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Comment by teruakohatu | Hacker News Reader

> ResearchCoin was included because it allows our community to create a dynamic system for rewarding open scientific publishing/discussion that can change over time. In addition, the ResearchHub DAO to allows scientists to help govern how rewards are distributed. The admittedly quite lofty goal is to create a democratic and evidence-based incentive structure for science.

I really don't understand how it helps research, can you please elaborate.

Do you mean researchers get paid in a coin, which they can sell, which will fund further research? If the coins became super valuable wouldn't this simply do the opposite: incentivize cheap/easy papers about popular/meme subjects in order to get upvotes?

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The way coins are awarded to posts can change over time via a democratic process facilitated by a DAO. In theory, this could create the infrastructure for the scientific community to self-govern how their work is assessed and rewarded.

Perhaps a 1-10 peer review rating would provide a better signal than upvotes? Or maybe basic research deserves 1.5x rewards because it helps to fertilize the landscape of translational research.

If the community wants to make changes to Researchhub's incentives, we will be able to iterate over time until we find a formula that properly encourages the behaviors that benefit science the most.

To speak to your example - if the v1 incentive structure encourages cheap/easy/meme science, we would be able to recognize this and make improvements to hopefully achieve better results.

This is an improvement over the current static system which values bibliometrics because it has the ability to adapt and improve over time.

Thank you for your answers. Best of luck.

> for the scientific community to self-govern how their work is assessed and rewarded.

Doesn't this already happen? Science chose bibliometrics as its God. Making a new God out of crypto and crowdsourcing doesn't feel like it addresses the root concern, which is human bias in the scientific method. It sounds like the system you're divising is just a new way for humans to bungle things with bias (no offense intended). I think you're on to something with trying to develop a new method, but perhaps we should figure out how to remove the bias before involving money and human heuristics?

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