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> I'm going to argue that direct public funding is the best way, and by that I mean the historical analogy of direct patronage or crowdfunding research today (e
by weland 11y ago
> I'm going to argue that direct public funding is the best way, and by that I mean the historical analogy of direct patronage or crowdfunding research today (e.g. experiment.com).
Sadly, you'll be hard-pressed to do direct public funding in anything that is not publicly-attractive. You'll get a gazillion bazillion dollars for research on canabinoids, and barely a dime on some boring ray-bending materials research problem that will eventually turn out to be easy to integrate on an organic substrate, opening the way for silicon-on-organic optoelectronic devices.
The "average citizen or constituent" has a level of scientific education that would prove at least as, if not more toxic than commercial interests. The current (absolutely terrible!) grant funding model is indeed too technical for the "average citizen or constituent"; a frickin' k-12 textbook is too technical for the average citizen, of course high-level research is too technical! That's why it's high-level!
> If you were motivated to go out and seek an answer for yourself, then perhaps you'd be less likely to lean on witnesses, testimony, or experts that you don't understand.
That's how we ended up with the anti-vaccines craze. People are motivated to go out and seek an answer for themselves, but they're also lazy and seek comforting answers.
- k__ 11y agoCouldn't the money gathered be split up? Like, 75% of the money goes to the funded project, 5% to the crowdfunding company and 20% is given to some less popular research. Problem is, how to distribute those 20%. Also, these platforms would be less attractive to the original researchers, because they lose 20%.
- deleted 11y ago[deleted]
- hitekker 11y agoI upvoted and I also want to say that your response was most convincing/seemingly logical.
- empath75 11y agoI wonder if letting people directly control priorities for some percentage of research spending (10%?) would encourage more science spending in general though. Like even if that 10% is flushed down the toilet, maybe it's counteracted by a much larger budget over all.
- dandelion_lover 11y ago> Sadly, you'll be hard-pressed to do direct public funding in anything that is not publicly-attractive. I think this problem can be solved exactly as it is solved in academia. Since technical things are indeed too technical, even many researches do not understand the precise value of a particular research. And this is why a commissions are created and peer-review is used. So the money from ordinary people should go to this commissions instead. Upd: of course such a commission should be able to explain/promote the corresponding research to the public. This will be their work, too.
- NickSharp 11y agoThis may be a new up and coming model. Take a look at this, http://www.lifespan.io/campaigns/sens-mitochondrial-repair-project/ http://www.lifespan.io/campaigns/sens-mitochondrial-repair-p... A crowdfunded mitochondrial repair project, fully funded ($34K) with 14 days to go.
- swsieber 11y agoWell, you'd get my money for a ray-bending materials research problem that will eventually turn out to be easy to integrate on an organic substrate, opening the way for silicon-on-organic optoelectronic devices. But in all seriousness, there are different types of research, no? Some research leads to new technology and some is verification, repeatability and just plain knowledge discovery. There might be some way of rigging up the system so that people who fund potentially patent creating research could get a cut of the royalties. And the reproducibility area would be great for a large number of people especially if such things are kept track of ("This particular study has only been done once"). If we can get people to trust repeated studies more than not repeated that site will help better clarify emergent research trends/topics.