Scientist Gets Research Donations From Crowd Funding
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npr.org
Perhaps I'm oversimplifying by seeing the pot of potential science funding as inherently limited. However, I fear that if we give the public the idea that science should be funded this way, then we deemphasize basic science, making it even harder for groundbreaking work to get funded.
-- Wheat et al. 2013. Raising money for scientific research through crowdfunding: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0169534712...
What are the important sciences that are unlikely to get funding that way?
In my experience, people fund the weirdest, most mundane things that you'd never consider yourself. That's the beauty of it.
I can think of it in terms of an analogy: in ZOOs, yes, the elephants and lions do indeed get loads of voluntary donations. But I'm always amazed when I see the plaques filled with donors next to completely random birds, rodents and insects (apologies to the respective enthusiasts -- I'm sure these are fascinating in their own right!).
A classical example of important basic science was the discovery of green fluorescent protein (GFP). The researchers who worked on it were just curious why jellyfish glowed. However, the result of their discovery led to the widespread use of GFP as a way to tag proteins of interest, making them directly observable and easily quantifiable. It has had a huge impact on the biological sciences, gets used in all sorts of research - both translational and basic. The folks who figured it all out won a Nobel.
Unfortunately, none of these impacts could really have been forecasted by the researchers doing the work, and it wouldn't have been in the "elevator pitch". Instead, the best they probably could have done was to explain that they were trying to see what made jellyfish glow.
Studying why jellyfish glow could make an excellent pitch -- even I can imagine donating to that!
And that's even though my pet hobby is geology, which I presume most would count among the more boring disciplines. Of course, I'd gladly donate there, given a credible pitch/project proposal/person.
EDIT: in fact, come to think of it, I'd be more inclined to fund a project where the person show genuine passion and curiosity about how a mundane and seemingly irrelevant thing works. Interesting. Food for thought.
Say I study the bonds between metal atoms and carbon atoms. Understanding the strength of interaction can potentially lead to understanding the reactions and dynamics of chemicals used on a daily basis - but not directly. Completing such work would not immediately lead to a deeper understanding of chemistry, but would just be a small step that could one day lead to major technological or scientific advancement. How could something like this be sold?
In any case, that's not hard to imagine at all. Particle physics is among the sexiest subjects in science (along with astrophysics), and there aren't as few geeks as generally believed (they're just relatively silent!).
That's like asking, who would devote time/energy/money to the study of the digits of pi? Visualising strange attractors? Calculating large prime numbers?
Not sure how extravagant projects (such as particle colliders) would fit in the crowd funding scheme, but I don't think they even need to.
The problem, though, is not everything is like particle physics. Particle physics is able to be publicized as a field which will give us a total understanding of the entire universe: a Theory of Everything.
But the example I gave is not as fundamental. It can give us a Theory of Understanding Many Types of Useful Molecules, which is awesome, but I would argue that it really just isn't as sexy a subject to the general populace, and so it simply cannot get as much funding.
I think this is what I'm trying to say: some projects are very accessible, like drug discovery. These will get funded. Some projects are extremely esoteric. But they are potentially revolutionary - particle physics, which theoretically can lead to us understanding everything, ever. But for all of those projects, there are thousands more that lie somewhere in between: esoteric enough that the benefits of the study are not immediately understandable, and without the potential of enormous impact. These, I think, will not get funded.
But science is not built entirely on revolutionary work that redefines our understanding and existence, even though many of the most-admired scientists are typically people who did this type of work (Newton, Einstein, etc). Most of it is small additions to the body of knowledge that is currently known, and does not have the same wow factor or potential application. And these will have a much harder time getting funded.
But I think that's alright -- and that is the core of our disagreement, I suppose. Plus, I think you're underestimating the numbers of what various people would find interesting/fund-worthy. It's a big, connected world, these days.
By the way, I gave several counter-examples of "esoteric enough that the benefits of the study are not immediately understandable, and without the potential of enormous impact" in my other replies in this thread, including the comment you're replying to.
In the extreme, when only one person is interested in a project (the researcher himself!), then only one person will devote energy/time/money to it. Fine by me.