The Citizen Scientist

Joe Geddes, a graduate student at The Pennsylvania State University, informed readers of The Citizen Scientist about the "Pro-Am Revolution" in a letter to "Backscatter" ("Kudos for LABRats and Shawn Carlson," 22 April 2005). "The Pro-Am Revolution" is an open-access book available online as a 315 KB PDF file. Because this book will be of interest to a wide cross section of citizen scientists, here we give the media release and sections from the text.

The "Pro" and the "Am" of "The Pro-Am Revolution" are professionals and amateurs who pursue similar interests across a wide range of fields, including science. The book's cover states in bold type, "The 20th century was shaped by the rise of professionals. But now a new breed of amateurs has emerged."

Shawn Carlson and I have looked at "The Pro-Am Revolution," and we have our own ideas about it. Indeed, we could have prepared a review of the book. Instead, we want to know your views. Please read the media release that follows and download this book. Agree or disagree, there is much to ponder in "The Pro-Am Revolution."

Please send your comments about "The Pro-Am Revolution" to "Backscatter." What do you like about the book? What is there not to like? Does the book properly acknowledge the role of past amateur scientists? Does it reflect your view of amateur science and its future? If not, what are your views?

A request like this just might generate a lot of mail, so please send only your very best response and check it for spelling and grammar.

Everyone needs a hobby and government should invest in leisure activities to encourage community cohesion, says new think tank report

Enthusiasts were once derided as trainspotters or anoraks; now they are emerging as an important new social group called ‘Pro-Ams', according to research commissioned by Discovery Networks Europe .

The Pro-Am Revolution is published by Demos on Tuesday 30 November. The report defines Pro-Ams as amateurs who pursue a hobby or pastime –which in many cases is an all-consuming passion – to a professional standard. Pro-Ams are involved in ‘serious leisure' , which requires specialist knowledge and a major time commitment.

As people live longer with active retirement years, or downshift mid-career to improve their quality of life, the authors predict that ‘serious leisure' will become a growing part of our lives.

“Pro-Ams are a new social hybrid who force us to rethink they way we think about work and leisure time,” say the report's authors, Charles Leadbeater and Paul Miller .

“Their activities blur the traditional definitions of professional and amateur. In recent years a variety of rather derogatory names have been used to describe real enthusiasts, including nerds, geeks and anoraks. We think a better term to cover all these kind of activities is Pro-Ams.”

The Pro-Am survey of 2189 adults conducted by MORI in June 2004 revealed a nation of committed enthusiasts. When presented with 20 popular categories of hobby or pastime, well over half of regular participants in most categories said they had 'good skills', and that rose beyond 75% for some activities.

Pro-Ams are more likely to be men than women; they tend to be well-educated people with annual household incomes over £30k. Pro-Ams are evenly split between part-time and full-time workers, but people who don't work are far less likely to be Pro-Ams.

The report uses a working definition of Pro-Ams as people engaged in a regular activity, at which they say they have good skills. The survey suggests that as a percentage of the total adult population in Britain:

Traditionally committed amateurs have made a significant contribution to society, from lifeboat men to army reservists to the Samaritans. However Pro-Ams are now making an impact in less traditional disciplines.

For instance, Pro-Am astronomers have made significant contributions to our knowledge of the universe. And Pro-Am software programmers who are part of the ‘open source' movement are providing the only real challenge to Microsoft's dominance of the personal computing market.

The authors conclude that government should invest in people's hobbies as a way to build communities. The report makes a series of policy recommendations aimed at encouraging Pro-Am's contribution to their communities and helping children develop Pro-Am activities at school. Recommendations include:

Companies should introduce Pro-Am days for employees to engage in activities and volunteering, with a designated national volunteering day;
The DfES, DCMS and DTI should jointly organise a national programme for 16-21 year olds who want to spend a year on social Pro-Am activities;
Organisations that have been given responsibility for promoting learning and training within public services like the Teacher Training Agency and Centrex should enable Pro-Ams to support the work of professionals.

These copyrighted materials and "The Pro-Am Revolution" are provided by Demos, which provides an open access licence to encourage the circulation of its work under certain copyright conditions. You can read a summary of the licence conditions here.