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A comment on If Immunity Project (YC W14) succeeds, they'll offer AIDS vaccine for free. Parent comment

Re:If Immunity Project (YC W14) succeeds, they'll offer AIDS... by yid on Thursday January 23, 2014 @07:51PM (#7112663)
> so $30k of demonstrated public interest would be matched with $3MM of NIH funding.

This sets up a perverse incentive: the researchers who can best pander to a layperson crowd will have the highest chance, regardless of the technical merits of their proposal (which the general public almost certainly isn't qualified to judge).

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Re:If Immunity Project (YC W14) succeeds, they'll offer AIDS... by _delirium on Thursday January 23, 2014 @08:46PM (#7112882)
Yeah, the first thing I thought of with this proposal was: this sounds like a great way to direct $$$ of NIH funding towards researching "why vaccination causes autism". For every $100k that Jenny McCarthy puts towards antivax research, the NIH would be compelled to match $10m...
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