Gamers solve molecular puzzle that baffled scientists

It could help towards a cure for AIDS.

The game is already For Science!, but still.

edited 18th Sep '11 5:50:45 PM by occono

Dumbo

That's...pretty awesome. I mean if there's any group out there who will inevitably perform something ridiculous within a given framework, it'd be bored college gamers.

Awesome.

And this is why the internet is ridiculously powerful.

edited 18th Sep '11 6:12:56 PM by Midgetsnowman

Sweet.

"Hipsters: the most dangerous gang in the US." - Pacific Mackerel

This is really cool, but I still wouldn't trust the general gaming public to do real science.

Huh. I'd heard of Foldit and thought it might be useful, but this greatly exceeded my expectations

Well this really isn't for the general public. Only people who find Science somewhat fun will be interested.

edited 18th Sep '11 6:57:32 PM by djmaca

...a little brother should belong to his older sister, right? - Orimura Chifuyu

There's nothing more to say besides this being awesome.

And just proving Video Games are even better to have in this society than people think. Plus, you know, helping to save lives!

Quest 64 thread

Gamers could cure cancer if there was an achievement involved.

seriously. offer a folding program on Xbox live and Ps N that gives new weapon unlocks for Modern Warfare. BAM. millions of gamers working on it.

^^ Think big. We need inventing Faster-Than-Light Travel to be an X Box achievement.

edited 18th Sep '11 7:06:40 PM by MajorTom

"Allah may guide their bullets, but Jesus helps those who aim down the sights."

Imagine the posibilites, THE POSIBILITES!! AHHAHAHAAHAHA!!!

http://steamcommunity.com/id/Xan-Xan/

Dude, that is freakin' awesome. Should show this to my mom, a fellow gamer.

And to my Aunt, who thinks gaming is completely unproductive.

And I agree on the earlier statement about gamers willing to do anything if it involves achievements. We could cure cancer, bring back the dead, unravel the final mysteries of evolution, stop global warming...

“DAMMIT WHEN I HEAR 'SPACE CQC' ALL I CAN THINK OF IS BIG BOSS WITH A FISHBOWL ON HIS HEAD, STRANGLING AN ASTRONAUT OUTSIDE THE ISS."

In terms of gaming being unproductive, all this does is reinforce the idea that we have millions of people wasting their brain power on games. Rather than implying "we could cure AIDS!", it implies that "we're not going to cure AIDS because we're calculating optimal dps in World Of Warcraft instead". At least before it could have been assumed that we're useless either way.

edited 18th Sep '11 10:16:41 PM by Clarste

So... because they figured out one small thing in the path towards curing AIDS that had stumped scientists, suddenly gamers are able to to do pretty much anything?

There are too many toasters in my chimney!

Well, you see, what this really means is that we have learned to properly tap an infinite resource; the lust for points inherent in gamers.

I have a message from another time...

I don't think that people are serious here.

At least, I hope they aren't.

People aren't as awful as the internet makes them out to be.

I very much hope they aren't.

I can never tell on this site though.

There are too many toasters in my chimney!

I'm not. I just find it freakin' awesome that they managed to do this, that's all.

Quest 64 thread

Yeah, I know it's a small step, and really more of a victory for crowdsourcing in general than for gaming, but it's still pretty cool.

I have a message from another time...

Well, Foldit is something that can be easily installed (I think), so you're essentially able to recruit anyone who uses a computer.

"Hipsters: the most dangerous gang in the US." - Pacific Mackerel

But how many people who can install it will? And how many of those people that do install it actually would use it to work on things like this?

It's a great step forward for opensource projects, but I believe it's highly doubtful that this is a big step forward for gamers.

"Delenda est." "Furthermore, Carthage must be destroyed." -Common Roman saying at the end of speeches.

I'd never heard of it until now, but it apparently has over 200,000 players since 2008. That's pretty good right there.

I think it's an excellent experiment in using non-conventional resources to solve a problem (in this case, a protein shape that's difficult for computers to map), and having a large pool of people who don't mind getting bad results (they still gain enjoyment from playing) improves the chance of payoff. Plus, the cost of setting this up was probably much lower than bringing a few hundred people in for lab experiments.

No one is suggesting you can seriously replace hard science (for instance, what to do with the resultant protein shape) with video games. This was simply one way of getting around a stumbling block, and it worked.

Left 4 Dead already has us prepared for the eradication of zombies, so why not go full circle?

edited 20th Sep '11 12:23:38 PM by SoCalToa

Show some love.

Yeha, there's a whole lot of untapped brianpower among us - We just need somethign to draw it out. I generally don't play for score though (W Hich is why EoSD is so hard for me.)

edited 20th Sep '11 2:32:32 PM by TARDISES