Tag Archives: Deirdre Lockwood

Citizen science = crowdsourced science?

Deirdre Lockwood’s Nov. 12, 2012 article (Crowdsourcing Chemistry) for Chemical & Engineering News (C&EN) offers a good overview of the various citizen science projects and organizations while using the terms citizen science and crowdsourcing science interchangeably. For me, it’s  a ‘poodles and dogs’ situation; all poodles are dogs but not all dogs are poodles.

Here are two examples from the article,

Although the public has participated in scientific research since at least the first Audubon Christmas Bird Count of 1900, so-called citizen science has gained momentum in the past decade through funding, enthusiasm, and technology. This trend is dominated by projects in biology, but chemists are getting on board, too. NSF’s funding of citizen-science projects has grown from a handful each year in the early 2000s to at least 25 per year today.

Online gaming project Foldit has attracted many participants to find the lowest-energy configuration of proteins. Foldit players recently solved the structure of a retroviral protease that had long stumped structural biologists (Nat. Struct. Mol. Biol., DOI: 10.1038/nsmb.2119).

There’s a difference between going out and counting birds (citizen science) and 50,000 or more people solving a problem in biology (citizen science and crowdsourcing science). In the first instance, you’re gathering data for the scientist and in the second instance, you’re gathering, analyzing, and solving a science problem alongside the scientists. There is, of course, a great big grey zone but if you’re looking to participate in projects, the distinction may be useful to you. Do take a look at Lockwood’s article as she mentions some very exciting projects.

H/T to the Nov. 14, 2012 news item about Lockwood’s article on phys.org.