Games as scientific research

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[they] think the gaming approach to biology offers some distinct - and to many scientists, perhaps unexpected - advantages over the more-traditional scientific method by which scientists solve problems: form a hypothesis, rigorously test it in your lab under controlled conditions, and keep it all to yourself until you at last submit your methods, data and conclusions to a journal for peer review and, if all goes well, publication.

Das and Treuille argue that the "open laboratory" nature of online games prevents data manipulation, allows rapid tests of reproducibility, and "requires rigorous adherence to the scientific method: a nontrivial prediction or hypothesis must precede each experiment."
Das says, "It only recently hit us that EteRNA, despite being a game, is an unusually rigorous way to do science."

http://scopeblog.stanford.edu/2014/10/0 ... -research/