Crowdsourcing Science

Over the past few years, crowdsourcing has become very popular due primarily to the widespread use of the internet.  The benefits of crowdsourcing are numerous, from accessing the knowledge base of a large group of people, to collecting a small donations from many people in order to fund startup projects.  Wikipedia is probably the most well-known crowdsourcing project, having been around for over twelve years with over 77,000 active editors.   More recently, websites like Kickstarter and Indiegogo have brought crowdfunding to the mainstream, with the former raising over $730 million dollars and successfully funding over 46,000 projects in the last four years alone.  Crowdsourcing is certainly a powerful force in the age of the internet, and its usefulness is only going to grow as the internet spreads further around the globe and more uses of it are discovered.

Crowdsourcing Science Using Your Computer

By far my favorite crowdsourcing project, the Berkeley Open Infrastructure for Network Computing (BOINC), has actually been around for over a decade, and its roots stretch back to 1999.  Technically, BOINC is distributed computing and not crowdsourcing, but crowdsourcing has recently grown to encompass more and more projects involving mass number of people, so I am going to include BOINC into crowdsourcing as well.  BOINC got its start as the SETI@Home project, which collects radio transmissions from space through the Arecibo radio telescope, then sends small chunks of this data to participating home computers which process it and return the results back to the project.  The goal of this project is to detect signs of extraterrestrial intelligence, though it has so far not turned up any conclusive results in its fourteen year existence.

A sample screenshot of the ClimatePrediction.net screensaver that shows when your computer is
running climate models.

Research Cancer and Global Warming with Your Computer

Following the success of SETI@Home, BOINC was developed as a framework that researchers and other organizations could use to create their own crowdsourced project to analyze mass amounts of data using the help of donor's computing power.  From its early starts with one project, BOINC now supports dozens of research projects, from running climate simulations to helping the Large Hadron Collider search for new fundamental particles to assisting in disease research in AIDS, cancer, and malaria.  All these projects have noble goals, and the best part is anyone with a computer can participate in them for free, without knowing a thing about the subject.

The Berkeley Open Infrastructure for Network Computing Logo

For anyone interested in science, but may be too busy to donate their personal time to 
research, I highly recommend trying BOINC.  The setup is fairly easy, the program runs in the background without your interaction, and it is fun to watch you earn points for helping out with research.  The program is using your computer to analyze data, so it does use more power than the computer does otherwise, but as long as your computer's hardware is functioning properly, there is no noticeable effect on its performance or lifespan.  I have run BOINC on about twenty or more computers in all my time using it, and I have yet to have a computer fail or run slowly due to BOINC.

Get Even More Science Out of Your Computer

Another great feature to BOINC is its ability to not only use your main processor (CPU) to analyze data, but also to use the processor on certain graphics cards (GPU) to perform analysis on data that requires the task be divided up into many small sub-tasks (graphics processors, unlike CPUs, are designed with a large number of cores, the current king of the hill having 2688 cores in one processor).  Projects like GPUGRID use the many small cores of GPUs to study cancer, HIV/AIDS, and neural disorders, which actually lets your computer work on other projects using your CPU at the same time.

If you are like me, and get obsessed with a project once you start, BOINC is now available on Android devices as well.  If you have an older phone like mine that runs slow I wouldn't recommend it, though you many not experience any problems, especially if you remove the built-in bloatware by rooting your phone.  Of course this would be a huge battery drain, so the app is designed to only run when it is plugged in and over 90% battery.

Crowdsource Science in Other Ways

Donating your computer to science is certainly not the only way to get involved with crowdsourced science.  There are a number of ways to donate your time or money for the betterment of mankind.

Crowdfunding Science

Crowdfunding is not solely the realm of artists and startups.  For those people who want to donate money to research, but don't have a lot to give, there is SciFlies, a website similar to Kickstarter, but focused on getting users to donate money to research projects.  What is great about this site is you can choose specifically where you want your money to go, rather than just giving it to an organization who can apply the money as they see fit.  

Crowdsourcing Your Brain

If you want to get more involved in crowdsourced science, there are other projects that you can become involved in.  The Polymath project is an attempt to enlist the help of volunteers around the world to try and solve complex mathematical problems through comments.  If you are good at math and want a challenge, I recommend trying the Polymath project out and offering up your help.  Below is a TED Talk about Polymath and open science, a movement to try to make science more open and available to the public.