By Shawn Carlson, Ph.D.

Amember recently sent in a research paper which he wanted one of our scientific advisors to review. The advisor replied that while the project had real potential, the experimenter needed to tighten his controls and spelled out how in a highly detailed letter. Shortly after he received this letter, the member called our office to complain. "I'm an amateur scientist, but you guys are holding me to professional standards," he told me.

I know that a number of our members feel this way because I've heard this complaint before. But I believe that this sentiment betrays a misunderstandingabout science and about the mission of our Society. Let me explain.

Any scientist, professional or amatuer, must be devoted to searching out the truth. And that's just about the most difficult thing in the world to do consistently. The truth can only be approached through careful investigation (or, more correctly, systematic experimentation). Isolating your signal from everything else mother nature will throw at you (sometimes stray signals are hidden by fiendishly subtle guises) is tough enough. Worse, all people, scientists included are predjudiced. We often have strong opinions about what an experiments will discover. To uncover to truth, we must sift though nature's complexity and our own perpensity for finding whatever we expect. Its quite easy to fool yourself.

At its essence, doing science is really all about not fooling yourself. Why do we quantify our observations? Because we know our senses can't provide the kind of detailed information we need to uncover the truth. Why do we require discoveries to be confirmed by independent researchers? Because we know that anyone (or rather, any research team)

can make a mistake. Indeed, every weapon in the scientist's arsenal is aimed at ferreting out various sources of errors that could creep into our results.

And this sets an absolute standard. Either an experiment was conducted with sufficient safeguards to make sure that the experimenters weren't fooling themselves, or these results can't be trusted. Either the conclusions were logically argued based exclusively on what can be demonstrated by experiment, or the conclusions can't be trusted.

So you see, while there certainly are amateur scientists, there is no such thing as amateur science. There is only good science and bad science. Many amateurs are doing great science and many professionals fail to meet the minimum standards necessary to make a discovery. It doesn't matter whether you do science on salary or if you do it just for the love of discovery, it's only the quality of your work that counts.

The Societyfor Amateur Scientists was founded to separate the amateur from the amateurish and in that way help all amateurs do better and more meaningful science. By helping our members meet high standards, that is exactly what we're doing.

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