For scientific knowledge to have an impact, it must survive outside the walled garden of academia and do more than tell an interesting story. It must solve critical problems day in and day out for people. By creating ventures, we force our innovations to confront problems as they are faced by those who suffer them.
Behavioral research in academia and across industries is undergoing a dramatic transformation from being largely based on in-person lab experiments and focus groups to online laboratories recruiting large numbers of subjects at low cost from around the world. However, online studies require a great deal of technical expertise to create and maintain, significant investments in subject management and recruitment, and substantial expertise to design and manage. Volunteer Science provides access to online behavioral lab facilities in the cloud. Researchers can create online studies, recruit online participants, and build and manage their own subject pool. For inquiries regarding Volunteer Science, please contact me at jason_radford@volunteerscience.com
When we try to create the best argument for or against something, whether it's a political position, life saving vaccine, or new product; we try to leverage experts to identify the best arguments and perform surveys and interviews to gauge people's reactions. However, these methods are limited. What experts find persuasive may not be persuasive to regular people (missing arguments) and what we get from surveys and interviews are not representative of all populations. Here, we use big data to solve these two problems, identifying missing arguments and modeling which arguments are most pursuasive among different groups. For inquiries regarding this venture, please email me at my Northeastern email address (j.radford@northeastern.edu).