“Curiosity can be exciting…but sometimes acting on it can be a little scary. And so I hope that we can provide some information to help people feel informed so that they can make a confident choice, whatever they decide to do.” ~ Maeve Tischbein

I think it all started when I ruptured my ACL.

I wondered: is there research about how this goes from here? Are there alternative care strategies I might try? Is there a study I can join?

If we’re curious about clinical trials – let alone getting involved in some way — where do we begin? And why wouldn’t we be curious about what’s involved in building our knowledge base about cranky knees, or whatever?!

Enter ResearchMatch, a nonprofit program funded by the National Institutes of Health, that helps to connect people interested in research studies with researchers from top medical centers across the U.S. It’s hoping to serve as an effective and complementary recruitment tool, connecting willing volunteers with researchers who are searching for appropriate folks for their studies.

I signed up.

So many trials fail because they can’t find participants.

Maeve Tischbein is Program Manager at ResearchMatch. We talked about why clinical trials are important, research as an ecosystem, curiosity and what motivates us to act, the agency that comes from being proactive, discovering new questions (or health research!) that might interest us, science for anyone and everyone, hope, and grappling with unknown unknowns.

Listen to Ep. #349: Research Match: Where Curiosity, Science & Volunteers Meet, with Maeve Tischbein

Learn more about Research Match. You can start searching for research of interest to you via Trials Today.

Catch the full conversation with astrophysicist and Nobel Laureate Saul Perlmutter: Curiosity & Creating Sense in a World of Nonsense.

Check out these C2BC Classics on citizen science: Citizen Science Is for Everyone, with Caroline Nickerson; Chronolog & Time-Lapse Curiosity, with Ky Wildermuth; and The Moore Foundation’s Curiosity-Driven Science Initiative, with Janet Coffey.

Theme music by Sean Balick; “Swapping Tubes” by Studio J via Blue Dot Sessions.

You can subscribe to Choose to Be Curious on Apple Podcasts and Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts.