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Zooniverse was a direct response to a PhD project that Chris Lintott was supervising. His student was tasked with classifying galaxies and in the end decided th

Zooniverse was a direct response to a PhD project that Chris Lintott was supervising. His student was tasked with classifying galaxies and in the end decided that the volume of data was just too great. There is a good supply of volunteers, and the tasks are enjoyed by those who undertake them. Where volunteers identify notable things, they are also credited by name in the resulting papers. > maybe they should think about if repeatedly firing, whimsically dismantling expert teams, and cut the funds to scientists at the slighest opportunity really pays at long term. I don't see much evidence for this happening in the UK, where the project is based.

pvaldes 7y ago
> I don't see much evidence for this happening in the UK, where the project is based. Reduction in a 40% of UK funding applicants in the last years: https://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-50044659 https://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-50044659 Lets see how the nice promises will perform at the end https://www.sciencemag.org/news/2020/03/uk-cues-big-funding-increases-rd# https://www.sciencemag.org/news/2020/03/uk-cues-big-funding-...
nil-sec 7y ago
Ha, funny seeing this mentioned on HN, this student was my Professor for Astrophysics during my time in this field. He was a great mentor and taught me (and others) quite a lot, in particular about outreach and science communication. The Zooniverse project is amazing and citizen science in general is a great idea. However, you mention the crux of the issue already: the tasks need to be enjoyable. Looking at galaxies that potentially no other human ever laid eyes on is pretty much as exciting as it may get. A former colleague of mine (in the group of the mentioned student) worked on this interesting structure https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hanny%27s_Voorwerp https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hanny%27s_Voorwerp that was discovered by one citizen scientist in the Zooniverse project (hence the name). It's one of the coolest success stories of crowd-sourced research I've heard about.

pvaldes 7y ago

> I don't see much evidence for this happening in the UK, where the project is based. Reduction in a 40% of UK funding applicants in the last years: https://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-50044659 https://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-50044659 Lets see how the nice promises will perform at the end https://www.sciencemag.org/news/2020/03/uk-cues-big-funding-increases-rd# https://www.sciencemag.org/news/2020/03/uk-cues-big-funding-...

nil-sec 7y ago

Ha, funny seeing this mentioned on HN, this student was my Professor for Astrophysics during my time in this field. He was a great mentor and taught me (and others) quite a lot, in particular about outreach and science communication. The Zooniverse project is amazing and citizen science in general is a great idea. However, you mention the crux of the issue already: the tasks need to be enjoyable. Looking at galaxies that potentially no other human ever laid eyes on is pretty much as exciting as it may get. A former colleague of mine (in the group of the mentioned student) worked on this interesting structure https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hanny%27s_Voorwerp https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hanny%27s_Voorwerp that was discovered by one citizen scientist in the Zooniverse project (hence the name). It's one of the coolest success stories of crowd-sourced research I've heard about.