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Crowd-funded HIV vaccine project sparks debate
- dnautics 13y agoI think this is a total hit piece. "They’re preying on people who are desperate for a vaccine," As a contributor (and a scientist) - I don't feel like I've been preyed upon, at all.
- Fomite 13y agoI didn't view it as a hit piece, because that's not the author talking. And while I don't necessarily agree with it, I do think that they're long on "Crowdfunded free HIV vaccine" and short on specifics. And I'd still be pleased as punch if it worked.
- reidrubsamen 13y agoHi! This is Reid, CEO of immunity project. Thanks for your comments! Our previous work is under review by a PRJ - our crowd funding is allowing us to do additional work which we will try to publish as quickly as possible! We have our white paper on our web site - if you want to discuss more details please shoot us an email at team@ImmunityProject.org
- Fomite 13y agoThanks for the reply - I know my comments sound a little harsh, but I really am rooting for you guys. I read over the white paper, but honestly, my expertise is way down the road from where you guys are right now.
- icinnamon 13y agoIan from Immunity Project here. Here's a link to our White Paper, as well: http://www.immunityproject.org/documents/Immunity_Project_White_Paper.pdf http://www.immunityproject.org/documents/Immunity_Project_Wh...
- alexnking 13y agoI'm probably missing something obvious here, but who would be desperate for a vaccine? If there were offering a cure, then I could see a complaint where they were preying on people with the disease who were desperate for a cure. Since that's not the case, do they mean the contributors, wanting to help develop the vaccine, are desperate, and being preyed upon? Because I hardly think that applies.
- nickthemagicman 13y agoThis is the way science should be funded. Imagine if the pace of medical research moved at the pace of javascript frameworks. We would all be fucking immortal. There would probably be some mutants though. But you gotta crack some eggs.
- icinnamon 13y agoHi- Ian from Immunity Project here. Thank you for your support! We know our fundraising approach for this experiment is novel, and we believe it's the fastest way to get it done.
- nickthemagicman 13y agoThanks for stepping out on a limb and doing something disruptive and new! We need more open source science!
- Fomite 13y ago"Fail fast, fail often" is less of a good thing when it's actual people's lives.
- jseliger 13y ago"Fail fast, fail often" is less of a good thing when it's actual people's lives. It depends. A lot of people are already losing their lives through inaction. This is slightly tangential, Alex Tabarrok's book Launching the Innovation Renaissance is good on the subject of FDA inertia and spending too much time trying to prove efficacy and too little emphasis on experimentation and rapid iteration: http://www.amazon.com/Launching-Innovation-Renaissance-Market-ebook/dp/B006C1HX24?ie=UTF8&tag=thstsst-20&linkCode=as2&camp=1789&creative=390957 http://www.amazon.com/Launching-Innovation-Renaissance-Marke... .
- nickthemagicman 13y agoDamn bro you're dropping eggs of wisdom on all of us. I agree. You give the kids a PCR machine and suddenly everyone is dead. Better stop now before it's too late.
- gregcrv 13y agoYes, and I prefer many "desperate" healthy people choosing to give little money to fund alternative researches (even if sometimes it fails) than big pharmaceutical companies bankrupting "desperate" ill patients (and families) for a cure that's not guaranty to save them. Reading this http://priceonomics.com/the-rapidly-escalating-price-of-cancer-drugs/ http://priceonomics.com/the-rapidly-escalating-price-of-canc... makes me think that drug industry is broken.
- TrainedMonkey 13y agoSometimes when it sounds too good to be true... Are there any real researches behind this project?
- Fomite 13y agoThat there isn't a single, in press or published paper supporting this research, when the amount of evidence you have to bring to the table for your average NIH grant is staggering set off some red flags for me.
- dnautics 13y agoThey have enough data to have completed an INDA and are proceeding to phase I clinical trials. That's a much, much higher bar than an NIH grant. Paper publication is not necessarily a useful metric.
- Fomite 13y agoA number of NIH grants fund clinical trials. I direct you to the R34 mechanism, which is for Phase III trials as an example. And when you're evaluating science, the paper itself, in the literature, is the only real way to evaluate it's quality.
- dnautics 13y agoAnd when you're evaluating science, the paper itself, in the literature, is the only real way to evaluate it's quality. This is incredibly short-sighted. Overvaluation of the literature is exactly why people pollute the literature with fraudulent results. It's why paper reviewing process and citations are polluted with political machinations. Ultimately, science is the entire corpus, from experimental design, through data collection, and presentation of work as papers. Reification of the publication process quietly enables researchers who keep everything up to publication a black box. Moreover because some NIH grants fund clinical trials doesn't mean that all (or even the average) NIH grants have that level of scrutiny
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- frisco 13y agoJust to clarify, I followed up "you can have people who are bad at science but are good at fundraising in public," with "and you can have people with very good science who are bad at fundraising," and I think you probably have a lot more of the latter than the former, which I perceive as the larger injustice. I didn't mean to come across as a downer on the project. I was clear to point out that I know very little about the team behind the Immunity Project and definitely wasn't in a position to evaluate the quality of their science; I was speaking very generally. Even if these projects are unsuccessful, anything that gets the public excited about science is probably a good thing, as long as high-profile failures (which are inevitable; welcome to biology) don't lead to a backlash and general burnout.
- Fomite 13y agoMy issue is the examples in the article are also extremely limited. These are "Kickstarter"-type crowdfunding ventures. Immunity Project is backed by YC, and the Perlstein Lab is for all intents and purposes acting like a regular biotech startup. Those are both pretty narrow opportunity bands.
- dnautics 13y ago"you can have people who are bad at science but are good at fundraising in public," You can also have people who are bad at science and are good at obtaining NIH grants. In my professional opinion, this characterizes a LOT of researchers out there. Which is the greater injustice? Dis?claimer: I happen to think that I'm good at science and indeed I failed at a crowdfunding attempt.
- jostmey 13y agoAgreed! I was following closely to your efforts to see what happened with "http://www.indysci.org/" http://www.indysci.org/". I hope your fundraising efforts turn out well in the future.
- mbreese 13y agoSince your username and your actual name from the article aren't very similar, you should probably add something that says - "Hey, I was the one quoted in the article". Just in case people don't put two and two together or don't click to see your HN profile.