Can Medicine Be Crowd-Sourced?
Last month, computer gamers working from home redesigned an enzyme. Last year, a gene-testing company used its customers to find mutations that increase or decrease the risk of Parkinson’s disease.
More from Matt Ridley in the Wall Street Journal.
This is fascinating! I’d always thought that as an amateur I had little to contribute to these discussions. This is a great example of what a few dedicated, inteligent people can achieve.
Crowd-sourcing works for so many other things, so why not.
My brother actually participates in a similar crowd-sourcing system. Whenever he lets his personal computer go to sleep, he has enabled access from SETI (Search for Extraterrestrial Life) so that they can borrow his computer’s processing power to crunch data. It’s a unique type of crowd-sourcing because it doesn’t even require the individuals themselves – only their assets.
I’d never heard the term crowd-sourcing before – what an interesting idea. I do have a hard time believing that these “computer gamers” did this project spontaneously as the article suggests. Surely they must have had something of a background in the subject.
Research has demonstrated the wisdom of crowds. Surveying a crowd yields a bell-shaped curve that approximates the actual answer whether people are guessing age or the weight of a cow. Crowd sourcing medicine harnesses some of this power but also enjoys advantage of large populations from which to sample. For instance, say your doctor gives you a new prescription and you aren’t sure what the side-effects are. The small font disclosure lists numerous effects that could be due to chance. Crowd-sourcing websites share the actual experience of (potentially) thousands of people.