A recent Washington Post article entitled Have a scientific passion? Become a citizen scientist . . . reviews a recent publication by Caren Cooper entitled Citizen Science: How Ordinary People are Changing the Face of Discovery.
As the daughter of an entomologist, I came to citizen science early. By the time I was in elementary school, I could identify the tiny black ants (Argentine) marching in determined lines down the sidewalk. By the time I was in high school, I was “volunteering” to help study the mating chemistry of bees. “Don’t worry,” my father shouted as I stood in a buzzing cloud of male drones, clutching a balloon bearing an array of come-hither pheromones. “They don’t sting.” . . . more