Driven on by the quest to understand more about the origin and evolution of the universe, and the need to base this upon robust quantitative analysis (see subsection 4.2.2), there continue to be developments in sky surveys and automated image recognition. In light of the discussion in subsection 4.4.1, these are regarded as a threat by the
99 core team to the project’s continued ability to interest astronomers in working with the project’s data, in turn throwing doubt on the future of Galaxy Zoo.
This Section reviews some of these developments and argues that, understood in the context of their emerging interests with the Citizen Science Alliance, key members of the core team nevertheless have a strong motivation to secure the future of Galaxy Zoo as a flagship project of the Zooniverse. The core team are currently devoting a great deal of attention and resources towards responding to the new developments, and this bears testament to the importance to them of continuing the success of Galaxy Zoo.
As described in subsection 4.3.2, the scientific work of Galaxy Zoo is divided into two categories: the core work, which is the generation of large datasets based on volunteer classifications of galaxy images; and serendipitous discoveries, such as Hanny’s Voorwerp and the Green Peas. Currently, a strong case exists that classifications by members of the public is the best available method for producing robust datasets, but rapid developments in sky surveys along with concurrent improvements in automated image recognition algorithms is considered likely by core team members to challenge this (Fortson et al. 2011).
One example is the Large Synoptic Survey Telescope, or LSST (LSST Science Collaboration 2009). This is currently in development, and is due to come online in the next ten years. It is anticipated that the amount of data it generates will dwarf that from other sky surveys, such as the SDSS: the LSST is expected to image approximately 50 billion objects, each object being imaged around 1000 times each, and at a higher resolution than in previous surveys (Fortson et al. 2011).
A set of images of this magnitude would allow for more sophisticated classifications, taking into account a larger number of criteria and providing additional statistical robustness, and any resultant dataset is therefore likely to supersede a dataset based on SDSS images. However, in order to exploit this data source fully would surely overwhelm any group of volunteers. This is explained in the following interview extract:
Extract 4.22: ‘The surveys we are designing now are a thousand times bigger than the Sloan so we won’t have millions of galaxies, we’ll have billions of galaxies. Can we use the Zooniverse technology on those? Probably not…if you want each galaxy to be observed 10 or 100 times, we’re talking about 10-100 billion clicks, ain’t gonna happen’ (Interview GZ-a/3)
This reflects the uncertainty amongst Galaxy Zoo team members about the project’s core purpose: under such circumstances, it is feared, the project would no longer provide an unparalleled dataset for interested astronomers, and thus no longer be of interest to them21.
21 Indeed, many of these astronomers expressed scepticism about Galaxy Zoo’s future. One, who had been a lead author on a Galaxy
Zoo paper, stated that they believed the project to be ‘winding down’ (Interview GZ-b/2) (Extract 4.23). Another said that they ‘don’t know’ where the project’s going in the future (Interview GZ-b/1) (Extract 4.24).
100 So why might do members of the project’s core team have a strong motivation to ensure Galaxy Zoo’s continuation in the coming years, even in the face of new advancements in sky surveys and automated image recognition? If viewed as cosmologists only, they might, too, be expected to leave citizen science behind as it would do very little for their reputations if they were to remain closely associated with outmoded methods rather than with the cutting edge. However, they also now have another identity, namely as founders and heads of the Citizen Science Alliance, and they are now highly motivated to secure Galaxy Zoo (which they regard as the CSA’s flagship project), well into the future (see subsection 4.3.3).
So how do the Galaxy Zoo core team view the task of securing the project’s future in terms of ensuring that citizen science continues to be regarded as scientifically useful to cosmology? The way forward that has been proposed is to develop ways to integrate volunteer observations and automated image recognition techniques in an iterative manner (see Fortson et al. 2011), and this is something that is not only actively being worked upon by members of the Galaxy Zoo core team, but forms a large part of their work:
Extract 4.25: ‘The experiment’s going to have to move from classifying everything, a brute force approach, to a smarter combination of human classification and machine classification, and how to combine those is one of the biggest research questions we’re working on now’ (Interview GZ-a/1) This might be done in two ways in particular. The first is that volunteers would classify only a subset of the LSST images: these classifications would then be used as a training set for the automated algorithms. This would be an iterative process in the sense that, first, the algorithm would be calibrated to ensure that it produced the same answers as the human observations on this initial subset of images. Then, the algorithm would run on another subset of images, and the volunteers asked to classify these images themselves to see how well the algorithm and the humans agreed on them, and so on.
The second is that volunteers will be asked to examine images to look for unusual or unexpected features (i.e. serendipitous discoveries like the Green Peas) in order to identify new classes of objects. The idea is that an algorithm could then be trained to identify instances of such a new object in order to assemble a collection of examples for further analysis (this process is described in Fortson et al. 2011). Even though this had not even been conceived of at the start of the Galaxy Zoo project, this is now considered a promising route to take in terms of securing citizen science involvement in cosmology, because serendipitous discoveries are only really achievable by human observation: it is not considered likely that automated methods will be developed that can identify new classes of objects, as this interview extract suggests:
Extract 4.26: ‘What something volunteers can always do is serendipitous discoveries...if you want to show them a bunch of pictures and say, “Do you see something weird here?”, there’s a lot of sky to look at and this is something which probably volunteers can do much better…I don’t think you can write software to pick up weird or funny things from pictures’ (Interview GZ-a/5)
101 Using an iterative mixture of human and automated observations, then, appears to offer Galaxy Zoo a way of continuing to produce research that is considered scientifically useful, even in the face of expected future developments, and a great deal of work to this end is being conducted by core team members. In light of these developments, the main task for these members is to ensure the project carves a unique role for itself that makes it indispensable from a scientific perspective.
4.6 Conclusion
In this Chapter, I have situated the emergence of Galaxy Zoo in light of the contexts in which its key personnel are embedded. In particular, we have seen the co-shaping of the project and the interests of these core team members and other scientists involved in the project. These interests can be seen as located in the socio-technical assemblages that constitute the project, as well as in the socio-technical linkages that constitute the broader scientific and institutional contexts in which the project is situated. How this is the case will be considered first in this concluding Section. Next, I highlight the challenges perceived by the core team to pursuing their interests. Finally, I shall look forward to the next Chapter, in which I will bring the Galaxy Zoo ethos into play and will consider the co-shaping of this ethos, the core teams’ interests, and the features and policies of the project.
The co-shaping of cosmology, the Galaxy Zoo project and the interests of the projects’ scientists Prior to the launch of Galaxy Zoo, the discipline of cosmology was seen as having a lowlier status compared with other branches of astronomy, in large part because it had not, to date, been possible to provide robust statistical evidence for many of the key assumptions upon which the field rests. It had been generally assumed that providing such evidence would never be feasible (and thus cosmologists had little interest in this path in any meaningful sense) until the emergence of the Sloan Digital Sky Survey (SDSS) and the development of other surveys that promised millions or even billions of galaxy images. Affording the potential of providing data to support or confirm the major hypotheses of cosmology, these surveys stimulated the interest of many within cosmology either to attempt to classify galaxy images by hand or to develop automated image recognition and classification techniques: i.e. the emergence of these surveys helped to shape and foster many cosmologists interests in providing statistical evidence for cosmology.
Aware of the limitations of these approaches for classifying galaxies, two cosmologists (Chris Lintott and Kevin Schawinski) began to conceive the Galaxy Zoo project. Prior to this, they had little apparent interest in setting-up a CCP, but the promise to these two young academics of recognition within their field that might result
102 from producing robust datasets based on SDSS images and the example of other CCPs such as SETI@Home, stimulated an interest in running such a project. Initially, they believed that the project might attract only a small number of volunteers, primarily amateur and professional astronomers.
This expectation, however, was confounded as tens of thousands of volunteers signed up in the very early days of the project. As the project unfolded, it became apparent to core team members that they might be able to make further, previously-unanticipated, contributions to cosmology (and thus increase their prominence within the field) through the Galaxy Zoo project, by the prospects of using volunteers both to make serendipitous discoveries and to provide more detailed classifications than the core team had previously thought feasible. Thus, the core team became more interested in developing the project further to promote and encourage these, and Galaxy Zoo 2 came into being.
As a result of the increasing fame of Galaxy Zoo, both in the popular media and in the scientific world, and the growing interest in CCPs, some members of the core team started to perceive an opportunity to use their expertise (and the Galaxy Zoo platform) to help set up other projects across a range of scientific disciplines. These individuals – who had once not necessarily even been interested in running a CCP and had only initially conceived of setting up such a project in order to pursue their professional interests within cosmology – have now become interested in Citizen Cyberscience in its own right and in the prospect of leading a growing movement of such projects by setting up the Citizen Science Alliance.
Challenges past, present and future In order to pursue their various, changing interests, however, the core team members have perceived a number of challenges that they have had to address, or anticipate having to address in the near future. In particular:
- The recruitment and retention of project volunteers who, the core team believe, are primarily motivated by the idea that they are helping science;
- The enrolment of other astronomers to work with the data. The core team believe that these scientists are engaged with the project only long as it remains the best source of data to help them produce research that gains them recognition within cosmology.
- In order to successfully enrol these astronomers, the core team have worked hard to ensure their data is viewed as credible and robust by the broader cosmological community; and
- In order to maintain Galaxy Zoo as a flagship of the Citizen Science Alliance, and in light of perceived threats from contemporary developments in sky surveys and automated image recognition
103 techniques, the core team must develop the project in such a way that it remains scientifically useful at the cutting edge of research.
This Chapter provides a foundation for the next Chapter. In Chapter 5, I shall consider in greater depth the co-shaping of the interests of the core team the project itself, and how both of these aspects have shaped (and, in turn, been shaped by) the Galaxy Zoo ethos as the core team attempt to pursue their interests and negotiate the perceived challenges to this pursuit.
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Chapter 5: The Galaxy Zoo ethos: Scientists’ relationships with volunteers
5.1 Introduction
Now, I turn my attention to how the core team have sought to constitute their relationship with the volunteers, and the conditions that govern the circulation of objects and information (examples include the galaxy classifications made by volunteers and what the Galaxy Zoo scientists write on their website) amongst the volunteers and project scientists. Thus, I attempt to offer answers to Research Questions 1 and 2.
Relationships with volunteers The aim of this Chapter is to demonstrate the co-shaping of Galaxy Zoo ethos, the interests of the project scientists (see Chapter 4), and the project itself (its features, policies for how it is run etc.). My contention is that this ethos did not exist prior to, and independently of, the project, and has not been fixed over time; instead, it has emerged over the course of the project.
To see this, I will first show how this ethos is socio-technically located, in the sense that the project is constituted by the various socio-technical linkages made and sustained by the various actors involved and that the meaning of their interests is located within these links, and outside of these links, it is meaningless (this is in line with my discussion in subsection 4.1.1 in the previous Chapter about the co-shaping of technology and society). The ethos helped to guide and constrain the choices made by the Galaxy Zoo core team regarding which socio- technical linkages to make (and which to leave unmade); at the same time, the ethos has developed and become more embedded in the project as these linkages were made, in the sense that they involve ways of treating the volunteers that then become reified over time into norms of behaviour.
I will also attempt to demonstrate how the interests of the scientists are socio-technically located. Using the conclusions of the previous Chapter, I will argue that, on the one hand, the choices made regarding which socio-technical linkages to choose have also been guided by the core team’s perceptions of how best to pursue their interests. On the other, the linkages that have been made have afforded the pursuit of certain pathways for the scientists to pursue some interests, and have closed off others. In other words, to reiterate the discussion in the previous Chapter (subsection 4.1.1), an individual’s interests and their perceptions of how they might pursue these interests, are inextricably linked in the sense that a necessary condition for an individual to be regarded as holding a certain set of interests is that they believe that the socio-technical network in which they are embedded affords them the possibility to pursue these; on the other hand, if they do not perceive such affordances then the individual cannot be said to hold these interests in any meaningful sense. Henceforth, my use of the phrase ‘an individual’s interests’ should be taken as shorthand for ‘an individual’s interests and their perceptions of how they might pursue
105 these’. A similar approach is taken when discussing ethos, in the sense that an individual can only be regarded in a meaningful sense as having an ethos if they perceive their socio-technical network as affording them the possibility to behave in accordance with it: in the discussion below, ‘an individual’s ethos’ should be taken to mean ‘an individual’s ethos and their perceptions of how they might adhere to it’.
In order to make this argument, I will first set out the key elements of the Galaxy Zoo ethos (Section 5.3). I will then examine the decision-making processes of members of the Galaxy Zoo core team in terms of how they have developed their project. At different points in the project, the core team have had to make key decisions about the features and policies of Galaxy Zoo and I will focus, in particular, on two examples of project features and policies, namely the way in which volunteers have been publicly credited for their contributions to the core scientific work of Galaxy Zoo, and the blog on the project website. Sections 5.4 and 5.5 will deal with these two examples respectively, discussing how the decision-making processes that led to the introduction and formulation of each feature and policy unfolded, showing the interplay of various factors involved (technical and scientific, ethical, and social). This is illustrated in Figure 5.1.
KEY:
A: The ethos shapes decision-making processes about features and policies of the project
B: The features and policies of the project shape the ethos, in the sense that they make it easier for, and encourage, the core team to pursue some particular approaches to treating the volunteer rather than others. This, in turn, might tend to fix these approaches as norms for the core team to behave.
C: The features and policies of the project help to shape the core team’s interests, in the sense that they afford easier ways to pursue some interests ahead of others, thus strengthening the former.
D: The core team’s decisions regarding which features and policies to implement, and how they are developed, are influenced by their perceptions of which choices will better help them to pursue these interests.
Figure 5.1: The relationships between the features and policies of Galaxy Zoo, the project ethos regarding how the project scientists should treat the volunteers, and the interests of the core team members.
106 Conditions under which objects and information circulate amongst scientists and volunteers In Section 5.6, I will to discuss how the features and policies under consideration, the norms that have developed around how they have been developed and operate by the core team (and the discourse employed by the core team when discussing this) constitutes a particular form of the knowledge economy, namely a gift economy.