I just posted about a hum that I hear. There is a science project to track the people who hear the hum, which I was looking to contribute to. Then I noticed the survey is inside the private walled gardens of Google. The researcher’s email address is gmail, the survey form is in Google Docs, and they exclusively use Twitter as well. There is apparently no free-world way to contribute data.

I wonder how much science is encumbered by technofeudal fiefdoms and if there are efforts to make scientific research more open. In principle, science is peer reviewed. So whoever would be the peer reviewers for the research would ideally spotlight this problem.

I don’t use google, so I won’t submit any data to them through docs. My work is very niche, but is something that researchers are interested in. I have pointed people to alternatives, but they rarely use them.

It’s quite frustrating as I would like to contribute