When I announced SciCast in January, I said we couldn’t pay participants. Alas, many associated folks are skeptical of paying because they’ve heard that “extrinsic” motives just don’t work well relative to “intrinsic” motives. No need to pay folks since what really matters is if they feel involved. This view is quite widespread in academia and government.

But, SciCast will finally do a test:

SciCast is running a special! For four weeks, you can win prizes on some days of the week:
• On Wednesdays, win a badge for your profile.
• On Fridays, win a $25 Amazon Gift Card.
• On Tuesdays, win both a badge and a $25 Amazon Gift Card.
On each prize day 60 valid forecasts and comments made that day will be randomly selected to win (limit of $575 per person).
Be sure to use SciCast from May 26 to June 20!

Since we’ve averaged fewer than 60 of these activities per day, rewarding 60 random activities is huge! Either activity levels will stay the same and pretty much every action on those days will get a big reward, or we’ll get lots more activities on those days. Either you or science will win!

So if you or someone you know might be motivated by a relevant extrinsic or intrinsic reward, tell them about our SciCast special, and have them come be active on matching days of the week. We now have 473 questions on science and technology, and you can make conditional forecasts on most of them. Come!

Added 21May: SciCast is mentioned in this Nature article.