The National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine are private, nonprofit institutions that provide expert advice on some of the most pressing challenges facing the nation and world. Our ...

A thousand people voluntarily buried their cotton underpants for two months—not to keep the Underpants Gnomes from stealing ...

Citizen science is a powerful tool for involving more people in research. By influencing policy, it is transforming conservation at global, national and local levels. Citizen science actively ...

Citizen science is a popular method of gathering data for natural and social scientists, with the number of projects and publications produced growing year by year. A typical citizen science project ...

Citizen scientists in Switzerland used cotton underpants to gauge soil health. The rate of fabric decomposition revealed the activity of soil's living organisms. Private gardens showed the highest ...

Citizen science is at the intersection of public participation, technology, and existing research projects,” said Alicia Lillich, emerging technologies specialist at the National Institutes of Health ...

Since the early days of “citizen science,” many have wondered just how helpful a group of untrained people can be. The recent boom in citizen science projects has been lauded as a great way to both ...

The two of us can often be found in a patch of scrubby bushland, phone in hand, slowly scanning for plants. Or crouched behind a tree trunk with binoculars, pausing mid-breath to find the source of a ...

The Great Backyard Bird Count is an annual citizen-science project that gathers data about wild birds. Participants go outside for at least 15 minutes and identify as many birds as they can. If you ...

A few small studies have found that citizen science volunteers tend to be white, well-educated and have high incomes. But this homogeneity of participants is common knowledge among researchers, and ...

WASHINGTON – Scientific research that involves nonscientists contributing to research processes – also known as ‘citizen science’ – supports participants’ learning, engages the public in science, ...