Decentralizing Academic research is something that's been stuck in my head ever since I left a research lab I was working in a couple years ago. Like, everything about it is fucked:
From the graduate student perspective:
- You work crazy hours, for little pay, and no respect
- If you have a crazy good idea, your advisor gets the credit and the the University takes the IP
- little to no job prospects after graduating, normally is debt
From the faculty perspective:
- Has to give the University a large cut of grant $$ and first dibs on IP
- Has to spend time teaching, managing, finding $$ instead of conducting research
Overlaying all this BS are the perverse incentives of government funded research which:
- incentivizes back-stabbing, credit-grabbing
- disincentivizes collaboration, counter-cultural theories
I think there's a P2P way to fund research, leveraging #Nostr and #Bitcoin. Imagine the flow:
- Researcher submits proposal, including deliverables, timeline, funding needs
- Enthusiasts crowd-source via zaps, npubs who support are linked to any deliverables from the research, increasing reputation
- Research results are disseminated to a P2P peer review process, where researchers can offer btc for quality reviews (judged by impartial(ish) LLM judges, or current experts) in a double-blind contract
- Once peer-reviewed, peers who reviewed the results are also cryptographically linked to the paper, with their compensation visible, directly linking the reviewers credibility to the quality of their review/the research results
IDK or something like that.
Cheers, plebs.