Adumbration

I have chided Science Friday's Ira Flatow for his tendency to equate interest in research on a given topic to the necessity that the best (or perhaps only) way to accomplish that end is via government agencies and the political process.  This post points out private alternatives that are becoming a reasonable alternative to support to research scientists.

Crowdsourcing as a phenomenon has certainly passed some threshold when public radio program Planet Money uses it to finance reporting on economics(and getting pledges amounting to 10 times their target). Wikipedia has a large list of crowdsourced projects (some of which are in the areas of science and technology).

I have been aware of a couple of crowdsourcing projects in science and technology, but what triggered me to write this post was an article that passed through my local news feed.  In "Microryza helps round up dollars for fund-it-yourself science", the Seattle Times' Sandi Doughton reports on a company that brings people with research ideas together with people who have both interest and money they aren't otherwise reserving for higher priorities.  A related article in the International Business Times, also references Microryza, a crowdfunding website that connects researchers in biology, medicine, paleontology, physics and other disciplines with interested supports of dozens of topics such as this one aiming to figure out how to use nanoparticles in targeted drug delivery.

The amazing thing is that there are more than one such sites:  fundageek and petridish being two others, while the well known crowdfunding site Kickstarter, has a section dedicated to science projects, with successful projects in conduct and teaching of science in areas as diverse as slime molds and space telescopes.

Julio Peironcely over at Next Scientist reports on a few notable projects and includes a graph that depicts the aggregate of dollars contributed to such projects.  These levels may seem small, but keep in mind that the market for this sort of thing is in its infancy - Kickstarter has only been around since 2009.  In addition there has been the crowding out effect of government finance to science for over 60 years, which has suppressed private science financing all these years.

I am encouraged.