I agree with a lot of what you said, but this: > People can today do useful and novel life science work for a few tens of thousands of dollars makes me wonder

I agree with a lot of what you said, but this: > People can today do useful and novel life science work for a few tens of thousands of dollars makes me wonder if you've ever done bench work or furnished a lab. Sure, you can do a few weeks or months of work for tends of thousands of dollars (which doesn't produce a lot of useful results in that time frame, but can produce some), but that's assuming you have a functioning lab. It often takes $100K just to stock one, which is why most new investigators get special startup money just for that. To produce useful results often takes years at a rate of at least $100K a year. Equipment and reagents (especially enzymes) can be expensive. $300 for a gel box here, $1000 for a pipette there, $5000 for a thermocycler, $2000 for an enzyme, it adds up. And that's not even getting into salaries. Most people don't work alone. I think it would be incredibly difficult to crowdfound science a la something like Kickstarter, especially with the amount of money currently spent on science (about $50 billion annually in the US alone). But maybe someone on HN will be the person who proves me wrong.