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RE: Running state-of-the-art particle physics research on Steem - a status report after 3 months
This is absolutely amazing. I was not aware that such a project existed. I find the idea particularly interesting in the context of funding independent scientific work. With numerous scientific scandals of faking results, corruption and bribery, this could become an interesting way to face those problems. Keep on rockin @lemouth!
Interesting comment! I really appreciate it and I am tempted to follow you in a debate. Please allow me for bringing my two cents. :)
Maybe in some future (and I am really looking forward to this future), research will be fundable with Steem or cryptos in general. However, we are not there yet. For instance, a PhD student costs about 40.000 EUR per year, and one needs to pay him during three years. So, in short, we can't really fund personal costs. However, travel costs for a small group (a few thousands per year) is probably achievable.
Here, with my small project, the scale is even more different. With a few hundreds of dollars in upvotes, we indeed can make a difference already today. We indeed don't need dozens of thousands of dollars. With this amount, we can open the doors of the world of scientific research to anyone who has time and who wants to help.
And this is what I find amazing. I tried to give this option to Steemians, and it fully works!
Interesting project! Thank you for coming back at the comment :)
Your comment sent me on a little google-research concerning the funding of independent scientific research. I ended up reading this article (downloadable pdf).
"All of these observations speak to the ways in which the lack of diversification
in science funding, its restriction primarily to corporate and governmental interests, erects
obstacles to the sustained production of scientific knowledge."
The article shines a light on the very topic you and me are talking about. A community which funds independent scientific research and development might sound like a utopian dream (no pun intended). But it is totally reachable! Really looking forward to see projects like this grow :)
Check out the article, quite interesting.
Let's just say that the world is neither white nor black, but rather grey instead. For instance, I am allowed to do research on what I want, but what I miss consists in students and postdocs. And here, it is indeed super hard to find funding (this is even true for theoretical physics in general). So yes, we are back to the sentence, and to the article in fact :)
I am not against it, just to be clear. But in order to fund PhD students or postdoc position, we need an certain amount of money that cannot be found that easily in the crypto-world... for now (which is also what state this article somehow: there are potential ways).
I cannot talk about the future, and I hope the crypto-world will be able to help scientific research in the future. It is not that expensive at the end of the day and the investment often pays off.
However, in the meantime of seeing the emergence of these new developments, I decided to focus on something that could work on Steem at a much smaller scale. Baby step by baby step, somehow.
PS: thanks for the article.
Several interesting comments here... I think you're stressing the 'PhD' factor too much. Taking it in smaller parcels, like you're doing with the project, is more feasible. It's more like a single class, done online via steem, so something like a steeMOOC, where people can learn how to program for physics, let's say. That's perfectly manageable with the money available.
I agree with you, of course. When people discuss funding research with external money, they usually think about funding a team, which is not possible without government money at the moment (because the scale of the costs). However, if we omit human resources, it is clear that great things can be done with little money.