Skip to content

Politics & Current Affairs — July 12, 2011

Crowdsourcing Scientific Research

As research budgets tighten at universities and federal financing agencies, a new crop of Web-savvy scientists is hoping the wisdom—and generosity—of the crowds will come to the rescue.

bigthinkeditors

Sign up for Big Think on Substack

The most surprising and impactful new stories delivered to your inbox every week, for free.

Subscribe

What’s the Latest Development?

While nonprofit science organizations and medical research centers commonly seek donations from the public, Dr. Calkins, an adjunct professor of biology at Evergreen State College in Olympia, Wash., and Dr. Gee may have been the first professional scientists to use a generic “crowd funding” website to underwrite basic research. “Websites like Kickstarter, IndieGoGo and RocketHub are an increasingly popular way to bankroll creative projects—usually in film, music and visual arts.”

What’s the Big Idea?

It is not very likely that anyone imagined crowd funding websites would be used to finance scientific research. And it is unclear what problems this odd pairing might beget. “Most crowd funding platforms thrive on transparency and a healthy dose of self-promotion but lack the safeguards and expert assessment of a traditional review process. Instead, money talks: The public decides which projects are worth pursuing by fully financing them. … The money can come from anywhere — the biggest backers of the quail project were ranchers and hunters.”

Sign up for Big Think on Substack

The most surprising and impactful new stories delivered to your inbox every week, for free.

Subscribe

Related

Book cover for "Irresistible Change: A Blueprint for Earning Buy-In and Breakout Success" by Phil Gilbert, featuring “an excerpt from Phil Gilbert” text set against a purple background.

How to land “the emotional why” of company change

The greatest companies navigate change at speed and make it stick at scale. Here’s how IBM started that journey in 2012.

Scott Britton, in business attire, sits cross-legged on a desk meditating, while blurred figures move in the background.

How to be ambitious without losing your soul

Former tech founder Scott Britton wants to shatter the binary myth that separates driving ambition from inner development.

A bald man in a blue suit and white shirt stands outdoors in Silicon Oasis, smiling, with autumn leaves and a blurred building in the background.

Silicon Oasis? How a northern English tech startup went global

We chat with Mark Klarzynski, founder of PEAK:AIO, on how his company became an international player in data storage for the age of AI.

A man in a suit stands facing a large human eye, positioned at the center of the pupil as if about to step inside.

The science of consciousness is solving the biggest illusion in our universe

“Consciousness is fundamental. It’s a fundamental property of the world that we inhabit, a fundamental property of the universe.”

▸

1:12:16 min

—

with

A bearded man wearing glasses and a plaid shirt speaks with a microphone clipped to his collar in front of a purple background with white dots.

How Rainn Wilson discovered sacredness

The hospital where Rainn Wilson’s wife and son nearly died became his own personal holy site. There, he discovered that the sacred can exist in places we least expect it. During his talk at A Night of Awe and Wonder, he explained how the awe we feel in moments of courage and love is moral beauty — and following it might be the start of our spiritual revolution.

▸

13 min

—

with

Up Next

Surprising Science

Stuxnet: World’s First Cyber Weapon

If the goal of the Stuxnet computer virus was to destroy Iran’s capability to produce nuclear weapons, it failed. But if it was meant to simply slow the process, it succeeded—for a time.