I'm going to kick in. I'm willing to spend some money just to help prove that croudfunded science can work. I understand why some are asking if this is the exactly correct study to do, but I'm not worried. A) I'm willing to trust the guy for $50, and B) once the market is established, competition will drive up study quality.
Crowdfunded research into how amphetamines work
31–40 of 43 posts
Re: Crowdfunded research into how amphetamines work
#32Really like the potential in crowdfunding of science as a way to get more people interested in science. Would be interesting to see rewards tailored for aspiring scientists. This research-topic is probably too controversial to directly associate with high school and younger students but letting them sponsor research projects in exchange for a lab tour / tutorial would be an interesting way to get young people more interested in research.
Re: Crowdfunded research into how amphetamines work
#33I don't get it. All of these people on the project would typically have amounts of money for research on whatever they want to do. Why do they need more money? I guess I am missing the point. I've heard of a bunch professors from friends that have huge research funds. They can even give portions of their research grants to students.
As an ex-academic type, your statement is both true and false. Some professors have large research grants, and indeed, their grants are what pay the salaries of grad students and post-docs. Other professors (the vast majority) struggle to get appropriate funding. It's a horrible rat race to scrounge up enough money to continue your research. God forbid if you aren't tenured - your job literally depends on how much fu…
I agree about the $25K part. I fail to see how they plan to achieve anything when a single vial of ultra purified drug API or even dendrimer will see you back a few thousand dollars.
I mean their intentions are great but I get the feeling they're yet to experience the crushing and pessimistic realities of scientific and especially pharmaceutical/neurobiological research. It's a depressign world for us sometimes.
Edit: In review, I would be very interested to read about how they were given permission to experiment on mice. Filling out the paperwork just to get ethical approval alone is a daunting task.
Re: Crowdfunded research into how amphetamines work
#34I'm going to kick in. I'm willing to spend some money just to help prove that croudfunded science can work. I understand why some are asking if this is the exactly correct study to do, but I'm not worried. A) I'm willing to trust the guy for $50, and B) once the market is established, competition will drive up study quality.
But Science is crowd funded by taxes, no?
Re: Crowdfunded research into how amphetamines work
#35I'm going to kick in. I'm willing to spend some money just to help prove that croudfunded science can work. I understand why some are asking if this is the exactly correct study to do, but I'm not worried. A) I'm willing to trust the guy for $50, and B) once the market is established, competition will drive up study quality.
But Science is crowd funded by taxes, no?
Some of it is funded by taxes. So are some businesses, and some art. That's all indirect support. Crowdfunding is direct support. Kickstarter has show that can work for businesses and art.
Re: Crowdfunded research into how amphetamines work
#36Earlier quoted context omitted.
Either you live in a country with much more liberal drug laws than the UK or US, or you are a bit misinformed. These countries have very strict regulations on who can possess quantities of scheduled narcotics, even for research. It took nearly a decade to get regulatory approval to schedule a MDMA research study in the U.S. It's hard to find source on this stuff, but you can see as noted here: http://www.newscientist…
MDMA is Schedule I and amphetamines are Schedule II in the US. There's a pretty big difference (legally) between those two classifications.
Marijuana is also Schedule I
Re: Crowdfunded research into how amphetamines work
#37Maybe it's just me, but looking at molecular accumulation in this way doesn't seem that promising. However, there are other problems here... In order to get this kind of research funded in a traditional way, the author would need a much more detailed explanation of the work: specifically, a compelling and well-referenced account of why drug accumulation in mouse brain sections will be helpful in understanding the mec…
After reading a bit more about this, it seems that they are an established lab with protocols in line for the questions you asked about. The PI's last publication (http://www.plosone.org/article/info%3Adoi%2F10.1371%2Fjourna...) states that they are affiliated with Princeton, so dealing with hazardous materials etc are dealt with Princeton's Environmental health and safety dept.
The same applies to animals, radioactive materials etc.
It looks like a lot of the details of the experiment are purposely left out of the application as they are looking to appeal to the general public and I think that is a smart thing to do. Putting details into the application would make people's eyes glaze over, so keeping it simple was the correct way to go.
From my understanding of their proposal, they are looking to do something quite common in neuroscience research. While I personally haven't done autoradiography, I know people who have and it is a commonly(although not much now) technique that has been used numerous times. To do this as a new lab, without university support would be dangerous, unethical and worrisome, but it seems clear this lab is already established.
What they propose seems to be an initial step in a nice project that could lead to something useful. Doing the anatomy (they are basically trying to see where the drug binds within the brain first) and then the molecular techniques makes sense and I wish more labs did stuff like this. As a neuroscientist, I applaud their going outside of the system and I'm happy to see that they will share their data with everyone.
Re: Crowdfunded research into how amphetamines work
#38Earlier quoted context omitted.
As an ex-academic type, your statement is both true and false. Some professors have large research grants, and indeed, their grants are what pay the salaries of grad students and post-docs. Other professors (the vast majority) struggle to get appropriate funding. It's a horrible rat race to scrounge up enough money to continue your research. God forbid if you aren't tenured - your job literally depends on how much fu…
I agree about the $25K part. I fail to see how they plan to achieve anything when a single vial of ultra purified drug API or even dendrimer will see you back a few thousand dollars. I mean their intentions are great but I get the feeling they're yet to experience the crushing and pessimistic realities of scientific and especially pharmaceutical/neurobiological research. It's a depressign world for us sometimes. Edit…
$25k for a single experiment is possible. I've applied to the national science foundation for a single experiment and my budget (along with funds for me to present the data at a conference (~$1500) was around $12k as we had most of the stuff I needed already.
This lab is already established, they just need some extra funds to run this specific experiment (from what I've read).
Re: mouse work. I'm assuming they already have the facilities to run these experiments...especially at Princeton. If they don't, I'm sure a neighboring lab has the mice/protocols to run this experiment and they will/can cola berate. They write up an IACUC protocol, go through a few bouts of revisions and they should be able to run the experiment. This would be a simple protocol as they are just injecting mice with the drug, this isn't out of the ordinary by any means.
Re: Crowdfunded research into how amphetamines work
#39That's pretty awesome! Citizen Science here we come!
Citizen science is one of the goals of my YC application :) It will be here soon.