[vadman]

"The problem is, crowd funding requires a significant investment of time, which might be applied more productively to research."

So they can't arrange for a capable student to take care of that as part of a work-study program? WTH. Perhaps I'm underestimating the amount of work involved, but it's not like they need to have contributor tiers with silly T-shirts.

[api]

Try to crowd fund this and you'll bring out hordes and hordes of Skeptic Movement Skeptics who will scream "con man!" and "pseudoscience!" and do everything they can to sabotage the campaign. Kickstarter would probably start getting e-mail campaign letters to de-list his account for fraud, etc.

You see, he needs more money to try to boost the signal and further test the effect. But since the effect is novel and controversial, attempting to raise such money means he's a con man and invites comparisons to that e-Cat dude from Bologna.

If I were him I would avoid publicity outside the scientific community simply to avoid the character assassination. I'd work with interested other scientists and publish in obscure journals until I could either find the flaw my measurements or generate data so unambiguous that it overcomes the howling.

[adrianN]

I think that would depend on how it is marketed. If they clearly state that it's a novel effect and that it's really likely that it will turn out to be a measurement error, then nobody can accuse them of being dishonest.

[blacksmith_tb]

Have other crowdfunded scientific projects had this problem? It's easier to see why people might unleash a lot of criticism at projects that might receive federal funding, but wouldn't the critics just... not back a crowdfunded test of Woodward's work?

[aperrien]

Because, unfortunately, some people are just jerks, and will troll for the luz.