5 ms·
Scientists scramble to keep dog aging project alive
- davidkong0987 3y agoReminds me of full metal alchemist
- AdoHaha 3y agoHow?
- jareklupinski 3y agoThe pig goes: "Oink" The cow goes: "Moo" The dog goes: "Ed...ward...?" Full Metal Alchemist
- Quixotica1 3y agoClassic
- Snow_Falls 3y agoToo soon. Its always too soon.
- mech422 3y agoDam man.. that one always gets me...
- graeme 3y agoAnyone know why the agency might drop funding midway through? It doesn’t sound like there was a cost overrun. Sunk cost fallacy doesn’t justify spending, but the project is now much cheaper than it would be to start afresh.
- prepend 3y agoSeems like they ran into some management issues and the research didn’t yield the results (as far as publications) that they expected in their application. And it’s a big grant at $28M. So that’s a lot to spend on researchers who seemed surprised at the difficulty of running such a study and didn’t seem to generate many new findings over the course of 5 years. For example… > The researchers estimated in their 2018 grant application that it would take at least three months to build the physical, digital and human infrastructure for the study. The process ended up taking three years. This is all good for a private philanthropist. But the NIH is taxpayer funded and $28M given to this grant means other grants not funded.
- nobodyandproud 3y agoHave you seen how large their “Executive Leadership” team is? I’m more than a bit skeptical that enough funding is being funneled into the research itself.
- fsckboy 3y ago"we meant dog-years!"
- woleium 3y agobut… dog years are _shorter_ than human years?
- prepend 3y ago> A petition asking for continued support from the National Institutes of Health has garnered more than 10,000 signatures I don’t think NIH should be awarding grants based on petitions from the public.
- Paul-Craft 3y agoWhy not? We pay for it. I don't see why public interest shouldn't at least be considered as a factor. (If there is any, that is -- most NIH studies don't get on the the media's radar for the public to even find out about them.)
- BobaFloutist 3y agoPetitions are a pretty poor measure for generic public interest, much poorer even than polling or voting.
- Paul-Craft 3y agoSo? Are you suggesting polling or putting the NIH funding agenda to a public vote? If not, the fact that there even is a petition, is a pretty good indication of public interest. Petitions work like internet comments: lurkers (non-signers) far outnumber commenters and posters (signers). One person's signature is an indication that there more people out there who are interested as well.
- MostlyStable 3y agoThis sounds logical until you realize that there are petitions with very large numbers of signatures (relative to petitions more broadly), that we also have polling for and that are, from polling, relatively unpopular. If the people who care care a lot, then you can get a sizeable petition (again, relative to petitions generally) even if there aren't a ton of "lurkers" who also support it but aren't signing. And this pattern of "small but very passionate minority vs large and slightly anti- majority" is a relatively common one (or flip the valences). There is probably a correlation between number of signatures and broader appeal, but I would bet that it's a very weak one.
- nobodyandproud 3y agoIs there a financials breakdown for this project? The project started in 2014 and they have—and continue to—solicit donations from the general public.
- Paul-Craft 3y agohttps://archive.ph/NSJOV https://archive.ph/NSJOV
- throwawaymaths 3y agoMaybe that dog lifespan prolonging startup should pitch in. Kinda like how tech startups don't pitch in to fund the open source projects they rely on
- idopmstuff 3y agoThis isn't like that at all - that startup (Loyal) is running their own clinical trial, not relying on the aging project.
- throwawaymaths 3y agoDo they not directly benefit from those data?
- jacobsimon 3y agoI wonder if that is part of the story here - seems like that company has come along and shown it’s possible to bring a solution to market faster.
- ProjectArcturis 3y agoAs a former neuroscience researcher, I sure wish I could have gotten the NY Times to write a feature article when my grants didn't get funded.
- yieldcrv 3y agooh the trick is to pay a publicist, and keep shopping around for publicists that have the right network there is nothing organic or merit based happenstance about this stuff, money talks even if its in a roundabout way, but its not as much money as you might think $800 - $6,000 a month my friend put me on to it and our google results look pretty impeccable, but behind the scenes there are lots of other things that aren't even for SEO, just the right people to notice
- iancmceachern 3y agoI can confirm this.
- xhevahir 3y agoFWIW, the NYT's decision to cover this particular story could be as simple as an editor's having figured out that pet-related content sells really, really well.
- yieldcrv 3y agowhich your publicist will find out and make sure that you, as a representative of your pet project, are selected for the quotes in the article
- MattGaiser 3y agoGiven how much undeployed philanthropic money there is out there, it doesn't seem like it would be a bad thing to have at risk research projects be highlighted more regularly in the news.
- ChainOfFools 3y ago
- green-salt 3y agoAfter losing pets I am all about increasing their lifespans, but not at the cost of their comfort and health.
- lacrimacida 3y agoHow about if you knew replacing parts of them brings them comfort, how far would you go adding artifical components to your pet and what’s the line you would never cross? Would a cyborg pet still interest you if it only had the original natural mind or you wouldn’t mind if their mind was just a copy in an artificial shell?
- andreareina 3y agoRapamycin is expected to increase healthspan as well as lifespan
- efitz 3y agoI wish billionaires would spend more money setting up trusts to fund research projects like this one, rather than spending so much money on politics.