Imagine if we have two things:
1. public research labs such as the BioCurious in many cities
2. free software system for uploading pictures, data, etc. from experiments
Then, a situation such as this can be possible:
- person A starts an experiment on day 1
- person B comes to the same lab, looks up what remains to be done for the experiment and performs the remaining steps on day 2
- person A comes back and uploads pictures of the results, e.g. gels, plates
- person C, located across the world, sees the pictures, analyzes them, and uploads the analyzed data
- person D, watching the experiment from some other location, makes some insightful observations
- and for the sake of practical benefits, persons A-D, having demonstrated their caliber, get recruited to an excellent university/company.
1. public research labs such as the BioCurious in many cities
2. free software system for uploading pictures, data, etc. from experiments
Then, a situation such as this can be possible:
- person A starts an experiment on day 1
- person B comes to the same lab, looks up what remains to be done for the experiment and performs the remaining steps on day 2
- person A comes back and uploads pictures of the results, e.g. gels, plates
- person C, located across the world, sees the pictures, analyzes them, and uploads the analyzed data
- person D, watching the experiment from some other location, makes some insightful observations
- and for the sake of practical benefits, persons A-D, having demonstrated their caliber, get recruited to an excellent university/company.
Crowdsourced design for biological molecules (EteRNA, Foldit, etc), along with cheap synthesis costs could make this more feasible.
ReplyDeletePerhaps it may be the case that in the presence of extremely fine-grained and well documented experimental protocol, the benefits of being decentralized would allow for a more stable and wealthier research infrastructure?
What percentage of expert labor and time can be had by live professionals at marginal cost? If the bandwidth and UI is done well, the sky's the limit.