RE: Connecting Steemit, scientific research and academia?
I am a bit worried about the idea that you always need experts in the field to determine if a research project is worthwhile. The researcher should be able to explain in clear terms what the benefit would be of performing the proposed research. Society should have a say in the research getting funded. In my opinion in a couple of years steemit might become a place for vetting research proposals by a diverse cross section of the population.
The strength of steemit is the versatility of the people it attracts. This might create cross-linking between specialties/researchers not explored/thought off before. In this light the pevo proposal starts to sound a bit too much like the existing situation with only accredited scientist having a voice. In my opinion this will likely result in dampened creativity and hampers the development of new research ideas.
Hi,
Sometimes, you need to be aware of the state-of-the-art of a field, and without knowing exactly all the details, it is hard to judge whether a research proposal is real new stuff or just garbage. Popularizing science is one thing. And I actually love doing that, as many researchers. Writing research proposal is a complex task and technical details cannot be bypassed, or summarized in simple words.
It actually has something to say. For each cent one gets, a report must often be written to the funding agency that will judge about the correct usage of the fundings.
To me, the Pevo proposal may give a unique chance to divulgation, in addition to the pure scientific piece.
Hello,
I am not saying steemit should be the platform to decide whether someone gets funding or not. Although it would be fun if it could fund small sub-investigations in ongoing work. It could however be a platform to discuss research plans and elicit new input from other researchers/"the public".
I myself am involved in medicine and translational research and in our field it is common practice, and it gets more important each year, to involve patient perspective in research proposals. This patient perspective is also expected in the most basic laboratory research plans. Of course this is on the level of cells and proteins and not quarks, but still....
Of course funding agencies look at the proposals before funding (would be great if they wouldn't have to though...) however in my world the people in the boards are often the same people who do the research.
I myself would like to get new insights/ideas from the community who are not wrapped up in it like I am and might think out of the box. In addition it might be yet another way to appease the funding boards ;).
I guess I agree with your stance on the Pevo proposal :) Let's see where all this new energy leads us.
I fully agree with this. Discussions are never hurting.
Isn't it possible to find competitors working on very similar topics so that we could have (roughly) the two extremes taking decisions?
Great points. Part of funding is that there is a need or gap in the research that your research addresses. A platform like Steemit has no mechanisms in place to weed old stuff from new stuff, and in order for people to even review the literature, they need access to the major expensive databases.
Some of those database are free and hopefully more will be free in the future. To me, the real question is what can be understood by anyone of the field from those databases.