Is it right to charge for citizen science?

Barter = the new commerce.

It looks like the part you’re paying for supposedly is getting to know your dog’s cognitive abilities and being able to compare it to other dogs. It seems kind of sneaky to me, though. If it’s a way to support the science, they should just say so.

If he’s funding his research solely on the proceeds of these charges, well, I guess the money has to come from somewhere. If he’s receiving public funds from a granting agency, then it may be inappropriate for him to collect this money, but that’s up to the granting agency to decide.
It’s possible that the charges might be there for the purpose of selecting for a certain type of dog owner for data-gathering purposes, but I have no idea what the point of that would be.

At first I was like, “Hosting costs money”. Then I saw the prices. It seems like a scam and I have no idea why anyone would pay 100 bucks a year to know why their dog likes humping legs. Horny + something that looks like it might have a hole, that is why, and my info was for free.

I like the idea.
My ghetto mobile much restricted the access to the website so I wasn’t able to obtain enough info to have an opinion on the actuality and not the concept.

It would be awesome to contribute to research and science projects that you were personally interested in. It is also better then government funding.

Also it is a fascinating subject. Pets, genetics, behavorial changes, adaptations, breeding programs. Because they have a shorter lifespan then us and are dependent on humans we have had marvelous opportunity to study their evolution and cognition. I think there is much to be learned from it.

Things cost money. Servers, analysis, etc. Nothing is free in the world.

Agreed, but I go along with @augustlan that they are being deceptive. If they flat out asked for a donation I would probably have given something, even though I am not participating. I love the idea of ordinary people being able to further scientific research. Asking people who are donating their time and effort to also kick in with cash ruins the sense of cooperative scientific endeavor.

I’m a bit sceptical of the science aspect. It sounds like it might be fun and worth the money for that reason but personally I’d rather just take the mutt for a walk.

Right or not (I don’t think it is right, if science truly is the goal), it’s going to diminish the number of data points, and large amounts of data are kind of the entire point of crowd-sourcing.

Without getting into the specifics of this particular offering, it doesn’t sound so outlandish.

The volunteers (and they are nearly always volunteers, and except for the expedition leaders not paid professionals) who work at many archaeological dig sites have to pay their own way to get there, pay for their own food while at the site, and pay to outfit themselves – maybe even to the extent of providing or buying their own tools (but I’m not so sure about that).

This is the way that a lot of research is done, in fact. Much research occurs by volunteers paying for it themselves until it seems to be panning out as “maybe worth something commercially”, in much the same way that gold and silver mining has always been done by a bunch of nobodies acting on their own hook… until they strike a vein, and the pros move in and take over.

I wonder what Fluther might look like as a pay-as-you-go site.

The volunteers in this case are supplying their own dogs along with whatever props are needed for the experiments. I would guess that the data is all simple multiple choice or numeric values, meaning that it is easily analyzed by a computer program. What cost is there for the scientists?

@LostinParadise I don’t know if you are curious you should email the guy and ask. I have started doing this a lot lately in regards to food.

If they don’t respond back I find a replacement product and will issue a form letter telling them they have lost my business of their entire company because of a lack of satisfication in their customer service and a lack of transparency of there product. It feels good to speak up or just to question.