rather than resistant.",
    "embodiment": "A working R&D or lab manager still walks the floor for chemical hygiene plan compliance, signs off on hood certifications and waste manifests, tours field sites and pilot plants, and shows funders the bench — but the majority of the week is Teams, Excel, and eLN review, so the physical component is recurring rather than defining.",
    "liability_shield": "The management title requires no license; what protection exists comes from being the named PI, the responsible official on an EPA or select-agent registration, or the signatory on an institutional assurance — role-attached duty rather than a credential a statute reserves for you, and many holders carry none of it.",
    "trust_premium": "Program officers at NIH/NSF/DOE and internal executives fund the person as much as the proposal, and senior scientists stay because of who they report to — but the deliverable is data, milestones, and publications that survive on their own merit, so the relationship shortens review cycles without being the product.",
    "judgment_accountability": "You decide which of six programs gets the next FTE on incomplete preclinical data, whether a safety incident is reportable, whether to disclose an anomaly to a sponsor before the readout, and whether a scientist's finding is solid enough to bet a milestone payment on — calls with no procedure, real dollars, and your name on the outcome."
  },
  "rationale": "The modal natural sciences manager splits time between screen work that AI now does well — drafting grant narratives and progress reports, summarizing literature, building budget spreadsheets, reviewing protocols for completeness — and work that resists it: deciding which research lines to fund or kill, hiring and developing scientists, walking the lab floor on safety and compliance, and owning results in front of funders, regulators, and executives. No license is required for the role itself, so the protection is organizational accountability rather than statute. The judgment tier is real and consequential, but the documentation and reporting load that fills much of the week is exactly what large language models compress.",
  "outlook": "Headcount holds roughly flat but the job's center of gravity shifts from writing and reporting toward portfolio decisions, people, and compliance accountability — managers who mainly package other people's science will find their span of control widened and their numbers thinned.",
  "what_would_raise_it": {
    "levers": [
      {
        "dimension": "task_resistance",
        "change": "Task-mix shift is genuinely available here: the occupation has a clear routine tier (grant narrative drafting, progress reports, literature summaries, budget spreadsheets, protocol completeness checks) and a judgment tier (portfolio kill/fund decisions, scientist hiring and development, safety walkthroughs, defending results to funders). If the routine tier is absorbed and headcount is not cut proportionally, the residual day is mostly the resistant tier.",
        "plausibility": "already happening",
        "would_add": 4
      },
      {
        "dimension": "liability_shield",
        "change": "Named-individual accountability written into statute or funder rule rather than org policy: e.g. an expansion of the NIH/NSF Responsible Conduct of Research and research-security regime (post-CHIPS Act Section 10632 research security program requirements) that requires a designated senior research official to personally certify data integrity, foreign-influence disclosures, and AI-use disclosure in submissions — with False Claims Act exposure for the signer. Precedent exists: institutional officials already sign grant certifications; individual liability is the missing piece.",
        "plausibility": "plausible",
        "would_add": 4
      },
      {
        "dimension": "liability_shield",
        "change": "For managers over biosafety, select agents, or radiation work, statutory naming of a Responsible Official under the CDC/APHIS Select Agent Program (42 CFR 73) or an NRC-licensed Radiation Safety Officer is already an individual, non-delegable, personally sanctionable role. If employers consolidate these designations into the natural sciences manager job description — or if a rule barred AI-generated safety determinations from satisfying the RO's inspection duty — the shield hardens for that subset.",
        "plausibility": "plausible",
        "would_add": 3
      },
      {
        "dimension": "judgment_accountability",
        "change": "Already near ceiling. Marginal upward movement only if AI-attributed research failures (retractions, failed trials traced to model-generated protocol errors) produce institutional rules naming a human manager as the accountable reviewer of any AI-influenced go/no-go decision — the pattern in FDA's draft guidance on AI in regulatory decision-making, which asks for a human accountable for model credibility.",
        "plausibility": "plausible",
        "would_add": 2
      }
    ],
    "ceiling_note": "Realistic ceiling is roughly the mid-60s. judgment_accountability is already 16 and the physical component is structurally small, so nearly all headroom sits in liability_shield — and that requires someone to convert existing institutional certification duties into named personal liability. Trust premium is omitted deliberately: the buyers here are funders, regulators, and executives who purchase institutional accountability, not a human manager per se, and there is no visible mechanism by which they would start paying a premium for human-ness."
  },
  "adjudication": null,
  "employment_history": {
    "points": [
      {
        "y": 2017,
        "emp": 56210,
        "wage": 118970
      },
      {
        "y": 2018,
        "emp": 60260,
        "wage": 123860
      },
      {
        "y": 2019,
        "emp": 67720,
        "wage": 129100
      },
      {
        "y": 2020,
        "emp": 75870,
        "wage": 137940
      },
      {
        "y": 2021,
        "emp": 74760,
        "wage": 137900
      },
      {
        "y": 2022,
        "emp": 82570,
        "wage": 144440
      },
      {
        "y": 2023,
        "emp": 96520,
        "wage": 157740
      },
      {
        "y": 2024,
        "emp": 100870,
        "wage": 161180
      },
      {
        "y": 2025,
        "emp": 108690,
        "wage": 167220
      }
    ],
    "from": 2017,
    "to": 2025,
    "change_pct": 93.4,
    "comparable_from": 2019,
    "spans_soc_revision": true
  },
  "pivots": [],
  "license": "https://cookedindex.com/terms"
}