There was even a friendly scuffle about just which field of science benefits the most from amateurs.
Paleontology is the study of the traces of ancient life.
Because they're so few and far between, individual can be veritable Rosetta stones to paleontology. While they hunt for scarce bones, the amateur paleontologists also pick up professional skills from Hunt. A good argument, but one ornithologist begged to differ. In the U.S. alone, there are 60 million. The citizen scientist programs at Cornell have compiled data from across the nation and Canada through amateur participation in the Birdhouse Network, Project FeederWatch, and Project PigeonWatch to name a few.