University of Minnesota-Twin Cities

Search
Search
News
Multimedia
Sports
Classifieds
Opinion
Subscribe
Entertainment
Send a Tip
In-Depth
Donate

University of Minnesota-Twin Cities

Minnesota Daily Logo

Wednesday, April 25, 2018 Print Edition

Subscribe

  • News
  • Sports
  • Opinion
  • Entertainment
  • In-Depth
  • Multimedia
  • Classifieds
  • Send a Tip
  • Donate
  • News
  • Sports
  • Opinion
  • Entertainment
  • In-Depth
  • Multimedia
  • Classifieds
  • Send a Tip
  • Donate
Search

Subscribe

The independent news source for the University of Minnesota campus, now only a click away. Subscribe to the Minnesota Daily's e-newsletter for full sports coverage, updates from the newsroom, and a pick of the week's top features.

Minnesota Daily Newsletter

Fill out my online form.

Donate to the Minnesota Daily!

The Minnesota Daily has been training student journalists and serving the University of Minnesota community since 1900. With your help, we will continue to produce award-winning journalism and provide excellent training for students in all areas of news production. We collect donations through GiveMN; please click below and donate today!

   

MINNESOTA DAILY | GiveMN


7/6/2016, 12:00am

Citizen science fosters collaboration

A new crowdsourcing platform helps citizens and scientists work together.

By David Clarey
Citizen science fosters collaboration
Photo courtesy of Banfield et al./SDSS
A radio contour overlay showing the newly discovered Matorny-Terentev Cluster RGZ-CL J0823.2+0333.

Share

  • Share
  • Tweet
  • Mail
  • Print

When University of Minnesota astronomer Larry Rudnick  found two citizen scientists discussing an abnormal radio structure online, he knew they were on to something bigger.

He brought the pair’s findings to the team he advises for a project called Radio Galaxy Zoo, which helps identify radio galaxy images. Soon, the researchers used the pair’s image to track down a new radio galaxy cluster. 

The project is part of Zooniverse, a website allowing everyday people to collaborate with researchers, a practice called citizen science. Co-founded in 2010 by University of Minnesota professor Lucy Fortson, the website is one of many platforms that let everyday people participate in projects like transcribing historical documents or discovering galaxies. 

“Citizen science can generate data that is just as good as the data that is collected by professional scientsts — on a much much bigger scale,” said Anne Bowser, co-director of the Wilson Center’s Commons Lab, which studies citizen science. 

A case study: Zooniverse

Zooniverse has over 1.5 million participants and 60 projects. There are also thousands in the “beta stage,” where they are evaluated before being opened to collaboration, Fortson said.

The website originated as a single project to identify over a million galaxy shapes. Because of the intense 

workload, she decided to create a site called Galaxy Zoo in 2007 to allow anyone to log on and help her team.

Computers struggle at classifying galaxy shapes, Forston said, making it necessary to recruit humans. 

“It’s just difficult for computers to provide information about an image, where human beings, our entire visual cortex has developed through evolution to provide highly precise information in an image,” Fortson said.

As the website caught on, Forston and her team conducted a survey to see why participants were interested and found that most people said they wanted to contribute to research in general. In response, Forston said, the team expanded their approach to include various disciplines in addition to astronomy. 

Zooniverse now houses Galaxy Zoo as one of its projects. 

Citizen science benefits

Rudnick said without crowdsourcing from citizen scientists, his Radio Galaxy Zoo project may have never started. 

“If I have a project that I think is going to take a month or two of a student’s time … it’ll get done,” he said. “Suppose it’s gonna take 1,000 years, you’re not gonna start the project,” Rudnick said. 

The Huntington Library in San Marino, Calif., turned to Zooniverse to help decode civil war telegrams. The decision was largely motivated by the potential to reduce the the project’s timetable, said project lead Mario Einaudi. 

 “For an individual at our institution to do that, working full time, it would take 3-4 years to do everything,” he said. “Here we can do it in much shorter time, and probably [with] much greater accuracy in the end.” 

Rudnick said researchers are also analyzing citizen scientists’ click data to see if they find a way to let computers automate the identification tasks that citizen scientists have to do. 

“It’s difficult for computers to give classisifications on the shape of a galaxy. But in the 10 years [of] Galaxy Zoo, computers have been getting smarter and smarter. But one of the things computer algorithims need is a lot of training,” Forston said. 

Battling skepticism

When Forston first opened her galaxy identification project to the internet, she said it was met with some skepticism from the academic community regarding data quality. 

To combat this, Forston said, Zooniverse is now highly selective in what projects they accept for collaboration. 

Anyone can submit proposals for projects to be worked on through Zooniverse, but it has to go through beta testing first to allow staff to determine if the project has potential to have high-quality data, she said. 

“For us it was absolutely critical, if a research team wanted to work with us, they had to have a very good probability of producing a peer reviewed journal paper,” she said.

Bowser, the Wilson Center’s Commons Lab director, said that because of all of their peer-reviewed papers, the citizen scientist community has proven “over and over and over again” that data quality is no longer an issue.

“Within the citizen science community, that [skepticism] really elicits an eyeroll,” Bowser said. “Citizen science is one of the only tools that can collect enough information in enough places to solve really global challenges,” she said.

 

Share



Related Stories

Sarah Webstor Norton waits to be called to speak during a public hearing at Minneapolis City Hall on Thursday, June 22. Sarah works in the service industry and is in favor of a proposed $15 minimum ordinance.

Minimum wage hearing draws crowds

By Christopher Lemke

Minnesota law now mandates sex assault training for students

By Melissa Steinken

Minnesota Rep. Phyllis Kahn, Mohamud Noor and Ilhan Omar debate in a filled Cowles Auditorium at the Humphrey School of Public Affairs Monday evening. The three are competing for the DFL primary for House Seat 60B.

Debate spotlights veteran, newcomers

By Ryan Faircloth


The Minnesota Daily welcomes thoughtful discussion on all of our stories, but please keep comments civil and on-topic. Read our full guidelines here.


Editor's Picks


Last Updated 12 hours ago

UMN College of Biological Sciences to offer new major this fall

By Katrina Pross

While the college already offers many cellular and organismal physiology classes, students haven't been able to pursue a major in the subject at the University of Minnesota.


Editorial Last Updated 12 hours ago

Editorial: The importance of student newsrooms and how you can help


4/23/2018, 2:29am

Sitting with women in class may improve your GPA and confidence, UMN study says


4/23/2018, 2:25am

University of Minnesota supplemental budget funding left out of omnibus bills


Minnesota Daily Logo To Homepage
  • About
  • Jobs
  • Contact
  • Archives
  • Advertise
  • Distribution

All Rights Reserved

© Copyright 2018 Minnesota Daily

Powered by Solutions by The State News.