The Madsci Network is a

website A website (also written as a web site) is a collection of web pages and related content that is identified by a common domain name and published on at least one web server. Examples of notable websites are Google, Facebook, Amazon, and Wikip ...

known primarily for its ''Ask-A-Scientist''

forum Forum or The Forum (plural forums or fora) may refer to: Common uses *Forum (legal), designated space for public expression in the United States *Forum (Roman), open public space within a Roman city **Roman Forum, most famous example *Internet ...

where users can ask questions to a panel of volunteer

scientist A scientist is a person who conducts scientific research to advance knowledge in an area of the natural sciences. In classical antiquity, there was no real ancient analog of a modern scientist. Instead, philosophers engaged in the philosophica ...

s. Each question, submitted via a Web interface, is reviewed by a volunteer moderator. If the question is intelligible, not a homework assignment, and has not been answered previously, it may be answered directly by the moderator, or forwarded to one of hundreds of volunteer scientists and professionals. The moderators match each question to a volunteer's area of expertise. After answering the question, the volunteer sends it back to the moderators who then review the answer prior to posting it on the web site. The moderator may ask the scientist to edit the answer or provide references for information. Thereafter, the majority of questions and answers are made publicly available in the extensive archives, which date back to 1996. The Madsci Network hosts the Edible and Inedible Experiments Archive, a unique collection of easy science demos, and a guided tour of data from the

Visible Human Project The Visible Human Project is an effort to create a detailed data set of cross-sectional photographs of the human body, in order to facilitate anatomy visualization applications. It is used as a tool for the progression of medical findings, in which ...

. The Madsci Network gets approximately 600,000 unique visitors and roughly 3 million page views per month. It is a non-profit ask-a-scientist site with over 700 scientists distributed globally and has been cited in academic publications, web awards, sites/portals like yahoo.com, etc. The principals are: Founder and Executive Director, Dr.

Lynn Bry Lynn Bry is a physician, anaerobic microbiologist, and microbial geneticist at Brigham & Women's Hospital, and Harvard Medical School. She has created multiple multi-institutional platforms to support scientific, clinical and educational activit ...

, and Director of Research, Dr.

Ricky J Sethi Ricky J. Sethi is an Assistant Professor of Computer Science at Fitchburg State University and the Director of Research for The Madsci Network. He was appointed as a National Science Foundation (NSF) Computing Innovation Fellow by the Computin ...

. Notable scientists who have answered questions on the website include Dr.

Samuel Conway Samuel Charles Conway (born June 4, 1965) is an American researcher in the pharmaceutical, biomedical and agrochemical fields of organic chemistry. He holds a Ph.D. in chemistry from Dartmouth College. Outside the scientific community, Conway is ...

.Madsci Network Hall of Fame
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References

External links

The Madsci Network
American science websites Question-and-answer websites {{science-website-stub