It also exposes your research plan to other scientists when your work is at a stage where it's the easiest to be scooped. I have a science project idea to be crowdfunded, but I'm still a bit skeptical...
That's a real risk. But the longer I'm in science, the more I believe that "ideas are cheap, follow-through is everything." If I'm scooped, it's not because someone else had the same idea (probably lots of people had that same idea); it's because I didn't reduce it to practice first. If getting funding from Petridish helps you reduce your idea to practice first, maybe it's worth the risk of getting scooped.
