Radio Galaxy Zoo Talk

Ideas for Citizen Science in Astronomy - hot off the arXiv press

  • JeanTate by JeanTate

    "Ideas for Citizen Science in Astronomy", by Philip J. Marshall, Chris J. Lintott, Leigh N. Fletcher, arXiv:1409.4291

    We review the relatively new, internet-enabled, and rapidly-evolving field of citizen science, focusing on research projects in stellar, extragalactic and solar system astronomy that have benefited from the participation of members of the public, often in large numbers. We find these volunteers making contributions to astronomy in a variety of ways: making and analyzing new observations, visually classifying features in images and light curves, exploring models constrained by astronomical datasets, and initiating new scientific enquiries. The most productive citizen astronomy projects involve close collaboration between the professionals and amateurs involved, and occupy scientific niches not easily filled by great observatories or machine learning methods: citizen astronomers are most strongly motivated by being of service to science. In the coming years we expect participation and productivity in citizen astronomy to increase, as survey datasets get larger and citizen science platforms become more efficient. Opportunities include engaging the public in ever more advanced analyses, and facilitating citizen-led enquiry by designing professional user interfaces and analysis tools with citizens in mind.

    I could not find any mention of Radio Galaxy Zoo, in my initial skim (maybe I just didn't read carefully enough?). One of the most interesting sections, from my point of view, is 5 Citizen-Led Enquiry:

    The previous sections have focused on specific, and somewhat isolated activities
    in which citizens have participated. In most cases, the community's involvement
    has been a contribution to a scientific investigation defined by professionals. The
    most important part of any scientific investigation is the question at its heart:
    what is it we are trying to find out about the universe? In this section we look
    at some cases where the process of enquiry, the science itself, has been instigated
    or led by citizens.

    I found it rather odd that RGZ was not mentioned, particularly given the not-so-recent GZ blog post The Hunt Is On, but as none of the authors have been involved in RGZ, perhaps that's understandable. (Aside: the subsection on Quench is full of - rather shocking, really - errors; I intend to give some feedback*)

    My thanks to fellow zooite zutopian, for writing about this in GZ Talk, here.

    *There's only a few days left, and feedback is open to all, at https://github.com/drphilmarshall/Ideas-for-Citizen-Science-in-Astronomy/issues

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  • JeanTate by JeanTate

    Having just finished reading the preprint, carefully, here are a few observations (no particular order, nor importance):

    • work on it began on 5 April, it seems, by Dr Phil Marshall

    • it was released (if that's the right verb) to arxiv ~1am Big Apple time, today (16 September, 2014) (or so it seems)

    • "Moreover, we might expect outsiders to ask some unusual questions, and make connections and suggestions that highly focused professionals may not have thought of." (p37)

    • "Both groups of citizen scientists are clearly quite serious in their reasons for taking part: their motivations are actually very close to those of professional scientists, as many readers of this review will recognize." (p44)

    • "Indeed, the more citizen-accessible the interfaces to the upcoming public wide-field survey databases can be made, the better chance we will give ourselves of enabling and supporting "bottom-up" citizen science." (p53) - hey, Science Teams, why not actively recruit some citizen scientists, to be deeply involved in the planning etc phases of such projects?

    • "The citizen astronomers are passionate about the subject, and are encouragingly motivated by being of service to science. We must recognize that a critical feature of "citizen science" is the enabling of amateurs to make authentic contributions to the research topic in question: this in turn should drive us to seek out those tasks that cannot be done by other means." Hear, hear! 😃

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  • ivywong by ivywong scientist, admin

    Hi Jean, I am not sure why RGZ has been left off the paper but we are hoping to publish our project description paper soon (Banfield et al 2014 "inprep") and so that might help our cause. We have benefited and learnt a lot from the other Zoo projects so I think that we are a great example of citizen scientists definitely making authentic contributions and discoveries! It has been hard work but it has been very inspiring working with you all. 😃 Keep up the good work!

    cheers,
    Ivy

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  • drphilmarshall by drphilmarshall

    I'll issue zkChris with finding a place to mention RGZ. Ivy, if he hasn't seen a draft of the Banfield et al paper, now might be a good time to email it to him! We refer to a few other unsubmitted papers, so "in prep" is not necessarily a barrier to inclusion. Thanks for bringing this up!

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  • 42jkb by 42jkb scientist, admin in response to drphilmarshall's comment.

    The draft has been sent your way.

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  • ivywong by ivywong scientist, admin

    Thanks @drphilmarshall.

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