Citizen scientists take up the slack

Science : In 2007 astronomer Chris Lintott, who works at the Adler Planetarium in Chicago, and colleagues were drowning under a data deluge—1 million images of galaxies to characterize and only one graduate student to do it. So they set up a website, called Galaxy Zoo , to recruit volunteer citizen scientists to help. The project was so successful—it attracted about 375 000 people working from the comfort of their own homes—that it was expanded to other projects, including studies of the Moon and an analysis of old ship logs for climate data. In Eli Kintisch’s article for Science, Lintott offers some suggestions to scientists for successful partnerships with armchair researchers.