With government grants at their lowest since World War II, the race for scientific funding has grown more competitive than ever. Bills like the 21st Century Cures Act, legislation that aims to pour an extra $1.75 billion a year for the next five years into medical research, hope to change this reality. In the meantime, scientists worry about an impending intellectual recession.
No one denies that the current system is riddled with problems. Neil Fitzgerald, assistant dean of science at Marist College and founding president of the Collaborative Research Experience for Undergraduates (CREU), a website devoted to helping college students turn their ideas into actual experiments, told Modern Notion that in addition to more competition for grants, fewer grants are being awarded overall. Even more frustrating, the grants available have become larger, something that typically helps the bigger fish in the pond, but leaves smaller projects unfunded by larger margins.
At the same time, the “good ol’ boy” network grows larger. Steven Farber, a staff member at the Carnegie Institution and adjunct associate professor of biology at Johns Hopkins, says shoulder-rubbing and back door politics are more apparent as competition heats up. The smaller the funds available, the more favoritism accounts for how grant-givers decide which few applications they’ll fund and which will get the chopping block. Farber explains that back in the day when there was enough money to fund say, a quarter of the projects submitted, there was more of an even playing field. Today, sometimes as few as one or two in 20 applications are accepted.
To remedy this, some entrepreneurs are thinking outside the box when it comes to keeping pioneering scientific work alive and well in the U.S. Enter: crowdfunding.
Right now crowdfunding is everywhere, from supporting the next indie art masterpiece to helping suffering families cope with financial struggles. But what about supporting the next great scientific breakthrough? Instead of waiting for more government funding with bated breath, several companies have popped up to support researchers’ otherwise shelved projects.
And thus, a new question arises: Is it really good science to let the public decide what projects get funded and which die in their tracks?
Crowdfunders see it this way: letting the people decide what projects get the go-ahead is the best way to solve the funding issue and bypass intellectual favoritism. Alex Fair, CEO of the medical crowdfunding site Medstartr, says crowdfunding democratizes the world of scientific research, which is often led by an insular group of people with complete “tunnel vision”:
Crowds don’t have that kind of tunnel vision. This is not to say that they are not as easily mislead, but at least their point of view is based upon a broader point of view than that of just a handful of scientists. One final consideration is that the crowd is the supporter of the study, so they should get a voice. If tax payers are paying for the studies, they deserve to have a strong voice in what gets funded.
And then it comes down to the money (doesn’t it always?). With crowdfunding, the money gets delivered far more quickly than going through the traditional drawn out grant process. The traditional grant process is tedious and timely. Farber, who’s been on the inside of academia, says scientists will often spend days reading over grant proposals to make sure they’re qualified for funding. But at least those reviewers are experts in comparison to the average crowdfunding participate.
When it comes to the internet, it’s usually the shiniest object that wins. Take, for instance, the scientific crowdfunding website Walacea. Some of their most funded projects are the “World’s First Imaging Brain Study on LSD” and “Friendships in the Dwarf Mongoose.” Each exceeded their fundraising goals, particularly the LSD study. In comparison, support for research on how the ocean’s acidification impacts crustaceans or how to preserve the African wild dog in Malawi failed miserably, each gaining less than 10 percent of the funding they hoped for.
But that’s not to say the clickiest project will always takes the prize. Colin Matthews, co-founder of another science crowdfunding site, Endeavorist, said that when his team started the website, they did expect the “sexiest” project to win. However, that’s simply not been the case. Their successful campaigns have all come down to marketing. For instance, a campaign to build a portable particle acceptor failed horribly (despite the really cool concept) while the seemingly less exciting one to build a software emulation of a “deterministic interpretation of quantum mechanics” succeeded because of how they engaged with users.
While some problems with crowdfunding are more philosophical—i.e. public opinion vs. expert opinion—but then there are some very black and white problems, specifically lack of standards and oversight. As Fitzgerald researched other organizations while building CREU, he was surprised at how lax the standards were, “Platforms generally do not check credentials, if the project was approved by the institution, if ethical guidelines have been followed, etc.” To remedy this, he made sure that CREU projects are thoroughly screened and get institutional authorization before funding begins.
If Fitzgerald is correct and few scientific crowdsourcing entities hold themselves to high standards, CREU is the exception, not the rule. And that means the money that you give to researching platypus ovaries might be going to sloppy, unusable research. But—silver lining—these standards can be built into crowdfunding, they just haven’t yet.
So is crowdfunding the answer to a broken grant system? The demand for it, and the companies that have arisen should be proof enough that something needs to change. And, hey, a little healthy competition never hurt anyone.
