[pedrobeltrao]

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 ?