Faced with intense competition for a shrinking pool of government cash, scientists around the world are turning to the public to fund their research

A hunt for the first moon orbiting a planet outside our solar system, a study into how LSD affects the brain, and an attempt to unravel what the dodo did with its strange beak are among the latest scientific endeavours to appeal for financial help from the crowd online.

The projects are part of a growing trend among academic researchers to seek funding for their work outside traditional government and industry-backed sources.

Faced with the threat of budget cuts and intense competition for the money that remains, scientists around the world are instead turning directly to the public for the help they need. In the process, they are unlocking millions of pounds via crowdfunding websites, but there are fears that as the funding becomes more significant it will skew the type of research being done or give governments an excuse to pull back from funding science.

A particularly eye-catching example was the announcement in November of an attempt to build the first crowdfunded moon lander, which will drill deep into the lunar surface to study the rock beneath.

Lunar Mission One said it wants to transform the way space exploration is funded by raising £600,000 to start the project from millions of small payments by the public. In return for higher payments, supporters are promised space on the mission to send a strand of their hair.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Millions of small payments from the public could put Lunar Mission One on the moon. Illustration: Lunar Missions

Many other scientists are turning to the crowd. Dr David Kipping, a British astronomer now based at Harvard, has raised funds to help his search to find the first exomoon – a moon that orbits a planet in another solar system.

His ambitious project involves sifting through huge quantities of data gathered by the Kepler Space Telescope as it stares into space, looking for an almost imperceptible change in brightness from a star that might indicate a planet with a moon passing in front of it.

In less than a month he was able to raise $12,000 (£7,700) from public contributions through the crowdfunding site PetriDish, giving his team enough to buy a small supercomputer needed to crunch the numbers.

It has allowed them to examine 57 planetary systems beyond our own solar system for signs that one might harbour a moon and has led to a $2m grant from Nasa to extend the search to look around hundreds of exoplanets.

Dr Kipping said: “When I first started on the project it was very difficult to get the funding we needed – we had just 64 desktop computers that were nowhere near powerful enough.

“Our project really seemed to strike a chord with the public – I think because everyone could understand what an exomoon was and how exciting it could be.”

Although many crowdfunding websites are cautious about revealing exactly how much money has been raised for science, money from this source is now estimated to contribute millions of pounds to the research community.

SciFund Challenge, for example, has allowed nearly 200 researchers to raise an average of $2,000 (£1,272) for 159 different projects. Hundreds of projects on RocketHub have raised up to half a million dollars each.

But there are some who fear that using crowdfunding to support science could alter the balance of what research gets the green light.

Certainly, the list of projects vying for money includes some unusual science, such as a US ecologist who has been trying to record the sounds that fish in the Amazon make, and as an enticement offers funders the opportunity to download the sound of a fish farting as a ringtone on their phone.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Some research proposals will have clear public appeal, such as a study to determine how much tranquilliser would have been needed to stop a T rex in its tracks. Photograph: Oli Scarff/Getty Images

Another is a vet at Iowa State University who wants to work out how much tranquilliser would be needed to bring down a Tyrannosaurus rex by studying dinosaur DNA.

There are fears that crowdfunding could skew what research gets done. Sarah Main, director of the UK’s Campaign for Science and Engineering, said: “There is a real question about the quality of science that will get funding if there is more of a reliance on crowdfunding. Putting together a proposal that is attractive to the public does not have to be as scientifically robust as putting an application into a panel of experts.

“I would be concerned about the effect of having to ensure that proposals have public appeal. A different type of work would attract that kind of funding and many of the important areas, such as in medical research, would be overlooked.”

However, there are some who believe crowdfunding will complement the current research structure, allowing studies that are overlooked by traditional funding sources or considered too controversial to receive government money, to blossom.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest A US ecologist is recording the sounds that fish in the Amazon make, and offers funders the opportunity to download the sound of a fish farting as a ringtone. Photograph: Alamy

Professor David Nutt, a neuropsychopharmacologist at Imperial College London who was controversially sacked from the UK government’s Advisory Council on the Misuse of Drugs over his views on the dangers of ecstasy, is to launch a bid to raise funding for research into the effects of LSD on the brain through a British-based crowdfunding site called Walacea.

This, according to Dr Didier Schmitt, a scientific adviser to the European commission – which itself is threatening cuts to its science budget – could be the real power of crowdfunding in the future. “In the case of projects competing for public funding, crowdfunding is a measure of citizen interest and could be used to help decision-makers and experts in their final choice,” he said.

Brian Meece, founder of RocketHub, argues that crowdfunding is empowering the public to choose: “We don’t judge campaigns based on content, as long as the project is legal and tasteful, it has a shot.

“These academic campaigns empower ‘the people’ to fund science – a paradigm shift, since science has been traditionally supported by governments, endowments or other institutions.”

Walacea was founded in October 2013 by Natalie Jonk, a 32-year-old former scientific adviser in the pharmaceutical industry, after she saw the difficulty young scientists were having getting funding for their work.

“Scientific research really shapes our society and can really improve our lives,” she said. “At the same time, getting funding is really difficult. Only about 10 to 20% of funding applications are successful and it is particularly difficult for scientists early in their career.

“There has been a lot of focus on trying to encourage more young people into science, but actually that is not the problem. There are a lot of people who want to do research, it is getting funded that is the issue.”

There is still some way to go before crowdfunding can begin to replace the £5bn the British government has set aside in the budget for 2015/2016 for scientific research or the £140bn the US government spent on science last year.

Imran Khan, chief executive of the British Science Association, believes that while crowdfunding could lead to scientists dreaming up projects that are likely to capture the public imagination, it could ultimately help science.

“If crowdfunding does become an appreciable part of the mix down the road then we might see more scientists deliberately thinking up projects that would have a direct public appeal,” he said. “But equally it might change how the public sees science. Scientists might become better at explaining the value of research that’s happening anyway, and non-scientists might become better at tuning in to it.”

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Crowdfunding paid for a supercomputer to search for exomoons in the vast quantities of data from the Kepler space telescope. Credits: Ames/JPL-Caltech/Nasa

Crowdfunding site: Petridish

Who is doing the research? Dr David Kipping, Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics

How much does he want? $10,000 (target reached)

What will he do with the money? The Kepler Space Telescope has now identified 996 exoplanets, with another 4,000 candidates still to be confirmed. Many of these are giant worlds, far bigger than our own and probably too hostile for life. Yet in orbit around some of these planets, there may be Earth-sized moons that could provide a refuge for alien life. There have already been hints that there may be exomoons out there, but none has yet been identified. Dr Kipping and his team have used the money to buy a small supercomputer that allowed them to analyse data from 57 planets by looking for tiny, periodic changes in the brightness of stars that may indicate the presence of the moon.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest What did the dodo use its extraordinary beak for? Photograph: Redmond Durrell/Alamy

Crowdfunding site: experiment.com

Who is doing the research? Professor Leon Claessens, College of the Holy Cross in Worcester, Massachussets; Dr Hanneke Meijer, Institut Catala de Paleontologia in Barcelona; and Dr Kenneth Rijsdijk, University of Amsterdam.

How much do they want? $8,000

What will they do with the money? After the species was wiped out by hungry sailors during the 17th century, the only information about what the dodo ate and what it’s odd-shaped beak was for are a few sketchy accounts in ship records and diaries. Some say the one-metre-tall relatives of pigeons ate large fruit or hard nuts, others say they used their beaks as weapons. The scientists want to finally answer this question by conducting detailed biomechanical research on 3D models of the creature’s head.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest The psychedelic drug LSD could have therapeutic uses. Photograph: Fredrik Skold/Alamy

What does LSD do to the brain?

Crowdfunding site: walacea

Who is doing the research? Professor David Nutt and Dr Robin Carhart-Harris, Imperial College London

How much do they want? £30,000 (yet to be launched)

What will they do with the money? The researchers are hoping to use MRI (magnetic resonance imaging) and magnetoencephalography to monitor the brain activity of people when they take the psychedelic drug LSD. They believe the drug could have therapeutic potential and that it is time to end the 50-year stigma surrounding its use. They hypothesise that it could “reset” normal brain function in people struggling to cope with addiction and depression. The money raised through the crowdfunding site will be matched by the Beckley Foundation, a charity run by English aristocrat Amanda Feilding.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Centipede venom contains a cocktail of chemicals some of which may have uses in medicine and agriculture. Photograph: Frank Greenaway/Getty Images/Dorling Kindersley

Crowdfunding site: Experiment.com

Who is doing the research? Micaiah Ward, Dr Darin Rokyta, Dr Kenneth Wray, from Florida State University

How much do they want? $6,000

What will they do with the money? Some centipedes can deliver venom to instantly disable their prey. For a human the venom can cause severe pain, but recent research suggests that it also contains a cocktail of compounds that may be useful for medicine or as pesticides. The researchers hope to isolate and identify the toxins that will be most beneficial.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Andy Gersick wants to learn the language of the spotted hyena. Photograph: Richard du Toit/Corbis

Decoding hyena calls

Crowdfunding site: Petridish

Who is doing the research? Andy Gersick, University of Pennsylvania

How much do they want? $5,000 (target reached)

What will they do with the money? The haunting call of the spotted hyena can be heard from several miles away, but scientists know very little about what these calls mean. To human ears, the whooping noises all sound the same, but these highly social animals will react in different ways to certain calls – some may be alarms while others appear to contain more complex information. The researchers want to use recordings of calls to investigate the associated behaviours. Gersick also hopes to test the hypothesis that hyenas choose acoustically favourable spots in their territories to broadcast some whoops far and wide.

• This article was amended on 9 January 2015. An earlier version misspelled Natalie Jonk’s surname as Jenk.