Speaker 1: Brought to you by Toyota. Let's go places. Welcome to
Speaker 1: Forward Thinking Tail everyone, and welcome to Forward Thinking, the
Speaker 1: podcast that looks at the future and says a mark again,
Speaker 1: a buck or a pound. I'm Jonathan Strickland, I'm Lauren,
Speaker 1: and I'm Joe McCormick. So, guys, uh, you know you
Speaker 1: guys like science, right, yeah, big on the science. I
Speaker 1: prefer mad science, right well, I mean Plaine science is okay, right, yeah.
Speaker 1: When when you can't get mad science, plane science will
Speaker 1: do in a pinch. And here's the thing about science,
Speaker 1: you see, it's a it's something that requires an investment.
Speaker 1: It's not we haven't reached a point in the world
Speaker 1: where we can just study things for free and mankind
Speaker 1: can benefit from our studies. It turns out that to
Speaker 1: to conduct really good science, you often need a lot
Speaker 1: of the cold, hard cat. Yeah. Things cost money, especially
Speaker 1: mad signs. I would say, yeah, no, that's those various
Speaker 1: Tesla coils and uh and Jacob's ladders. They don't pay
Speaker 1: for themselves. Yeah. Well, I mean you can sometimes get
Speaker 1: test subjects at a cheaper hourly rate if you promise
Speaker 1: them nightmarish hallucinations. This is true if you read any
Speaker 1: of the signs on Marta trains for college students who
Speaker 1: are desperate for money. Uh yeah, so, but but human
Speaker 1: experimentation out of the way, you still have materials costs
Speaker 1: and things like that. You uh, if you've ever done
Speaker 1: a science fair as a kid, you know you had
Speaker 1: to buy that three paneled cardboard backdrop and those things
Speaker 1: ain't cheap. Soda glue and yeah, yeah no, and beyond that,
Speaker 1: I mean, we're making light of it, but obviously there
Speaker 1: are lots of different costs involved, everything from salaries or
Speaker 1: or at least some sort of compensation for the people
Speaker 1: doing the work because you know, they have to pay
Speaker 1: bills and things, to paying for the labs, for paying
Speaker 1: for all the materials, uh, and paying people to make
Speaker 1: sure and quality check all the research to be certain
Speaker 1: that everything was done properly so that whatever findings come
Speaker 1: out as a result are logically based upon the experiment itself.
Speaker 1: I mean, the whole process is expensive. So where does
Speaker 1: that money come from? Traditionally from from three different kind
Speaker 1: of branches. Yeah, yeah, you've got you've got governments. That's
Speaker 1: a big one. Well, actually, i'd back up before we
Speaker 1: hit governments. Traditionally you may have also have independent wealth.
Speaker 1: So a lot of scientists throughout history, certainly not all,
Speaker 1: but a lot of people who made scientific discoveries were
Speaker 1: people who had leisure who are or they had a
Speaker 1: patron who was who had that kind of disposable income.
Speaker 1: In fact, patronage was a big way of doing science
Speaker 1: before we got into the giant academy and things of
Speaker 1: that nature. Sure, these days that would probably fall under
Speaker 1: kind of the private grant kind of area, which was
Speaker 1: going to be our second topic. But we can just
Speaker 1: mention now that there are lots of private foundations out
Speaker 1: there that that have it within their scope to specifically
Speaker 1: fund research that's right and right. So it you know,
Speaker 1: a few hundred years ago, it might have been like
Speaker 1: a duke or like the church or something like that.
Speaker 1: Now it's maybe more like some organization, a nonprofit organization.
Speaker 1: And in these cases, the the approach of getting funding
Speaker 1: from a private grant a private organization is not that
Speaker 1: different from applying for a government grant for science. How
Speaker 1: government work? Well, how does government funded science work? Question? Yeah,
Speaker 1: So essentially you have pools of money that have been
Speaker 1: allotted by the United States. This is within the United States.
Speaker 1: Obviously other countries are different. But the United States you
Speaker 1: have pools of money that are allotted for specific purposes,
Speaker 1: for instance, scientific research, and that's overseen by different departments
Speaker 1: like the National Science Foundation or the National Institutes of Health, etcetera,
Speaker 1: Department of Energy, etcetera. Yeah, yeah, even Department of Defense
Speaker 1: has a big one obviously, DARPA. They that whole area
Speaker 1: has got its own budget for research. Now, all of
Speaker 1: these are meant for specific types of applications. Sometimes they're
Speaker 1: pretty broad, general categories like the National Science Foundations, pretty broad,
Speaker 1: National Institute of Health obviously that's more health related. So
Speaker 1: you have these pools of money that then are overseen
Speaker 1: by committees, and so in order to get at that money,
Speaker 1: you have to submit a grand application and hope that
Speaker 1: yours is chosen over all the other applications coming in
Speaker 1: knowing that that pool of money is pretty limited, and
Speaker 1: sometimes we see those budgets cut year over year. It
Speaker 1: all depends upon what politicians feel is important from one
Speaker 1: year to the next. My guess is that the general
Speaker 1: public believes that that money is more abundant than it
Speaker 1: actually is. It is not, and it is not easy
Speaker 1: to get to but we'll cover that later on in
Speaker 1: the podcast. Okay, But so both like a private patron
Speaker 1: or organization and the government, they they're potentially likely to
Speaker 1: fund your exploratory science just to discover things about the world.
Speaker 1: But i'd imagine there are also groups that are mainly
Speaker 1: interested in how science is going to make you some money. Yeah,
Speaker 1: those would be corporations. Yeah, I wrote down private companies,
Speaker 1: but corporations is more accurate because it doesn't have to
Speaker 1: be a private company. It could just be it could
Speaker 1: be a publicly traded corporation that funds. But yes, a
Speaker 1: corporation is usually funding the private sector. Yeah, funding science
Speaker 1: for a specific they're hoping for specific outcomes, something that
Speaker 1: can be monetized down the road. Uh. And obviously that
Speaker 1: comes with its own set of pros and cons, which
Speaker 1: we'll get into a little bit later. And you can
Speaker 1: devil's advocate that if you can make that phrase into
Speaker 1: a verb, that that that that a given company might
Speaker 1: in fact be interested in promoting research for the good
Speaker 1: of mankind as well. But it's also it's it's always
Speaker 1: going to be sticky territory. Thank you for advocating devilishly, Lauren.
Speaker 1: But but SpaceX would be a good example of that, right,
Speaker 1: SpaceX private company, but a lot of at least the
Speaker 1: pr coming out of SpaceX is along those lines, and
Speaker 1: I'm I'm willing to believe that there is a an
Speaker 1: actual sincere spot in the heart of that company. Doesn't
Speaker 1: necessarily mean everything they do is altruistic. I don't mean
Speaker 1: to go that far, but to suggest that they are
Speaker 1: very much interested in the pursuit of science beyond just hey,
Speaker 1: here's how we can make some more cash. Now, an
Speaker 1: emerging way of paying for science is crowdfunding, which, of
Speaker 1: course most people think of things like Kickstarter and indiegog.
Speaker 1: Those are the two big ones, right, and more for
Speaker 1: things like like you've you've got a pebble, Jonathan, I
Speaker 1: like like goofy gadgets, I mean or useful gadgets, pebbles,
Speaker 1: not goofy gorgeous. Okay, explain what a pebble is. Well,
Speaker 1: it's a little rock, or it's also a smart watch.
Speaker 1: It was a popular crowd crowdfunded smart extremely now now,
Speaker 1: granted I I ordered mine after the crowdfunding I was
Speaker 1: not one of the cool kids who backed it back
Speaker 1: in the kickstarter days. Even though it is a Kickstarter edition.
Speaker 1: But but many Kickstarter projects are for you know, artists
Speaker 1: or musicians or or small technology companies who are trying
Speaker 1: to put a product to market, not not necessarily for research.
Speaker 1: So so how does this research then come into the equation.
Speaker 1: It's interesting because it's one of those it's one of
Speaker 1: those applications of the Kickstarter model that at least at
Speaker 1: first glance, does not seem to fit the parameters of
Speaker 1: what Kickstarter was all about. But Kickstar has been pretty
Speaker 1: flexible with those. I mean, there are examples of projects
Speaker 1: that have been approved on Kickstarter that again don't necessarily
Speaker 1: fit the terms of service that you are supposed to
Speaker 1: agree to, and you submit a project and knowing that
Speaker 1: that project could be denied. I mean, not everything that
Speaker 1: gets submitted to kickstarters approved, but there have been several
Speaker 1: cases of science based projects that were submitted to Kickstarter
Speaker 1: and were approved and either funded or didn't fund um
Speaker 1: And Kickstar is not the only one. There's actually one
Speaker 1: called Experiment, which is just for scientific research and various
Speaker 1: scientific projects. So there are some that are specific for that.
Speaker 1: But Kickstarter, I think is the most well known of crowdfunding,
Speaker 1: with maybe Indie Go Go taking second place. So um
Speaker 1: at any rate, there are a lot of different examples.
Speaker 1: The one I wanted to talk about specifically that made
Speaker 1: the news not too long ago was kick SAT. So
Speaker 1: I guess the kick is for Kickstarter and SAT for satellite,
Speaker 1: And the actual Kickstarter was launched back in two thousand eleven.
Speaker 1: So you muld say, well, why the heck is that
Speaker 1: news now? Well, it's news now because it went from
Speaker 1: the Kickstarter project phase all the way through funding to reality.
Speaker 1: It actually became a thing that then got launched into space.
Speaker 1: But what the heck was it? So this was a
Speaker 1: project to launch very very tiny satellites tiny spacecraft into
Speaker 1: low Earth orbit. And when I'm talking tiny, I'm talking
Speaker 1: about like a little bitty square that's a circuit board
Speaker 1: that only has a few elements on it. I'll talk
Speaker 1: about that in a second. The project co creator named
Speaker 1: Zack Manchester. He was a graduate from the Aerospace engineering
Speaker 1: department at Cornell University. The other co creator was Michael Johnson,
Speaker 1: and together they developed this tiny spacecraft. They called it Sprite.
Speaker 1: So each individual spacecraft is a sprite and they could
Speaker 1: be built and launched in low Earth orbit for just
Speaker 1: a few hundred dollars each. So the idea was that
Speaker 1: by creating a whole bunch of small ones and then
Speaker 1: making a delivery system where you could package hundreds of
Speaker 1: small ones together, you could launch the equivalent of a
Speaker 1: hundred or a thousand satellites for the same price that
Speaker 1: you would pay for a relatively small piece of equipment
Speaker 1: that's just one piece to go into space. So kind
Speaker 1: of quantity over quality in a way, because these particular
Speaker 1: spacecraft are not terribly sophisticated. Um, do you guys, you
Speaker 1: guys have heard about the the Soviet satellite sput Nick right,
Speaker 1: the first man made satellite launched into orbit. It essentially
Speaker 1: just produced a ping that could be picked up by
Speaker 1: by radio antenna and terrified the Americans. Oh, it absolutely did,
Speaker 1: because not because it made a ping noise, but because
Speaker 1: it was a very sinister ping. Mostly admit that the
Speaker 1: Soviet Union had a had missile technology that could reach
Speaker 1: all the way across the United States. There's also this
Speaker 1: whole issue with Cuba going on at the time. But anyway,
Speaker 1: so my our former co worker Chris Palette used to
Speaker 1: call it the the sphere. What beat is essentially what
Speaker 1: spot Nick was and that's you know again, it didn't
Speaker 1: do much other than send out this little ping message
Speaker 1: to just say I'm here, Yeah, I'm here. It's proof
Speaker 1: that this is a man made object in orbit. Well,
Speaker 1: the the kicks at Sprite spacecraft are pretty similar in
Speaker 1: the sense that that's pretty much all they can do.
Speaker 1: They only have a couple of antenna, a micro controller,
Speaker 1: a radio, and some solar cells that allow it to
Speaker 1: gather power from sunlight. And all it really does is
Speaker 1: transmit its own name, which you can you know, if
Speaker 1: you were to back this project, you could actually name
Speaker 1: your sprite, so it would send out that message over
Speaker 1: and over and plus a few bits of data. So
Speaker 1: not that different from spot Nick. Right, you know, there
Speaker 1: wasn't It wasn't a practical application. It's more of a
Speaker 1: proof of concept, and the idea being that further more
Speaker 1: sophisticated spacecraft could be developed in the future, assuming that
Speaker 1: this one proved to be successful. Oh sure. And also,
Speaker 1: I mean these these are very very small, which is
Speaker 1: impressive in terms of just circuit board technology and and
Speaker 1: the way that things have advanced since for example, spot
Speaker 1: Nick back and right, yeah, yeah, where you don't have
Speaker 1: a giant silver ball going around the Earth. Yeah, I know,
Speaker 1: it's pretty exciting. Um. And then the kick Sat itself
Speaker 1: was the delivery system. So it looked like a like
Speaker 1: a kind of like a bread box. This is a
Speaker 1: big rectangular thing that could hold hundreds or thousands of
Speaker 1: these sprites. And then at the appointed time, the the
Speaker 1: various doors on this would open up and launched. Yeah, yes,
Speaker 1: you get a cloud of sprite, actually cloud of sprites,
Speaker 1: but close enough. And uh So, the whole idea was
Speaker 1: to be able to launch these then make sure you
Speaker 1: could actually locate them and track them and see that
Speaker 1: the project was in fact a viable one. That's that
Speaker 1: would mean that they could build on it in the future.
Speaker 1: The goal was just thirty dollars, and I say just
Speaker 1: because when we talk about space projects, thirty dollars is
Speaker 1: really not that much at all. Um. It was a
Speaker 1: very successful project ended up getting more than twice what
Speaker 1: they were asking for. They got seventy four six bucks.
Speaker 1: I don't know who threw in these six dollars, but
Speaker 1: that was pretty cool of them. Uh And in total,
Speaker 1: in May two thou fourteen, the kicks Sat satellite, the
Speaker 1: first one ever, carried a hundred and four sprites courtesy
Speaker 1: of a space X launch. Already mentioned them once in
Speaker 1: this podcast, but that's the company that actually launched the
Speaker 1: rocket that carried the kicks at. It was a c
Speaker 1: R S three rocket and it was actually on the
Speaker 1: way to the I S S, the International Space Station,
Speaker 1: so it was up in. Yeah, they hit stor ride,
Speaker 1: they did their little uh thumb out the on the
Speaker 1: side of the highway, sad Hulk music playing in the background,
Speaker 1: and this rocket picked him up. Elon Musk was like, yeah, sure,
Speaker 1: come along. Yeah, He's like, dude, we're totally going that way,
Speaker 1: come on, hop in. So the only thing is that
Speaker 1: there's a couple of people who have said that maybe
Speaker 1: this project is not the best thing in the world,
Speaker 1: not not for this particular implementation, but because of implications
Speaker 1: down the road, being that uh yeah, like like space debris,
Speaker 1: Like you're you're purposefully launching a couple of hundred useless
Speaker 1: bits of technology into an already crowded air field. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that would be the space that would definitely be the criticism, right.
Speaker 1: I mean, now we're not saying that the spacecraft are useless,
Speaker 1: we're just saying that's kind of what the critics would say,
Speaker 1: and uh, and you know, the response is that the
Speaker 1: spacecraft are designed to deteriorate, their orbits deteriorate rapidly, so
Speaker 1: within a week or two they would be burning up
Speaker 1: on reentry and not be an issue in space. They're
Speaker 1: not going high enough in orbit for them to stabilize
Speaker 1: or to or to Yeah, that would take quite a
Speaker 1: bit of ways, or to just become an issue like
Speaker 1: getting in the way of other communication satellites or anything
Speaker 1: like that. However, so while this particular implementation is not
Speaker 1: a problem in that sense, the worry is that by
Speaker 1: proving that this is a viable option, we might see
Speaker 1: lots more stuff get launched into space over time, and
Speaker 1: that an aggregate could become an issue at some point. Now, granted,
Speaker 1: that's saying like we shouldn't do this thing because this
Speaker 1: other thing may or may not happen, and that's that's
Speaker 1: a tough argument to make. It's very discouraging and sort
Speaker 1: of a pessimistic view of what could happen, but it's
Speaker 1: still something to think about. It's something to consider when
Speaker 1: moving forward. Is let's at least acknowledge that that's a
Speaker 1: possibility before we hit the launch button, because then we
Speaker 1: can still be responsible while continuing research. We don't want
Speaker 1: to we don't want to discourage people from doing science.
Speaker 1: We just want to do a response. But we can
Speaker 1: form a plan this way and right exactly. So that's
Speaker 1: not the only Kickstarter science project that's out there. There's
Speaker 1: actually a few. Well, in fact, there have been other
Speaker 1: satellite projects from Kickstarter. The remember the Planetary Resources ar
Speaker 1: kid project, right y, Yeah, where they wanted to launch
Speaker 1: small satellites and and through Kickstarter they gave people the
Speaker 1: chance to help aim the satellites at certain funding levels
Speaker 1: or to have their picture displayed on a on a
Speaker 1: picture taken by the satellite up over the curve of
Speaker 1: the Earth. Right Yeah. That was a really cool way
Speaker 1: of trying to get public support behind a project. Another
Speaker 1: one that was pushed by one of the co founders
Speaker 1: of kicks At, Michael Johnson, you know I mentioned him,
Speaker 1: was called Pocket Spacecraft. Now, that was a follow up
Speaker 1: project to kicks At, which had at its root of
Speaker 1: an even smaller spacecraft than than the little sprites, so
Speaker 1: tinier form factor. It was supposed to be more um sophisticated.
Speaker 1: It was called Scout, but this one was going to
Speaker 1: travel to the Moon, and they held a Kickstarter, but
Speaker 1: that one did not fund. However, the project gained the
Speaker 1: interest of private investors, who then poured about five thousand
Speaker 1: dollars into Were these private investors wearing long robes with
Speaker 1: funny hats and carrying umbrellas, not that I know of. Sorry,
Speaker 1: I'm making a little journey to the moon. Yeah, I
Speaker 1: get the joke. But as far as I know, they,
Speaker 1: as far as I know, they were not um dressed
Speaker 1: in such a manner. But it's possible I was not there.
Speaker 1: Kickstarter doesn't really necessarily make you, you know, it doesn't
Speaker 1: disclose the fashion of the participants all the time. And
Speaker 1: I wasn't there for the private investment, so it could
Speaker 1: be you know what, let's just say yes, yes, they
Speaker 1: were in fact doing that. Another science project that appeared
Speaker 1: like Kickstarter with Songbird, which, uh, while it was a
Speaker 1: songbird migratory pattern Kickstarter, it was really kind of a
Speaker 1: cool thing, this idea of putting tiny little geo locators
Speaker 1: on the California hermit thrush as a two thousand dollar goal,
Speaker 1: and it funded. And this was the whole idea was
Speaker 1: just to find out where these birds go when they
Speaker 1: travel in the winter because they would always return to
Speaker 1: the same spot, but no one was entirely certain exactly
Speaker 1: where they would end up. And so by putting these
Speaker 1: little gl locators on the birds, they're going to learn
Speaker 1: more about the migratory patterns of this particular species, unless,
Speaker 1: of course, it weighs them down, in which case they'll
Speaker 1: stop someplace closer along the way and then we'll all
Speaker 1: think that that's where they always went. So you know,
Speaker 1: of course, the thing about science you can't observe when
Speaker 1: it affected. Granted that usually applies only to the quantum world,
Speaker 1: but go with me on this one. Another one was
Speaker 1: plasma jet electric thrusters super awesome, you know, alternate alternate
Speaker 1: propulsion system. This was really just to test out a
Speaker 1: propulsion system, so not something to that would be built. Yeah,
Speaker 1: this is more to to try and perfect the actual
Speaker 1: technology here on Earth so that one day it could
Speaker 1: be incorporated into spacecraft that would launch from some other means,
Speaker 1: you know, we would get it up into space and
Speaker 1: then this would be its propulsion once up in space.
Speaker 1: So that was really cool. That's successfully funded back in
Speaker 1: two thousand and twelve, and there are a lot of
Speaker 1: other checks on Kickstarter. Almost all of them are space related,
Speaker 1: not not every single one, but most of them. Space
Speaker 1: tends to be one of the ones that people get
Speaker 1: really excited by. It's pretty inspiring. Yeah, it's you can
Speaker 1: see how that could get someone's imagination going. You know.
Speaker 1: It's it's a little harder sometimes to suggest to people, Hey, uh,
Speaker 1: why don't you contribute to this. We're going to be
Speaker 1: studying this fungus. You know, space is the final frontier.
Speaker 1: Threshes are not. No, but it was successful. Of course,
Speaker 1: it did have a very modest goal. Two thousand dollars
Speaker 1: was not a whole lot. So as far as the
Speaker 1: pros and cons of all these different kinds of funding
Speaker 1: strategies go, there's some that are pretty similar. Like I
Speaker 1: said before, the government and private foundation grants are pretty
Speaker 1: close in the way that generally you have to go
Speaker 1: about trying to secure one. So if you're a scientist
Speaker 1: and you need to get funding for your project, probably
Speaker 1: want to write up a grant proposal. Yeah, probably gonna
Speaker 1: write up lots of grant proposal because the first you
Speaker 1: need to learn how to do that thing, because it's
Speaker 1: actually really complicated. No, it's not easy. The people who
Speaker 1: who specialize in this. I mean they can spend, you know,
Speaker 1: quite a long time just working on one let alone multiples,
Speaker 1: and you'd never want to put all of your scientific
Speaker 1: eggs in one scientific basket. So you're probably applying for
Speaker 1: multiple grants. Especially if there's a limit on how much
Speaker 1: can be rewarded and your project has a budget that's
Speaker 1: greater than that limit, you're going to need multiple grants.
Speaker 1: So uh, that means that you're going to have to
Speaker 1: apply to lots of different either government programs or private foundations,
Speaker 1: or a combination of the two. And while you're doing that,
Speaker 1: you've got to keep in mind all the other scientists
Speaker 1: are doing the same thing. Everyone is competing for that
Speaker 1: same pool of money that is represented either by the
Speaker 1: government or these private foundations. Now, in some cases, private
Speaker 1: foundations are concentrating on specific types of science, So it
Speaker 1: may be that your project falls in their purview and
Speaker 1: you're fine, but some other project doesn't, and so you
Speaker 1: don't have to compete directly with them. But they're still
Speaker 1: going to be competition no matter what it is. Oh yeah,
Speaker 1: and and as we mentioned earlier, the amount of money
Speaker 1: that the government has to give according to budgets is
Speaker 1: not usually greater year over years. No, it's sadly our
Speaker 1: our investment in science has either for most year's plateaued
Speaker 1: or taken a dip um. There are some special initiatives
Speaker 1: that give more money to very specific areas of research,
Speaker 1: and that's really cool, right, you know, when you get
Speaker 1: to just broad exploratory science, that's where it starts to
Speaker 1: get It's hard. It's a hard sell because you're asking people, look,
Speaker 1: we're specifically wanting to look into the mystery to find
Speaker 1: out what's there. We don't know what's there, and we
Speaker 1: don't know that anything we find will be of any
Speaker 1: practical use. It's hard to convince people to pay for
Speaker 1: that because that's tough, especially if you're trying to convince
Speaker 1: bureaucrats and politicians or for that. I mean, it's not
Speaker 1: just anybody. It's people who specifically are uh very conscious
Speaker 1: about the budget because they have to answer to the
Speaker 1: people for it. And then a lot of times they're
Speaker 1: not necessarily sympathetic to what you're trying to research, especially
Speaker 1: if they themselves don't have a background in science, because
Speaker 1: it's harder again for them to have that sympathetic view
Speaker 1: you've heard these clips before of politicians making fun of
Speaker 1: government funded science projects that studying you know, fruit flies
Speaker 1: or studying mold. Ha ha ha ha ha. It's like
Speaker 1: they just don't understand that, Oh, that's actually something worth studying.
Speaker 1: We're learning very important things from doing that. Yeah, it's
Speaker 1: once and again it's hard to communicate that with someone
Speaker 1: who doesn't have that same background, especially you know, and
Speaker 1: some scientists are are great scientists, but not great communicators.
Speaker 1: So that actually problem so very complex here. Also, on
Speaker 1: top of that, it requires scientists to dedicate a huge
Speaker 1: amount of time just to try and try to get
Speaker 1: through all the bureaucracy. In fact, according to uh to
Speaker 1: Scientific American, in the university realm, so specifically within university
Speaker 1: research areas, faculty members spend their time just going through
Speaker 1: red tape, so that leaves only to do the actual job. Yeah.
Speaker 1: I mean that's even if you're just a pure research
Speaker 1: scientists at a university and you're not also carrying a
Speaker 1: load of coursework, you know, or you're teaching courses. So
Speaker 1: I mean almost half your time just getting through to
Speaker 1: try and get the funding you need. So you can
Speaker 1: understand how a lot of people talk about this system
Speaker 1: being broken or at least inefficient. You know, if not broken,
Speaker 1: it's it's not working at full potential. Um. So that
Speaker 1: has definitely been a big issue. Next, let's talk about
Speaker 1: the corporate sponsorships. You know, we mentioned that, uh, we
Speaker 1: get the corporations involved sometimes, Uh, you know, it's it's
Speaker 1: more frequent that we see corporations look for practical uses
Speaker 1: of science. So it's even more difficult to kind of
Speaker 1: just get pure explored territory science funded by corporations. Not
Speaker 1: that it never happens, but it's rare. Yeah, and there's
Speaker 1: I certainly don't want to cast a shadow over all
Speaker 1: corporate funded science, but there is always a question when
Speaker 1: you have corporate funded science out there. You know, so
Speaker 1: you've published results that are favorable to whatever industry it is,
Speaker 1: the oil industry or the you know, or or or
Speaker 1: towards a specific kind of medication or treatment over another kind. Right,
Speaker 1: it seems to be that you've got the money for
Speaker 1: this experiment from those people. Right, it seems like there's
Speaker 1: a there could be a bias going into the results. Yeah,
Speaker 1: Like you said, Lauren, I mean the medical world is
Speaker 1: a great example, because something like se of all clinical
Speaker 1: trials in the United States are paid for by corporations
Speaker 1: through corporate sponsorship. So if you have a a corporation
Speaker 1: that has a vested interest in a particular let's say
Speaker 1: it's a it's a a new experimental drug that they
Speaker 1: want to have pushed through approval, uh, and they're the
Speaker 1: ones funding a study to make sure that the drug
Speaker 1: is actually has efficacy, that it's that actually does what
Speaker 1: it's supposed to do, that it doesn't have the serious
Speaker 1: side effects that could potentially sideline at all that kind
Speaker 1: of stuff. Um, if they're the ones funding a group
Speaker 1: of scientists work to do this, and the scientists want
Speaker 1: to continue to be able to do work, there's always
Speaker 1: the question of was biased introduced? Where the scientists biased
Speaker 1: at all because the source of their the funding for
Speaker 1: the project came from the same company that has a
Speaker 1: vested interest in the outcome. Well sure, I mean, but
Speaker 1: but there's there's something to be said for, um, for
Speaker 1: pure research and development and and a lot of the
Speaker 1: I mean, the kind of clinical trials that we're talking
Speaker 1: about here are not internal research and development trials. Of course,
Speaker 1: a company also, to to balance it has a vested
Speaker 1: interest in making sure that the product that they put
Speaker 1: out doesn't kill people. Um, that's bad for your customer. Yeah,
Speaker 1: they don't want to have to completely you know, regenerate
Speaker 1: generations in order to sell more more products. Yeah. I
Speaker 1: think typically they will be concerned for liability, so they
Speaker 1: don't want to try to like hide the fact that
Speaker 1: this is going to kill people in a way that's
Speaker 1: traceable to them. But but I mean more like what
Speaker 1: I imagine happens more often. That might be a problem
Speaker 1: with corporate funded researches. Selection bias in publishing. So if
Speaker 1: if they've got a bunch of results that say, this
Speaker 1: drug is very effective in this one study, and then
Speaker 1: this other found that it's not really effective, and this
Speaker 1: other found it doesn't do any better than placebo, they
Speaker 1: might publish only one of this set of results. Well,
Speaker 1: there are really complex laws for how any given research
Speaker 1: team is allowed to or or should um accept and
Speaker 1: report the funding that they receive from from any from anyone,
Speaker 1: I mean, whether that's that's a government agency or private
Speaker 1: foundation or one of these privately held companies, or publicly
Speaker 1: you know, from from a corporation, and and and there
Speaker 1: are a whole lot of of of law laws internationally, nationally, locally,
Speaker 1: and at the at the academic like university institutional kind
Speaker 1: of level. And I mean technically most journals, most reputable journals,
Speaker 1: will not publish something if they suspect there's too much
Speaker 1: of a conflict of interest. However, I mean, you know,
Speaker 1: it's it's it's always it's always messy, and it's always
Speaker 1: difficult to really get to the bottom of something like
Speaker 1: whether someone was unbiased. And you know, keep keep in
Speaker 1: mind that bias exists everywhere. There's literally no person on
Speaker 1: this planet that is completely unbiased, and also no organization
Speaker 1: that's completely unbiased. Even if you're talking about a government organization,
Speaker 1: you're you're going to have at least a little bit
Speaker 1: of an agenda there. Well, yeah, I mean it's where
Speaker 1: we're not totally objective. We can't be. We can be
Speaker 1: as close, we can try and be as rigorous as
Speaker 1: possible to maintain an objective point of view, but it's
Speaker 1: never going to be. Yeah, I think that's given. It
Speaker 1: just be a question of relative level. Where on the
Speaker 1: spectrum do you fall on chrony ism or or reputable scientist. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and and so really what that kind of thing comes
Speaker 1: down to is being more educated when you know, when
Speaker 1: we as researchers, or when you as a consumer of
Speaker 1: a product or or or s as a consumer of
Speaker 1: a product or anyone is looking at this research that
Speaker 1: has been done, it's really critical to to go to
Speaker 1: the part where they disclose what funding they have received
Speaker 1: and check it out right and just you know again,
Speaker 1: just because even if if a research team gets their
Speaker 1: funding from a corporation that has a vested interest, it
Speaker 1: does not necessarily mean that the science they did was
Speaker 1: bad or the findings were inaccurate. It just means that
Speaker 1: you might want to look and see if there are
Speaker 1: any other independent studies that were also done. Right. It's
Speaker 1: a factor. It's it's that grain of salt that you
Speaker 1: really need to take. So then we have crowdfunding, which
Speaker 1: also has both pros and cons. One of the big
Speaker 1: pros is that it gets people excited about science. Now,
Speaker 1: being excited about science is a great thing because not
Speaker 1: only does it allow the scientists to do their work,
Speaker 1: but that can send a message to government officials to say,
Speaker 1: you know, this is important and we should invest more
Speaker 1: in it. So it kind of has has sort of
Speaker 1: a ripple effect where it's possible if crowdfunding gets to
Speaker 1: be exciting enough that you could see some more government
Speaker 1: interests play apart in funding science. Down the road, of course,
Speaker 1: you could also get the other side where the government says, well,
Speaker 1: we don't need to fund science, look that people are
Speaker 1: doing it on their own, so let's just get out
Speaker 1: of that game. Um So there's always there's always that
Speaker 1: possibility too. I like to be more of an optimist
Speaker 1: and hope that we just find new ways of funding science.
Speaker 1: But another advantage is that sciences don't have to jump
Speaker 1: through as many hoops necessarily like they have. Imagine that
Speaker 1: kickstarter standards are a lot lower than the government. Well, yeah,
Speaker 1: for one thing, Kickster really what they're looking for is
Speaker 1: to make sure that you you are following the rules
Speaker 1: that Kickster has set up, and as we've pointed out already,
Speaker 1: they're not always that. Um yeah, there are a couple
Speaker 1: of projects I'm thinking of right off the top of
Speaker 1: my head that that clearly did not meet the goals,
Speaker 1: but not not scientific ones either. But as long as
Speaker 1: they as long as you do, you've got a good
Speaker 1: shot of getting your project approved. So the first thought
Speaker 1: I had when we were talking about crowdfunding science as
Speaker 1: through Kickstarter is Hey, I never got these results I
Speaker 1: was promised. Well, see, that's the thing is that you
Speaker 1: have to you have to define your project properly so
Speaker 1: that people know what it is you're trying to do
Speaker 1: and if you are responsible because this is this is
Speaker 1: approach that a project manager has to do. The project
Speaker 1: manager needs to be able to explain whatever the scientific
Speaker 1: project happens to be, whether it's any kind of experimentation
Speaker 1: for for you know, just scientific exploration purposes, or if
Speaker 1: it's building a specific piece of equipment, whatever it is.
Speaker 1: They have to be very clear on what the goals
Speaker 1: of the project are and what a successful outcome will
Speaker 1: look like. Even if they don't know what the results are,
Speaker 1: they would say, you know, knowing the results would be
Speaker 1: the successful outcome. And so you have to be very
Speaker 1: good at communicating that because otherwise what can happen is
Speaker 1: if you're if you're not good at communicating it, and
Speaker 1: people fund these things and then they never hear anything
Speaker 1: about it ever again, it just very quietly kind of
Speaker 1: fades away. Let's say that everyone was on the up
Speaker 1: and up and they actually did whatever it was they
Speaker 1: said they were going to do. But either it just
Speaker 1: didn't pan out, or it wasn't really reported on, or
Speaker 1: they kind of forgot to get back to their user
Speaker 1: base and send out that update like like, hey, check
Speaker 1: it out. We learned that this stuff happens. Right. If
Speaker 1: that doesn't happen, then that is bad news for everybody,
Speaker 1: because what it does is discourage the folks who supported
Speaker 1: that particular project from ever supporting another one. So you
Speaker 1: have to be really careful with crowdfunding as well. You've
Speaker 1: got the fact that you don't have to jump through
Speaker 1: as many hoops, and all you have to do is
Speaker 1: appeal to people's sense of whatever what exploration or adventure,
Speaker 1: whatever your scientific project is related to, could be conservation,
Speaker 1: could be anything. Really, you have to appeal to that.
Speaker 1: But then you have to make sure you make good
Speaker 1: on the promise or else you you run the risk
Speaker 1: of alienating those people and making things worse for everybody
Speaker 1: down the road. Right. Well, what I was referring to
Speaker 1: was all those kickstarted projects and we all know something
Speaker 1: that you know that they got funded and they got
Speaker 1: their money, and Okay, I'm still waiting for all three
Speaker 1: of my crowdfunded backed smart watches. I got an update
Speaker 1: on two of them today and uh yeah, there are
Speaker 1: a few months overdue, so I know exactly what you're
Speaker 1: talking about. But anyway, yeah, this in this case, it's
Speaker 1: not so much. You know. One of the things you
Speaker 1: have to remember whenever you're backing any kind of crowdfunded
Speaker 1: project is that you're not really don't think of it
Speaker 1: like a store. You know, you're not supposed to think
Speaker 1: of it like a shop. But you're funding is someone's
Speaker 1: uh work to create something, whether that's work of art
Speaker 1: or a scientific project or a piece of technology. You're
Speaker 1: funding that work which may or may not work out.
Speaker 1: You are like an investor, and sometimes investments pay off
Speaker 1: and sometimes they don't. And if you if you think
Speaker 1: of it that way instead of hey, I sent you
Speaker 1: a check for this thing that I was promised and
Speaker 1: I still don't have that thing. Unless it was something
Speaker 1: small that was just supposed to be a guaranteed uh delivery,
Speaker 1: like you know, a key chain or something, then chances
Speaker 1: are it's because the project didn't work out the way
Speaker 1: the people had anticipated. So you just have to take
Speaker 1: that into account. Well, you should think about it like
Speaker 1: giving a gift or giving some money to your friend
Speaker 1: you do it because you like your friend, not because
Speaker 1: you're expecting to get some charge so much interest on
Speaker 1: the gifts I give to my friends, And I don't
Speaker 1: know that you can call it liking, but all right,
Speaker 1: that's fair. I kind of understand what you're talking about.
Speaker 1: So one of the interesting things I came across while
Speaker 1: looking at how science is funded was some stories about
Speaker 1: just inefficiency the problems that come upon the administrative side.
Speaker 1: Like let's talk about you are one of those. You
Speaker 1: you run a foundation that gives out money to people
Speaker 1: who are applying for for scientific grants. But your job
Speaker 1: is to look at each grant proposal as it comes
Speaker 1: in and to evaluate it and to decide whether or
Speaker 1: not this represents a a viable scientific experiment. You have
Speaker 1: to figure out, I mean, forget whether or not the
Speaker 1: outcome is going to benefit someone directly. You just have
Speaker 1: to decide whether or not it even looks like the
Speaker 1: group that applies can do what they say they're going
Speaker 1: to do. That alone is really hard to do. Oh, sure,
Speaker 1: it's a very specialized job. And should we really trust
Speaker 1: to the general public with making that decision. Yeah, that's
Speaker 1: another crowdfunding thing is that can Let's say that I
Speaker 1: I see something on there about you know, belly Bob's
Speaker 1: Cold Fusion Emporium, and and that's some guy who's talking about,
Speaker 1: you know, with a couple of beer cans and some
Speaker 1: good old American ingenuity, is going to make a cold
Speaker 1: fusion reactor elbow grease, yeah, headlight fluid. You. I sit
Speaker 1: there and think, um, I you know, I don't. I
Speaker 1: don't have expertise in this field, so maybe I shouldn't
Speaker 1: just leap in and assume this person knows what they're
Speaker 1: talking about. Well, the same is actually true for people
Speaker 1: who are responsible for granting actual like government grants, private
Speaker 1: foundation grants. They have to be able to evaluate these things.
Speaker 1: Not all of them have a background in science necessarily,
Speaker 1: so that's a challenge. And according to Scientific American, back
Speaker 1: in two thousand nine, Canada spent forty million dollars just
Speaker 1: on determining how to award grant money. Forty million dollars,
Speaker 1: And in fact, they pointed out that it would have
Speaker 1: been less expensive if they had just given every single
Speaker 1: applicant that had sent in a grant application the average
Speaker 1: amount that was granted. So keep in mind some of
Speaker 1: the grants were smaller, simple grants were larger, but the
Speaker 1: average amount was thirty thousand dollars Canadian. So if they
Speaker 1: had instead of evaluating all of these grant applications, just
Speaker 1: given everyone money, Congratulations, you sent in an application, here's
Speaker 1: your thirty thousand dollars, that would have been less expensive
Speaker 1: than the amount of money they spent evaluating those applications
Speaker 1: and then sending out the grants. So that just shows
Speaker 1: you that, you know, in order to do good science,
Speaker 1: whether you're thinking about it from a a scientific approach
Speaker 1: or a funding approach, it's not a simple you know, yes,
Speaker 1: no switch. You have to really look at and evaluate
Speaker 1: this stuff. And uh, and that's why you know, it's
Speaker 1: it's a complicated issue. Um. But one other method that
Speaker 1: was mentioned in that Scientific American article was you could
Speaker 1: use a lottery system where you have a certain pool
Speaker 1: of money and that's all all there is, and you
Speaker 1: figured out what the grant is going to be for
Speaker 1: any one grant and then essentially they draw lots and
Speaker 1: then uh, whichever projects get the winning lots get funded.
Speaker 1: And that means like there's no evaluation whatsoever. So you
Speaker 1: could have you can you can have a whole bunch
Speaker 1: of billy bobs out there, or you could have have
Speaker 1: a whole bunch of you know, life saving drug research.
Speaker 1: You never know. So there it seems to come down
Speaker 1: to a question of what's more important, fairness or funding
Speaker 1: good science exactly? And see this the thing is that
Speaker 1: there's not an easy answer for this. Oh sure, And
Speaker 1: and at that point, maybe crowdfunding is the best option
Speaker 1: if you if you put it out to a crowd
Speaker 1: of hopefully increasingly educated people and and say, hey, um,
Speaker 1: we want you to be informed about where your money
Speaker 1: is going, because the public is paying for this one
Speaker 1: way or another. I mean in our taxes, in the
Speaker 1: products that we buy, in the donations that we make,
Speaker 1: And so wouldn't it be better overall to have us
Speaker 1: all making our own educated decisions. I think. I think
Speaker 1: the bigger that audience gets, the better off we are, because,
Speaker 1: like you say, Lauren, that gives the opportunity for people
Speaker 1: who are knowledgeable in the field to weigh in one
Speaker 1: way or the other. And that may not necessarily sway everybody,
Speaker 1: but it gives me more comfort. Like when I start
Speaker 1: reading into scientific discussions, I like going to different forums
Speaker 1: where there are various experts who engage in debate or
Speaker 1: discussion about the topic, because it lets me learn a
Speaker 1: lot more about it than just reading scientific papers um,
Speaker 1: which you know, some I find really accessible and some
Speaker 1: I don't. So being able to kind of jump into
Speaker 1: a community like that, I think is very helpful. I
Speaker 1: think crowdfunding overall is uh an interesting approach. Obviously, it's
Speaker 1: not gonna work for everything, so there's some scientific research
Speaker 1: that's going to be well beyond the scope of any
Speaker 1: crowdfunded approach, although you can maybe offset some of it.
Speaker 1: But I find it pretty positive out overall. I mean,
Speaker 1: for one thing, it gets people excited about science, and
Speaker 1: that to me is really cool. Well, I guess that
Speaker 1: wraps up this discussion about where the money for science
Speaker 1: comes from. If you guys have any suggestions for topics
Speaker 1: that we've covered, or you know you want you want
Speaker 1: to weigh in on this topic, or you want to
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