Euny Hong, who wondered if crowd-funding could support a new generation of independent researchers, says she overlooked the importance of salesmanship:
I realized after reading some of [pharmacologist Ethan] Perlstein’s ongoing experiment updates that the open-source analogy is not totally applicable. His way of wording and framing his work is so clever that he can be described as more of an ad man. It occurs to me that a scientist not blessed with the gift of the gab would probably not make it as an independent scientist. … Everything is worded so that even non-scientists like me can not only understand, but find the whole thing engrossing, like his dangling the term “Mystery Psych Drug X.” Why withhold the name? To create suspense, Perlstein says. It’s working.
A reasonable point. Better get with it, Journal of Basic Microbiology:
]]>