Gamers Are Credit To Team!
August 5, 2010 10:14 AM   Subscribe

Today's issue of Nature contains a paper with a rather unusual author list. Read past the standard collection of academics, and the final author credited is... the FoldIt multiplayer online gaming community. Even though most of them had no biochemistry experience, the human players of FoldIt turned out to be better at identifying three-dimensional protein structure patterns than the algorithms of Rosetta@Home. (Previously on MeFi)
posted by zarq (12 comments total) 14 users marked this as a favorite
 
Cool stuff, but why do all the posts mentioning this news item have the exact same wording? hm.
posted by slater at 10:15 AM on August 5, 2010 [2 favorites]


FoldIt multiplayer online gaming community : Three-dimensional protein structure patterns :: slater : something fishy
posted by davejay at 10:20 AM on August 5, 2010


Click through to any of them.

Today's issue of Nature contains a paper with a rather unusual author list. Read past the standard collection of academics, and the final author credited is... an online gaming community. Scientists have turned to games for a variety of reasons, having studied virtual epidemics and tracked ... — full article at arstechnica.com

They're linking to the very same Ars Technica article linked in this post, and quoting its first sentence, just as I did.
posted by zarq at 10:22 AM on August 5, 2010 [1 favorite]


Although technically I paraphrased it instead of quoting.
posted by zarq at 10:22 AM on August 5, 2010


Come on MetaFilter, we've got to get ourselves in gear! What major scientific discoveries have we made as a community lately?
posted by Salvor Hardin at 10:28 AM on August 5, 2010


Now if only there was a way to make all those hours of playing Halo benefit society instead of just waste electricity...
posted by Salvor Hardin at 10:29 AM on August 5, 2010


I'm most of the way to getting all the achievements in Plants vs. Zombies. If that doesn't count for something, then what's the point in living?
posted by blue_beetle at 10:44 AM on August 5, 2010


I'm imagining a lot of incongruous resumes:

Employment History:
Retail Manager, The Gap, Edwin Hills Mall, 2005-present

Academic Publications:
Predicting protein structures with a multiplayer online game
Cooper, Khatib et al., Nature 466, 05 Aug. 2010, doi:10.1038/nature09304
posted by gurple at 10:58 AM on August 5, 2010 [11 favorites]


I love it when the hive mind comes good!
posted by Anderson_Localized at 12:57 PM on August 5, 2010


I'm imagining a lot of incongruous resumes:

Don't forget 2006 TIME Person Of The Year.
posted by Evilspork at 5:00 PM on August 5, 2010


I'm proud to say that my children could play all the computer games they wanted (as long as they went to bed at a decent hour, and only after homework was completed).
posted by francesca too at 5:13 PM on August 5, 2010


We used this game as part of the intro bio course I TAed last year. (Well, technically as extra credit.) It's a fun little game, and an interesting concept. I'm glad to see it produced some results.
posted by pemberkins at 7:43 AM on August 6, 2010


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