Doing Citizen Science
A year or so back I gave a talk at our local astronomy society about science projects people can do at home—called citizen science. This is distributed science and data analysis that takes people on explorations through data sets they never dreamed existed.
I’ve given that talk a few times, even on a cruise ship. I got cornered by a bunch of folks in the bar afterward with their laptops and iPads. They wanted the Web addresses of the citizen science projects I mentioned in my talk.
People do love science topics, and I know that we are all born scientists at heart. As kids, we experiment with all kinds of projects and behaviors. Somewhere in our lives, some of us get boosted to do science as careers. But, science isn’t just a job. It’s a continual exploration of the world around us. We’re all STILL scientists…if we want to be. Citizen science is a way to continue the passion for learning and exploring. It can happen at your computer or you may be able to work directly with scientists as many amateur astronomers do.
Citizen Science Via the Web
There’s a place online that has gathered a number of cool citizen science projects. It’s called Zooniverse, and it is stuffed with projects you can do on your computer. They include a lot of astronomy projects, which interest ME of course. However, their “people-powered” programs that give you a chance to participate in some pretty unique research projects that have nothing to do with the sky. Take, for example, the many projects where you count plants, or birds. You can access sites that let you take a census of animals on the Serengeti, or search out communities of life that grow along coastlines. Or, classify sounds that manatees make in order to understand those beings.
It’s not all science, either. One project that particularly intrigues me has people transcribing written Supreme Court notes. There’s another one to transcribe the military records of African-American soldiers who fought in the U.S. Civil War. You can work on Shakespearean-age documents and sift through weather observations written in ship’s logs since the 19th century. There are dozens of projects at the site, each one waiting for someone like you to become a data scientist and lend your time and computer.
Zooniverse isn’t the only place online for this work. Google the term “citizen science” and you’ll find a lot of other efforts out there, too. The SciStarter Web page has links to more than 1,500 vetted research projects, and you can learn more about NASA’s involvement on its Citizen Science Pages, too.
(If you DO Google the term, watch out for the site citizenscience dot org. When I clicked on it, it tried to hijack me to another site chock full of non-related contests. I know it was a legit site at one point, so it may be infected at the moment.)
Why Do Citizen Science?
At a time when science appears to be under attack in the U.S. (and in other parts of the world), it’s important to remember that it’s how we learn about our cosmos. It’s about really digging into nature, including the human species. Whether it’s data from distant stars or studying the names of people who worked on films, science provides a treasury of knowledge. And, citizen involvement helps us all. We don’t have to be scientists to work on the data and make a contribution. But, in working on that data, we DO become data scientists, and that’s an important step forward in understanding our lives, work, history, planet, its life, and the cosmos at large.
Come on over to the Science Side. It’s fun!
