A while ago, my ‘editor’ (i.e. good friend and ‘partner-in-crime’, Graham) sent me a copy of a book by Michael Nielsen called ‘Reinventing Discovery’. I’ve been reading chapters of it since and I’ve been meaning to show it here since too. The title suggests it’s ‘our cup of tea’, as both Graham and I are part of the Galaxy Zoo community (does that sound like we’re into some sort of weird sect? Or is the term ‘Zooite’ already part of my readers’ vocabulary?) You know, the Zoo on which I discovered something new indeed.
This book is about the exciting era we live in today, as The Internet creates a whole lot of new opportunities to do science. As the blurb reads, the book is “for anyone who wants to understand how the online world is revolutionizing scientific discoveries today – and why the revolution is just beginning.” Nielsen is described an advocate of open science and discusses the pros and cons of sharing scientific information online. For scientists, as well as for the rest of the world. Galaxy Zoo, being the obvious example of a citizen science project, is well featured in it.
I’m not a scientist, but I am part of this rather big thing and I reckoned most of you readers here would be interested in this topic, so I just thought I’d point it out. My friend Jules, also a Zooite, wrote a short review on our forum, in the thread typically called ‘We’re in a book!’ (That’s the other thing of course, besides the interesting debate, we are also in a book!!) Here’s what she said and I can only add that I can recommend the book as well.
“It really is a very good read and includes a fairly thorough account of how science works now (i.e. reputation is based on the number of papers written / papers cited) and how a more open science (sharing data and computer code) could speed up the rate of scientific discoveries. While Michael Neilson admits that progress will be slow, he sees citizen science as having a serious role to play in changing the way science works and Galaxy Zoo is used as a shining example. […] It made me realise just how radical (and brave) the decision to start Galaxy Zoo was.”
I also just remembered the girl who once came up to me after a lecture I had given in the early days, and asked how I felt about knowing my name would appear in history books eventually. The thought had never crossed my mind and I didn’t really know what to say back then. But it’s sort of happening now and all I can say is that it made me smile seeing the term ‘Voorwerps’ listed in the index.
