Including the Public in the Data Pipeline: From motivations to publications

Speaker: Pamela Gay
Affiliation: Southern Illinois University Edwardsville; Astrophere New Media

Title: Including the Public in the Data Pipeline: From motivations to publications

Date: Thursday, November 3, 2011
Time: 3:30 PM Refreshments in CAS 500, 4:00 PM Talk
Place: 725 Commonwealth Ave. CAS 502

Abstract:
Citizen Science isn’t new. From Herschel to Humason to Levy, individual citizen astronomers have found ways to distinguish themselves by making meaningful contributions to science. In recent years, the internet has fundamentally changed how citizen science takes place by making it possible for members of the public to click through images and complete needed scientific tasks that require only limited training. Their efforts have been put to use in dozens of science papers, showing that these click-workers can become part of the data pipeline. In this talk, the field of citizen science is over viewed with emphasis placed on science emerging from the Zooniverse, and the motivations of citizen scientists is discussed. (Why do people do science instead of playing “Angry Birds”?) At the end of the talk, a new project to transform online citizen science from click working to online amateur astronomy is introduced.