The Zooniverse is Expanding

On Thursday, June 2, I attended a presentation to the Minnesota Astronomical Society by University of Minnesota professor Lucy Fortson, formerly of the Adler Planetarium in Chicago. The topic of her presentation was, “Birth of the Zooniverse: How Citizen Scientists are Taking on Research from Galaxies to Climate Change.”

Galaxy Zoo

The Zooniverse grew out of Galaxy Zoo, a scholarly effort to get many pairs of eyes analyze and create a taxonomy for the “data flood” of deep field and ultra deep field galactic images taken by the Hubble observatory. In contrast to the thousands of bright galaxies photographed onto glass plates by the Palomar Sky Survey in the 1950s, the number of digital photographs of bright galaxies needing identification exceeded one million, much more than is possible for any graduate student to handle.

Human beings understand relationships via taxonomies. When a field is largely unknown, and the development of galaxies is still not understood, scientists first gather large amounts of data, then sort and classify it by carefully defined criteria. (Computers also do a wonderful job of storing data, and associating data in relationships that nevertheless must first be defined by human beings.)

Astronomers attempted to have algorithms identify and classify these galaxies, using color as a proxy for shape. Computers, however, are great at crunching numbers but still have only limited success at pattern recognition and matching. Meanwhile, this “data flood” was producing blue ellipticals and red spirals, creating contingencies that crossed the color proxy parameters set for the algorithms. Neural networking also had limited success, and duplicated the same problems. Therefore, the solution was to find volunteers without astronomical knowledge, who would provide fresh eyes, to identify spiral armed, spiral barred, and elliptical galaxies among the images.

In 2007 the astronomers launched a website, Galaxy Zoo, which they expected to gather a few thousand volunteers at most. The response from the public was overwhelming, and it crashed their servers. Hundreds of thousands of ordinary people from around the world participated (the astronomers saw a marked dip in classifications when the Egyptian government shut down the internet for a while), and soon the questions were coming in from the volunteers. Unable to answer them all, the astronomers set up a forum for the volunteers.

Also, in order to eliminate empty clicks, false identifications, and practical jokers or random clicks by children, statistical analysis is applied to the results.

Known unknowns and unknown unknowns

Here is where the project truly becomes interesting for me: unable to get their specific questions answered, this increasingly astronomically literate community, which started out with very limited astronomical knowledge, began to do literature searches of refereed journals. They began to make discoveries celestial objects predicted but not yet observed. One of the volunteers, frustrated with the “hunt and peck” method of going through this “data deluge,” even wrote a query of the Sloan site’s spectral data.

The project has yielded 20 peer-reviewed scientific papers—including the MNRAS papers—and one comic book. (I can’t help but wonder what Guillermo Gonzalez was doing all this time if he was serious about attaining the qualifications for tenure.)

New research projects have been designed around these lessons learned, and thus the Zooniverse was born. New projects include an avian and entomological project with the Cleveland Museum of Natural History, a study of ocean temperatures recorded in British ship logs during World War I (climate change is driven by the oceans, yet most of our data comes from land-based temperature sensors, yet the British recorded the ocean temperature faithfully every four hours), and the reconstruction and translation from the Greek of the Oxyrhynchus Papyri from Egypt.

The role of the citizen scientist

It must be stressed that, when one uses nonexperts as citizen scientists, it is imperative that their roles be clearly defined and coherently limited by a strict definition of “citizen science.” There were also strict parameters set (spiral versus elliptical, etc.). This is not a top-down agenda to employ vulnerable adults seeking assuagement of eschatological fears in a campaign to get “new” (fringe or pseudo-) science into high school curricula, or a one-stop shop for bullet points to provide “corroboration” for a foregone conclusion. For example, though there are an abundance of amateur astronomers, these volunteers were not solicited to gather images, but to identify them based on good faith eyeballing. Eyeballing identifies simple shapes and colors (not “complexity”) and should only be used for this. Naïve eyeballing by nonexperts was expressly sought after in this particular case for a particular reason: to eliminate the bias that experts would show in performing what for them would be considered a menial task.* To the public, however, looking at images of galaxies and identifying their shape was a meaningful exercise that led to open-ended inquiry and, importantly, greater information literacy.

*For example, my eye doctor apologized to me for putting me through glaucoma tests after seeing an abnormal cup size on my optic nerve. He admitted that he had just attended a conference on glaucoma and had been viewing so many abnormal optic nerves that that may have influenced the false positive that he saw in my case.

It happens: despite the fact that the word “archive” [sic] is used many different ways in the vernacular, the second I see that word I focus immediately on it. (Actually, use of the word "archive" is a giveaway, as professionals use "archives" even in the singular.)

It was a dark and stormy night...

I just vacated my temporary internship position at the Smithsonian...

I just received the first round of comments and corrections paper that I submitted for peer review...

Holy crap, does this situation sound somewhat familiar?

The irony! The irony! I could make such a Sternberg joke right now! ;-) But peer review is not for whiners.

(Actually, the bulk of my paper survived and I found the criticism to be well founded. After going to SAA this year, I actually disagree with parts of my own paper now.)

Ah, back to the drawing board. That's the name of the game. Plus, I'm working on other articles and projects - while sitting in the hot tub. A strong stomach for rejection - I has it!

(I'd better have it...)

Gossip About Obama (and McCain)

I can't even believe I'm writing this, but either certain Americans are more gullible than P.T. Barnum imagined, or there's a concerted effort by McCain supporters to plant stories of "Clinton supporters now voting Republican" because they think Barak Obama is an Arab/Muslim/from the Middle East. (Being cynical, I tend to think both could be true.)

[UPDATED: McCain has just pulled ads from allegedly pro-Hillary sites that compare Barak Obama to - you guessed it - Adolf Hitler. I remain skeptical about the reports of these "sour grapes" Hillary supporters, although from what I've seen of them they could very well be as crazy as the "agents of intolerance" McCain is now saddled with, and who he used to denounce. Andy Warhol had it partly right - in the future, everyone will have 15 minutes of fame being compared to Adolf Hitler.]

The fact that these alleged "sour grapes" voters make equations between the three astonishes me. What does being an Arab have to do with being a Muslim? Arabs are an ethnicity; Islam is a religion. As a matter of fact, most Arabs in the United States are Christian, and most Muslims in the world are Asian. And don't make simple equations between these and the Middle East, either. They are three different sets that can, but don't always, overlap. (Did people know that there are Jews in Iraq, Lebanon, Turkey? Do people know that Arab-speaking Christians and Jews also pray to "Allah," which is simply the Arabic word for "God"? Do they know that there is no religious test for the Presidency? I hope so.)

When I hear (or read) questions like, "How are we supposed to know what's true?" I just cringe and remember all those passed notes on the schoolbus ("So-and-so in such'n'such state was ARRESTED for PRAYING IN SCHOOL!!!") and everything that people repeated mindlessly from television ("Pedophiles are SACRIFICING BABIES to Satan!" or "Bottled water causes CANCER!"). I remember clearly the day that I had a "snake pit" moment amidst all the false drama that people in a small town invent to have something to do, and realized, "If I listen to these people, I'll never get anywhere."

This is a fine time for a 70-year-old Citizen Joe to ask how we are supposed to know what's true. You should have learned that long ago. This is why we need sound science education in our public schools! Critical thinking is not a "choice" between rumor and fact, any more than it a "debate" between science and pseudoscience. Whatever happened to the adage, "Don't believe anything you hear, and only half of what you see?" But unfortunately, our education system has become so politicized by special interest groups like creationists and abstinence-only wingnuts that people can be easily swayed by even the most outrageous rumor (in fact, the more outrageous the rumor, the more likely that it will be believed), while simultaneously believing that they are the ones digging deeper at some hidden truth. It's the same with Obama.

So where do I begin?

1. Start by becoming curious; climb out of that shell, switch off the idiot box, and start living. Meet people; do things. As a result Citizen Joe/Jane will feel less insignificant and helpless, and the world will be a much less scary place, factors that are probably the greatest contributors to gossip.

2. Talk to your librarian, check some books out of the library - for example, Obama's autobiographies (or McCain's) - look at a few maps and read about the history of Islam, Arabs, the Middle East, and Africa. You live in a country that allows you the freedom to inform yourself about the world. Take advantage of it! Consider travel, too - another freedom that much of the world doesn't enjoy.

3. Ignore all the rumors you hear at the water cooler, the barber shop, in church, on radio or television, and in those fucking forwarded e-mail hoaxes - and be prepared to experience in response a massive amount of peer pressure, exhortations to be a "part of the group," which should confirm that what you're hearing is a crock. (The pressure to gossip is overwhelming, in part because if you don't succumb you will likely become the next target. I know.) The best response is to delay any action. Even if what you're hearing turns out to be true, in all likelihood there's nothing you can do about it that cannot wait until you've confirmed it from a credible source. (In all likelihood there's nothing you can do about it anyway.)

4. Be suspicious of any statement that plays to your emotions, especially fear and vanity - be aware that these rumors always have a "hook, a threat, and a promise," which alternately scares the target and flatters him/her with the power to "save the world," usually by forwarding an e-mail to "all of your family and friends," or by signing some "petition" (what a great phishing scam!) or, in this case, by not voting for Obama.

5. Ask for specifics - for example, where in "Africa" was Obama supposedly born? Africa is a huge continent, after all. Who was his doctor/midwife? Where is his birth certificate? Where is the birth certificate of McCain's "love child"? (To which I must ask, "Who cares?" I tend to feel relieved when people, Republicans especially, show a bit of tarnish. There is a puritanicism that lurks beneath all of this talk.) Where specifically are people getting their information? Ask for the original author of the information - and if no one can name a name other than their neighbor who passed it on, or some e-mail or talk show host, it's a rumor and should be dismissed immediately. (Likewise for this crap about McCain "not being a U.S. citizen" or being "too old" to run for President. Spare me.)

6. Learn to recognize logical fallacies, and dismiss any argument that uses them. Start seeing the contradictions that will arise, inevitably, from gossip. (Isn't it strange that Obama can both be "from the Middle East" and "from Africa", or both "have that awful pastor" and be a "Muslim"?) Get into the habit of assessing websites for accuracy and objectivity.

7. When in doubt, check out Snopes.

Don't get caught up in the "drama" of spreading the rumor - which is what this phenomenon is really about, if the participants were to be honest with themselves. Gossip is Nobody's Friend:

My name is Gossip.
I have no respect for justice.
I maim without killing.
I break hearts and ruin lives.
I am cunning and malicious and gather strength with age.
The more I am quoted the more I am believed.
My victims are helpess. They cannot prove themselves against me because I have no name and no face.
To track me down is impossible. The harder you try, to more elusive I become.
I am nobody's friend.
Once I tarnish a reputation, it is never the same.
I topple governments and wreck marriages.
I ruin careers and cause sleepless nights, heartaches and indigestion. I make innocent people cry in their pillows.
Even my name hisses. I am Gossip.
I make headlines and headaches.
Before you repeat a story, ask yourself:
Is it true?
Is it harmless?
Is it necessary?
If it isn't, don't repeat it.

P.S. Do belly dancers also have "Arab tendencies"? Call the Department of Homeland Security! Stop me before I dance again! I think I just invented a slogan for a t-shirt.