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These markets with $15K+ bet should have more liquidity than $400. Typically it would rise with volume, unclear why that isn't happening anymore. Why not just allow people to add but not withdraw it? @ClearerThinkingRegrants @ManifoldMarkets

@BTE They removed that feature temporarily.

@SneakySly I am fairly certain I was the reason why. I had added liquidity to a lot of these markets that I assume will come back once these all close.

@BTE I think the issue was that you could increase leaderboard profits by seeing a mispriced market, injecting liquidity at the mispriced value, and then trading against the increased liquidity.

This of course comes from the liquidity you injected but injected liquidity losses don't subtract from leaderboard profits.

The team seems to already have a strong track record in related research and prototypes are already developed and shared as open source hardware. The next step towards establish a diagnostic kit, and preparing the reagents is crucial. They can stand on the shoulders of giants in doing so

To me it looks that the team is capable and competent. The objectives are well defined, ambitious yet achievable with the technical basis they already stablished.

@CarlaTousMayol I wonder if you are biased?? Since the only other person I have seen spell "established" as "stablished" is the person who applied for the grant.

@BTE did not realise - english is not my native language.
I do know the researchers since I'm in the biotech field as well, that's all.

@CarlaTousMayol I mean, what are the odds of that?? IMO there is a good chance you are the same person as @FranQuero. That is just not a common misspelling.

@BTE lol not the same person (https://orcid.org/0000-0002-7872-5293)

@CarlaTousMayol Fair enough. Thanks for clarifying.

@BTE "Broken English are globally accepted"... it's a typical typo for native spanish speakers.

I cannot understand how this would be a good use of $450K, it is not even close to enough to get this device to market.

@BTE I need to insist. There is not outcome that involves having the device ready into the diagnosis market.

The grant is to stablish the production networks with proper quality management systems, answer the question of which disease is more important to target next in ghana, do the research to expand the technology to that disease, assembly the final product and get the hardware safety certification and start the clinical trials for the IVD certification. Document everything and create guidebooks by WHO experts that allows the production system to be replicated in the future.

@FranQuero After one hour of writting I am just not focused anymore to explain the things properly. I know the grant is large but all the information is already there!

@FranQuero Now you have given me the answer I need to determine this should not be funded. They are only just STARTING the clinical trials, so this would be a huge amount of money without any concrete outcomes and only speculation about potential success one day.

@BTE In my opinion (and Medic Sans Frontiers https://msfaccess.org/improve-local-production-diagnostics, CDC, WHO and the biggest healthcare agencies in the world), having distributed production of diagnostic hardware and wetware that ensures QMS is important. Using this materials to assembly to perform years of clinical trials will, indeed, require more time and funding.

We want to ensure that the production is ready and have enough quality. And we seek for more funding to continue the certification.

One step at a time.

Please, read the MSF guidelines, your sentence is literally betting against their expertise and opinion.

@FranQuero Sorry, another typo, my brian is melted at this point haha.

Using this materials to assembly final products and to perform what it can be years of clinical trials will, indeed, require more time and funding.

Just to qualify, we have data (written in the grant) that supports that this technology has much more potential than the current standard.

At some point it will have to be produced at scale and certified. We propose to produce and start certification and decrease the cost of entry so that other initiatives can do it.

@FranQuero I actually work in medical device quality assurance so I understand that part of the proposal.

@FranQuero May I ask why you are not suspicious to other proposals in medical devices? There are proposals that for 30k€ and a much weaker technology (Everyone kind of agree that LAMP is the future in the biotech field against PCR) and that are even more ambitious.

@FranQuero $30K for two kids that go to MIT and Purdue looking to develop a device as cheaply as possible is a great project. They have clear goals and they aren't paying themselves or anyone else a salary with the money. It is very low risk. Your project on the other hand is extremely high risk with huge amounts being spent on consultants, so basically the exact opposite of the other project. I understand that you guys are very sophisticated and I can appreciate your skills, but that does not mean this is the right place for you to get funding. There are more appropriate venues for this level of risk.

@BTE There is exactly the same product here -> https://maxanim.com/assay-kit/active-b12-eia/

There is no evidence, having consulted partners as Incas Diagnostics Ltd., a lateral flow manufacturer in Ghana that there's a demand of B12 paper strips in nigeria less by the price that the product that they are developing will cost.

Pardee and MIT were also part of our references/collaborators, our technology is cheaper and have a lower detection limit that a lateral flow strip made out of antibodies, a technology that have been selled since 50 years ago.

Even if they develop something that works and people would like to buy they need to stablish mass production, do a QMS and certify it. After that they probably address to have something similar to the products already existing by a more expensive price.

By the way, all the materials we want to produce, including the WHO guidebook on QMS on diagnostic production, is aiming to help projects like their one to move from experimental phase to have a real production/impact.

@FranQuero I think if all you had applied for was money to support creating the QMS guidebook I would get behind this project. But it’s MUCH LARGER than that, in fact much larger than this grant, so for that reason I don’t think it makes sense. There is no clear outcome that doesn’t require a lot more than this grant.

@BTE

I don't understand what part of the proposal you are not sure we comply with or don't see necessary:

• Market scoping to see in which local disease our technology has the most potential. 15k to pay the biggest experts in the field.

• Adaptation of the technology to the new disease, including first design, sample extraction... 70k (Thanks to a previously established system in which Learning Planet Institute spent more than 5 million and 5 years of development).

• Establishment of local hardware and wetware production lines in Switzerland and Cameroon. 140k (A much bigger budget has already been invested in setting up production on top in Cameroon (https://openbioeconomy.org/team/cameroon-node/) and Gaudilabs (http://www.gaudi.ch/GaudiLabs/?page_id=2) has been a reference in scientific hardware production for more than 10 years). These chains include the production at scale of hardware developed in the framework of a grant program of the most prestigious open source scientific hardware organization (https://forum.openhardware.science/t/apply-here-for-gosh-s-2022-collaborative-development-program-phase-2/4007) and on which we presented good results in the grant. They also include a biotechnology that has been a semi-finalist in Covid's XPRIZE-19 accessible diagnostics (https://medium.com/justonegiantlab/the-xprize-rapid-covid-testing-challenge-selects-corona-detective-and-3-other-projects-on-just-ace6faaa9b23) and has been refined a lot since then including testing with clinical samples in the field in Ghana (results in the proposal).

• Recruitment of WHO experts (among others) to produce open source guidelines that will help us and future projects to achieve a sufficiently secure Quality Management System in local production. 150k.

• Final assembly of the materials into a final product in Ghana. Start of clinical trials to validate the technology and its open publication of results as a final metric of the system in collaboration with the reference laboratory in the country, Noguchi Institute (with which we have collaborated several times before), among others. 85k (including certification and nurses fees).

I repeat, this is an oversimplification. We have put considerable time, several researchers and experts besides me (I am the youngest of this proposal) in writing the best scholarship we could. Please, anyone who reads us at first, we will be very grateful if you take the time to read it.

It seems that you have already committed a lot of funds, when you had not even read the proposal (Sorry if I am wrong, I make this statement after reading some of the messages you have sent at the beggining of the conversation when you "bet all your money against this proposal") to change your mind now.

I agree that it is a long and complex proposal, but that is why without reading it with attention and expertise it is difficult to judge it.

@FranQuero You are wrong. I did read it. I am not disputing the quality of the science at all, I am saying it’s too much money for no clear outcome other than taking just another of many steps toward a successful device. Like I said, if you just asked for funds for the manual that would make sense because it has usefulness even if this specific project fails. But asking them to fund early stage clinical trials of a device without the outcome being a fully certified device is not a good investment. You should apply to NIH or Bill and Melinda Gates who have a mandate for this type of work. FTXFF is looking for more tangible results for that much money in my opinion.

@FranQuero You haven’t even chosen which disease to focus in yet. Why do you need $15K to do that simple task?!? That should have been decided before you apply for this much funding.

@FranQuero why do you need the world experts to do something so simple as choosing which disease to focus on? Why should anyone give you funding if you can’t do that yourself?

@BTE If you have read the proposal, you probably understand that we have big candidates like typhoid fever, malaria or sexual transmission diseases, but we want to contrast this with people that have spent 10 years analyzing african healthcare before before arraging the entire process in a disease or target that may not have a real market (as the B12 project you supported). Analizing markets is not simple and is indeed a multivariable system.

Talking about that project; yes they are working for free (as you mention as an advantage before), and that's probably because they don't have enough expertise. As you are working in the medical device quality assurance you probably know that knowledge and expertise have a price. With that project you are literally paying a 30k€ learning experience.

We have in our team recognize names in the field of diagnostics and biotech and we have as a referees of our work quality the the previously mentioned MIT fellows (http://jfgm.scripts.mit.edu/littledeviceslab/) or people that comes from pardee lab, or direct institutions working on the field for infectious diseases diagnostics.

None works for free if they spent their lives to work out of this, and precisely because we have included fees to pay for their knowledge we present a more serious proposal than one that just made a budget to pay research materials. For half of our research materials we already have a budget, we just want to focus this money in our goal; moving to a distributed manufacturing of our already stablished technology.

Don't get me wrong, some of your questions are precise and I am happy you are asking them, but it feels that you already took your decision and I wont be able to change it, so I better wish you good night and go to sleep.

@BTE Men I am sorry for the typos in the answer. This entire forum/improvised conversation is catching me saying an answer coming directly from my mind, which is not probably the best solution, but at least is an honest one.

Wish you the best in the bets and do not hesitate me to send me a message if you have any other questions.

@FranQuero I really appreciate all of your detailed responses and I am very impressed by your application. To address your comments about my questioning I want to describe my approach. I was thrilled to see the applicants for these projects defend their proposals in the public comments, not an easy task, especially when there is the extra burden of the fluctuating percentage next to the question. I don't envy being on your side of the conversation, this funding is critical for you to advance your life's work. From your perspective I am merely speculating with play money and lobbing questions at you rapid fire, seemingly unmoved by your direct, honest and impressive responses to my inquiries. Your answers, like your technology and proposal, were all very impressive.

My no bet was motivated by the fact that your research, despite being very impressive and certainly worthy of funding from the FTXFF, does not seem to make much sense or have any relation to the Clearer Thinking mission. While my knowledge of CT is based on the few sentences describing the organization in the About section of this contest, psychological research is pretty clearly not a bucket your work fits into.

I think you will definitely find the funding you need to continue advancing your vision for open source medical devices. My advice for funding in the US is to apply to NIH for an SBIR grant. US federal law requires even applicants from outside the US to be eligible for all NIH-related grant programs. Your technology would probably be very attractive to a number of federal agencies, but other than the NIH exception, I don't think non-US applicants are eligible for federal grant funding.

Anyway, best of luck. I hope I lose a bunch of mana because you won a bunch of dead presidents.

@FranQuero Solid play on brian, missed this the first time. Tipped accordingly. Good luck!!