Ask Slashdot: Crowdfunding For Science — Can It Succeed? 153
jearbear writes "Can crowdfunding work for science? Having raised nearly $40,000 for scientific research in 10 days for projects as diverse as biofuel catalyst design to the study of cellular cilia to deploying seismic sensor networks (that attach to your computer!) to robotic squirrels, the #SciFund Challenge is taking off like a rocket. Might this be a future model for science funding in the U.S. and abroad? What would that mean?"
a new business model... (Score:3, Funny)
...for NASA?
Re:a new business model... (Score:5, Informative)
I would send $100 to NASA right now if I knew it would reach their coffers.
Re:a new business model... (Score:4, Informative)
if every working American (estimates around 100 million out of 225 million) did that... you could launch around 20 shuttle missions, excluding costs for payloads (according to NASA - the per-launch cost is closer to 1.5 billion so you're looking at more like 6 launches).
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So in other words, space exploration is cheap.
Re:a new business model... (Score:4, Insightful)
the original promise was $80m a mission, the official estimate is $450m, actual numbers dictate $1.48bn. Drop the admin and you'll probably get down to half a billion easily.
NASA, like every other large organisation, is hemorrhaging money in administration and practically nothing in actual work. This should come as no surprise. Most of the work of every corporation is administrative in nature. It's all that remains when manufacturing (semiconductors, complete devices, food...) is outsourced to the Far East. Most of the rest is logistics and litigation.
Here in the UK nearly half the workforce that is actually in work, is in the Public Sector. That's over fourteen million people. Of the remainder, an ever increasing number are Agency but subcontracted to the Public Sector. There is little manufacturing left in the UK, we used to be a net exporter, now we import everything (even oil although we should be independent for that given the vast North Sea reserves). The only specialities that are actually expanding in the UK right now are children social services and family panel solicitors. EVERYTHING else is taking cuts.
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Or you could try the next best thing. [planetary.org]
$40,000? (Score:5, Informative)
With a new roughing vacuum pump over 2k?
A temp controlled stirring hot plate at over 400 and often over a grand?
And we're not even talking about the more complicated experimental apparatus here. How is this more than a tiny tiny impact? This might fund a grad student. Maybe. Small grants rely on the existing infrastructure that groups have. You already have the equipment and the grad student and you allocate half their time to something.
Far too early to be crowing about how it's the next big thing with these funding levels.
(Aside: I work for a chemistry department doing lab equipment and instrument repair. At work, I spend my day finding ways to get equipment for such people for tiny fractions of the above prices. But, that's relying on the gear having been paid for years or decades back and me digging it out of storage, then finding ways to fix it for low cost. Starting up a lab without an existing infrastructure is expensive with a couple exclamation points. Yeah, I find the cost of current scientific gear to be outrageously high, but that's a different discussion.)
Re:$40,000? (Score:5, Interesting)
Yup, this is indeed small for now. If you total up all of the projects and what we're shooting for, though, it's about $250K, so, not tiny. Although, to give you context, we actually told all of the scientists to start small [wordpress.com] as this has never been tried on this scale before. It's an experiment, really, to see if it can work at all. Phase 2 is scaling up.
It should be noted, though, that many projects are asking for amounts that are reasonable within their discipline. We have a lot of ecologists whose needs for running and analyzing experiments often fall in the $1-5K range, rather than hundreds of thousands of dollars. For example, I'm seeking ~$7K to fund two days of sampling in kelp forests in the California Channel Islands [rockethub.com]. It's not huge, but it's what is needed for the kind of data I collect.
Needs vary greatly between disciplines and projects.
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Complete agreement. In a lot of situations, it can do a lot of good. It's just not the total solution.
Especially when combined with existing labs or researchers it is a Good Thing(tm).
Most science is small science and often it costs more than it sometimes really needs too. That said, we have to feed the researcher and pay their rent as well.
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If you total up all of the projects and what we're shooting for, though, it's about $250K, so, not tiny.
$250K is about one FTE-year. That is: one person, decent salary, benefits, and overhead for a year, at most any lab in the country.
Not saying it's tiny, just throwing that out for perspective on simple personnel costs.
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My organisation does set overheads that high. My salary ($115K/year as senior research scientist (i.e. mid-career) at a major research organisation) plus overheads is costed at $268K/year (this is the cost: we charge much more if we're trying to make a profit on a project). This doesn't include operating costs such as travel, equipment or lab analyses. It does covers my salary, benefits and office, basic computing facilities (anything special needs to be charged separately to the project) plus a percentage
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$115k/yr is an end of career salary in many organizations. Sound like exactly why I think government review panels should be allowed to consider cost and overhead when ranking proposals. When you get a great proposal from a place that pays high salaries with 80% overhead and a really good proposal from a place that pays a bit less with 30% overhead, maybe the one with 30% overhead should get funded.
But it'll never happen, because the people who work at the funding agencies want a job at the high salary/h
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Hahahaaaahhahahahahaaaa. Wow, what a great joke. This FTE is for who, exactly? A tenured PI in a place with a high COLA, maybe. A typical FTE for a grad student /postdoc is around 40k/yr, in the life sciences, which is usually the highest paid.
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That's more like the salary of a (poorly paid) postdoc or (extremely well paid) grad student. You need to double that or more to get the FTE cost, to account for overheads.
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Postdocs around here make $40k, so FTE is going to be $80k-ish. And grad students cost more - ask any professor what's more expensive, a grad student, or a postdoc. Something about how universities bill tuition plus health care plus stipend.
And is that who you want doing your reseach? Postdocs and grad students? Whose lab are they going to work in, and who pays for the equipment and space and computers? I guess the PI is just supposed to do that stuff for free.
Nothing against postdocs and grad student
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$40k is a lot for a postdoc, and FTE isn't double. Maybe $60k, still a lot less than the $250k you were saying earlier. And yes, grad students are expensive.
Anyway, postdocs and grad students DO the research. Yes, the PI "supervises", but you will have one PI for a group of 10 or more postdocs/grad students. No, it's not ideal, but that is just how it works.
Your original point, I think, was that personnel are the most expensive part of doing research. That is definitely true. However, if the total funding i
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$40k seems like a good estimate, and googling for a minute seems to verify the numbers I've heard recently from my colleagues:
Caltech $45k [glassdoor.com]
MIT $43.4k [glassdoor.com]
UT-Austin $43.5 [glassdoor.com]
U of AZ $41.5k [glassdoor.com]
I only know what the overhead is at places I've been, but 85-100% is what I hear from others. 100% is good enough for making an estimate. FWIW, 100% is what any freelancer charges for overhead. Maybe it's a bit less at some universities/labs, but the point is: those costs are significant.
$250k/FTE-year is a reasonable guess of w
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Your Caltech average salary is sourcing 10 postdocs at Caltech. There are a lot more than that, I am sure, so I think that is a fairly selective sampling. Here are the NIH guidelines for postdoc salaries in 2010,
http://grants.nih.gov/grants/guide/notice-files/not-od-10-047.html [nih.gov]
Most labs pay less than the NIH, unless they have a lot of funding. Also, postdocs are usually temporary positions lasting 1-3 yrs. So the top of the pay scale is often not reached. Now, I am using life science salaries as my benchmar
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Your reference is old. The newer one [nih.gov] (at the top of the link you listed) says $38.5k for a newly minted postdoc. Close enough to the numbers I listed as to make no difference. So I'd guess that those averages, small sample though they are, are probably about right, and the NIH pays low, which squares with what I've heard from my life sciences buds, compared to physics and engineering.
You said A typical FTE for a grad student /postdoc is around 40k/yr. My numbers are closer to right than yours, and you'r
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Read my whole post. That is what NIH recommends. Not what labs actually pay. Even if the FTE is closer to $60k, which is what I conceded earlier, that is not even close to the $250k you are standing by. Even if you take the highest NIH salary and use your doubling estimate for FTE, that is $100k, also not even close to $250k. I'm sorry, but your claim is just ridiculous. Like I said earlier, tenured faculty might make that much, but not the majority.
I'm not writing off anything less than $1M as chump change, and I'm not writing off $40k as chump change. But I'm not kidding myself about how much it costs just to get people in the lab, and I think you are underestimating it significantly.
Getting people into the lab is expensive, I'm not disputin
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I never said a postdoc cost 250k. I said "one person, decent salary, benefits, overhead" ~ 250k. I've said mid-career scientist several times. Where did I say a postdoc cost that much? In many scientific fields, maybe not yours, at many universities, and national labs, tenured faculty and staff scientists cost, not make, $250k. It is not ridiculous and it is not uncommon. Other posters have confirmed that estimate is reasonable. Shall I post up links to lists of salaries of faculty at public uni's?
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Dude, chill out. We are having a discussion here. No need to be so passionate.
Stop reading more into what I am saying than what I am saying. I already said a couple of times that a $250k FTE is in the range for a tenured professor (or mid-career scientist using your terminology). The point behind the postdoc diversion is that it isn't the tenured professors doing the lab work. When you need to hire someone to work on a project in your lab, you don't hire the equivalent of a tenured professor, you hire a pos
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Asking me - as someone with a PhD in a science subject - to choose which of two particle physics experiments is more worthwhile is unlikely to get a sensible answer.
Well, when you ask a particle physicist you'll get three possible answers. 1) The one that is closest to the way I do it. 2) The one that is closest to the way everyone has always done it. 3) The one that looks for the answer that we all think is correct. The one that will not be chosen is the one that might get an interesting or unexpected answer. So write your grant applications accordingly. The only way you can justify new science to a review panel is through developing instruments applicable to
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It's really amazing what $40k can do for an ambitious team or renaissance man working independently. Use-rate style renting of expensive specialized equipment, thrifty surplus purchases, allocating the increasingly available shared workspace resources, and open-source project management have shown just a few ways one can leverage R&D dollars beyond any institutional development rate. Also, depending on the mission and scope of the project, $40k for fund raising can easily turn into $400k within a year i
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And that's a key point. For someone doing it on the side and having their expenses already paid for, the marginal cost can be pretty small.
But, that limits how much of the time you can spend on it. It also makes it tough to get away for technical conferences (gotta earn that salary somewhere that won't pay for them usually).
You can do a lot with it. Innovative ideas, Makerspaces and open source are wonderful. But, just like anything, they have limitations.
This augments the usual scientific funding sources r
Shareware? (Score:2)
Try the question this way: does Shareware work? I think the answer to that is a resounding NO for the authors.
However, nickle and dime ware (ala App Store) does work amazingly well. So, maybe science projects could publish an app, and patrons could get some kind of exciting insider news first on their smartphone or in their e-mail in exchange for their continued small donations?
How many people would subscribe at $10/month to a "Manned Mission to the Moon." The media division of the project (making the vi
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Far too early to be crowing about how it's the next big thing with these funding levels.
Yeah, you're right. $40,000 raised that likely 99% of those funds will actually make it into a projects coffers...as opposed to more "traditional" fundraisers where $400,000 is raised, and yet $40,000 of that actually makes it into the projects coffers.
Somehow the 1% is convincing us that our math is wrong and immoral. Go figure.
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I've just recently begun to get involved in academic research and I've been amazed at how expensive things are. New manual spin coater? 3k. Want a better one? 5-8k.
Bearings in a turbomolecular pump go bad? 3k to repair, unless your boss lets them have it when said pump has less than 1000 hours on it and they decide pissing off a department that they make a lot of money from isn't smart. Same pump brand new is 10k.
Helium leak detector goes tits-up? 4.5k to repair. Of course that's better than buying a new on
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Yep. Welcome to my workday. It's spent trying to turn $800 repairs into $80 ones. (Add the appropriate zeros for the other cases in decreasing numbers. I suspect it follows some fractional power law probability. ;)
I'd like to do more with tubopumps, but the start up cost for what you need to fix them is very expensive. And just try to find someone to train you how to do it.
The manufacturers have a love hate relationship with techs like me. On the one hand, they like to sell me parts. That's easy low overhea
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The most expensive part of research science is people. In Europe, a four-year PhD student runs about €250,000, which you have to procure before you can hire said student. A postdoc costs about the same for two years. Rates in the US are probably about the same, but some of the costs can be shifted to the university (for example, by allowing students to be paid for teaching).
The projects in the summary also all have the quality that they can be explained to non-experts. Try crowd sourcing €500,000
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Not when you've got patent laws that are designed to kill innovation.
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There's a lot to be said for small and easily ignored.
It's when you start making them and selling them that you really run into problems. Yes, a manufacturer could start lawsuits, but it's pretty hard when a set of plans just shows up on a file server somewhere and then people make their own. Witness the RIAA and MPAA, etc. over the past decade.
That said, it's rarely a way to really save that much money. Rolling your own to the same level of quality tends to cost a lot.
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That's too general of a statement.
I can build a PC to a better level of quality than Gateway for the same money that they'd charge. And then when it's done, I'll know what's in it and how to fix it if need be.
But I could never build a tablet as good as a Galaxy Tab for the same price.
I can make better coffee than Starbucks for a lot less than they charge, but I can't make a dobos torte or chocolate/hazelnut cupcake as good as Alliance Bakery
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"That's too general of a statement."
That's why I put in that "tends". There are things where you can save a lot. We have people keeping protein solutions cold in a small anerobic hood using an off the shelf peltier cooler like you buy at Walmart. It works well.
For the PC, you have fairly integrated building blocks you can buy at quite low cost since they are mass produced. But, for a lot of things, you have to do things up from the component and board level. Let alone the mechanical side, thats tough to do
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That's too general of a statement.
I can build a PC to a better level of quality than Gateway for the same money that they'd charge. And then when it's done, I'll know what's in it and how to fix it if need be.
I think you're assuming you get to start with a motherboard and a power supply rather than building your own. Just the cost of designing and fabricating a PC board exceed the value of most PCs before you add components. Check out the cost of a high quality 4 or 5 output lab power supply to power it with. It's fine to say rolling your own is cheap if the expertise and the parts are available. If it's really science you probably aren't going to find either.
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Yes, the same way that Gateway does.
You think Gateway is designing and building their own motherboards and powersupplies?
No more than most scientists build their own centrifuge or stirring hotplate. Now, I know chemists who make their own glassware and I'm sure there are a lot of physicists and other scientists who fabricate their own gear, but a lot of science can be done with off-the-shelf parts.
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Sometimes that can work. (I'm on some of the open source hardware mailing lists.)
Often though, even at the inflated prices, building your own when it's only a single item is rarely a way to save a lot unless you give up a lot in features.
I've worked for a custom electronics shop as well. We usually were quite inexpensive compared to other companies, but there was a limit to how cheap we could be and still pay ourselves and the bills.
Making onesy twosey quantities of things gets expensive unless you've got a
Maybe. (Score:5, Informative)
You've got to remember, though, that outside the simpler home-use inventions, science is expensive. A single Y chromosome decode costs between $1k-$5k, depending on the quality. Identifying genetic diseases means a full genome scan, at maybe 10x the price, but you can't just examine 1 individual. To be useful, you need hundreds if not thousands of samples, plus an equal number from your control group. So you're looking at $100,000,000 just for the analysis. Most bio labs cut corners, which is why most bio labs can't tell you much that's useful.
($40,000 is, frankly, chump change for anything of significance. It would buy you 4 hours of time in a low-end particle accelerator. It is a fifth of the cost of a decent-grade MALA ground penetrating radar unit. You might be able to buy a stormchaser vehicle with it, minus any scientific equipment to go in it.)
However, if you crowdsourced a million people per project, high-end science may be doable. The problem is convincing a million people to part with their money. Remember, getting donations is merely a voluntary version of taxation and people despise taxation. The fact that it's voluntary is immaterial, it doesn't change the cost of the project, it doesn't change the outcome of the project, it certainly doesn't change the management of the project. All of those matter far more than your goodwill.
Then there's the fact that a lot of these sites that handle such stuff are run by dweebs who are infinitely worse than any government agency when it comes to filing the proper paperwork, micromanaging what projects get listed, etc. Most of these sites are reputedly run by venture capitalists who would prefer it if they could waste your money rather than their own.
Re:Maybe. (Score:4)
Convincing smart people to part with their money as opposed to giving it to somebody else is a part of the process. I'm sure there are cases where genuinely important research gets delayed or denied because it isn't obviously important, but over all given the scarcity of money in general for science that's what's going to happen. We can't send probes to the moon every time somebody has an idea that relates in some vague way to the moon.
And yes, $40k is chump change for most things.
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Don't you mean "convincing the rich people to part with their money?
The smart people don't need much convincing, in my experience.
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The smart people are, sadly, not the ones with money. Smart people spend too much time understanding their subject to spend time making a killing on the stockmarket. It is entirely about the rich, who didn't become rich for the benefit of others. They can sometimes be persuaded, but they see it as a tax writeoff, not as a means of benefiting humanity.
Re:Maybe. (Score:5, Insightful)
And how do you fund ongoing projects? Many (if not most) worthwhile scientific endeavors take decades. Having funding depending on a crowd's momentary whim doesn't seem like a good long term strategy. This problem already exits in the current funding scheme - long term projects often get dinged when money is scarce but at least there are (imperfect) mechanisms to deal with the problems.
Prioritizing science and technology funding is difficult. Letting the 'crowd' do it makes no sense at all.
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Agreed. The idea is obviously derived from angel investors and venture capitalists, but those have a motive to continue (such as pwning anything that works), aren't subject to whims of the moment and are careful about where they put money (there being a limited amount of the stuff).
Now, I'm willing to concede that there are mini projects that this sort of system will work on. DIY stuff, or maybe archiving material of some sort, but that's about the limit of its reach.
Small Money does not mean Small Science (Score:5, Interesting)
Not always. Entire projects in, say, Ecology can be done for the cost of one sequence. Theoretical modeling can require little more than a laptop, pen, and paper. Already, many prototype or preliminary research experiments get done on the shoestring budget at the end of a grant. Big Science does not always mean Big Money. And maybe that's the kind of research crowdfunding is suited for.
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The problem isn't creating theoretical models, the problem is working out which ones correspond to the real world. To do that, you need to measure reality, and that usually costs quite a bit. If correspondence to reality wasn't required, science would be so easy.
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I'm a theoretical physicists. $40,000 can pay for a LOT of paper and pencils...
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You still do your calculations on the back of an envelope? But then again, you can use your mobile phone now to do calculations on that you needed a super duper top of the line computer for only 5 years ago.
Re:Envelope (Score:2)
He's right though, while being dryly funny, that yes, a humble envelope is a valid scientific tool because while brainstorming you aren't "producing" anything. You're staring out of focus wondering why your equation "just looks wrong" despite having checked it 7 times to confirm there was no simple blunder.
So the envelope might contain a key graph, an Unhappy Face, a couple swear words, a doodle of the waitress, and three half baked equations with a big mystery gap in them.
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Actually, I really do spend most of my time working pencil to paper. Sure, I do simulations on a computer for some things, and I've used analytic programs for others, but most of the time calculations in my field are done by hand. Sometimes because you're working on a simple enough idea from a new perspective or because you're dealing with mathematical objects for which there is no analytic program.
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That is pretty cool. I never was good enough at maths to be any use in mathematical modeling so I always marvel at the people who can do it :).
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The reason why the government covers things like that is that it's not sexy enough to attract attention from the private sector. Sort of like how there are unpopular but vital services that need to be provided. Most people get angry about having to pay tolls and angrier about not having a road to drive on so the government steps in and builds it with tax dollars.
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Problematic. Not only is science unsexy, the overheads of administering such a system would seriously cripple the money available.
Now, I can see an alternative maybe working - perhaps every 10 years hold a national referendum on what the priorities should be (put your 1st, 2nd and 3rd down), where no project attaining more than some threshold score can get funding cut back (after allowing for inflation) for those ten years.
Rewards for contributors (Score:5, Insightful)
Another issue though is that all of humanity benefits from scientific advances. If government funding were to reduce and be replaced by fund raising drives, then (in the simplest case) those who don't contribute would be getting all the benefits (alternatives to fossil fuels, medical advances, etc) but with none of the upfront cost. Of course, we already have some fund raising for breast cancer/prostate cancer/MS/other specific disease but I would imagine this makes up a fairly small portion of their research budgets (and in some cases genuinely represents an investment in their personal future).
The obvious way around this is through a Kickstarter style reward system, where people who contribute get some specific rewards. But what would you offer? You get a share of the profits? (Well, now you're actually a corporation.) You get early access to the treatment? (That's not going to fly politically.) You get your name on the side of the particle accelerator? (That might work.)
Obviously, people are welcome to do whatever they want with their money, but I think government funding of science for the common good is the fairest scenario, and what we should be encouraging.
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Be careful with absolutes. While I agree with you, there are *many* people who will point out that the discovery of how to build atom bombs did *not* benefit humanity. Why is this relevant? Funding is all about politics, and absolutes don't mix well with politics.
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(Even the nuclear bomb research probably helped spur nuclear power, which in turn staved off climate change. And, of course, views are
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On the other hand atom reactors benefit all humanity. And Fermi and Szilard did work on both.
Atomic bombs benefitted mostly Western Europe, as in the fifties the Soviets had much more ground troops than Western Europe.
Can YOU make it succeed? (Score:5, Informative)
As one of the co-founders of #SciFund, I'm curious, after you slashdotters go and look at the projects at http://scifund.rockethub.com [rockethub.com] and their videos and rewards, would YOU crowdfund these projects? (and if you would, then by all means, do so!) This is the first time we're trying this on any scale, and so have chosen to start with small projects that, if they don't get funded, won't set back anyone's research program. What we're really curious is if the science literate and science interested people like YOU would go over, see what scientists have up, and say "Yeah, I'll fund that."?
And if you want more background, check the articles our scientists are writing about this process [wordpress.com].
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Tell you what. Get me a 1:1 offset on my taxes, and *sure*, I'll fund it. Until then, you're trying to double dip :) !
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I want to know how the research you fund will be published. Will it be freely available, published under some kind of copyleft license? A quick skim of the site didn't turn up anything on that one way or another. Until I have assurances that I will be able to read any research I might help fund, that it won't end up locked away behind some miserable journal's outrageous paywall, I'm not too excited about funding anything. The research projects themselves all look pretty cool.
It's a start. A start tow
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I want to know how the research you fund will be published. Will it be freely available, published under some kind of copyleft license?
Most projects on the site have some form of "you will recieve printed/pdf copies of any papers published" statement. Also, any one of us would be happy to send out a copy of our papers. To us our work is worth spreading and we're well within our rights as authors to share our papers with anyone we like, paywalls notwithstanding. Moreover, most projects also offer access to blogs or monthly newsletters as a way of keeping their contributors informed on the progress of the research.
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I want to know how the research you fund will be published.... I'm one of the Scifund researchers. Many of the projects have methods to share the data and results (see prior reply). In my case, I intend to share the hardware design of the instrument I use to collect the data as well (i.e open hardware instrumentation). The data I hope to publish in a true open source journal. My goal is to make a instrument which is a resource for other researchers around the world. By publishing my hardware design, I hope other researchers will modify it and use it for their experiments. The funding basically covers the expense of figuring out how to make it as cheap as possible.
Science by Popularity? (Score:4, Interesting)
Crowsource funding for science will come off at best as well as crowsource funding for the arts, which is pretty much what we've had for the last several decades. The masses will fund what tickles their fancy, or their ego, and the smart researcher will tap into that by pandering. Science will end up with its equivalent of Justin Beeber, Hank Williams, Jr., Gwen Stephanie, and the list goes on.
My colleagues and I came up with a great idea along these lines some years ago (I've been in research since 1980) - one of us would grow a large head of hair and dye it white. He'd be the front man for a Church of Researching God's Creation (I think t that's the name we came up with) which we'd take to the airways to surf for donations. If done right, this could bring in serious money. Of course, we'd all have to look at ourselves in the mirror every now and then, but by the number of highly successful (and very rich) evangelicals floating around that must be a solvable problem.
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It is solvable. Vampires don't see their reflections :-)
Also, L. Ron Hubbard has prior art (Scientology) that you'd come close to infringing - the whole "make up sh*t in the name of religion and join everyone else fleecing the flock."
no (Score:3)
No voluntary program is going to deliver enough funds to science to really meet the definition most scientists would define as 'working'.
Unfortunately, forced support via taxation is the only realistic way.
NO (Score:2)
This is what democratic government is for; the majority forces everybody to contribute for the benefit of all. (note: I specified democratic; obviously, a broken one is no longer functioning as democracy and is so only a democracy in name...)
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No voluntary program is going to deliver enough funds to science to really meet the definition most scientists would define as 'working'. Unfortunately, forced support via taxation is the only realistic way.
Wow. The latter part of your statement might as well be a campaign slogan for the 1% in the #Occupy movement.
Try not to rain on a 10-day old parade that raised tens of thousands of dollars that most likely 99% of that money WILL actually be put towards the project. Instead, take a good hard look at the charity orgs out there raising millions and how much they blow of that money on "overhead" before it even comes close to funding their project. The results will likely disgust you, and make you think twice
short-lived (Score:2)
It's still new, wait. As a new concept, people actually believe that if they give money to someone trying to invent something weird, that it'll actually get invented most of the time. Just wait.
In short-order, people will realize that 50% of this kind of research goes nowhere forever, and another 40% of it fails out-right quickly. Only 10% makes it to what we're going to call, here, a prototype. And of those, only half make it to what we'll call a break-even point.
Finding people willing to invest has ne
Not bloody likely (Score:3)
It could help my fusion efforts a great deal. (Score:4, Informative)
Horrible replacement, OK suppliment. (Score:4, Insightful)
The problem with basic scientific research is that it often involves concepts too esoteric and complicated to be readily understood by the public.
If I tried to explain why you should fun a study of the color of highly unstable metal compounds, you might think I'm crazy. Of course it is studies like these in the early 1900's that lead to our understanding of molecular orbital theory and thus helped in the development of semiconductor transistors.
The large cognitive and temporal gap between basic research and applications will prevent such projects from getting funded. Sure people will fund robotic squirrel projects, but why bother with a gas-phase ion chemistry project, never mind the unseen world changing applications 50 years down the road.
The system works as it is now. Taxes fund scientific advancement agencies where qualified individuals evaluate grant applications based on the merits of the proposal and the reputation of the researcher. It's not perfect; tallent is occasionally overlooked, stagnation is occasionally rewarded, but it's the best system we have now.
I've worked in research, and this ain't gonna work (Score:3)
Folks who have never done research have this romanticized notion that researchers just sit there and think up new stuff all day long, and it works beautifully the first time they hit the button, and revolutionizes the life as we know it every time. Truth is, 99% of the research done today is incremental at best, folks just combine existing stuff into something borderline new and try it out, then tweak it some, and try it out again. That's what research is — you go down the alleys to see if they're blind, and most of the time they are. 90% of it is fruitless waste of time and money, you just don't know which 90%. The remaining 10% makes it more than worthwhile, but the core thing to understand here is that it's incredibly hard, and _expensive_ work which most of the time produces a "no" and "try something else". When people fund something out of their own pocket, they generally expect a return on their investment and get pissed off with negative outcomes.
Been there, done that ... (Score:2)
That is pretty much how science operated prior to the twentieth century. It even worked, in a limited sense. After all, it did give scientific research a huge kick-start. But let's be realistic too. It would be next to impossible to maintain current rates of scientific progress using that model because you can achieve far higher funding levels by taxing a hundred million people a dollars a head per year than you would by persuading a hundred people to donate a million dollars a head. (Since very few of
Maybe should have been: Where can it succeed? (Score:3)
I have been fascinated by the comments in this thread. And I realize perhaps I mis-stated the question. The tacit assumption seems to have been that this may be a potential replacement for NSF/NIH funding or otherwise that can completely support a research lab.
And maybe it can. But I agree with all the posters that the chances of crowdfunding as a complete replacement for more traditional funding sources are highly unlikely. As everyone has noted, #SciFund is targeting pieces of research programs rather than whole labs (although we do have some folk trying for a chunk of their salary). And perhaps it is no accident that the first time around, the disciplines and scientists that have been attracted to #SciFund are not ones who are trying to purchase or use multi-million dollar pieces of equipment.
So, perhaps the question should be, Crowdfunding for science - when and where can it be used successfully?
Because, really, the answer to the first question, can it succeed at all for any project, no matter the size, rests on folk like you. But what are its best uses? That's a bigger issue that I'd love to hear more thoughts about, as we're still grappling with it.
(FYI, we'll also be doing a formal analysis of all of the projects and their funding records at the end of the 45 day funding period - #SciFund runs through Dec 15th, so, we have pulled in $40K now, but we still have a month left to get more, if you want to contribute [rockethub.com] and help us figure out what projects are really capturing people's imagination when it comes to funding.)
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But I agree with all the posters that the chances of crowdfunding as a complete replacement for more traditional funding sources are highly unlikely.
It's not just unlikely, it seems an extremely dangerous approach to take. Seen from the outside it's fascinating, frightening as well as somewhat hilarious, how the US is dismantling itself - trying to become a third-world country by destroying all it's functioning institutions. So might crowdsourcing be a future model for science funding in the U.S. and abr
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So, perhaps the question should be, Crowdfunding for science - when and where can it be used successfully?
Label me a greedy insensitive capitalist bastard hell-bent on making a few bucks, but the only time I would donate money to research is when I know I will financially benefit from the research. So instead of "crowdsourcing for science", I would recommend "crowdsourcing for investors".
That's what tax dollars are for ... (Score:5, Insightful)
Sorry, but I want public funding to go towards scientific research for two reasons.
First and foremost, you need public funding to support pure science. There are a few branches of pure science that will attract private donations, but most won't. Take astronomy vs. computers in the pre-WWII era. Astronomy was almost entirely impractical, but it attracted deep pockets. Real computers (i.e. anything beyond adding machines) received very little love at all, even though they turned out to be hugely important to society down the road. Computers were developed primarily because of government funding during and after WWII. Heck, even Charles Babbage received government funding. But all of the other computing projects (and there were a few) received inadequate funding and ended up going nowhere.
Re:That's what tax dollars are for ... (Score:4, Insightful)
Oops, I was too busy dreaming of the grinding gears of the difference engine to remember point two. :)
The second point is that the modern taxation system works because there is something for everyone. Bleeding hearts like myself see funding going to science and social programs. Rednecks see taxes going towards infrastructure and national security. (Sorry about the over generalizations there, but I use them only to illustrate a point.) Now I know that everyone loves to grumble about taxes, but most people will pay them because they receive some benefits from them. A system of universal taxation wouldn't work otherwise because the people who aren't serve would eventually revolt (which we have seen historically).
In other words, if you want my tax dollars to fund roads you better be willing to see some of your tax dollars go to science.
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There are two ways to take your comment: you either want me to pay for what you value, yet you don't want to pay for what I value; or you think that people should only pay for what they value themselves.
From prior experience, most people will claim the latter but mean the former. After all, as soon as you outline the consequences (i.e. cutting funding to their cherished programs) they start screaming bloody murder.
But just in case you claim the latter and actually mean the latter, have you ever considered
First project should be hedge fund software (Score:2)
Although I believe that copyright is a good thing when done correctly, I also believe that today copyright is impeding new developments and is impacting negatively the human specie.
What I would like to see is for this project is to first develop a hedge software, so it can fund itself to a very large intent, and then to use all that money to lobby US Government to fix Copyright law.
Only after that, it makes sense to pursue other projects. Otherwise they will be killed by patent trolls.
We could call it "Taxes"..... (Score:3)
I know, why don't a lot of us who live in the same area agree to all put in some of our money regularly, and use it to pay for science, but also to pay for some people to keep the roads in good condition, keep an eye on bad people, let some people not have to do their jobs full time but instead be full time teachers, full time doctors, that kind of thing. That would be a fantastic way of sharing out the costs amongst us and make sure science and other things get done that wouldn't happen otherwise. We could even crowdsource the decision making process, call it "government". And the crowdsourced income generating strategy, we could call it "taxes".
I'm not sure it will succeed, but I've heard a rumour that science is funded in some other countries in this way, in some cases for quite a few years...
Such a simple answer... (Score:2)
It can work, but there's a catch... (Score:2)
Like any form of mass marketing, crowdsourcing science basically comes down to convincing large numbers of people that what you are doing provides enough value (not necessarily in monetary terms) that putting some of their own money toward it is a worthwhile thing to do.
In a society that has become increasingly skeptical of doing a thing for the thing's own sake, that's a lot harder than it used to be, and it's true in fields across all political boundaries: weapons research would find itself without all th
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Re:Shoving the current buzzword down our throats (Score:5, Insightful)
I'll answer the question originally posed. And I think the answer is, for the most part, no. Most of the diverse projects funded by SciFund Challenge have goals in the hundreds of dollars or in the low thousands. While there are some science project you can do for a few thousand dollars, the are the minority rather than the majority. You also have be primarily talking about projects run by people who aren't getting paid to run these projects (i.e. professors paid with tax dollars an tuition). A more realistic scale for a small science project is two full time early career scientists, which, with benefits and overhead is going to run you $250k/yr, now add what it's going to cost to do the experiments. There's no way you are going to be able fund that on donations unless people perceive a immediate benefit to themselves.
You can probably guess from the signature, I'm a fan of SETI@home. From a couple hundred thousand SETI@home users, they manage to raise $50k/yr. That's not great for a project that costs $500k/yr to run. It could be worse. The Allen Telescope Array run by the SETI Institute (unrelated to SETI@home) costs about $1.5M/yr to operate. In their funding drive, the SETI Institute raise $200k to bring the ATA back on-line. If it's still back on-line, I don't know where the rest of the money is coming from.
In other words, no, I have no faith in the ability of "crowdfunding" to act as a stable funding source for any non-trivial science project, and even then I think much of the funding will go to people who are already funded (at least in terms of salary), and just see a means to squeeze a few extra bucks into their research programs. Except, of course, in the case of "one's a crowd". The rich in this country control most of the wealth and income. Why ask for money from the peasants? Since we're moving our economies back into the feudal model, if I were a scientist looking for funding, I would probably be searching for a wealthy patron. Chief Alchemist to the Court of Gates, perhaps?
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Chief Alchemist to the Court of Gates, perhaps?
Microsoft Research [microsoft.com] does actually release some stuff for public use from time to time, you know.
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Re:Shoving the current buzzword down our throats (Score:5, Insightful)
Government funding is the ultimate crowdsourcing.
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So if I threaten to drag you out of your house and throw you in jail if you don't fund my pet project, I'm crowdsourcing?
For every single act of government -- without fail -- there is a gun around a corner waiting to remind you why you do what government asks.
Holding half the population at gunpoint to get science done may be a historically effective approach, but it is hardly a harmless or moral one.
Re:Shoving the current buzzword down our throats (Score:5, Insightful)
Like it or not, the government of the United States is designed to get its power from the consent of the people. The government IS the people.
If someone comes to your door and drags you out of your house for not paying taxes, it's because American citizens, as a group, have agreed be subject to such a law to make sure nobody tries to dodge their responsibility to ante up so that there can be roads, health care, a military, etc. While we don't require unanimous votes on these issues, if there was sufficient will the entire government could be changed top to bottom in a relatively short time.
The danger is not from government, it is from outside, non-citizen, non-human entities wresting control of government institutions from the people, as has been the case with the rise of the corporate oligarchy abetted by the Supreme Court's Citizens United decision, in which an activist, rogue court inexplicably decided that corporations are "super-citizens" who have more influence over government than actual citizens.
In the US we are not bound to an aristocracy, a royalty or a military dictatorship. Without exception, every two years the entire House of Representatives stands for election. Every six years the entire Senate stands for election, and every four years the President stands for election.
I'm sorry that you believe that some outside agency is going to "drag you out of your house and throw you in jail", but you are not without influence. Americans have, decade after decade, voted that people who try to skip out on their civic responsibility can, in rare instances, be arrested and prosecuted and thrown in jail. It hardly ever happens, the jail part, except to people whose disregard of their responsibility to the community borders on sociopathy.
That's bullshit and you know it. I don't think "half the population" need a gun pointed at their head to realize that "getting science done" is a worthwhile endeavor for public resources. And for the most part, drama queens like yourself are ignored. Even so, you are free to try to convince your fellow citizens, though judging by the "anti-tax, anti-government" movement I've seen in the past few years, I doubt you'll find many who are physically fit enough to try to toss a few pallet-loads of tea into Boston Harbor, and the real progeny of the Boston Tea Party are busy trying to bring the biggest sociopaths to account via public demonstrations and protests in towns and cities all across the country.
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You and I have been over this before.
A person doesn't have the right to drag me out of my house and shoot me. How do 10, 100, 1000, or 100,000,000 people acquire that right when as individuals they do not possess it?
They don't acquire that right; their actions never acquire a veneer of morality. They merely assert violence. And they are moral monsters.
The US is not foundationally a democracy, by the way. But I've explained this to you before. The nature of who and how the laws are made is basically irr
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Again, you dodge a moral defense of your position, this time attempting to avoid it with humor.
Your ideas rest on the premise that you and your friends get to murder me if I don't do what you say.
Please explain why this is ethical.
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"Murder"? Are you serious?
And who are my "friends"?
bmajik, are you OK?
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Less than you would think. Politicians in robes who are not subject to elections, and who have taken upon themselves increasing power.
They are not even subject to the same ethical standards as any other judge in a US court.
At the moment, SCOTUS is by far the most powerful branch of government, and none of them have been elected. Further, the process by which the will of the people is supposed to be exerted by the Senate has been corrupted by an unconstitutional
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No, this is more like science begging for charity. It's disgusting, as are begging for cancer research funding and any of the other underfunded "charitable causes".
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And I always wanted to see Olivia Hunt with her knickers down around her ankles.
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If i could see my money would all help research efforts in the fields of ...innovative green power, genetic mutation ... health as well as many others i would donate $1000 - $10000... with all the rules and regulations involved as well as bureaucrats getting half the money, I'm not sure it would reach it's full potential.
Given how things work for #SciFund, we have an 8% overhead to rockethub and about a 2-5% for folk at universities (although this varies) since it goes through a different channel than government grants. And we have projects looking at greener [rockethub.com] power [rockethub.com] applications [rockethub.com] as well as problems of global good production [rockethub.com]. So, great! Sounds like a perfect match for you!