Model Engineer - Citizen Scientist

My daughter brought up the subject of citizen science today, in the context of gamers developing a protein folding algorithm in four weeks that took protein scientists four years to develop independently.

It's odd how scientists have a positive attitude to the name 'citizen scientists' (and indeed amateur scientists across most disciplines - no one questions amateur ornithologists, lepidopterists, astronomers or geologists calling themselves such things), in contrast to the recurring debate about 'who should be allowed to call themselves an engineer'.

Neil

I think that this is about science being perceived to be based in 'research' and engineering 'only' being about making things that we all depend on..... Also, there has traditionally and historically been a much better dovetailing of amateurs into various scientific discilines and scientists in some fields have only furthered their research by using groups of amateurs,...astronomy and ornithology both come to mind.

Compared to this, engineering of various flavours is a much more visual, serious and failure prone area where there is scarcely room for the pro operators at times let alone ignorant amateurs faffing about!...there's not much room for amateurs to get inviolved with bridge building or aerospace.....

Edited By Bob Stevenson on 03/07/2017 09:32:38

I'm glad to hear how they call them, I don't think people realize a lot of the best scientists and engineers had no paper qualifications whatsoever, that wasn't important, but what they did have was a lifetime involvement behind it.

I would like to think we could call ourselves citizen engineers! Just look at the charity remap, it doesn't go looking for professionals necessarily and that has flourished.

There was an article in MEW recently about flute manufacture and the author said the best silver tube maker he's met was an old bloke in a workshop doing it the same way it had be done for generations and it was dead accurate.

Some people have an almost cartoonish ideal of what a professional is allowed to be, I suppose.

Michael W

I don't think there is a contradiction, as Bob says. Amateur scientists make great contributions (not least in astronomy Neil) but by and large not in areas that depend on deep knowledge and skill, for example mathematics. Many of their contributions (but not all) are in observation and experiment.

Engineering (in the professional sense) is about designing, making, and supporting products and systems that need to be delivered in a reasonable timescale, work as expected, within reasonable cost, don't fail and don't kill people. Not something that an amateur likes to take on in general.

There was a news story not so long ago about a British kid finding a logical flaw in nasa's althogorims for finding habitable planets that lead to much bigger predictions than was truly possible, no expertise and the whole agency missed it.

...gamers developing a protein folding algorithm in four weeks that took protein scientists four years to develop independently.

Which would mean the scientists would lose 3 years and 11 months of funding which is mortgage payments, childcare, car costs etc

Official Science often has short term funding and Big Politics problems to contend with

You will get funding for "proving" that man made global warming exists, but see how far you get if you want funding for a project to try and prove it doesn't exist

The gamers just had a problem to solve, and nothing else (very well done them though)

That Wakefield MMR farce was about a tiny study which needed further investigation for proving a yes or no conclusion. It turned into a gigantic media and political circus with decades long repercussions

Official Science is a high risk job nowadays where you need to consider the Politics, the Legal issues and the Funding issues

Marconi was an amateur, the Titanic was built by professionals.

Geoff

Emerging fields - such as 3D printing, software development - don't seem to get hung up on titles, it's what one can do, not the title one holds that matters, and above all, the desire to impart knowledge. Just visit a Maker Faire or Hackerspace to find out

What makes you think he was an amateur? He didn't qualify (but then as a member of a rich noble family he didn't need to) but attended lectures and labs at the universities of Bologna and Livorno. He went on to found the first highly successful radio company and won a Nobel Prize.

I don't buy that. The study of parasites or volcanoes is life-critical, whilst horology is pretty harmless.

Neil

Ahem. The way science works is to propose a hypothesis and test it.

There's no difference between a project to 'prove global warming' and one to 'disprove global warming', you just take the probability the result is correct and subtract it from 1 to get the probability of the opposite conclusion.

Neil

Surely the study of volcanos is only life critical if you live on or near one?

Neil,...since you have singled out 'horology' and horology is my particular area of interest I feel I should mention that horologists consider the invention of the atomic clock at the Nat.Physical Lab. Teddington in 1959 to have been extremely "life critical".........

Another can of worms you've got me into!!

I always wanted to be an Engineer. That's probably why the capital "E" is so important to me. Now I'm in a group which is self titled as "model engineers", even though strictly speaking I don't agree with it. As has been said Engineers design things, with all the background to justify their design, whether it's an aeroplane, bridge, ship, or food mixer. The group of model engineers make stuff, which is admirable, citizen engineers almost certainly, but not Engineers, unless by coincidence.

Personally, I always fancied being a pastry chef, then Gordon Ramsey came along. Anyway, what's in a name!!

cheers

Bill

Didn't a group of amateur radio enthusiasts design and build a communications satellite, UoSAT-1, decades ago and have it launched into orbit? It led to the formation of Surrey Satellite Technology Ltd so became professional.

Russell.

I don't think engineers necessarily design stuff. Many stick with making or repairing stuff, or operating stuff, hence maintenance engineers, plant operating engineers, construction engineers and so forth.

Casey Jones was an engineer. But he never went near a university in his life.

+1 for Neil's comment about probability, but also be aware it is impossible to prove that something doesn't exist. (The Loch Ness Monster may have an undiscovered hiding place.)

A project that "proved" a negative would be incredible, most likely inspired by a motive such as politics, self-interest or fraud. Avoid!

Dave

Einstein was a clerk when he published his general theory of relativity

I'm an amateur bodger. I have a need to make something that fits to do a job and I use the skills I have acquired (metal working, wood working, welding, electrical circuits) to design and make the thing. Sometimes it even fits and works first time! (but not always)

My professional skills are in none of the above. I developed these skills after my dad left home when I was 17 and someone had to keep the house we lived in maintained. At 23 I found motorcycles and after I got bored just riding and cleaning them I bought a bit of a wreck to strip it down to see how an engine worked. After that my enthusiastic amateurishness just grew and grew into other areas.

I consider the "model" bit of our hobby to mean we can make things really accurately at a small size

I believe the word engineer is derived from the same root as ingenious. So someone who is ingenious is an engineer. This is different though from someone who is a qualified engineer who can put letters after their name to let people know how qualified they are in their ingenuity.

Martin C