In November 2012, Ethan Perlstein secured about $25.000 funding via Crowdsourcing for a basic pharmacology project about the cellular distribution of amphetamines (yeah infamous methamphetamine or crystal meth is one of those) along with his collaborators Prof David Sulzer and Daniel Korostyshevsky. To entice more contributors, he promised rewards such as 3D-printed plastic models of a methamphetamine molecules for $25 donations. Daniel Korostyshevsky was the responsible of the
amphetamines distribution project in the Sulzer lab.
I made a note of his name and went on to follow the progress of his project. One very good thing about the project was the open access to the data via figshare (http://figshare.com/articles/search?q=perlstein&quick=1&x=0&y=0); although I haven't been able to find a report with the final findings- something like a paper. There were also frequent updates and open protocols. Since then Ethan Perlstein exited academia to become an "indie scientist and biotech entrepreneur" focused on orphan disease drug discovery.
This was the first time I came across this idea in science, which in my eyes didn't look all that bad. However, I found out very soon that Perlstein's initiative was not the only one of this kind. There are a lot of platforms where scientists can "advertise" research projects and ask for everyone's support.
Experiment is one of them that hosts willing-to-fund projects from several scientific fields such as biology, physics, paleontology, ecology but also economics, psycology or education. Usually, these projects demand small amounds and would be short-term projects that wouldn't find funding through the common routes such as funding bodies or governmental grants. For example, a very popular project that managed to concentrate 455% of its inital goal is a study of the optimal form of excersize based on our genetic material. The study undertaken by Linda Pescatello and her group in the university of Connecticut will use deep gene sequencing to a group of volunteer and they hope in the long run to manage to create personalized exercise prescriptions.
Another crowdfunding platform is Petridish. Their projects are more enviromental biology-orientated, I'd say, and range from saving fossil whales in Virginia's Carmel Church Quarry to using Kepler telescope data to search for the existence of exomoons. Apart from seeing a scientist project getting realised, the supporters can choose from a big array of rewards, such as field experiences, naming rights or personal talks.
And there are many more; more general Rockethub, healthcare-related MedStartr, sciflies.org and energy innovation focused eurekafund are all matchmaking needy scientists with willing donors.
A common characteristic of all the scientific crowdfunding projects is that they pledge open access for all to their data; something that goes completely against to how research has been contacted so far, behind closed doors and with absolute secrecy.
With crowdsourcing funding of science gaining a bigger and bigger momentum we've just to wait and see if it will help science to move forward, will provide some stress-relief to scientists struggling for funding and will make us get more and more involved with science since we are the ones now that are giving money to the projects that are of our interest.
