Slashdot Mirror
Crowdsourcing HIV Research
biolgeek writes "In recent years, HIV has been managed with a collection of therapies. However, the virus will likely evolve around these drugs, making it crucially important to get a better understanding of the virus itself. An important step in understanding the virus is to get a handle on its genetic blueprint. William Dampier of Drexler University is taking a novel approach to this research by crowdsourcing his problem. He is hosting a bioinformatics competition, which requires contestants to find markers in the HIV sequence that predict a change in the severity of the infection (as measured by viral load). So far the best entry comes from Fontanelles, an HIV research group, which has been able to predict a change in viral load with 66% accuracy."
If you crowdsource AIDS Research/Treatment, you'll find that upwards of 50% of treatments will be complete crackpottery/homoeothermy/witch doctors, 45% of finds will be from religious groups/AIDS denialists, and the remaining 5% will be paid astroturfing from pharmaceutical companies. A vanishingly small percentage of suggestions will be from actual medical researchers.
The internet is a cesspool of misinformation, junk and lies. Sorry but that's just the way it is. If you give everyone on earth their own personal, worldwide soapbox, don't expect quality content on average. I'm not saying there isn't quality information out there. I'm just saying that it is very, very difficult to find without trustworthy quality control, or which there is precisely none whatsoever at this point in time.
Sure we can talk about a "marketplace of ideas", but as anyone with three brain cells and the attention span of a goldfish can attest, marketplaces are neither rational, efficient or likely to work without moderating forces. Left to the crowds in their clouds, the HIV virus is going to remain even more inscrutable than if it was just left to professional researchers. People will turn up so many loose ends and red herrings that the whole enterprise will be a giant waste of time.
May the Maths Be with you!
Isn't this what caused so many people to come down with it in the first place? Brac Apartments