Decentralised Science Isn't Just Possible—It's Almost Here

Science has problems. Many scientific studies make outrageous and hard-to-digest claims day in and day out. Silent, not deadly; how farts cure diseases, a glass of red wine is equivalent to an hour at the gym and everything we eat both causes and prevents cancer are examples of problematic science. 

There is a growing concern that many, if not the vast majority of published results, may be partially or entirely false and that they are rarely compared to rapidly expanding research output. Besides, replications are limited to small scales due to limited professional incentives.

In 2018, Valentin Danchev, an alumnus of the University of Chicago, released a paper in which he concluded that centralised scientific communities were less likely to generate replicable results. He argued that centralised, overlapping scientific collaborations weaken our collective understanding because they spread ideas that are less likely to be independently verified, even when generally accepted. 

Blockchain can bring decentralisation, improve the essential practices in science and provide a fair mechanism to incentivise professionals. Blockchain technology can also ensure transparency and make scientific findings available to the general public.

DeSci can fix centralised science

DeSci or decentralised science, is a movement to improve science using Web3 tech and tools. It seeks to establish a scientific system more democratic and equal. DeSci enables a more decentralised and distributed model of scientific research, strengthening its resistance to censorship and government regulation. By decentralising access to money, scientific resources, and communication channels, DeSci aims to foster an atmosphere conducive to the development of novel and innovative ideas. 

The goal is to make science more open, collaborative and accountable.  

How to solve other problems

In 2016, Vox conducted a surveyon the challenges of the scientific community. The survey, in which 270 scientists participated, found that lack of funds, poorly designed studies, reproducibility crisis and broken peer review, among others, were some of the challenges scientists faced. 

DeSci solves the problem of funding for scientists. Instead of applying for grants from funding bodies, a decentralised community crowdsources the funds for research. They also own any value produced, not research institutions or companies.

Replicability and reproducibility are the foundations of quality scientific discovery, which can be ensured using new Web3-native technologies. These tools enable academics to test high-quality science. In a consensus system, each analytical component — raw data, computational engine, and application result — can be attested to. Then, it would be up to this system to replicate the calculation and verify each output. 

In conventional science, the ownership of digital assets like scientific data or articles is a major issue. Web3 uses NFTs to do this, and they do it incredibly well. 

NFTs can make it possible to guarantee that the original authors of digital assets receive a share of the proceeds from subsequent sales. Similarly, transparent value attribution chains can be used to pay researchers, authorities, or even the individuals whose data is being collected. As a result, the benefits and value in the digital economy would be distributed more fairly. 

DAOs that are changing science

In the biotech space, DAOs are taking a novel approach to organise and incentivise collaborative research. Experts believe that by enabling new methods of optimising collaboration, talent, and capital allocation, they have the potential to break Eroom's law (drug discovery becoming slower and more expensive over time). 

There are other famous DAOs in the medical space. VitaDAO is democratising longevity research by utilising a crowd-sourced funding model for early-stage research projects. For example, it aided a group of Danish researchers in raising funds to repurpose existing drugs as anti-ageing medications. Opscientia, another science DAO, is establishing a network of knowledge foundries. It brings citizen science communities together while also providing a framework for incentivising their contributions to collaborative research. 

Right questions will give birth to new discoveries

When money is scarce, scientists frequently forgo riskier but more radical ideas in favour of safe, dependable research or even pseudoscience.  Martin Cooper, an engineer and a pioneer in the wireless communication industry, was heading a project at Motorola in the 1970s, where he was developing the new-age car phones. During that time, he came up with a question — when we call a person, why do we always call a particular place instead of a person?  

In 1973, Motorola became the first company to launch a mobile phone.

French philosopher Claude Lévi-Strauss once said: "The scientist is not a person who gives the right answers, he is one who asks the right questions."

---

Fundamentally, the article argued that DeSci or decentralised science using web 3 tech and tools is the way forward as it is based on the distributed and decentralised model of science which makes it resistant to censorship, government regulations, and ownership conflict.  Other challenges like obtaining funding are another major obstacle facing the conventional scientific community, along with limiting information. Researchers have also been known to give up on potentially revolutionary projects due to traditional grant systems being too strict, leading to the destruction of potentially revolutionary ideas. In my opinion, DeSci does solve many of these conventional science challenges, for example, the ownership problem is taken care of by de-platforming and passing shares from subsequent sales by removing gatekeepers. In other words, on Web3 everything you do will be owned by you, not by any platform claiming to be your guardian angel that in turn bring benefit to your wallet without any middlemen involved. Moreover, decentralised science aims to create a system where scientific papers are distributed and trusted without the need for traditional publisher gatekeepers, so peer-review is more transparent and streamlined. Additionally, to advance scientific development, decentralised autonomous organisations (DAOs) leverage the power of the community.

Despite all the likely possibilities that might open for us, there are certain things that we should be careful about how the review process will work under such a decentralised system. For example, if someone shares a research study and in absence of any scrutiny what will happen if something ends up wrong? Similarly, the patent system in conventional science is granted to an organisation after a huge investment of time and resources, and one wonders how it would be handled since decentralised science should be devoid of regulations. Consider a cancer drug that claims to cure the disease, how are we going to regulate it when deregulation is a sacred principle? Finally, if you fail in DeSci then the entire architecture will collapse, so it is best of everyone’s interest to answer these questions before making any conclusions. So, to conclude, the DeSci does bring new funding opportunities, higher credibility, more democratised access to resources, and nurtures collaborations and innovation which outwait the benefits of modern scientific research.

---