Crowdfunding sites like Kickstarter have proven successful for artists, musicians, and technology startups, but, asks Bitesize Bio, can the same model work for science?
Bitesize Bio highlights a new website, called Flintwave, that combines social networking and crowdfunding to support specific projects. Scientists can use the site to share videos, posts, and presentations that "science enthusiasts" can follow or, hopefully, fund.
"Keeping a profile page up to date on Flintwave.com, but especially having a project funded through its visitors, could be a good way to share your scientific progress with the general public," Bitesize Bio says. It might also be something that "grant application reviewers like to read."
Of course, Flintwave's developers aren't the first to apply the crowdsourcing model to science. It joins a host of other science crowdsourcing sites that have popped up recently, including Open Genius, the SciFund Challenge (hosted by RocketHub), IAMscientist, Microryza, and Petridish.
Amid this proliferation of science crowdfunding options, Eva Amsen at the Occam's Typewriter Irregulars questions whether the model can be as fruitful for scientific projects as it is for other disciplines, noting that "while some popular Kickstarter projects raise ten times or more of their target goal ... scientific research projects are nowhere near this level of fundraising."
One reason for this, she suggests, is that "funding a research project does not give a direct return on investment." While Kickstarter contributors may feel that their donation is essentially a pre-order for a future album or video game, scientific research rarely results in a tangible end product. "This can be an appealing incentive to fund a project, but it obviously doesn't apply to academic research," she says.
That's not to say there's no upside for those who choose to support scientific projects through crowdsourcing sites. As the Economist notes, "donors can expect no revenue if a crowdfunded science project is successful," but they may still "get a warm glow from the feeling that they are making a contribution to the advancement of knowledge in a way which was previously open only to philanthropists with rather fatter wallets."
In a previous Daily Scan
In a previous Daily Scan commentary, I calculated that the research behind the average NIH-funded scientific paper in a 5.5 impact factor journal costs at least US$ 128,000 to fund (http://www.genomeweb.com/blog/happy-medium). In view of this, the number of biomedical research projects that are likely to be funded by crowdsourcing online is probably much too small to be of real significance in the progress of scientific research as a whole.
The vast majority of scientific research proposals are much too esoteric for the average person to fathom. Unless targeted for popular objectives, such as the diagnosis and treatment of common diseases or saving an endangered species, they are unlikely to receive much interest. As more science crowdsourcing sites mushroom on the Internet, I suspect that the limited number of real donors will be even more confused about whom to support, and the success rate for applicants will plummet to the point where the allocation of time and effort expended to obtain funding through this route will be highly questionable. More famous researchers, who are already well funded and the least needy, will probably be the highest beneficiaries from crowdsourcing.
With continually declining success rates for research support from granting agencies, crowdsourcing might seem to be an attractive option to scientists. However, many researchers need to be more introspective of the value of their efforts to society at large and become more politically active in convincing the general public and politicians about supporting their research if they are really passionate about it.
For donors that are looking to make a real difference with their limited charitable funds, I recommend that they make equity investments in small biotech companies that are started by scientific entrepreneurs that often have made a deep commitment to making their research practical and/or enabling. Most of these founders have strong academic roots. In the worst case scenario, the investors will get no monetary return, but would have contributed to the advancement of scientific research and development of solutions to society's life science problems as a real partner. In the best case scenario, the investors will also realize a profit, and have additional resources to invest in other promising research ventures.