Anthony Doesburg: Idle time put to work, all in the cause of science

http://www.nzherald.co.nz/business/news/article.cfm?c_id=3&objectid=10602226

....in a field referred to as cyberscience, a subset of what has come to be called citizen science. To Bill St Arnaud, head of research at CANARIE, a high-speed network connecting 50,000 Canadian researchers, citizen science is a way of democratising science.

It has echoes of another internet-borne phenomenon, citizen journalism, the idea of members of the public reporting news from their communities without the filters of the corporate media.

Citizen science, however, is not about second-guessing the work of scientists, but can contribute to their efforts by giving them many sets of eyes with which to make observations and measurements, and by lending them computer power.

[...]