3 ms·

In the HN spirit, where's the opportunity? How can we help improve the life of researchers? Start ups trying to help: Science Exchange (YCS11) https://www.sci

by kayhi 10y ago

In the HN spirit, where's the opportunity? How can we help improve the life of researchers? Start ups trying to help: Science Exchange (YCS11) https://www.scienceexchange.com/ https://www.scienceexchange.com/ : outsource parts of your research to companies Instrumentl (YCS16) https://www.instrumentl.com/ https://www.instrumentl.com/ : identify and push relevant grants towards applicable research Experiment (YCW13) https://experiment.com/ https://experiment.com/ : crowdfunding platform for scientific research Transcriptic (YCW15) https://www.transcriptic.com/ https://www.transcriptic.com/ : a robotic cloud laboratory for the life sciences LabGuru https://www.labguru.com/ https://www.labguru.com/ : inventory management and lab notebook Lab Spend https://labspend.com/ https://labspend.com/ : tracks spending and finds savings on supplies and chemicals

timr 10y ago
As a former scientist, current startup person: please stop. This is crass. Startups that sell services to scientists aren't helping with the fundamental problem (i.e. there aren't many jobs, and there isn't enough funding once you have a job). Crowdfunding is nice in theory, but just makes the problem of vanity science worse than it is right now. Crowds don't know shit about science. If you want to help researchers, vote for people who will increase scientific funding. Much of this crunch is directly attributable to congressional budgetary cutbacks since the early 2000s: http://www.faseb.org/portals/2/images/opa/Factsheet_Restore-NIH-Funding-Graph2.gif http://www.faseb.org/portals/2/images/opa/Factsheet_Restore-... (Oh also: encourage your local billionaire(s) to stop funding ridiculous vanity projects, and do scientific good by giving grants to researchers who are already doing peer-reviewed work. Or just encourage them to give their money to the organizations that exist and do a great job of this, like HHMI, or the Gates Foundation. How refreshing it would be to hear a nouveau riche Silicon Valley dudebro stand up and say: "I want my money to have the tiniest chance of curing cancer in my lifetime -- a task so impossibly large that even my vast wealth and gigantic ego cannot possibly tackle it alone -- so I'm making a massive charitable donation to the National Cancer Institute!" Alas...)
- Bartweiss 10y ago
  Frankly, crowdfunded science scares the hell out of me. Pretty much every time I've seen it, it consists of some fringe researcher promising one weird trick to cure A, B, and C. They don't get funding through traditional channels, because actual experts recognize the subtle-but-inescapable reasons they won't succeed, so instead they go to crowdfunding to squander a bunch of public money. I'm sure this could work, genuinely viable projects lack funding all the time, but it's generally because they weren't sexy enough for the grant committee. If the NIH thought it wasn't exciting enough, what are the chances the general public will choose it over some guy promising to cure cancer with nanomachines?
  - Obi_Juan_Kenobi 10y ago
    Yes! The problem with funding science is simply the size of the pot; the way it's dolled out is actually quite reasonable given all the problems it could have. Sure, you'll have cases of grants not getting funded because it runs contrary to the prevailing wisdom, and that is bad, but the magnitude of this problem is often overblown. You can swim against the current if you're careful about it and make a compelling case, absolutely. Compare this to the issues of having anyone other than scientific peers judging the merits of work, and you'll see the easy advantage.
dredmorbius 10y ago
I don't think this is a problem startups are positioned to address. Start-ups are geared to return outsided returns (1,000x+) on investment within a short time. Most are wealth-extractive, though a few may present real synergies. The principle benefits of information technology to research have been in the tools and information access side. Computers are vastly less expensive, programming and data access/analysis tools vastly more powerful. And access to knowledge, mostly in violation of copyright conditions, through Sci-Hub, LibGen, and the like, is unprecedented in all world history. Compensation is far more difficult. One element is that the environment of a startup and the environment of research are almost diametrically opposed. Very high-pressur,e high-stress, rapid turnaround, subject to the whims of investors and markets, is pretty much the exact opposite of what a researcher needs. There are reasons that universities buffer faculty from these pressures (or at least do in theory). The funding and financing of innovation through the ages is an interesting study. Few innovators have directly benefitted by their inventions through the market, many, especially of the most significant inventions (take television, 4-cycle engines, and gas turbines for example) have failed entirely at business. Alternative models of support, including sinecure (essentially: tenure), and specific prize awards, might be other options. I'm exploring this area, the history is interesting. Markets have a strong tendency to reward gambling-type activities, especially around monopoly formation.

by kayhi 10y ago

timr 10y ago

As a former scientist, current startup person: please stop. This is crass. Startups that sell services to scientists aren't helping with the fundamental problem (i.e. there aren't many jobs, and there isn't enough funding once you have a job). Crowdfunding is nice in theory, but just makes the problem of vanity science worse than it is right now. Crowds don't know shit about science. If you want to help researchers, vote for people who will increase scientific funding. Much of this crunch is directly attributable to congressional budgetary cutbacks since the early 2000s: http://www.faseb.org/portals/2/images/opa/Factsheet_Restore-NIH-Funding-Graph2.gif http://www.faseb.org/portals/2/images/opa/Factsheet_Restore-... (Oh also: encourage your local billionaire(s) to stop funding ridiculous vanity projects, and do scientific good by giving grants to researchers who are already doing peer-reviewed work. Or just encourage them to give their money to the organizations that exist and do a great job of this, like HHMI, or the Gates Foundation. How refreshing it would be to hear a nouveau riche Silicon Valley dudebro stand up and say: "I want my money to have the tiniest chance of curing cancer in my lifetime -- a task so impossibly large that even my vast wealth and gigantic ego cannot possibly tackle it alone -- so I'm making a massive charitable donation to the National Cancer Institute!" Alas...)

Bartweiss 10y ago
Frankly, crowdfunded science scares the hell out of me. Pretty much every time I've seen it, it consists of some fringe researcher promising one weird trick to cure A, B, and C. They don't get funding through traditional channels, because actual experts recognize the subtle-but-inescapable reasons they won't succeed, so instead they go to crowdfunding to squander a bunch of public money. I'm sure this could work, genuinely viable projects lack funding all the time, but it's generally because they weren't sexy enough for the grant committee. If the NIH thought it wasn't exciting enough, what are the chances the general public will choose it over some guy promising to cure cancer with nanomachines?
- Obi_Juan_Kenobi 10y ago
  Yes! The problem with funding science is simply the size of the pot; the way it's dolled out is actually quite reasonable given all the problems it could have. Sure, you'll have cases of grants not getting funded because it runs contrary to the prevailing wisdom, and that is bad, but the magnitude of this problem is often overblown. You can swim against the current if you're careful about it and make a compelling case, absolutely. Compare this to the issues of having anyone other than scientific peers judging the merits of work, and you'll see the easy advantage.

dredmorbius 10y ago

I don't think this is a problem startups are positioned to address. Start-ups are geared to return outsided returns (1,000x+) on investment within a short time. Most are wealth-extractive, though a few may present real synergies. The principle benefits of information technology to research have been in the tools and information access side. Computers are vastly less expensive, programming and data access/analysis tools vastly more powerful. And access to knowledge, mostly in violation of copyright conditions, through Sci-Hub, LibGen, and the like, is unprecedented in all world history. Compensation is far more difficult. One element is that the environment of a startup and the environment of research are almost diametrically opposed. Very high-pressur,e high-stress, rapid turnaround, subject to the whims of investors and markets, is pretty much the exact opposite of what a researcher needs. There are reasons that universities buffer faculty from these pressures (or at least do in theory). The funding and financing of innovation through the ages is an interesting study. Few innovators have directly benefitted by their inventions through the market, many, especially of the most significant inventions (take television, 4-cycle engines, and gas turbines for example) have failed entirely at business. Alternative models of support, including sinecure (essentially: tenure), and specific prize awards, might be other options. I'm exploring this area, the history is interesting. Markets have a strong tendency to reward gambling-type activities, especially around monopoly formation.