Doing Good Science With Rank Amateurs

Picture this You’re in an isolated corner of Easter Island, leading a research expedition peopled by lay volunteers who have actually paid for the privilege of helping you find and catalogue a series of ancient rock paintings. You’ve hiked for hours over extremely rough terrain to get to your site, a cliffside so precipitous that the volunteers have to be anchored to solid ground with ropes. Out of the blue, a female vol unteer approaches you and asks if there’s anyplace nearby where she can get her wig styled. You roll your eyes heavenward and ask yourself “Is this any way to do science?” That’s the question that occurred to archaeologist Georgia Lee of the University of California on a recent expedition to Easter Island. Lee and her charges were the product of the University Research Expeditions Program (UREP), one of a number of organizations— Earthwatch of Watertown, Mass is the best known—that invite nonscientists to accompany working researchers on exotic expeditions—exploring the inside of a volcano in Iceland, say, or tagging bears in the highlands of Nepal. Every year, thousands of lay volunteers sign up for these excursions, paying as much as $1,700 (airfare not included) to spend two weeks in remotest Researchland, getting their hands dirty and their knees scraped doing what amounts to scientific gruntwork. If one believes the newspaper articles that appear periodically, most of the paying volunteers seem to feel that their money has been well spent. But until now, no one has asked the scientists themselves what they get out of it. Are the volunteers Club Med dilettantes with Jacques Cousteau fantasies who need hand-holding and coddling? Or are they reasonable, intelligent, and helpful people with a genuine interest in science? To put it briefly: from the point of view of the scientist-in-charge, is the “Earthwatch Experience” really worth it? Useful Data Yes, votes Georgia Lee. Despite suffering through wig-styling queries, Lee has used UREP volunteers to document more than 6,000 Easter Island petroglyphs. “It’s a great way to get your field work done,” she says. “You get your expenses paid, you get your equipment, and you get a crew.” “It works,” declares Margaret MacLean, an archaeologist who liked the Earthwatch expeditions so much she led that she became associate director of the organization’s Center for Field Research. “The scientist comes away with exactly the kind of useful, replicatable data he wanted.”’ Of course, the picture is not wholly rosy. “I wouldn’t say the volunteers have made my work easier,” muses Smithsonian vulcanologist William Melson. “Some- times it’s pretty hard to manage 18 people; it’s your job to keep them happy, and that’s not always easy to do. But they’ve enabled me to get things done that I wouldn’t have been able to do otherwise.” In fact, Melson’s evaluation is backed by the weight of long experience. He has been leading Earthwatch expeditions since 1972, and was, along with Smithsonian colleague Bob Citron and as- trophysicist Paul Mohr, one of the organization’s founding fathers. The first few expeditions back in 1972 were solid hits with both the scientists and their volunteer helpers, and since that takeoff Earthwatch has grown by 20% each year, so that this year the organization will send 3,000 volun teers on 108 expeditions around the world. Perhaps equally to the point for the scientists involved, the average expedition generates some $20,000 in research money— some jaunts can bring in as much as $100,000—as well as a labor pool whose value is almost inestimable. To scientists, the appeal is obviously considerable: Over 400 made preliminary applications this year, and of the more than 108 scientists who were ultimately accepted, over 50% are returnees. Earthwatch’s success led to a number of similar organizations, including the University of California’s UREP, the Andover foundation for Archaeological Research (AFAR), and the Smithsonian National Associates. Obvious Need Most of these organizations have found that the approach doesn’t work for all scientific disciplines. Archaeology, for example, with its ongoing and obvious need for a large supply of essentially unskilled labor, is more suited to the volunteer format than, say, social anthropology, which may require very sophisticated interviewing skills. And most would agree with UREP director Jean Colvin’s prescription for the ideal personality in a scientific leader “It’s the same as what we look for in a participant,” she says, “gregarious, outgoing, enthusiastic, and flexible.” To that list add patience and the ability to speak plain English. “We got one application from an anthropologist,” says MacLean, “who referred to individual people as ‘eth- nic units.’ I’m not so sure he’ll work out.” Those scientists wbo are suited by discipline and disposition may find a number of important differences between the Earthwatch-style expedition and more traditional field research. In the first place, although screening procedures may be equally stringent, many find Earthwatch proposals easier to write than the more longwinded and technically exacting proposals for funding from the National Science Foundation. At the same time, working with lay volunteers is often a pleasant surprise compared to working with students. “Many students find it a rude shock to find themselves on their hands and knees with a teaspoon and a dental pick,” says Robert Bull, a Drew University archaeologist who has led a number of expeditions to the ancient Israeli port of Caesarea. “But most of the Earthwatch volunteers have done this sort of thing before [up to one-third of all current Earthwatch volunteers are repeaters], so they don’t complain, and they very quickly become team players.” Most experienced expedition leaders agree that even under difficult field conditions, lay volunteers are in general surprisingly easy to keep happy. “If you can give them good food and a decent place to stay with a hot shower at the end of the day,” says Lee, “they’ll put up with just about anything.” Of course, there are always exceptions. “Some of our people get tired of eating rice and beans every day,” says Melson. “I just tell them that’s too bad.” And, of course there was the now-notorious Wig Woman of Easter Island. “I think she probably would have been better off on a Princess cruise,” Lee sniffs. But one reason why the Wig Woman sticks out so clearly in Lee’s mind is that her type is so rare; in general, scientists agree that it is unusual to encounter a volunteer with a blatant Club Med mentality. “They’re careful and fastidious,” says Bull. “They’re the ones who are always working after the whistle blows to go home. In fact, some of them even call me after we get back, asking if there’s anything more they can do.” Even so, as in any team situation, problems inevitably arise. Some are relatively trivial complaints about bugs, beasts, or overlong hikes. Others can be more serious, and can even threaten the viability of an entire expedition. John Broadwater, an underwater archaeologist with the Virginia Division of Historic Landmarks, re calls a contingent of Earthwatch volunteers who arrived to help salvage the sunken fleet of British General Cornwallis in the York River. “Some of the people obviously hadn’t spent too much time underwater,” Broadwater says. “In spite of constant harping on them not to get into the silty bottom, they’d go in there like 500-pound bombs and stir everything up for the whole day. In essence, they were their own worst enemies.” Lack of relevant experience among volunteers also came close to compromising an expedition led by sociobiologist John Hoogland of the University of Maryland. For more than 10 years, Hoogland had been observing the behavior of prairie dogs in South Dakota’s Wind Cave National Park. In February and March of 1984 and 1985, he brought along three Earthwatch volunteers. But he found that it took as long as two weeks to train the volunteers in the proper use of binoculars and in what to look for in the way of important behavior in the animals—fights, kisses, and the like. “By the time they became competent,” Hoogland says now, “it was time for them to leave.” Like the experiences of Broadwater and Hoogland, some expeditions do end up as scientific fizzles. One Earthwatch expedition that was studying the fish populaton of Papua New Guinea simply failed to find enough fish, Others have been downright dangerous. A 1976 parrot-chasing expedition to the Caribbean island of Dominica ran smack into a revolutionary battlefield, with volunteers watching aghast as wounded guerrillas were carried by. The expedition was aborted. Fizzles and flying bullets aside, most scientific leaders seem to agree that the problems are outweighed by the rewards. Scientists take delight in the intelligent enthusiasm shown by most volunteers, enthusiasm that can some- times change the course of volunteers’ lives. Four of Lee’s helpers, for example, have gone back to school to get advanced degrees in archaeology. And there are some benefits that have little to do with money or labor. “In having to present our work to the intelligent lay public,” says Melson, “one has to clarify one’s own research, and that’s valuable in itself.” Overall Satisfaction For most scientists, though, the greatest reward comes with the harvest of an expedition’s data. “It’s good, solid, publishable stuff,” says Meleon. “And it’s no harder to get it published than data gathered in a more traditional way.” Even Hoogland’s unsophisticated volunteers were able to help with marking animals, and this formed at least part of the data base for subsequent articles in Science and Animal Behavior. On balance, then, most of the scientists who continue to lead volunteer expeditions are more than happy with the experience; happy enough, in fact, to repeat it time and time again. Even John Broadwater, who presided over the compromised York River expedition, plans to use Earthwatch volunteers in the future, as does Hoogland, who will soon move to observing ground squirrels in northern Arizona. “The volunteers,” concludes Bull, “bring a stance, a sense of purpose, and intentionality to their work. If I'm in the field again, I'd like to have those people with me.” Bill Lawren is a contributing editor of Omni, is based in Amherst, Mass.

Doing Good Science With Rank Amateurs

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Bill Lawren

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October 1988

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