51–60 of 94 posts
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That's like saying it takes 7 billion to make a company that competes with facebook, and you'll never get 7 billion series A funding. Trivially true, but to compete with facebook is a process, and not all stages of a process use the same funding mechanisms.
Would you like to sign up for a buggy minimum viable drug treatment?
We already have crowd funding for science. We do it as a whole society when we fund the various grant-giving agencies in this country. I cannot emphasize how bad of an idea it is to take funding decisions away from professional scientists and place them in the hands of untrained individuals, no matter how enthusiastic they may be nor how much money they are willing to throw away.
Here is a quote that my experience in science has caused me to resonate with. "I think there's been a Gresham's Law in science funding in this country, as the political people who are nimble in the art of writing government grants have gradually displaced the eccentric and idiosyncratic people who typically make the best scientists. The eccentric university professor is a species that is going extinct fast." - Peter…
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These philanthropic organizations almost always have either (a) committees made up of scientists that decide where the money should be allocated (e.g. HHMI) or (b) donate to institutions which then dole out money internally as project grants that are vetted by other scientists. Philanthropic organizations don't generally just hand out money to the person who makes the flashiest video.
The question boils down to a real-world application of which is a bigger fallacy, the appeal to authority or the appeal to majority. Well, I don't think there is a good answer to that. But let's get serious here. I'm asking for 50k to do one experiment. Microsoft just paid one billion for minecraft.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
That's like saying it takes 7 billion to make a company that competes with facebook, and you'll never get 7 billion series A funding. Trivially true, but to compete with facebook is a process, and not all stages of a process use the same funding mechanisms.
Would you like to sign up for a buggy minimum viable drug treatment?
People don't seem to realize how expensive it is to bring a new pharmaceutical drug to market and why this approach won't work. A typical drug will cost between $1bn-$2bn and take about a decade of work by the time it hits the shelves. ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Drug_development has details for those interested) Crowdfunding at those sort of levels just isn't feasible yet.
That's like saying it takes 7 billion to make a company that competes with facebook, and you'll never get 7 billion series A funding. Trivially true, but to compete with facebook is a process, and not all stages of a process use the same funding mechanisms.
People don't seem to realize how expensive it is to bring a new pharmaceutical drug to market and why this approach won't work. A typical drug will cost between $1bn-$2bn and take about a decade of work by the time it hits the shelves. ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Drug_development has details for those interested) Crowdfunding at those sort of levels just isn't feasible yet.
That's like saying it takes 7 billion to make a company that competes with facebook, and you'll never get 7 billion series A funding. Trivially true, but to compete with facebook is a process, and not all stages of a process use the same funding mechanisms.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
That's like saying it takes 7 billion to make a company that competes with facebook, and you'll never get 7 billion series A funding. Trivially true, but to compete with facebook is a process, and not all stages of a process use the same funding mechanisms.
Oh yes. I forgot scientists produce life saving medicine from their dorm rooms all the time. How could I forget.
That's more common than most people realize (meaning something being discovered through work in an unrelated context). Look at the discovery of Penicillin as one example, there are many others.
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Oh yes. I forgot scientists produce life saving medicine from their dorm rooms all the time. How could I forget.
> Oh yes. I forgot scientists produce life saving medicine from their dorm rooms all the time. How could I forget. That's more common than most people realize (meaning something being discovered through work in an unrelated context). Look at the discovery of Penicillin as one example, there are many others.
People don't seem to realize how expensive it is to bring a new pharmaceutical drug to market and why this approach won't work. A typical drug will cost between $1bn-$2bn and take about a decade of work by the time it hits the shelves. ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Drug_development has details for those interested) Crowdfunding at those sort of levels just isn't feasible yet.
I will freely admit I know very little about the pharmaceutical world, but my (perhaps dumb) question is what scope is there to disrupt these typical costs. For example it used to be that space programs cost billions, yet India has just put a Mars orbital in place for $74m. I am old enough to remember when it was the received wisdom that people believed an e-commerce website would cost $1m, yet many startups launch t…
But it's not a trivial thing to disrupt, and there are some costs that are just out and out fixed (clinical trials are spendy).
People don't seem to realize how expensive it is to bring a new pharmaceutical drug to market and why this approach won't work. A typical drug will cost between $1bn-$2bn and take about a decade of work by the time it hits the shelves. ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Drug_development has details for those interested) Crowdfunding at those sort of levels just isn't feasible yet.
You don't need to crowdfund any more than it costs to convince a group with $1bn that they can make money on this by spending that to commercialize your demonstration. That is often just a few million, or even less, depending on how compelling your data and how good your connections. Most of that $1bn and decade of time is make-work created by ever more risk-averse regulators. The actual process of creating something…