get paid to solve this problem!

December 10, 2006 9:57 AM

Innocentive.com is a place where a bounty is placed upon biology and chemistry problems, and any roving freelance scientist can get paid to offer a solution.
posted by localhuman (6 comments total)

I'd be amazed if they end up paying out any of these bounties to amateurs. Much of the low-hanging fruit in science is gone, and it takes a lot of money to do research these days.
posted by chrisamiller at 10:28 AM on December 10, 2006

chrisamiller: That's BS, my aerosol spooge is already in patent review. Er...sponge? Never mind.

Pretty cool idea, though the amounts offered cannot seemingly come close to the invested time, as chrisamiller notes.
posted by maxwelton at 10:38 AM on December 10, 2006

chrisamiller: I've seen a couple academic presentations on these guys. Very little of the money goes to real amateurs, per se, but lots of it does go to the equivalent of chemical open source hackers- someone who gets paid 9-5 to work on whatever chemistry problem the boss gives him, and then takes a few hours in the evening to work on an Innocentive problem. It is important to note that what they are mostly posing are not Deeply Serious Academic Problems, but rather seeking refinements in academically/intellectually uninteresting problems. Think of them as a replacement/adjunct to in-house industrial R&D, not to serious boundary-pushing Research.

here is a much better, non-pepsi blue article about them. Also, here's an HBS interview with Karim Lakhani, who has done research on them. I find his research fascinating, but I'm weird. :)
posted by louie at 11:09 AM on December 10, 2006

Also, they've been around for 5-6 years now, so they must be doing something right. :)
posted by louie at 11:10 AM on December 10, 2006

"Novel method to resist snack chip breakage during processing and distribution is desired."

Now this is the kind of scientific innovation I await with delerium.
posted by docgonzo at 1:51 PM on December 10, 2006

Heh. It isn't very exciting, but it is the kind of innovation that is probably better solved by 1,000 people spending 5 hours each than 5 people spending 1,000 hours each- exactly the kind of thing innocentive focuses on. And all those little things do add up over time to make the world a better place, even if they aren't very glamorous.
posted by louie at 3:23 PM on December 10, 2006