Foldit Player May Have Created a Useful Protein 144
An anonymous reader writes "The organizers of the game Foldit, where you fold proteins for scientific research, announced that a user has found a protein that may be able to bind influenza viruses. Researchers plan to test the protein in a lab over the next few weeks to see if it might be medically useful."
Re:And who gets the patent for it? (Score:5, Insightful)
Hint: Not the player.
Re:And who gets the patent for it? (Score:5, Insightful)
I guess it's whoever spends the hundreds of millions of dollars to follow up on the infinitesimal chance that this will lead to something useful?
*sigh* (Score:1, Insightful)
If it is a useful protein, the patent will go to whoever owns the lab. The player and discoverer will be quietly shooed away. You'll see a slashdot article titled "foldit player sues lab" in 8 months. Then you'll never hear about it again.
Re:*sigh* (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:*sigh* (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:confusion about problems and symptoms (Score:2, Insightful)
so it's a completely different pool of money[,] asstard.
You're confused about that making any difference at all in a cost-benefit to society way.
To paraphrase you: "You're so stupid. The money doesn't get wasted in this place but in the other one. This is totally ok, you know, because this is a symptom of the way the system is set up, so it must be ok. That said, I'm now going to drag something completely unrelated into the discussion because I'm less interested in finding out what's right than in attacking people who don't share my unquestionable presuppositions."
The difference here probably is that your parent implied it's bad to spend money, i.e. human time and labor investment, on something that doesn't create added value, while you think it's just "frictional" costs in a system that can't be any other way.
Re:And who gets the patent for it? (Score:3, Insightful)
Try comparing R&D expenses to their marketing expenses. R&D doesn't look that expensive anymore.
Re:Pauling and Vitamin C (Score:2, Insightful)
Go look at the literature. Pauling showed that the mechanism virii use
Viruses, viruses, viruses. Virii is not the plural of virus.
Re:And who gets the patent for it? (Score:4, Insightful)
Huh, oddly enough I seem to remember that when drug companies were banned from advertising on TV their drugs still sold. So it's not really a necessary evil. Drug companies used to be hugely profitable and didn't have as large marketing budgets.