Kickstarting science: crowdfunding as a cure for scientific research compromised by the pursuit of grant money

Sandia Labs

We all like to think of science as a pure discipline, something that holds the pursuit of knowledge above all else. But things are very different in practice. Like everything else, scientific research requires money. And unlike with other professions, there are not many people willing to pay directly for the services of a scientist. Most scientific research, therefore, are funded by government and industry.

Money is a scarce resource, so the unfortunate truth is that researchers are forced to spend time and effort competing for grant money — time and effort they could have spent on their work (by some estimates, researchers spend as much as three months a year writing grant proposals, most of which they don’t get). Not only do they have to compete with other researchers for a cut of the science budget, they also have to compete with all other budgets of the funding organization. Whether it is in government or industry, it is well known that when the budget ax falls during tough times, it usually falls on the science budget first. Science is a long term enterprise: for most people, it appears as a money sink with no near term benefit. And we live in a world that is increasingly near term oriented.


The pursuit of government or industry grants not only takes valuable time away from scientists. It also compromises their work. Rather than follow the science, researchers are forced to produce the sort of work that helps them secure future funding (without which they will be out of a job). Fundamental research is attempted less because they carry a higher risk of negative results and take much longer to complete. The pressure to publish quickly results in hurried, less thorough work. Researchers are forced to pick areas that they can make a living off of, rather than areas that actually need more work. And finally, some researchers are forced to sensationalize their findings for the media coverage they need to convince funding sources that their research is relevant.

Kickstarter style crowdfunding has been spectacularly successful in the technology industry. Even projects to build simple consumer electronic devices have been successful in raising hundreds of thousands of dollars. Imagine if we could use the same model for funding scientific research. Cut out the middleman, cut out special interests and committees who decide who gets funded and how much. Members of the public decide exactly how much they want to spend on what areas of research.

Science crowdfunding platforms already exist, of which Microryza (started in 2012) is a good example. Many projects there (such as a research project into developing a diagnostic test for non-healing wounds) seem to be in the sub-$10,000 range. The credentials of the researcher, the goals and a rough breakdown of how the funds are used is presented with each proposal. Many projects appear to be funded by donations averaging about $100. Like Kickstarter, the funding model is all-or-nothing, meaning that no one is charged if the funding goal is not met. But unlike Kickstarter, project backers do not receive any direct benefits from the project. Instead they are allowed access to the project’s lab notes.

It is easy to imagine scenarios where people would want to contribute to research in this way: other researchers whose own work depend on results of such projects, those who suffer from medical conditions who wish to contribute to research into new treatments, science enthusiasts, philanthropists and maybe even private businesses whose products can benefit from the results of crowdfunded research.

Perhaps the Microryza model may not work in the exact form it exists in today. After all, even Kickstarter is only a few years old as of this writing. It remains to be seen what sort of a funding and tracking model will work best for crowdfunded scientific research. But whatever the model may be, crowdfunding has every possibility of becoming one of the biggest (if not the biggest) driver of fundamental scientific research in the twenty first century.