Crowdsourcing a Cure

Election day.

Thank goodness.

I'm certainly not the first one to be sick of all of this. I'm ready to move on and accept whatever comes from here. What choice do I have? But this is America, and I know that in four years, there will be another chance to get what I want. Heck -- I'll get that chance in two years, when Congress is up for re-election. People tend to forget that last part.

In the meantime, I will have to accept the "wisdom of the crowd."

Speaking of "the wisdom of crowds" (a term popularized by the writer James Surowiecki, who argues thatthe collective work of many interested people is better than one person), I've been saving a nice article called "Crowdsourcing a Cure."  "Crowdsourcing" is the act of relying on multitudes to do work and help make decisions, much like what Surowiecki advocates. You know what "outsourcing" is -- sending jobs outside of a company. "Crowdsourcing" works the same way, but relies not on low-wage workers, but on volunteers -- people interested in solving whatever your problem is. It's how Wikipedia works. rather than relying on a single expert to tell you what's important, you rely on the collective wisdom of a whole bunch of people who are all seeking the truth. (At least in theory.)

The article describes a project in which researchers asked volunteers to look at tens of thousands of slides online. The slides contained pictures of breast cancer cells. If the volunteers spotted an abnormality, they flagged the slide, and researchers could then  further examine it later on. If just one person flags the slide, maybe it's not worth looking at. If dozens flag it, maybe it deserves some attention.

The "wisdom of the crowd."

And there are certainly problems with the approach. Sometimes, Wikipedia pages contain false information. And sometimes, there's probably a sicko who wants to lead breast cancer researchers down the wrong path, for whatever twisted reason. There will always be trolls.

But for the most part, crowdsourcing works. The key is work with people who are actually interested in solving the problem.

There's a pretty easy opening in that last sentence for someone who wants to be all cynical about Election Day. I choose to be hopeful.

It's the cancer patient in me.