Imagine you’re a recently graduated student and you finally got your master's degree in biotechnology. Now, it's time for the breakthrough in your research, the one that you’ve been working all those years for; a small crack in the foundations of the field that needs to get fixed. This is the time to face the obstacles that you—and many other researchers—have faced before: journal paywalls, publication issues, peer review difficulties, and, time-consuming grant submissions.
Most scientists can confirm that at least half of the time they dedicate to their work is spent on grant submission processes. Additionally, and even more alarmingly, is how often potentially groundbreaking proposals are dismissed and, conversely, how frequently debatable submissions are accepted to this process. Of course, these are just a few of the issues that put into evidence how the grant approval process is, at best, questionable.
Furthermore, grant information is unclear, and access is hard to come by. These grants are few and far between, and therefore the competition for them is overly stressful. What’s more, when large companies are the ones that provide funding, researchers end up having to lean in favor of the company's interests in order to get the necessary resources allocated—even if that compromises the integrity of their project.
It may seem like funding applications require a master’s degree in itself. But it doesn’t have to be this way, it could be fairer and simpler. Decentralized Science (or “De-Sci”) proposes a 180º turnaround in the way we fund and do science. In this post, we’ll share everything you need to know about it.
We’ll discuss:
How science and technology funding works today.
How private funding operates.
DAOs (Decentralized Autonomous Operations or Organization) as a groundbreaking alternative.
Funding could be fairer and easier through crowd-based & DeSci (Decentralized Science) initiatives.
Privately funded research does not democratize its benefits or results, while the public system is dominated by a few actors with power over research agendas.
Scientific studies that are not financially profitable are less likely to be funded, even if they are crucial to their discipline.
A DAO is an alternative way of achieving consensus within the congregation of a specific community.
DAOs allow large numbers of people to coordinate efforts in an open way. Therefore, DAOs empower groups to make complex decisions in a fairer manner.
AOs enable the creation of mechanisms that benefit and reward members of a community through more transparent and accessible means; providing more democratic grounds for scientific research.
So, going back to this scenario where you are a recently graduated scientist.
There is an opportunity for your research to be funded by a company. Some manager accepts a meeting and the first question is: “What's in it for us?”
There’s an unspoken truth that to be worthy of funding, science needs to be market-oriented. This leads to a state of affairs where valuable research will persistently go underfunded if its commercial applications are unclear.
For instance, scientific funding in the United States is distributed between public and private organizations, mainly Government entities and corporations. According to the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS), most of the total investment comes from the private sector.
Corporations have contributed three times as much capital as the State has, and 63% of this investment goes to the experimental development of products. Just 17% goes to fundamental science (which focuses on knowledge, rather than how to apply it). If we consider these percentages - and the fact that they are growing for experimental development - it will be increasingly difficult to recover when fundamental sciences are left with a very low percentage of funding. Financing basic science is like building infrastructure: It may not be profitable in the short term, but It’s a critical investment.
So, it’s fair to say that neither the public nor the private sector seems to be truly aware of the long-term implications of their biases. There are a lot of underappreciated methods, new techniques, and ignored facts that may open promising doors for researchers—and eventually, for those applying science to technology or healthcare.
As a society, we need to build and contribute to science through alternative funding and let inventiveness and initiative to our scientists. Sometimes, that implies taking risks - but intelligent risk-taking is the fuel of any area of knowledge.
Privately-funded research is often accessible and available, however, the process to disclose the findings and results isn’t necessarily the priority for corporations that seek immediate profit. Hence, the methodological details and a candid assessment of biases aren’t always publically available.
The science-funding system today is led by a few big actors with profit-favoring interests. By acting as both patrons and gatekeepers, they have a disproportional (and, some would argue, unjustified) power over how, why, and what is studied.
With more independent and transparent scientific research it will be accurate to see how funding gets more fairer and can focus on innovation to save lives.
A Decentralized Autonomous Organization (or DAO) is an alternative way of achieving consensus within the congregation of a specific community by using blockchain software that acts as a contract (or “smart contract” to be more precise).
How does a DAO work? Basically, all members engage in tiered participation by means of voting power to deliver decisions to a project. This mechanism allows a large number of people to collaborate effectively and make complex decisions. DAOs are community-driven, transparent, and work fully on the blockchain. This means they are accessible to anyone on the globe regardless of geographic location. Plus, the information on the DAO cannot be falsified since everyone can have a copy (called nodes). Given said characteristics and functions, this kind of organization can be great assets for scientific endeavors.
When placed in practice, this decentralized philosophy leads us to DeSci (Decentralized Science), a new organizational dynamic where research funding is not solely managed by profiteering actors driven by self-interest. Instead, DeSci funding is made possible through community consensus and driven by a shared sense of the greater good.
DAOs can be a perfect infrastructure to debate and decide efficiently and transparently. DeSci not only proposes alternatives to funding but to governance and information access.
ViralCure's ecosystem is committed to releasing transparent documentation of its progress. Imagine that you helped fund a scientific study through the purchase of an NFT and you’re curious about the limitations of the research methodology the scientists are using. You just have to go to the public documentation and check. You can also use that data to compare similar projects and decide which one you prefer to collaborate with. In essence, DeSci methods broaden the participation of the general public in conversations that mainly concern their well-being and the building of a more prosperous future for all. Knowledge is power, and we can take it back.
As we already mentioned, money for research projects has a strong tendency to go to profit-oriented projects. Consequently, those scientific studies that do not have immediate effects on innovation or technical development are less likely to be funded, even if they are crucial for their discipline. Many times there are topics, researchers, and social urgency to develop an investigation but the financing is lacking, and this generates a delay in the process that is already long and tedious.
Traditional financing suffers from a lack of coordination of specific efforts to achieve long-term development. If all the actors invest in short-term goals, who will study long-term issues without immediate benefit? We don't need dividends, we need to reorient scientific activities towards a broader field of research for the short and long term.
It's also worth mentioning that some fields that receive little financial support could have an incredible impact on certain investigations that had a wider reach. The studies for treatments that are considered unprofitable may have findings that unlock or resolve the development of a cure for diseases that companies consider profitable.
But, how can we reach those places that the market is not interested in? Some DeSci led initiatives and crowd-funding alternatives are starting to emerge, such as:
Scientific crowdfunding campaigns
Access to research funding is complex. There is little information, a lot of competition, and economic interests that often determine the research agenda. Through community-driven funding, we can move away from profit-oriented research and fund projects for the benefit of humanity.
At ViralCure, we're building an ecosystem for scientists and community investors. Our purpose is to liberate science from bureaucracy by democratizing funding.
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