In 2016, Jason Pipkin was working in a biology lab at Brandeis University, authoring papers with titles such as “Mapping the mind of a fly,” when he first heard of PredictIt. It is a website where you could place bets and win money on political outcomes. Consequential things, such as who would win an election or whether a bill might pass, and trivial things, like how many times Donald Trump would say the words “Crooked Hillary” at a debate. It wasn’t brain science; some bets, such as whether Hillary Clinton would win the Democratic nomination (a foregone conclusion to political junkies like Pipkin) were easy money.