Video game-inspired remote labs could prevent scientific fraud
Scientific error doesn't always come from botched equations or faulty theories but bad behavior, too -- sometimes scientists crack under pressure and contaminate their results by crafting fraudulent, retrospective hypotheses or cherry-picking data to verify a bias. It's a constant problem within the scientific community, but researchers from Carnegie Mellon and Stanford Universities may have stumbled upon an unconventional solution: video games. Specifically, EteRNA, an educational game that teaches players to design RNA molecules online.
Although EteRNA is presented as an RNA matching game, it actually teaches players the rules of RNA and has them construct molecule designs that can later be tested in a real lab. Underneath the game, however, the system is highly resistant to most forms of scientific fraud. "We registered more than 150,000 participants who contributed in excess of 2 million human-hours to EteRNA," explains Adrien Treuille, assistant professor of computer science and robotics at Carnegie Mellon. "That means there were a lot of eyes, a lot of people looking over each other's shoulders as hypotheses were developed and experimental results evaluated. Everything is out in the open."
When viewed as an online lab, the game is so transparent that it makes fraud extraordinarily difficult. It also allows parties that weren't involved in creating a theory to test it, removing the temptation of the team to manipulate results to validate their own work. The team admits that setting up online labs is potentially expensive, but it's within the reach of most major research facilities.
[Image credit: Getty]
