You really can't do that with something like protein folding simulations (I would know, I've worked in the field for three years...). In fact, most scientific problems involve calculations applied to stochastic problems where they don't necessarily know what the results will be. The only way I can think of is to just use a ripple like system where whatever at home gives you credits based upon your solutions being provided to them. But it's not necessarily a bad answer to this problem, it's better than folding and getting nothing but points on a leaderboard.
If opencoin just released their source code you could directly port it and then use it to make a network like ripple for your coins -- but they haven't.
I've had this idea in my mind for the last few months, but I haven't had the time to get started. I suppose the name CureCoin would generate more interest than my idea of ScienceCoin. The main point though was to release an alt coin that actually serves a purpose.
My idea was to auction out (in
BTC) the hashing power of the network, and return on a pps basis to the miners. So essentially ScienceCoin would be a - cheaper than supercomputer option - for anyone requiring distributed computing solutions. Obviously the hard part would be to figure out how to allocate simulations/problems to the entire network. I suppose something like Hadoop could be used for that?
I'm all for "ScienceCoin" concepts, as long as there's a good POW function. Centralization is good in the case that a party can enforce the use of a certain algorithm, and implement checksums to make sure that the appropriate work has been performed, but is against the grain of most cryptocurrencies current out there.
BTW taco, forgive me if my ignorance is showing. My current field of study has nothing to do with protein folding or structure, and my knowledge is essentially in layman's terms (a scientific layman that is).