Crowdsourcing your work

Ebird is a website where bird watchers (or “birders”, in the parlance of the field) upload their observations. This project, by Cornell’s Lab of Ornithology and the National Audubon Society, has been a beautiful success, with over 1.5 million observations. I know first hand that birders are a unique community, but they are not the only amateur community that could contribute research. Amateur astronomers are a similarly fertile resource. What other communities could be organized to further scientific research?

A similar approach is being used by protein chemists. Predicting tertiary structure from amino acid sequences is a huge problem that is being attacked on multiple fronts. One effort to contribute better structure solving algorithms is a bit like “The Last Starfighter.” Researchers at the University of Washington have developed a game, Foldit, which trains people to accurately predict tertiary structure from amino acid sequences. Apparently, this is something that some people have a natural knack for. The gamers fold proteins with known structures, so the game can grade their work. By observing the strategies that expert games use, the researchers are hoping to come up with better algorithms; and maybe even have gamers design proteins themselves.

Similar projects:
Project Feederwatch
Galaxy Zoo