Buying and selling stocks – with real or play money – is a way to harness the wisdom of the crowd about questions like who is going to win a competition.
Online reviews are not always what they might seem.
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A recent extortion scam involved threatening to leave unfavourable reviews to restaurants unless they paid up shows the dangers of relying on the wisdom of crowds.
Maps contain useful information, but that means leaving out other information that is also useful.
Associated Press
As scientists frantically try to find drugs to slow COVID-19’s spread, citizen science offers an opportunity for all of us to get involved.
20 years ago, who could predict how much more researchers would know today about the human past – let alone what they could learn from a thimble of dirt, a scrape of dental plaque, or satellites in space.
Manuel Domínguez-Rodrigo
20 years ago, who could predict how much more researchers would know today about the human past – let alone what they could learn from a thimble of dirt, a scrape of dental plaque, or satellites in space.
Leonardo da Vinci sketches. He invented the pulley, the parachute and the water-powered mill. None were patented.
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Ben Marwick, University of Washington; Erle C. Ellis, University of Maryland, Baltimore County; Lucas Stephens, Max Planck Institute for the Science of Human History, and Nicole Boivin, Max Planck Institute for the Science of Human History
Hundreds of archaeologists provided on-the-ground data from across the globe, providing a new view of the long and varied history of people transforming Earth’s environment.
The concept of ‘new power’ can be applied to modern digital journalism.
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A new book on so-called ‘new power’ can help us understand transformations in journalism like increased collaboration and use of digital technologies for investigative journalism.
Professor Samir Brahmachar: ‘Why should drug discovery be kept in the Wright brothers’ era of trial and error?’
Alchetron.com
Professor Samir Brahmachari’s innovative Open Source Drug Development allows thousands of researchers to work together to discover novel therapies for under-studied diseases.
If the site is increasingly where people are getting their news, what could the company do without taking up the mantle of being a final arbiter of truth?
Imagine where working together on open data can get us?
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This method of crowdsourcing science legwork is ready to expand into other disciplines – and maybe the amateurs themselves can start calling some of the shots.
The proposed changes to the Corporations Act might protect investors in crowd funding but it limits the types of businesses that can use these platforms.
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Libraries are warm, dry and safe spaces with free Internet, which many people need. But academics and researchers in the 21st century can get along very well without them.