If Crypto was used for research

To those that have known me for a while now, you may already know that I’m a chemist by profession and by study. My life is research and will probably be until who knows when 😅 This is not written as a rant but it’s just a what-if.

Anyways, after reading @CryptoMax 's article (which you can read here: https://read.cash/@CryptoMax/the-system-is-rotten-do-something-about-it-f2e84b7a#comment-74cd317c) I really got to thinking of what the research field would be like if it were to be fueled by crypto. Quite a far-fetched vision right now, yes but I couldn't help but think how it would really benefit so many researchers, especially here in my country. 

You see, researchers here are so undervalued. The only reason there are still researchers who stay here is that they either want to make a change in the country, or they’re on the industry and the government’s side. The rest honestly aim to leave the country so they can continue their research. Let’s face it, the government organizations established to help researchers and the science sectors aren’t doing a very good job at it. The most recent and most expensive equipment I’ve seen them get was the one used for the development of the covid vaccines but aside from that, nothing followed. It makes you think that unless there was a pandemic, the government probably wouldn’t even bother getting more and better equipment. 

This is not an exaggeration. In most government testing labs, it takes forever to request good equipment. And if we do get new equipment, it will come in small quantities. There’s a lack of understanding of how fundamental the research sector is to every sector of society, like in the food sector, if we falsely pass failed products, there would be an outbreak of either food poisoning or something, In construction, if we approve the usage of a certain brand of cement even if it doesn’t meet standards, you’ll be ridden with guilt over the number of deaths you caused because you approved a substandard material. A lot of lives will be affected with one just falsified product report. 

Researchers here try to create makeshift instruments and equipment just to cope up with the things we don’t have. These makeshift equipment work and they are reproducible yet what we always lack is the funding to further have the equipment validated by other laboratories. It’s easy to say that we can approach the science sector the gov established but getting the funds for it might result in having your research stolen. We’ve seen a few stolen research that was used by the gov, some were sold off and the rest just end up on a shelf, gathering dust. And in the rare case that they do agree to fund your research, you’d have to have really exceptional research like some amazing cancer detection kit that can trace cell abnormality even on the Femto scale. But what about individual researchers that just want to make a difference? It’s near impossible to get any sort of funding. 

But what if research funding was done with crypto instead of the taxes you pay the gov? It would be more transparent, the masses could have a say in what projects and research should and should not be given a chance. For a timely example, the covid vaccines. If the mass only knew how limited the gov provided funds were for all the trials they would need to test its effectiveness, a number of us would have donated or invested already. The transparency researchers would get for the funding will be rewarded with transparency on the project or research’s end because research has always been transparent with reporting its findings. 

Yes, the idea could potentially abolish the science sector of my country’s gov system but in return, the research sector could eventually be censor-free. That’s also one thing we face with the gov: They censor out a lot of important facts and information. But if crypto became a major driving force with research though, the research field would be censor-free and maybe it would advance and could be on par with those of other countries. 

How could I say this? Because I have seen so much good research in these research symposiums we attend every few months (pre-pandemic, and they are hosted by private companies, universities, and private research facilities), and I have seen so much potentially good and profitable research go to waste because they couldn’t get the funding it deserves. 

It also made me think that the masses here aren’t that undereducated so advertising what your research can do to the masses in order to get support wouldn’t be such a bad idea, especially the green-researchers that I’m part of (although my specialization is nanomaterials, my materials are usually waste materials). The masses might actually support the research more than the gov ever will because research, solutions, and progress isn’t their goal, their goal is to get a fraction of the people’s taxes to themselves (I’m not saying it’s all of them, but the corruption history in my country is just ridiculous, so is the lack of transparency with the funds). 

I should stop myself before I take this further but even on a surface level, this is the research side here. This is my reality and will probably continue to be until I either leave the country or until some sort of change comes and they find better ways to gather funding. Anyways, these are just my thoughts and wishes for the research sector.