How do Ichthyologists Advance Science Through Social Networking?
It isn’t a surprise to you that even Ichthyologist’s use Facebook. What’s an Ichthyologist you ask? Ichthyologists study the biology of fish and they are what you would call “Fish Experts”. You would think that I am about to tell you a boring story about how Ichthyologist’s use Facebook to update their relationship status or show what they are doing, but that is the wrong direction of thought. Ichthyologists’ goal with the use Facebook is to help advance ichthyology at the speed of light and discover the hidden secrets behind certain species of fish people have yet to discover.
The Ichthyologist in this story, let’s call him A, takes a picture of every fish he finds in a small city in Guyana. However, in order to export these fish, one needs to be able to identify the type of fish through its species name and identify how many of each species he has captured. Out of the 5,000 fish he caught, the majority of these were difficult for him to name. In order to resolve such an issue, Mark Zuckerberg’s brilliant website, came to his help.
Person A uploaded a picture of every single fish he found to his Facebook page and through his immediate ties whether they be weak or strong, tagged those individuals in these photos. He wanted to test how information flows between people towards his benefit and test whether or not his social network will pull through. Let’s say that Ichthyologist A (iA) has strong ties with iB, iC, and iD. A tags B, C, and D in his pictures to try and figure out the names of some of the fish he finds. What happens in this circle of friends is that maybe, no one knows a particular fishes name. However, D has a strong tie, iE, in his other group of ichthyologists, who probably knows the name of these fish. This local bridge between D and E will help bring in new information that A, B, C, or D did not previously contain. Now that E is tagged in the photo, E will start to get to know A since it is A’s photos, forming maybe a weak or even a strong tie between the two individuals. E will also be able to tag some of E’s own friends (ichthyologists) of course, that are willing to help iA’s project.
This networking goes on and on and obviously I am emphasizing the most basic of relationships. But is it not fascinating, that instead of calling, or sending post mail to scientists across the world, this virtual meeting of scientists via tagging them in a photo on a social networking site will help advance this field of zoology and maybe even the future of science forever?
~AS
Sources:
- http://www.webpronews.com/facebook-helps-ichthyologist-crowdsource-his-research-2012-09