Crowdsourcing
Science Philanthropy for the 99 Percent
12/10/12 13:23 Filed in: GenomeWeb Daily Scan
Bitesize Bio highlighted a new website, called Flintwave, that combines social networking and crowdfunding to support specific projects. Scientists can use the site to share videos, posts, and presentations that "science enthusiasts" can follow and fund. It joins a host of other science crowdsourcing sites that have popped up recently, including Open Genius, the SciFund Challenge (hosted by RocketHub), IAMscientist, Microryza, and Petridish. Eva Amsen at the Occam's Typewriter Irregulars questions whether the model can be as fruitful for scientific research projects as it is for other disciplines as much higher levels of fundraising are required and a direct return on investment is much less likely. S. Pelech calculates that the research behind the average NIH-funded scientific paper with a 5.5 impact costs at least US$ 128,000 to fund, and figures that in view of this cost, the number of biomedical research projects that are likely to be funded by crowdsourcing online is probably much too small to be of real significance in the progress of scientific research as a whole. Read More...