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Biggest challenges in science: how can DeSci help?
Recorded: May 7, 2025 Duration: 0:35:20Space Recording
Short Summary
In a recent discussion on decentralized science (DSI), participants explored the skepticism surrounding DSI, the launch of the Big Mouth Taping Trial, and the critical trends of funding cuts and research reproducibility. The conversation highlighted the need for legitimacy and innovative funding solutions in the evolving landscape of crypto and science.
Full Transcription
Thank you. Thank you. All right, welcome to the DSI mic. This week, kind of a quick topic to dive into that's
been top of mind lately. Just discussing some of the biggest challenges in science and how
can DSI help. Is DSI really helping? I feel like I've had so many conversations lately with people in the broader crypto sphere about Desai.
And still the general sentiment is Desai is a scam.
It's a bunch of meme coins.
flip side, talking to different people building in the desized space and what were some of the
different things that really helped them stand out and build up more legitimacy, get different
token holders that they might be existing
within, taking a much more kind of mature and standardized type of approach to the field that
they're working within, and making sure that all of those best practices are being followed kind of to the highest level and even more so to be able to
overcome some of that question or critique that both the traditional science sphere has of DCI
as well as the cryptosphere has. And so this has been super top of mind lately. I feel like
every conversation I'm having is on one of those sides of the equation,
but circling around, okay, DSI might have some really great opportunities to address
some big challenges in science, but what are some of these foundational things that we
might need to have in place as a sector or as standard procedures that each
DSI project is kind of enacting or making sure is being followed to ensure that that project,
as well as the whole space, is being taken seriously. And so kind of just want to bring that into the spotlight as a conversation that's
happening broadly.
Um, see if anyone has any thoughts on these topics.
Ray, I see you down below.
Uh, if you're able to come off mute, would love to have you share about the project that
you're collaborating on as well.
Um, and for anyone else listening to,
yeah, mostly really just wanted to kind of bring this conversation into the spotlight today. Great,
welcome. Awesome. Hey, Aaron, thanks. And thanks for doing this every week as well. I know it's a lot,
like you said, there's a lot of doubters out there. So trying to spread the message about
decentralized science is a difficult thing. And, you know, I just want to say
everyone on your team for doing this.
Yeah, so you're absolutely right.
I think it's still viewed as a potential scam, but you also have to differentiate exactly what we mean by DSAI.
Because when we say DSAI, does that mean a blockchain is involved?
Does that mean we're raising money? A crowdfunding? Does it mean the
science itself or the participants of a research study is in a different location? Are they all
remotely connected? These are, and the answer is it depends, right? I think some of the challenges
that we're seeing is largely due to just general mistrust in crypto, which is fair.
And there's also a lot of friction to actually getting onboarded into crypto.
You know, having a wallet and managing that might be easier to the people on this call and people may be listening.
But to the average person, it's still sort of like a foreign concept.
And that's something that just is going to require some education.
It's going to take time.
It's going to also require potentially some government mandates, perhaps.
So, you know, we'll watch for that.
As, you know, in the past, and I'm kind of going in different directions here, but I also want to mention 20, 30 years ago, electronic medical records were an option for hospitals.
They didn't have to deploy or implement an EHR system.
You know, most clinics just use paper records.
And then I forget exactly what year, but there was a mandate that they had to use electronic medical records because it was more helpful to manage records electronically.
to manage records electronically.
So that was a government mandate.
So that was a government mandate.
Something similar could happen in the D-side space
where the provenance, the originating data for science
has to be low instead of just trusting the PI
or the teams that conduct the science.
So that might be a new sort of data integrity mandate
that might come out of the government at some point,
which I'm also excited about. So yeah. But anyways, one thing I actually did want to speak
to your community about specifically is a decentralized trial that's going on right now.
It's called the Big Mouth Taping Trial. And essentially, it is planning to investigate or is currently investigating whether or not taping
your mouth shut while you sleep helps you sleep better improves your breathing and just overall
improves your cardiovascular and overall health so this is happening now actually if you go to
my profile you can see some of the content on that.
Anyone can register to be part of this trial.
It's completely remote.
You don't have to visit a clinic or anything like that.
It's run by Tassimo Research.
And I really encourage people to check it out.
And if you have an iWatch, a Whoop, or an Oura ring device, wearable device,
and you would like to participate, you should definitely sign up.
If you do so, you'll get reimbursed for the tape that you'll have to purchase.
It's $7 reimbursement.
And you get the potential of winning an iWatch Series 10, a brand-new watch, too.
So those are some of the benefits of winning an iWatch series 10, a brand new watch too. So those are some of the
benefits of joining. But again, this is potentially going to be the largest decentralized trial on
mouth taping. And I know there's a lot of anecdotal evidence and I myself have done mouth taping while
I sleep and I think it's great. My mouth is certainly less dry in the morning and many
other, you know, I sleep better, more soundly. So, but there isn't enough real data around
this. So this study has been well designed. It is privately funded. So there's no institutional
or corporate big pharma sort of influencers it's really just to understand how
doing this simple biohack of taping your mouth can really improve your life
um and yeah if there's any questions on that i'm happy to talk about it in more detail
you can go to passimoresearch.com to find out more about it. It's currently live, so please do sign up as soon
as you can. And yeah, if there is any questions, please feel free to reach out to me. Yeah,
that's amazing. I'm signed up for the study. I'm only a couple days into it, so I have a few more days to go, but I'm curious how
it will play out at a personal level and then to look at some of the results from this study
as more people are participating as well. Yeah, we'd love to have you share any further details
on some of the other partners involved with the study. I know I'm using a couple different apps to track some of the different data here.
Any different hypotheses or kind of how this project came about?
Yeah, anything else you're able to share, we'd love to have you dive into that, Ray.
Yeah, for sure, Aaron, Thanks. There's actually two optional
studies that you can be part of while doing this. The basic required study is essentially,
you know, taping your mouth shut to see how well you sleep using the metrics on your wearable
device. However, there are two other, as I mentioned, things we are looking to investigate.
One is the facial structure hypothesis, basically saying if you keep your mouth shut while sleeping
and you're breathing exclusively through your nose, your jaw and your facial structure will
actually improve because mouth breathing over time can cause a recessed chin. So that's one potential, I guess, side study or
side investigation we're doing. And it's pretty simple. You take a picture of your face, a few
pictures actually before the study, and then after 30 days of doing this and to see if there's any
change that- Has there been a lot of like research or investigation into that
hypothesis of like the face shape um and kind of that recessed chin positioning with it or is that
more just like anecdotal or smaller scale studies like yeah Good question. So I don't have the full answer to that,
but I know there are some studies, but again, I don't think they are. There's some anecdotal
evidence. I'm looking now to see if I could find some good specific. For sure. But yeah,
I feel like I've, I've just heard that talked about a lot and I didn't know how much like actual proper study format foundation there was for it or if it was mostly kind of anecdotal, which when collected at scale, like can be incredibly knowledge informing.
incredibly knowledge informing. So I guess that makes this study even more exciting if that's
part of it. And like you said, it was just three pictures. So it's super simple, easy to do. I just
like took the picture on my computer. So it takes two seconds to participate in that part of it. So
yeah, I'm curious to see for myself, even like, does this change my face?
Yeah, no, it's for sure. I mean,
I know that there's been some studies on babies actually not specifically on,
uh, like mouth taping, but, um, using, uh,
pacifier and things like that. So there's, you know,
I wouldn't even say there's similar studies
but there's has been an investigations around how um you know lifestyle factors maybe or
could influence your your facial structure you know and especially specifically mouth breathing
and things like that i was was gonna. But again,
this is the reason we're doing this study is to get some real data around it.
So I appreciate you being part of that.
Yeah.
When you were talking about like the studies on babies,
I'm like,
they've taped babies mouth shuts,
but the pacifier makes farmer sense and probably easier from an ethical
standpoint as well.
Yeah, absolutely.
I don't think anyone's taping Ake's mouth shut.
But the other part of the study,
I mentioned there's two optional studies.
The other part is in conjunction with Snore Lab.
So essentially, in addition to wearing
your wearable device at night while you sleep
and taping your mouth shut,
you'll also have your phone out to record noise to see if you are snoring and when you're snoring and how loud and how often.
And and seeing if that interrupts your actual sleep if you wake up in those moments and to see, again, the mouth taping helps reduce the amount
that you actually snore.
So really interesting hypothesis.
Again, what's I think really important here
is how easy this can be to do.
Anyone can essentially buy some tape and tape their mouth.
And if it turns out that, you know,
after we look at the data,
that this really does help
maybe reduce snoring and maybe even help
with sleep apnea potentially,
that's pretty awesome because, you know,
again, there's no pharmaceuticals involved.
You don't have to wear a large CPAP machine.
Again, this is not medical advice or anything like that, but as a community,
we're trying to investigate whether or not how helpful this can be. And the more people that
can join the study, the more accurate and reliable the data will be. So that's sort of the purpose behind it. Yeah. I'm doing that portion
of the study as well. I have found that sometimes it, it tracks like different movement I might have
as noise. So I'm curious if like, that's part of the like, sleepers nor score as well, I might not be diving into the data or app deep enough, but I know I'll cycle over some of the different peaks and sound, and I'm like, oh, that's a blanket wrestling.
So I'm sure there's a way to filter through some of that.
But it's cool that all of these different angles are being explored in this study.
Sure.
Yeah, there can certainly be some data noise, not actual noise, but some data noise with this study, of course,
that's one of the reasons we want to recruit as many people as possible. But I think, you know,
on the average, that's sort of taken into account. So it's a good point. I'm not exactly sure how
they kind of make sure they don't, I don't know if it's like exclude that piece of data
or kind of average it out.
I'm not really sure,
but I'm certain that, you know,
with such a large study population,
we'll be able to figure out
if there's any real reliable sort of conclusions
that could be made around it.
Definitely.
Yeah, I know you mentioned at the
beginning that it's not like funded by or tied to any set institution. Did this study come from just
like an individual curious on this type of topic? Do you have any insight into how it came about? I know you've been a collaborator kind of getting looped in much more deeply a
bit recently. But yeah,
didn't know if you knew any of the origins of it.
Yeah.
So the lead investigator and really the founder of Cosimo research is Maya
Adar. And she's the main researcher in this study.
And I would kind of call her the person to ask those questions.
She probably has a way better understanding of origination,
but definitely she's also on Twitter.
So certainly her ex would definitely follow her at Maya Adar.
And very approachable.
Not very, what's it called?
Since we're trying to be on many platforms at once,
obviously she's pretty busy as well.
So she couldn't make this specific talk, obviously she's pretty pretty busy as well so she couldn't make
this specific talk but um she's very approachable so you can try to message her directly and i'm
sure she'll she'll follow can definitely second that she's awesome uh super friendly and uh does
awesome research and looking at questions such as this that can directly tie into individual people's lives and
that kind of wide scale participation. So yeah, if you're not yet following her,
definitely recommend it. But Ray, you're also involved with other things as well.
You've had a podcast for a while. Would love for you to share general other updates of things you might be
paying attention to, working on, conversations you're having, anything else kind of top of
mind that has some overlap with broader DSI health combos? Yeah, for sure. So for those that may not be aware, since 2020, 2018, sorry, I've been actually interviewing entrepreneurs and founders and different executives that have been trying to take, of course. But it's funny because when I started it, D-Sci was not even a term people spoke.
So it's evolved many times.
I remember the ICO craze and bubble in 2017 and 18.
And then there was a huge NFT bubble and then DAOs.
So I think all these cycles, I don't want to say hurt D-Sci, but they sort of sometimes
bring in a lot of people. But at the same time, when things go down, a lot of people leave.
So there's this constant cycling of individuals who get interested in blockchain for healthcare,
broadly speaking, and then they leave. And it's been interesting talking to non web3 individuals
people that are in traditional science or traditional health care and i always ask them
hey have you heard about dsci or have you heard about how blockchain can help with verifiable
credentials for providers and things like that. And the answer is typically no.
You know, it's not very, so we're still really early in terms of getting this to the broad public.
So what I find interesting is how, how do I put this, how the financial sector, our De defy has been gaining some serious steam so i think
that's going to be like a prerequisite honestly for dsci it's going to take the financial the
traditional financial sector and our industry or really governments too, nation states, to adopt or to make normal
the use of blockchain technology.
And only then will we really start to see large scale adoption.
I don't want to say that and I'm not trying to be negative or pessimistic.
that and I'm not trying to be negative or pessimistic.
I truly believe in the technology.
I truly believe in the technology.
And I think there's so much to be said about,
online communities and even local communities
and what they can do.
But just the incentives right now,
whether it's like a crypto-based crowdfunding organization
or even like a genetics-based some on some sort of web3 platform
there's too many points of failure and a lot of traditional scientists or traditional finance
people they don't want to get involved because it it's not been done before so i even want to
hear and everyone listening probably is a sort of like a trailblazer in this space and keep pushing. There are, as you know, many conferences where you can meet
other people like this, but we're still pretty early. Yeah.
Yeah, definitely agree. I think some of the points you were making of just the different seasons or eras of different kind of areas of interest, whether it's the ICO era or different times when there's been an influx of attention or interest of people coming into the B-sized space, maybe building in it, and then maybe falling off a bit,
maybe building in it and then maybe falling off a bit uh is is an interesting pattern to just
keep in mind as the whole space has evolved and uh you've definitely had a good eye uh watching
all of those different trends and also highlighting different people building uh as as these timelines have evolved. So I wanted to give a shout out there as well.
And if anyone hasn't yet checked out Ray's podcast,
definitely go do that.
There's so many great people, conversations, organizations,
ideas, projects talked about on there.
And yeah, highly recommend it.
Yeah. about on there. And yeah, highly recommend it. Yeah, one thing I also want to add is I'm really enthusiastic about the improvements that are done on just layer one blockchains. That's going to be
so helpful in actually creating a product like a user interface or experience where people can feel like it's easy to use.
You know, I think that's so important.
We're getting, with AI, we're just getting, we're all getting lazy.
I think we're just kind of depending on, you know, either AI or certain workflows to be
there for us.
And we're kind of forgetting how, you know, to build these
things, it takes a lot of hard work sometimes, and perseverance. And I think that's something
like, you know, you, Aaron, and a lot of people in the community understand really well. But just
anyone who's new to the space, remember, this is, this is something that's relatively new to society. It's going
to take a lot of education and a lot of different voices to really explain the benefits and how,
you know, you should really be interfacing with some of these communities. Yeah.
Yeah. Couldn't agree more. And I think some of these different experiments and projects such as the Big Mouth Taping
trial are great examples of how easy it can be for people to participate and also just
get engaged with the ecosystem without even having to download a wallet at this stage and
and still participating to this decentralized approach to knowledge collection and knowledge
generation knowledge sharing um and like getting the supplies for it was super simple every like
pharmacy has medical tape that they sell there.
So super easy to pick up all of the materials needed to be able to participate.
It doesn't cost that much and it's reimbursed.
So that factor of, oh, I need access to certain things isn't kind of a prohibitive factor either.
And I hope we continue to see more and more of that kind of open access for participation
in different scientific pursuits as projects keep moving forward. Definitely, for sure. Cool. Well, I think we covered a lot with this trial.
If you haven't yet signed up, would definitely recommend it. I've pinned up above a great thread that Ray posted on
this mouth taping trial and how you're able to sign up as well. So definitely recommend you go
do that. Give Ray a follow, give Maya a follow if you haven't already too. those are that was one of the main things I wanted to dive into in
this convo right are there any other things top of mind for you right now maybe broader
conversations or challenges in science that you're hoping to see more uh decide people projects approaches kind of bringing bringing their their kind of side of
things into trying to address those different challenges or opportunities
uh yeah i think um i would say two big problems that I'm seeing just keeps growing and growing.
One is funding, of course.
It looks like we're getting a lot of cuts in research grants.
And I think from a federal perspective, that's a big issue because people are going to stop research that might be ongoing, or maybe they're not going to start a project that they were thinking about doing.
And we're often seeing a lot of potential PhDs actually not pursue the PhD route and
go in a different direction.
So that's like a hit for science.
We want people to be explorers and curious and trying to do experiments that'll help
us unpack this crazy thing called the universe.
And I think that's important to continue doing.
So DSAI with its potential for, you know, raising,
let's call it value or money from the community is essential, I think.
And it might be the next way that we raise or that we provide funding
for a lot of these researchers.
So I'm very bullish on that side.
And I think that's been already like a hot topic for a while.
The other thing is just reproducibility of research, because, you know, there are so
many articles out there that have been retracted and it's concerning because we need to be able to trust
the conclusions scientists make because it sort of builds on top of each other so you have if you
have a study or a conclusion that's made that's false then you have additional studies on top of that that could be basically false too.
So we have to be able to rely on the assumptions of previous studies so that we can continue to build on top of the shoulders of the previous giants in this space.
space. Yeah, I'll leave it at that. Thoughts? Yeah, as you were talking, the visual that came
Yeah, I'll leave it at that. Thoughts?
to mind was like science Jenga. And if all the blocks at the bottom are these different
scientific experiments or conclusions, and you knock one out because there's some data
manipulation, you knock another one out because somebody funded it to come up with a certain conclusion.
How many of these blocks can we knock out before the whole scientific paper collapses?
Yeah, no, you're exactly right.
You're right.
Yeah.
Something I've been thinking a lot on lately is just how possibly in like a few years from now, as a whole scientific community, and even people building or training different scientific ML AI models,
AI models, we might end up throwing out all of the research generated from maybe about a year or two
ago until some type of standards get put in place, just because it's so incredibly easy to
generate completely fake scientific publications and like illusions of science um and there's no way to really discern
between what's real and what's not at least based on what's implemented today warranted uh a bit
focused on this just with the work we're doing at causality um but i'm hoping hoping as a whole scientific community, we'll start implementing something so the good work that's being done today can still be trusted and part of pushing science forward and holding everything up to keep things accelerating up or in good directions.
Cool.
Well, I think those two points are good points for just pondering on until we might come back here again next week.
Wanted to thank you, Ray, for joining in on the conversation today.
And we'll be back here next week with another topic for the D-Sign mic. If anyone is listening
in afterwards, feel free to reach out with any topics or conversations that you think we need
to be having as a whole community. I'm currently in
Switzerland and I'll be hosting an in-person session next week titled, Is Desai a Scam?
So that's a broader conversation that I'm happy to keep exploring and just proving out how it's not all a scam, at least, as everyone keeps building in the space.
Before we close out, Ray, any final thoughts?
Yeah, just want to thank you again, Aaron, for doing this and being such an incredible voice in this space.
Yeah, no, thank you.
And you're right. I think it's going to take time. And the question of is Desai a scam is quite interesting, because in the 90s,
everyone thought the internet was a scam. And sure, there were a lot of scammers on the internet,
but it's kind of taken us to this place now. So, you know, with any great technology,
there's pros and cons, and you got to be able to balance it out. So looking forward to that next
week. So thanks. Amazing. Thanks so much for joining in sharing about the largest mouth taping
trial in history. And if you aren't yet signed up, you had plenty of time to do so while we were talking but if you
still need some more time go sign up now super easy to participate and I really enjoy just kind
of the intention before bed and when I wake up to be able to even just check in with myself of
how did I sleep last night and just mentally get into that space too.
So if you're needing a more selfish reason to participate in addition to some of the other
ones of just knowing how does this affect your face, your breathing, your sleep quality,
everything, that's another kind of softer side of a reason to participate as well.
So thanks so much for joining in.
Ray, thanks for being part of the conversation.
We'll be back here same time next week,
12 p.m. Eastern time for another conversation on the D-Sign mic.
Thanks so much.
