Crowdsourced research
During the past weekend, during a dinner at our house, conversation shifted to how crowdsourced research is helping tackle some of the problems. The traditional research revolves faculty and others in a research group training the students in research methods as well as relationship building with the members of the research group. Implicit in all of this is that when the student researchers brings the results to the faculty, the familiarity of the methodologies as well as trust makes this relationship produce excellent results. Similarly, research collaborations happen between faculty from different areas within the same institution or from others based on common interests, familiarity and trust. Again, familiarity and trust are the basic foundations for the success of research. Of course, this is, like everything else, a gross generalization, but it captures what happens today.
Crowdsourcing of research simply means putting out a research problem out there on the internet and inviting anyone who wants to participate to contribute to the research. There is a lot more to this in that the researcher needs to define up front the process for vetting the contributions and attributions and all that jazz. But the idea, when it works, is brilliant. Instead of a few students or postdocs working in a lab, you now have literally thousands of participants from all over the world. The kinds of research one can carry out this way is certainly limited, but, it is still very powerful!