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The Dating Agency model discussed by the author is interesting, and I'm impressed that he went to the effort of discussing the idea with ethicists, lawyers and

by jboy 12y ago

The Dating Agency model discussed by the author is interesting, and I'm impressed that he went to the effort of discussing the idea with ethicists, lawyers and entrepreneurs (and of course, scientists). > Every year, an untold number of potential new drugs or interventions, any one of which might go on to improve thousands of lives, are thrown away without being tested in humans. It is a matter of funding, not science: there is not enough money in the public or private sector to run clinical trials on every exciting proposal that comes out of research labs. Thinkable.org is a recently-launched crowdfunding platform for cutting-edge scientific research: http://thinkable.org/discover http://thinkable.org/discover Similar to the article's Dating Agency model, Thinkable does review the campaigns before listing them publicly: "Dr McNeil said Thinkable would only allowed researchers affiliated with accredited research organisations to use the site and any funds donated would be managed by the organisation to ensure they were used for research." [1] Thinkable doesn't appear to allow you to buy early spots in the clinical trial queue, but it certainly seems that they want to ensure that important science research won't be lost between the cracks due to a lack of funding. A more democratic approach to funding scientific research, in contrast to the plutocratic approach discussed in the article. [1] http://www.smh.com.au/technology/sci-tech/young-scientists-use-crowd-sourcing-to-fund-their-research-20140804-zzs0y.html http://www.smh.com.au/technology/sci-tech/young-scientists-u... Edit: I temporarily removed my point about Thinkable being a democratic approach, because in retrospect it seemed a trivial & obvious observation, until I saw that wyager had just replied to that point specifically!

wyager 12y ago
>Thinkable is a more democratic approach Pedantically, it's a more market-oriented approach. A democratic approach would be if everyone got one vote (not proportional to how much money they were willing to risk), and voted on which drugs they thought should get funding, and the rest got nothing. Forgive me, this is a personal pet peeve of mine :)
- jboy 12y ago
  OK, you make a fair point. :) The difference between one-vote-per-person and a vote proportional to the amount of money you are willing to risk, is a significant one. So I suppose Thinkable is halfway between the plutocratic and democratic approaches? As an aside (tangent to your comment about the rest getting nothing), I don't know what Thinkable does if a campaign doesn't reach its funding target: Whether the money is restored to the sponsors or the researchers simply have to work on a smaller budget (maybe once a minimal funding threshold is passed).

by jboy 12y ago

wyager 12y ago

>Thinkable is a more democratic approach Pedantically, it's a more market-oriented approach. A democratic approach would be if everyone got one vote (not proportional to how much money they were willing to risk), and voted on which drugs they thought should get funding, and the rest got nothing. Forgive me, this is a personal pet peeve of mine :)

jboy 12y ago
OK, you make a fair point. :) The difference between one-vote-per-person and a vote proportional to the amount of money you are willing to risk, is a significant one. So I suppose Thinkable is halfway between the plutocratic and democratic approaches? As an aside (tangent to your comment about the rest getting nothing), I don't know what Thinkable does if a campaign doesn't reach its funding target: Whether the money is restored to the sponsors or the researchers simply have to work on a smaller budget (maybe once a minimal funding threshold is passed).