A New Kind of Big Science

This post originally appeared on the Software Carpentry website.

Via Michael Nielsen, a guest column by Aaron Hirsh at the NY Times on "A New Kind of Big Science":

There is another way to extend our scientific reach, and I believe it can also restore some of what is lost in the process of centralization. It has been called Citizen Science, and it involves the enlistment of large numbers of relatively untrained individuals in the collection of scientific data. To return to our architectural metaphor, if Big Science builds the high-rise yet higher, Citizen Science extends outward the community of villages.