

Crowd-funded HIV vaccine project sparks debate - feelthepain
http://www.nature.com/news/crowd-funded-hiv-vaccine-project-sparks-debate-1.14675

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frisco
Just to clarify, I followed up "you can have people who are bad at science but
are good at fundraising in public," with "and you can have people with very
good science who are bad at fundraising," and I think you probably have a lot
more of the latter than the former, which I perceive as the larger injustice.
I didn't mean to come across as a downer on the project. I was clear to point
out that I know very little about the team behind the Immunity Project and
definitely wasn't in a position to evaluate the quality of their science; I
was speaking very generally. Even if these projects are unsuccessful, anything
that gets the public excited about science is probably a good thing, as long
as high-profile failures (which are inevitable; welcome to biology) don't lead
to a backlash and general burnout.

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dnautics
"you can have people who are bad at science but are good at fundraising in
public,"

You can also have people who are bad at science and are good at obtaining NIH
grants. In my professional opinion, this characterizes a LOT of researchers
out there. Which is the greater injustice?

Dis?claimer: I happen to think that I'm good at science and indeed I failed at
a crowdfunding attempt.

~~~
jostmey
Agreed! I was following closely to your efforts to see what happened with
"[http://www.indysci.org/"](http://www.indysci.org/"). I hope your fundraising
efforts turn out well in the future.

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dnautics
I think this is a total hit piece.

"They’re preying on people who are desperate for a vaccine,"

As a contributor (and a scientist) - I don't feel like I've been preyed upon,
at all.

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nickthemagicman
This is the way science should be funded.

Imagine if the pace of medical research moved at the pace of javascript
frameworks.

We would all be fucking immortal. There would probably be some mutants though.
But you gotta crack some eggs.

~~~
Fomite
"Fail fast, fail often" is less of a good thing when it's actual people's
lives.

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jseliger
_" Fail fast, fail often" is less of a good thing when it's actual people's
lives._

It depends. A lot of people are already losing their lives through inaction.

This is slightly tangential, Alex Tabarrok's book _Launching the Innovation
Renaissance_ is good on the subject of FDA inertia and spending too much time
trying to prove efficacy and too little emphasis on experimentation and rapid
iteration: [http://www.amazon.com/Launching-Innovation-Renaissance-
Marke...](http://www.amazon.com/Launching-Innovation-Renaissance-Market-
ebook/dp/B006C1HX24?ie=UTF8&tag=thstsst-20&linkCode=as2&camp=1789&creative=390957)
.

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TrainedMonkey
Sometimes when it sounds too good to be true... Are there any real researches
behind this project?

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reidrubsamen
Thanks for your comments! We have a great team with a lot of experience in
computer science, drug delivery and HIV-relevant lab immunology. I studied
biochemistry and computer science at UC Berkeley - then going to Stanford for
an MD and MS in Computer Science - was in the PhD program in course 6-2 at MIT
- left (without getting the PhD) to start Aradigm in Hayward where I worked
for 10 years on inhaled insulin.

That was a complex project that required a lot of special technology, much of
which we developed ourselves, to make and characterize micro-particles.

CV Herst, Pete Lloyd and I (all part of the Aradigm founding team) have been
working together at Immunity Project since the beginning - Pete is an ME (UC
Berkeley and Davis) who built and operates our precision spray drying system
for sphere manufacturing. CV got his MPH at Berkeley in Med Micro and his PhD
from North Western in Mo Bio later doing a post doc at MD Anderson. He has
extensive experience working with HIV in both the diagnostic and lab research
setting requiring handling the virus in cell culture.

~~~
TrainedMonkey
That gives me a measure of confidence. Thanks!

