His scouts will learn science, not tie knots
EAST GREENWICH, R.I. -- Shawn Carlson went into science because he wanted to be like his grandfather, a vibrant, smart amateur scientist. And because he did not want to be like his grandfather, a scientific nobody without a degree whose work was ignored and rejected.
''My grandfather was a really brilliant man, but he couldn't get published. His work was sent back without review," Carlson said. ''I wanted to be taken seriously."
So Carlson, thrown out of his broken home when he was 16, got serious. He zipped through his last year of high school, in Anaheim, Calif., sleeping in a blue station wagon, supporting himself as a street psychic and three-card monte player. His first scientific paper was published in the prestigious journal Nature when he was 18. He earned his doctoral degree at the University of California, Los Angeles, and went to work as a physicist in an academic lab.
Mission accomplished.
But his greatest joys were when his ''physics brain" fizzled out and he studied the algae he grew on his windowsill. Whether he liked it or not, in that way, he was just like his grandfather.
In 1993, Carlson quit his job running an observatory and supernova research at the University of California, Berkeley, and founded the Society for Amateur Scientists, a kind of tinkerer's guild that continues to champion amateurs and struggles to democratize the elite world of science.
''It's like trying to herd cats," he said during a recent interview at his home office, neatly crammed with microscopes, electronics, and test tubes. ''When we first got into this game 11 years ago, citizen scientists were largely ridiculed by professionals."
Over the years, the cats have fallen into line -- at least a little. The Society for Amateur Scientists has grown steadily to 2,000 members, and is gradually raising amateurs' profiles among funding agencies and ''real" scientists with doctoral degrees and university affiliations.
Now, he is preparing for the society's biggest project ever: an effort to bring widespread equality, freedom, and acceptance to science -- from the bottom up.
''My goal is to change the way science is taught in the United States," he said, smiling confidently.
This January, Carlson plans to launch LABRats, a kind of science Scouting program in which troops are replaced by ''synergies" and leaders are called ''mentors."
If all goes well with the prototype start-up in East Greenwich, LABRats -- which already has 1,100 kids enrolled in an Internet version -- will launch nationally in May.
It'll be as big as Boy Scouts, it'll solve the science literacy problem in the United States once and for all, and it'll be fun -- or so Carlson claims, even though the National Science Foundation opted not to fund the program.
But Carlson is used to being doubted. His organization struggled for years to get recognition from professional scientists. In 1998, minutes after his wife sat him down and told him he needed to get a normal job, his phone rang and he was told he had been awarded a MacArthur ''genius" fellowship -- a $290,000 prestigious award.
''The day before I won it, I was certainly certifiable. The day after it, I was a certified genius. . . .Then [my critics] shut up."
Carlson parlayed the recognition he got from the MacArthur into $400,000 from private donors to fund LABRats, knowing that he was following in the footsteps not only of his grandfather, but other great American citizen scientists -- Ben Franklin, Benjamin Rush, and Thomas Jefferson.
''Every generation has its citizen scientists," he said. ''We see no reason why we can't" make more of them.
Home: Grew up in Southern California, moved to East Greenwich, R.I., seven years ago.
Family Legacy: For six years, Carlson authored the ''Amateur Scientist" column in Scientific American, the one publication that also accepted some of his grandfather's writings.
Mad Scientists: While Carlson works to get amateur scientists equal standing as their counterparts in the ivory tower, he has no tolerance for bad science. ''Frankly, we don't deal with crazy people," he said. The Society for Amateur Scientists refuses to consider research that tries to unify the forces of nature or uncover the origins of the universe, two topics that seem to particularly attract wild theories.
Savvy Skeptic: His 1985 Nature paper, ''A double-blind test of astrology," showed there was no scientific basis behind astrologers' claims. Carlson appeared on the ''Phil Donahue Show" as an expert debunker of religious miracles and made a statue of the Virgin Mary cry.
To join LABRats go to: www.sas.org/labrats/
