Remember the ice bucket challenge? It just funded an ALS breakthrough

The ALS Association says money raised by viral charity challenge, dismissed as 'slacktivism' by many, has helped identify a new gene associated with the disease

It is often easy to dismiss viral charity campaigns as "slacktivism", which lacks in real-world impact (we never did catch the warlord Joseph Kony, after all) but a breakthrough discovery bankrolled by 2014's ALS ice bucket challenge may give the lie to that cynicism.

The ice bucket challenge was a phenomenon in the summer of 2014 in which people dunked a bucket of iced water over their heads in order to solicit donations before nominating others to do the same.