• Many studies are poorly designed in order to promote an agenda.
• Replicating results is necessary for good science, but rare
• Peer review has many shortcomings
• Too much science is locked behind paywalls
• Intellectual Property is slowing down science and creating inequalities

The pharmaceutical industry is a massive global business, worth billions of dollars each year. It is made up of numerous companies that develop, manufacture, and market drugs and medical devices. Corporate interests play a significant role in the pharmaceutical industry, as these companies are driven by the need to make a profit. This profit motive can sometimes conflict with public health interests.

Getting funding and conflicts of interest: 

One of the biggest challenges for medical scientists is to find a sustainable source of funding. In most places around the world, Governments or public organizations provide funding for medical research, reducing the chances of conflicts of interest, however, these are limited funds. This means researchers look for private funding that supports science aligning with their corporate agenda. This is catastrophic because it means that some science is guided not by what is good for society/humanity, but by what will make the most return on investment to these private funders. Much of nutrition science is funded by the food industry, and this is a major conflict of interest. Food companies will not alter the results of research, however, they will not fund something if the hypothesis goes against their interests, thus shaping how science evolves.^{1 2}

Only around 1% of newly developed drugs in the late 20th century were for tropical diseases like African sleeping sickness, dengue fever, and leishmaniasis. As a result, only a single new drug has been introduced in the past 50 years to treat tuberculosis, which claims the lives of millions of people each year.³ This is because research done by pharmaceutical companies is often focused on profitable markets. This means a significant portion of healthcare spending is on drugs to treat conditions like type 2 diabetes, hypertension, and high cholesterol, which are largely caused by poor diets and a lack of exercise. Implementing policies like stricter regulations on unhealthy foods and drinks, subsidized healthy school meals, and courses on preparing nutritious and affordable meals can help people lose weight, lowering the need for these drugs. 

Since scientists have to compete for this finite and decreasing amount of funding (at least for public funding), it creates conflicts of interest between scientists of the same field, puts pressure to publish many papers instead of a few quality ones, and forces scientists to oversell their work (use buzzwords to get funding). This competition between scientists for funding affects what people study, the risks they take, and the risks they don’t take. Overall it pushes researchers to do predictable, safe, and hyped science. On top of that, grants are usually short-term (3-5 years), which means that scientists are less likely to apply for long-term projects, even though these are usually the ones that create the biggest discoveries. All this pushes scientists to submit repetitive, short, safe studies. 

Repetitive results and lack of truth and transparency: 

Medical researchers are judged by the research they publish, and they have tons of pressure to get certain types of results. If you get good splashy results, it will be easier to get published in a prestigious journal, but if they get mediocre results, many scientists consider presenting the data differently to keep it exciting. “The consequences are staggering. An estimated $200 billion — or the equivalent of 85 percent of global spending on research — is routinely wasted on poorly designed and redundant studies, according to meta-researchers who have analyzed inefficiencies in research. We know that as much as 30 percent of the most influential original medical research papers later turn out to be wrong or exaggerated.”⁴

The crisis of irreproducibility: 

A survey made by nature.com (1576 researchers) claims that there is a “crisis of irreproducibility”. It concludes that “70% of researchers have tried and failed to reproduce another scientist’s experiments, and more than half have failed to reproduce their own experiments.”^{5 6}

Additionally, studies that fail to replicate results from a “good” study might not get published, thus creating bias in science (rejected publications may have value). Some causes could be a lack of understanding of statistics, poor experimental design, lack of mentoring from senior researchers, fraud, hyper-competition, lack of resources, or simply selective reporting of results.

Science is behind paywalls: 

Science and research is mostly locked away and not easily accessible. They are often costly to access and can be hard to find. Many researchers have argued that academic research should be free for all to access, as many for-profit publishers slow down the pace of science. One article in a scientific journal can cost you 30$, some yearly subscriptions are 300$ and up to 10,000$.⁷ On top of publishing fees paid by the research team.⁸

Science is slowed and locked by intellectual property: 

*This will be the longest section as it is arguably the most important thing to change in the way we do medical research. 

Protected patents are a relatively recent invention, the first modern patent system was created in 1474  in Venice, and it has since evolved into a complex set of laws and regulations, both at the local and international levels.⁹ Despite the fact that patents are intended to promote innovation and progress, their impact on the development and access to life-saving drugs has been a subject of increasing concern. The current patent system, which grants exclusive rights to pharmaceutical companies to produce and sell drugs, has led to high medicine prices, limited the scope of research, and limited access to care for many people, especially those in developing countries.¹⁰

Is the right to intellectual property or Human rights more important to you? I believe that patents should not extend so far as to interfere with individuals’ dignity and well-being. Where patent rights and human rights are in conflict, human rights must prevail.

The current system allows pharmaceutical companies to patent new drugs and prevent other companies from manufacturing and selling generic versions of those drugs for a fixed period of time, usually around 20 years. This gives the patent holder a monopoly on using, producing, importing, and selling the drug, which allows them to charge high prices to recoup their research and development costs and make a profit.¹¹

It also prevents researchers from sharing their ideas and promotes wasteful practices. Ironically, stronger patent protection may even lead to less innovation. When patents expire, drug companies frequently sue competitors to prevent them from selling cheaper generic versions. The European Commission estimated that these legal battles had cost the EU €3 billion over an 8-year period.¹²

Before the mid-1990s, pharmaceutical product patents were not permitted in many developing nations (India is a prime example). This decision was often a deliberate policy choice, based on the belief that the advantages of low-cost access to medication outweighed any potential negative consequences resulting from the absence of domestic patents on multinational companies’ research and development decisions. However, since the World Trade Organization’s adoption of the Trade-Related Intellectual Property Rights (TRIPs) agreement in 1995, all countries have been required to allow pharmaceutical product patents. TRIPS has been controversial, as it can make it difficult for developing countries to produce or import affordable generic versions of patented medicines. According to the World Bank: “Nothing is more controversial in TRIPS. […] Many developing countries see little potential benefit from introducing patents. In contrast, potential costs could be significant.”¹³

“Like a poorly conceived new drug with deadly side effects, the modern medicine patent regime is a relatively recent innovation and, not a good one.”¹⁴

Overall, the flaws of the patent system: 

1. Patent monopolies allow pharmaceutical companies to charge exorbitant prices for essential medicines. This can make them unaffordable for many people, particularly those in developing countries who cannot afford to pay high prices for life-saving treatments.
2. The high cost of drug development is often used as an argument to justify high drug prices, but the actual cost of drug development is often overstated. Pharmaceutical companies often spend more money on marketing and lobbying efforts than they do on research and development. Independent analysts have estimated the cost of developing a new drug to be significantly lower than the industry’s claim of around US $1 billion, and the Drugs for Neglected Diseases Initiative (DNDi) believes they can develop a new drug for $110 million to $170 million. These costs include a theoretical expense for failed projects. Ultimately, drug prices do not reflect research and development expenses but rather what heavily subsidized “markets” are willing to pay. Making private insurance more expensive, as well as government-supported healthcare thus wasting tax money.¹⁵
3. Pharmaceutical companies can extend their patent protection by making minor changes to a drug or by obtaining multiple patents on the same drug. This practice, known as “evergreening,” can extend a drug’s patent protection for years and prevent the development of generic versions. The strategic value of patents has expanded beyond their role in promoting innovation. Even if a patent does not generate revenue, it can still be highly valuable for its strategic benefits. Using a patent as a blocking strategy is common practice. ¹⁶
4. The current patent system does not incentivize the development of medicines for neglected diseases that primarily affect people in developing countries. This is because there is often little profit to be made in developing treatments for these diseases.

Must read papers to understand the cost of patents: “Deadly gaps in the patent system : an analysis of current and alternative mechanisms for incentivising development of medical therapies.”¹⁷, “Are Patents Really Necessary?”¹⁸ and this incredible meta study. ¹⁹

What is Etica Protocol: 

It is an open-source protocol for medical research without intellectual property. It aims to create an alternative funding solution for medical research while removing patents. Researchers are financially rewarded throughout the process of research, and all solutions found within Etica are immediately available for anyone to use. Open Source has already proven to be faster and more efficient in many other fields like Software development (such as AI research) and can fundamentally change how we do medical research.

Grant proposals are grouped by disease on Etica.io, and then users (holders of ETI) can vote and get rewarded for correctly participating. In the long term, Etica.io will be only one of potentially thousands of websites connected to the Etica blockchain. Potentially, instead of having science locked in journals with paywalls, we could have websites directly connected to the Etica blockchain, without restriction and free of patent. To that extent Etica blockchain can be called a permissionless decentralised science journal.

How can Etica solve problems with modern medical research: 

• The big money problem: Etica provides a new additional decentralized funding system for medical researchers to use. We are not naive, most people will act for their own interest. Etica is not under the control of the incumbent of the system that chooses the pace and direction of research according to their vested interest.
• Poorly designed studies, and reproducibility: It will be important for the community to select quality and not flashy research. In fact the token holders have a collective interest that Etica maintains its value. If the network globally accepts unqualified/useless proposals then the network is going to become worthless. A key part of the Etica system is that the token holders have a responsibility to get the best proposals rewarded so that people keep increasing the amount of work they do for each proposal and create a healthy open-source ecosystem.
• Paywalls: All Etica proposals are public and free to read, uploaded on the IFPS network, as well as easy to access.
• Intellectual property: Etica removes intellectual property which is costly to medical research and human rights.

Etica enables people to “donate” / invest money in open-source medical research. You can earn rewards by deciding what will get funded, and it is always possible to cash out ETIs. The current model is funded by the government (taxes, public health insurance) or private insurance often colluding and price-fixing with pharma companies funding mostly useless overpriced science. We are currently paying taxes, or insurance to solve hair loss problems, instead of focusing on  life-saving research. With Etica, it is possible to self-fund open medical research, all while protecting your money in a low-inflation asset.

1. https://www.vox.com/2016/3/3/11148422/food-science-nutrition-research-bias-conflict-interest ︎
2. https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/12928469/ ︎
3. https://www.hhrjournal.org/2015/11/making-medicines-accessible-alternatives-to-the-flawed-patent-system-2/ ︎
4. https://www.vox.com/2016/7/14/12016710/science-challeges-research-funding-peer-review-process ︎
5. https://www.nature.com/articles/533452a ︎
6. https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.aac4716 ︎
7. https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2011/aug/29/academic-publishers-murdoch-socialist ︎
8. https://www.enago.com/academy/what-is-the-real-cost-of-scientific-publishing/ ︎
9. https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=585661 ︎
10. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2636619/ ︎
11. https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1111/1758-5899.12730 ︎
12. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5817403/ ︎
13. https://documents1.worldbank.org/curated/en/285571468337817024/310436360_20050012014722/additional/Global-economic-prospects-and-the-developing-countries-2002-making-trade-work-for-the-worlds-poor.pdf ︎
14. https://www.hhrjournal.org/2015/11/making-medicines-accessible-alternatives-to-the-flawed-patent-system-2/ ︎
15. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5817403/ ︎
16. https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1111/1758-5899.12730 ︎
17. https://ir.canterbury.ac.nz/bitstream/handle/10092/9826/thesis_fulltext.pdf?isAllowed=y&sequence=1 ︎
18. https://www.cigionline.org/articles/are-patents-really-necessary/ ︎
19. https://globalizationandhealth.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/s12992-022-00826-4 ︎

1. Understand Etica and its goals
2. Contribute to research
3. Mining and creating nodes
4. Participate in the community
5. Develop applications for Etica
6. Trading, buying, and holding

Contributing to any of these categories is essential and will contribute to the growth of Etica.

1. Understand Etica and its goals: Before you start contributing, it’s crucial to understand how the Etica protocol works, its goals, and the technology behind it. This will give you a better idea of how to contribute and what areas to focus on. “Etica is a blockchain and platform for funding medical research. It also produces rewards for those who evaluate proposals and vote on them or otherwise participate in Etica. These can fundamentally change how scientific research is incentivized, opening a new world of patent-free, open medical research.” From u/makeasnek

With this Reddit post, you can understand the problems that Etica is trying to solve: https://www.reddit.com/r/Etica/comments/xrzbdg/why_is_etica_useful_medical_research_is_not/

I also recommend reading this Reddit post: https://www.reddit.com/r/Etica/comments/u44d8r/reaction_to_makeasnek_post/

Understanding the differences between EGAZ and ETI: EGAZ is used to secure the network, it is also more useful to do transactions using the network. ETI does not secure the network but is used to fund research, it can be used as a store of value, and the holders then have influence over the medical research conducted by Etica researchers. You can earn EGAZ by mining and creating nodes, you can earn ETI by contributing to research or mining.

It is important to understand Etica has no ICO or pre-minted coins. ETIs are distributed over the span of 10 years to distribute 21 million Etica through mining and protocol rewards, with a lower Gini coef than BTC and XMR which means it will be more evenly distributed. Each phase (1 year long) decreases mining rewards and increases research and curating rewards. EGAZ gets distributed to miners that help secure the network, EGAZ has a tail emission of about 4 EGAZ per block (every 13 seconds).

You can also check out this medium article and read the Whitepaper to understand all the details.

Medium: https://medium.com/@Cn_demo/decentralized-science-3608dc44603c

Whitepaper: https://www.eticaprotocol.org/viewwhitepaper

2. Contribute to research: It is currently possible to earn around 8000 ETI per week by doing medical research on Etica. Contributing to open-source medical research is important because it promotes collaboration, innovation, and transparency in the scientific community, leading to improved health outcomes for individuals and society. Open-source medical research is often more cost-effective than traditional research methods, as it allows for the pooling of resources and expertise from around the world with barriers. This can lead to faster and more efficient research outcomes. If we want Etica to succeed we need to start funding research, we also need to start curating research. You can help by doing research, curating work, or onboarding researchers. Research on Etica will give it its value in the long term, so this might be one of the most important areas of development.

Closed research = slower research = wasted money = lost lives

3. Mining and creating nodes: The easiest way to contribute by mining is by joining a mining pool. A mining pool is a group of miners who combine their resources to mine a cryptocurrency together. This increases the chances of finding a block and receiving the block reward. You can also solo mine which is usually harder since you don’t share computational resources. You can both mine ETI and EGAZ, both are important but has different impact and influence. Mining ETI makes it possible to contribute to research, and mining EGAZ helps to secure the network.

Running a node and mining are two different ways to contribute to a proof of work cryptocurrency. Running a node is essential for maintaining the integrity and security of the blockchain, while mining is important for generating new coins or tokens and processing transactions. Both nodes and miners play essential roles in a proof of work cryptocurrency and contribute to the overall health and security of the network.

Join the Subreddit or Discord to find the links to mining pools and get help getting started

4. Participate in the community: Contribute by participating in the community. This can involve providing feedback, reporting bugs, suggesting improvements, and helping others new to the Etica ecosystem. It also means creating marketing content, guide, and tutorials, since Etica is decentralized this can be shared on official channels as well as personal channels or organizations.

5. Develop applications for Etica: If you have programming skills, you can contribute to the project by developing applications or tools that use its blockchain. This can include creating wallets, developing decentralized applications, or contributing to the development of the blockchain itself.

Join the Subreddit or Discord to get started

6. Trading, buying, and holding: Trading and buying activity can help to increase the value and popularity of a cryptocurrency, which can lead to greater adoption and support for the network. It also helps to establish a market price for ETI and EGAZ. This price serves as a benchmark for investors and traders and helps to stabilize the value of the cryptocurrency. It also creates liquidity in the market, which makes it easier for investors, contributors, and researchers to buy and sell EGAZ and ETI. On top of that when more people buy and use ETI and EGAZ, it increases their adoption and popularity which means more investors and users will become interested in the technology.

More importantly, it is a great way to support the protocol: When investors buy and hold a cryptocurrency, they provide support for the network by increasing demand for the cryptocurrency. This can also encourage developers and miners to continue contributing to the network, as they see that there is interest and demand for the cryptocurrency.

However, it’s important to note that buying and trading activity alone is not enough to ensure the success of a cryptocurrency – the underlying technology and community also play a crucial role. And this is why I have put it at the end of this guide.

You can currently trade EGAZ and ETI on Txbit.io

Feel free to comment with any other ideas that could help Etica grow

Useful links to get started:

Read the whitepaper: https://www.eticaprotocol.org/viewwhitepaper

Great guides to get started: https://www.eticaprotocol.org/eticadocs/

Get the Offical Wallet: https://github.com/etica/etica-gui

Egaz Faucet: http://faucet.etica-stats.org/

Understanding Tokenomics: https://www.eticanomics.net/

See the source code: https://github.com/etica

Blockchain Explorer: https://www.eticascan.org/

Telegram group: https://t.me/eticaprotocol

Bitcoin talk: https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5411039

• Medical research has a money problem
• Many studies are poorly designed to promote an agenda.
• Replicating results is necessary for good science, but rare
• Peer review has many shortcomings
• Too much science is locked behind paywalls
• IP is slowing down science

Medical Research has a money problem

Medical research funding in many places around the world can come from public sources (tax money) as well as private organizations which distribute money for equipment, salaries, and other research expenses. This is one of the biggest challenges for medical scientists, is to find a sustainable source of many to run experiments and concentrate on the science.

In most places around the world, Governments or public organizations provide funding for research, which is good, as there are fewer chances of conflict of interest, but there is not enough. The USA offered 900 federal grant programs, and half of this funding, 800 billion USD goes to healthcare. In 2020, the National Institute of Health accepted only 21% of research grant proposals (11,000/55,000). Source: https://report.nih.gov/nihdatabook/report/20

So researchers then look for private funding, which will support science if it supports their corporate agenda. This is catastrophic because it means that some science is guided not by what is good for society/humanity in terms of science, but by what will make the most return on investment to these private funders. Much of nutrition science is funded by the food industry, and this is a major conflict of interest, food companies will not change the results of research, but they will not fund something if the hypothesis goes against their interests, thus shaping how science evolves. This is the same for drugmakers that fund most drug clinical trials. This means that drugs for a disease that won’t be profitable (In places with poor populations or very few people touched by the disease) might only get funding from charitable organizations (less than 3% of funding in the USA).

Since scientists have to compete for this finite and decreasing amount of funding (at least for public funding), it creates conflicts of interest between scientists of the same field, puts pressure to publish many papers instead of a few quality ones, and it forces scientists to oversell their work (use buzzwords to get funding). This competition between scientists for funding affects what people study, the risk they take, and the risk they don’t take, overall it pushes researchers to do predictable, safe and hyped science. This also means scientists have to spend a lot of time and energy competing for funding and writing grant proposals which means less time for science.

On top of that, grants are usually short-term (3-5 years), which means that scientists are less likely to apply for long-term projects, even though these are usually the ones that create the biggest discoveries. New, experimental, but potentially breakthrough research takes a long time to produce, requires the work of many people, and it does not always pay off. So scientists often avoid these types of studies that don’t easily get funding and prefer short-turnaround, safe research.

Science is pressured to display certain results

Medical researchers are judged by the research they publish, and they have tons of pressure to get certain types of results. If you get good splashy results, it will be easier to get published in a prestigious journal, but if they get mediocre results, many scientists consider presenting the data differently to keep it exciting.

“The consequences are staggering. An estimated $200 billion — or the equivalent of 85 percent of global spending on research — is routinely wasted on poorly designed and redundant studies, according to meta-researchers who have analyzed inefficiencies in research. We know that as much as 30 percent of the most influential original medical research papers later turn out to be wrong or exaggerated.”

Source:https://www.vox.com/2016/7/14/12016710/science-challeges-research-funding-peer-review-process

Rewards for medical research should be based on the research methods, and quality of analysis, not just the outcomes of the research.

Going back to the funding problem, this problem is exacerbated by private funding methods that expect certain results that align with their agenda.

Not rigorous enough

There might be a “crisis of irreproducibility”, a survey made by nature.com about reproducibility (1576 researchers) concludes that “70% of researchers have tried and failed to reproduce another scientist’s experiments, and more than half have failed to reproduce their own experiments.”

The data from the survey also reveal contradictory thinking about reproducibility: “52% of those surveyed agree that there is a significant ‘crisis’ of reproducibility, less than 31% think that failure to reproduce published results means that the result is probably wrong, and most say that they still trust the published literature.”

Source: https://www.nature.com/articles/533452a

On top of that, studies that fail to replicate results from a “good” study might not get published. Studies need to be at the cutting edge of science, with new and positive results, this pressure prevents necessary replication and might produce many false positive results.

Some causes could be a lack of understanding of statistics, poor experimental design, lack of mentoring from senior researchers, fraud, hyper-competition, lack of resources, or simply selective reporting of results.

Peer review needs to be improved

Peer review is an essential aspect of research, scientists send their articles to a journal, and if the journal accepts the article, it is sent to peers in a similar field, for constructive criticism, to then be published or not in that journal. The journals set up a blind reading, reviewing, and editing of the articles to reduce bias. This system in theory works, but it has many shortcomings, it often does not detect fraud, selective results, and other problems. Researchers are often not paid to review articles, which creates less incentive to do serious peer reviews.

Science is behind paywalls

A lot of science and research is locked away and not easily accessible. They are often costly to access and can be hard to find. The publication process can also be slow, which slows down many other processes. Many Researchers have argued that academic research should be free for all to access, as many for-profit publishers slow down the pace of science. One article in a scientific journal can cost you 30$, some yearly subscriptions are 300$ and up to 10,000$. On top of that, it can be quite expensive to publish a scientific article: “the average cost to publish an article is around $3500 to $4000” and most of that cost is falling on the researchers themselves.

Source: https://www.enago.com/academy/what-is-the-real-cost-of-scientific-publishing/

Science is slowed and locked by intellectual property

Protected patents are a relatively recent invention, the first modern patent system was created in 1474 in Venice, it has since evolved into a complex set of laws and regulations, both at the local and international levels.

Source: https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=585661

When patent rights are expensive, it makes successive activities more costly, as research will have to seek permission from patent holders, and when patents are debated, this can slow down the progress of science and technology. Patents are also used as a business strategy, often used by large firms, that use patents to entrench their position in the market by making it expensive/complicated/impossible to research certain subjects (many times not even using the patent). The current patent system does not reward follow-up research, as scientists are scared of litigation.

Is the right to intellectual property or Human rights more important to you? I believe that patents should not extend so far as to interfere with individuals’ dignity and well-being. Where patent rights and human rights conflict, human rights must prevail.

This is an overview of present problems in medical research, and we could in much more depth about the systematic shortcomings in science. But this is good enough to understand what needs to be solved in the medical research field. A great example of a project that solves these problems is r/etica. But I am sure there are other cryptos that are similar.

What is Etica?

You can learn a lot from Etica on the main website: Eticaprotocol.org

From u/makeasnek: “Etica is a blockchain and platform for funding medical research. It also produces rewards for those who evaluate proposals and vote on them or otherwise participate in Etica. These can fundamentally change how scientific research is incentivized, opening a new world of patent-free, open medical research. Etica runs off its own version of the Ethereum Classic blockchain, which uses proof-of-work to mint coins and secures the network.”

Etica funds research with its inflation, the distribution of ETI coins will look like this:

Each Era is approximately 1 year.

Era 1: 1 890 000 ETI to mining reward and 210 000 ETI as protocol reward

Era 2: 1 680 000 ETI as mining reward and 420 000 ETI as protocol reward

Era 3: 1 470 000 ETI as mining reward and 630 000 ETI as protocol reward

Era 4: 1 260 000 ETI as mining reward and 840 000 ETI as protocol reward

Era 5 to Era 10: 1 050 000 ETI as mining reward and 1 050 000 ETI as protocol reward

The mining of ETI will then stop (in 10 years) and the 2.61% of inflation will be used to reward researchers and voters.

Grant proposals are grouped by disease on Etica.io, and then users (holders of ETI) can vote and get rewarded for correctly participating. In the long term, Etica.io will be only one of potentially thousands of websites connected to the Etica blockchain. Potentially, instead of having science locked in journals with paywalls, We could have websites directly connected to the Etica blockchain, without restriction and free of any patent. To that extent, the Etica blockchain can be called a permissionless decentralized science journal.

Any proposals can be anything, the community will decide what gets funded or not. I recommend reading this Reddit post to understand Etica better:reaction to makeasnek

If we go back to the main problems (TLDR):

• Big money problem: Etica provides a new additional decentralized funding system for medical researchers to use. We are not naive, most people will act in their own interest. Good and evil people will come to Etica but what is different is that Etica is not under the control of the incumbent of the system that chooses the pace and direction of research according to their vested interest.
• Poorly designed studies: It will be important for the community to select quality and not flashy research. In fact, the token holders have a collective interest that Etica maintains its value. If the network globally accepts useless proposals then the network is going to become worthless. A key part of the Etica system is that the token holders have a responsibility to get the best proposals rewarded so that people keep increasing the amount of work they do for each proposal and create a healthy open-source ecosystem.
• Replicability problem: Etica’s main aim is not to solve this problem, but open science contributes to more replicable science.
• Peer review: Peer review is incentivized on the Etica platform and can be a way to earn more ETI, this means researchers can be paid to peer review. Voters that make the curation work are rewarded with 38.2% of the ETI research rewards. Token holders will not necessarily be scientific experts on everything, but we can imagine different ways people can get informed on proposals and share information. They can use earned ETI to finance expertise and do quality peer reviews.
• Paywalls: All Etica proposals are public and free to read, as well as easy to access.
• Intellectual property: Etica removes intellectual property which is costly to medical research and human rights.