Crowdfunded research into how amphetamines work | Hacker News Reader

Crowdfunded research into how amphetamines work

rockethub.com

72 pointsbmahmood39 comments

Maybe it's just me, but looking at molecular accumulation in this way doesn't seem that promising. However, there are other problems here...

In order to get this kind of research funded in a traditional way, the author would need a much more detailed explanation of the work: specifically, a compelling and well-referenced account of why drug accumulation in mouse brain sections will be helpful in understanding the mechanism of stimulant function. I would also like to see more detailed methodology and an account of how the researcher will responsibly conduct the research (in terms of accounting for hazardous materials and maintaining researcher safety). These are essential components that any PI would need to provide in order to get research funded, because they are necessary to ensure that the researcher can actually conduct the research (has the knowledge and resources), and get it published (missing some of these features would prevent publication in an academic journal).

It seems to me that other kinds of analysis, such as molecular state-space based approaches (transcriptomics, metabolomics, etc.) would be much more useful than cellular and sub-cellular accumulation, especially since we have very little knowledge of how spatial tissue, cellular, and sub-cellular neurobiology relate to brain function.

Please let me know if I just missed these essential details...

A lot of the information that you are curious about can be found in Ethan Perlstein's website.

After reading a bit more about this, it seems that they are an established lab with protocols in line for the questions you asked about. The PI's last publication (http://www.plosone.org/article/info%3Adoi%2F10.1371%2Fjourna...) states that they are affiliated with Princeton, so dealing with hazardous materials etc are dealt with Princeton's Environmental health and safety dept. The same applies to animals, radioactive materials etc.

It looks like a lot of the details of the experiment are purposely left out of the application as they are looking to appeal to the general public and I think that is a smart thing to do. Putting details into the application would make people's eyes glaze over, so keeping it simple was the correct way to go.

From my understanding of their proposal, they are looking to do something quite common in neuroscience research. While I personally haven't done autoradiography, I know people who have and it is a commonly(although not much now) technique that has been used numerous times. To do this as a new lab, without university support would be dangerous, unethical and worrisome, but it seems clear this lab is already established.

What they propose seems to be an initial step in a nice project that could lead to something useful. Doing the anatomy (they are basically trying to see where the drug binds within the brain first) and then the molecular techniques makes sense and I wish more labs did stuff like this. As a neuroscientist, I applaud their going outside of the system and I'm happy to see that they will share their data with everyone.

I'm not sure that leaving details out of the proposal is really that smart. It seems like we're doing the public a disservice by excluding them from the kind of information traditional funding sources use to make allocation decisions, because it reduces the basis for making funding decisions on all proposed research to oversimplified descriptions, while providing no insight into traditional research funding.

In other words, people can get duped into funding research that is not as well founded as this one (supposedly), and we pass over a key opportunity to teach the public how organizations like the NIH make funding decisions. Maybe if people had an idea about how rigorously funding proposals are analyzed they would be less likely to cut science funding because of inane arguments like Sarah Palin made about public funding to study fruit flies.

NIH has recently changed how they deal with grants. They are asking for less methodology information and more of the conceptual info. I support that, especially since most of the methods will be modified throughout the experiment and commonly read over anyway. This is one step above that. The concept and end result is the important portion for people to get interested in the project. Those who are in the field know what autoradiography is and how it is done and the investor who is interested in the outcome isn't going to understand/care. If you have limited space to pitch an idea, are you going to spend more time explaining the idea and why it’s awesome, or the intricate details as to how you are going to do it? You talk about the idea and why it’s awesome, if someone is interested in knowing how, they ask. In regards to Sarah Palin’s inane arguments, I agree/disagree. There is some amazing science going on, and some realllllly shitty science going on, both of which are federally funded. This is a huge topic (also one of the main focuses of my YC application) and I don’t know if the details of this proposal, or proposals like this are the venue to really get at those issues. However, I do understand your point and I think it is valid, just in a different venue.

I made a $100 contribution (which gets the "talk science over a round of beer" reward) earlier this month. The researcher, Ethan Perlstein, is actually in the Bay Area at the moment... he reached out to me and we're having beers in Palo Alto this afternoon. If you've contributed to the project and are in Palo Alto feel free to join us for a chat / beers in the Science Exchange office (459 Hamilton Ave).

I'm going to kick in. I'm willing to spend some money just to help prove that croudfunded science can work. I understand why some are asking if this is the exactly correct study to do, but I'm not worried. A) I'm willing to trust the guy for $50, and B) once the market is established, competition will drive up study quality.

But Science is crowd funded by taxes, no?

Some of it is funded by taxes. So are some businesses, and some art. That's all indirect support. Crowdfunding is direct support. Kickstarter has show that can work for businesses and art.

Title is a bit sensationalist don't you think? It's at least under the guise of research.

Apologies, but that's the general headline the researcher is using to raise awareness for the initiative.

Is it?

The title was "Crowdfund a Meth Lab" but it has been changed.

Sorry, not sure why the title changed. Was originally 'Crowd Fund a Meth Lab', as noted in other media outlets.

Thanks to everyone for all the thoughtful discussions!

And thanks to Bilal for starting this thread.

If anyone would like to discuss our project in greater detail, please email me: eperlste@princeton.edu.

P.S. traffic from here to RocketHub resulted in 999 project video plays, which is 40-times the previous day's total, and 3-times greater than the previous daily high.

-Ethan

Really like the potential in crowdfunding of science as a way to get more people interested in science. Would be interesting to see rewards tailored for aspiring scientists. This research-topic is probably too controversial to directly associate with high school and younger students but letting them sponsor research projects in exchange for a lab tour / tutorial would be an interesting way to get young people more interested in research.

I don't get it. All of these people on the project would typically have amounts of money for research on whatever they want to do. Why do they need more money? I guess I am missing the point. I've heard of a bunch professors from friends that have huge research funds. They can even give portions of their research grants to students.

As an ex-academic type, your statement is both true and false. Some professors have large research grants, and indeed, their grants are what pay the salaries of grad students and post-docs.

Other professors (the vast majority) struggle to get appropriate funding. It's a horrible rat race to scrounge up enough money to continue your research. God forbid if you aren't tenured - your job literally depends on how much funding you can bring in (not enough papers = not enough funding = sacked for someone else).

That said, $25k is laughably small amount of money in research. At my old lab, I performed an experiment where I was easily blowing $1000 per week. And I was just a single technician in a lab. Hell, I spent more in supplies than I was paid in salary (probably by some multiple).

I agree about the $25K part. I fail to see how they plan to achieve anything when a single vial of ultra purified drug API or even dendrimer will see you back a few thousand dollars.

I mean their intentions are great but I get the feeling they're yet to experience the crushing and pessimistic realities of scientific and especially pharmaceutical/neurobiological research. It's a depressign world for us sometimes.

Edit: In review, I would be very interested to read about how they were given permission to experiment on mice. Filling out the paperwork just to get ethical approval alone is a daunting task.

$25k for a single experiment is possible. I've applied to the national science foundation for a single experiment and my budget (along with funds for me to present the data at a conference (~$1500) was around $12k as we had most of the stuff I needed already. This lab is already established, they just need some extra funds to run this specific experiment (from what I've read).

Re: mouse work. I'm assuming they already have the facilities to run these experiments...especially at Princeton. If they don't, I'm sure a neighboring lab has the mice/protocols to run this experiment and they will/can cola berate. They write up an IACUC protocol, go through a few bouts of revisions and they should be able to run the experiment. This would be a simple protocol as they are just injecting mice with the drug, this isn't out of the ordinary by any means.

I just got a group leader position in the UK (currently a postdoc in the bayarea) and I am paying some attention to these experiments in crowdfunding for academic projects. In almost all group leader or faculty position, the research budget is covered by applying for grants. These are very competitive with typical rejection rates of 90%. This is an interesting alternative but there are many caveats. As someone has already noted in one of the comments, you would typically need to write a scientifically grounded proposal. One fear of crowdsourcing for science would be that many "unreasonable" or pseudo-science projects might attract funding if they are popular. This is slightly less of a concern with for-profit projects since popularity needed for the crowdsourcing might be correlated with financial success. The same is not true at all for academic success. The other issue that has already been hinted at is that the required funds are probably too high. A good grant might bring in on the order of 1 million so is it worth more fighting to improve your social networking and fundraising skills or getting more grants submitted ?

Why? There is already a pretty thorough understanding of how amphetamines work (as compared to other psychoactive substances) because they've been used by militaries around the world forever. Oh and baseball teams.

For more information on the researcher's discipline, you can check out this neat video on 'Evolutionary Pharmacology': http://vimeo.com/44687770

They should get Walter White to show them how to cook blue meth.

I liked the old title better...

> How will we spend your money?

on lawyers

Amphetiamines are used by the military to keep pilots awake and has a plenty of other legal uses. Methamphetiamine, for example, is prescribed by doctors to treat ADHD in low doses.

What exactly is illegal about researching the effects of the drug on the brain?

The usual difficultly in studying this stuff is finding funding.

Either you live in a country with much more liberal drug laws than the UK or US, or you are a bit misinformed. These countries have very strict regulations on who can possess quantities of scheduled narcotics, even for research. It took nearly a decade to get regulatory approval to schedule a MDMA research study in the U.S. It's hard to find source on this stuff, but you can see as noted here: http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn22280-a-real-fmri-high...

MDMA is not used clinically like Amphetamines are.

You can find amphetamines at pharmacies in the USA under the brands: Adderall, Dexedrine, Dextrostat, Desoxyn, Didrex, ProCentra, and Vyvanse.

In addition, the article doesn't say they are specifically going to use Meth, only amphetamine.

Exactly. Desoxyn is brand name for dextro-methamphetamine, the CNS-active stereo isomer. Levo-methamphetamine is found in those little Vicks nasal inhalers you stuff in each nostril to clear your sinuses.

MDMA still has limited clinical use and is under research, as is LSD but it is under quite tight controls.

http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/02791072.2008.104...

http://psycnet.apa.org/psycinfo/1987-01824-001

MDMA is Schedule I and amphetamines are Schedule II in the US. There's a pretty big difference (legally) between those two classifications.

Marijuana is also Schedule I

Yes, it sure is.

>What exactly is illegal about researching the effects of the drug on the brain?

Unless you dot all your i's and cross all your t's, you'll end up ending with illegal precursor substances in your possession. Synthetic drugs are one of the most serious causes of death in the club scene, stuff like 5MAOI-MIPT, 2CI etc.

For the record, the air force has switch from amphetamines to modafinil and yes, it is adderral for "ADHD"

Catchy title, great project.

Clicked for the title, stayed for the project write up.

That's pretty awesome! Citizen Science here we come!

Citizen science is one of the goals of my YC application :) It will be here soon.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com