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Gaming cancer: How citizen science games could help cure disease

By inviting players to tackle real scientific problems, games can offer a hand in solving medicine’s toughest challenges.

These remarkable parallels can be put to good and surprising use, as I argue in my book, “ Gaming Cancer.” Cancer remains an unsolved problem, and thousands of scientists worldwide are working diligently to make progress in its treatment. Modern canning and jarring techniques originated in part from a reward offered during the French Revolutionary Wars to anyone who could devise a cheap way of preserving large quantities of food. The games involve citizens solving problems related to almost every area of science, from identifying celestial bodies (there are only so many human astronomers, and AI has its limits), to transcribing ancient texts, to finding new ways to engineer quantum computers.

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