Most 'misfit research' is funded by the government through broad training grants or broad departmental level support. Parts of those grants get used to fund early career researchers and students. Most often it is funding mainstream science but sometimes it is used just to keep these people on board. So it isn't about funding any one weird thing, but instead giving people the freedom to explore ideas and develop skills. Even when supported by specific grants, PI will use that money to let students / fellows explore more broadly.

The idea that VCs or DAOs would give a penny for R&D is a sick joke.

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throwawaymaths 7 hours ago | parent [-]

definitionally, no:

> work that is a poor fit for academia

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searine 7 hours ago | parent [-]

Academia is already a sandbox. What kind of research would fit poorly?

In the article most of the examples of funding sources give their funding to academic labs already.

Discussion about non-governmental sources of funding is fine, but they still almost always funnel back into a lab at a university.

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btrettel 5 hours ago | parent | next [-]

Here's an example of research that I found to be hard to do in academia with details about why: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31154799

Note that I don't think VCs or DAOs would care about this research either as it's not flashy enough.

	▲	growingkittens 5 hours ago \| parent [-]
		I have found that many areas of human knowledge are massively disorganized. Everything is also siloed; knowledge that could easily apply to other domains is hidden by things like specialized terminology. I think it is because science is systematic, or step-by-step, and not systemic - lacking a "whole system" point of view. Both perspectives are needed to understand a reality made of systems.

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throwawaymaths 2 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

anything that is unlikely to produce papers. anything that is unpalatable to the science status quo (so you could produce papers but you'll get extremely critical reviewers or be relegated to low tier journals). research in any field in which you yourself are not established but you have good reason to believe you can make a mark