Ask HN: Use Kickstarter for Academic Research?

Microryza, https://microryza.com we're different in that we don't follow the Kickstarter model of tangible rewards.

Petridish was targeting crowd-funding for research

For most research it's unlikely enough people care about it in order to fund it.

I like the idea. How can we hold them accountable, assuring the research that was intended to be done, actually gets done?

I suspect that it would be no less reliant upon academic integrity as any other mechanism.