Citizens for Science

The world of citizen science is growing rapidly, says the Associated Press' Mary Esch. Once restricted to tasks like counting birds for the Audubon Society, non-scientist volunteers are now being put to use by researchers for a variety of projects — some involve counting various types of organisms, while others involve recording data on the weather, water quality, and other phenomena, Esch says. Darlene Cavalier started a Web site called ScienceForCitizens when she was a grad student writing a thesis on citizen science. The site brings together researchers who need volunteers to help with their projects and people who are interested in helping with a little research. "For researchers, volunteers provide free labor and are able to complete a great deal of work in a short time if there are a lot of them," Esch says. While the research community has been a little wary of involving civilians in its work, better designed projects and new methods of "weeding out bad data" have made more scientists comfortable with the idea, Esch adds.