How cool is this?

The manicured lawns and neat brick homes of the LakePointe Forest subdivision, nestled on the shores of Taylor Lake, don't fit the typical image of an industrial neighborhood struggling with air contamination.

Nor is this the kind of place that one would expect at the center of a covert pollution study.

Yet by retrofitting a common suburban backyard lawn fixture — the birdhouse — a team of modern-day Nancy Drews are keeping tabs on the emissions coming from the Bayport Industrial Complex, a 15-square-mile expanse of more than 40 refinery and chemical plants whose stacks are just visible to the north.

Laurence over at IsFullOfCrap.com (who gets the hat tip) had this to say

Gather your own data. Analyse it. Put it up for critical review. Refine your methods and check your equipment. Gather data again. Analyse it.

And get ready to fight when Dr. Corporate Scientist throws a bunch of fake numbers back in your face.

Are we heading for a new Reniassance of scientific curiosity and activism among private individuals, refusing to follow the skewed drum-beats of Corporate Science or Activist Science? Is this a new Golden Age like the days of the first widely-available barometers and telescopes?

Now this is a great idea. Use blogs to thoroughly expose the scientific method. Comments could be used for refutations or data corrections. Allow many to upload their data. Granted, blogs would have to change a bit in format to maintain a bit of accuracy (wouldn't want cancer research accurate as a Wiki article) it's an interesting idea.

Just food for thought.