three cheers for teamwork.

In my earlier post about The Race for the Double Helix, I wrote a bit about Watson and Crick's competitive approach to science.  Is there an alternate approach; something more "teamwork-based?"

Can our "race" mentality really be fixed?  According to Foldit, it can.  Fold.it is an online protein folding video game.  You can actually play a game - and a fairly entertaining one at that - and simultaneously help solve problems that have been baffling scientists for years.  Granted, there's a big learning curve, but there have been big results.  Apparently one of the pieces of the AIDS puzzle was found when Foldit gamers cracked a case in 3 weeks that scientists had been working on for 15 years.  If you want to learn more about it you can go here or here.

The Foldit story is proof that competition isn't the only thing that motivates scientists.  Foldit's success is based on several ideas, three of which are:

1. People are smarter when they work together.  The fact that we all reason differently can be one of our greatest advantages.

2. People work better when they are having fun.  People will keep doing something if they enjoy it.

3. People are often driven by something more than just selfish motives.  We're more benevolent than we think.