DailyDirt: Science Needs Your Help

from the urls-we-dig-up dept

Wed, Apr 25th 2012 5:00pm — Michael Ho

Kickstarter isn't the only crowdfunding platform on the internet. There are plenty of folks jumping on the crowdfunding bandwagon, and with the decline of basic science funding, scientists are hoping to convince some backers that their pet projects are worth a multitude of small contributions. Here are just a few examples.

Petridish.org has a couple fully-funded projects with about $10,000 worth of donations. One project aims to look for exomoons, and another will look for new species of ants in Madagascar. [url]
Microryza is another crowdfunding site for scientists aimed at the journey of learning something new -- which is its own reward. Will backers still be fascinated by a collection of negative results? [url]
Sciflies.org boasts a pretty rigorous peer-review process provided by The American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS). Putting such a high bar on the projects (before they're launched) is supposed to give backers some assurance that the projects are worthwhile, but it also seems that the projects turn out to be a little esoteric for the general public... [url]
Opengenius.org wants to promote innovation, economic development and social wealth -- via science and open source software. Great goals... but it looks like this organization needs some funding for web hosting and some fancy graphics. [url]
To discover more interesting science-related stuff, check out what's currently floating around the StumbleUpon universe. [url]

By the way, StumbleUpon can recommend some good Techdirt articles, too.

Filed Under: crowdfunding, crowdsourcing, research, science
Companies: aaas, kickstarter, microryza, opengenius, petridish, sciflies

5 Comments

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Anonymous Coward, 25 Apr 2012 @ 10:31pm

there needs to be a project...
come on, who's gonna fund a project to disprove evolution with me? I just need to buy some monkeys and watch that they don't evolve into humans....
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- Skeptical Cynic (profile), 26 Apr 2012 @ 6:04am
  
  Re: there needs to be a project...
  I think you posted this request in the wrong forum. Try one of the Creationist forums and I am sure you can get a lot of funding.
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David, 26 Apr 2012 @ 3:17pm

Crowdfund a Privacy-focused ISP
This seems like a good place to drop a link to a crowdfunded privacy-focused ISP...

http://www.indiegogo.com/calyx?c=home&a=70238
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- Michael Ho (profile), 27 Apr 2012 @ 3:43pm
  
  Re: Crowdfund a Privacy-focused ISP
  I think they'll need a bit more than $1M to create a useful nationwide ISP...
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- Michael Ho (profile), 27 Apr 2012 @ 3:48pm
  
  Re: Crowdfund a Privacy-focused ISP
  ooh, but a $25,000 level for free ISP service for life?! That might be cool if they said what dataspeeds.. and meant the users life, not the life of the ISP.
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