About a month ago I attended a lunch hour lecture held by Professor Kate Jones. In her lecture 'Technology for Nature', Professor Jones discussed the concept of citizen science and introduced the work of the Extreme Citizen Science research group here at UCL. This was the first I had heard of citizen science until a few weeks later when it featured on Countryfile. I realise that it is extremely topical at the moment and I am interested to find out more about it!
In a review of citizen science commissioned
by the UK Environmental Observation Framework (UK-EOF), scientists from the
NERC Centre for Ecology and Hydrology (CEH) and the Natural History Museum,
London defined citizen science as:
“…volunteer
collection of biodiversity and environmental information which contributes to
expanding our knowledge of the natural environment, including biological
monitoring and the collection or interpretation of environmental observations.”
(Roy et al., 2012).
In short citizen science is the involvement
of volunteers in science. According to Roy et al. (2012), participation with environmental science and natural history is
not a new thing. It has a long history dating back much further than the latest
iOS update. In 1993 Paul Feyerabend philosopher of science, called for a full
“democratisation of science”. He claimed that scientists are no better at
science than anyone else (Pfeifer et al., unpublished). “Long history”?! “1993”?! Well I feel OLD! Moving
swiftly on… Over the past decade there has been a rapid increase in the
diversity and scale of citizen science and this is partly due to the
development of smartphone apps, which have enabled a revolution in data
collection.
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| Smartphones have revolutionised data collection |
However, it seems that not everyone is
rushing to the app store. The involvement of the public in scientific research
is still disputed by many. For example, in 1993 (‘oh I remember it well’), The
US House of Representatives voted to ban the National Biological Survey from
accepting the services of volunteers (BBC, 15.03.2011). It seems only right to list the pros
and cons of citizen science!
Strengths of citizen science
- Involves and empowers a participating public
- Contributes to our scientific knowledge base
- Helps organisations prioritise action and investment
- Raises people's awareness of environmental issues and their local environment
- Can be used to present global issues, e.g. the impacts of climate change or biodiversity loss, in a way that is locally relevant and meaningful
- Allows for more research to be accomplished globally
- Connects people in a worldwide environmental movement
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| Citizen science raises people's awareness of their local environment |
Weaknesses of citizen science
- Data sets are often dismissed as inconsistent because they were collected by non-professional scientists
- Data requires validation and calibration
- High cost in the development of smartphone apps
- People who don't have access to/choose not to engage with technology are excluded
- The development of technologies such as smartphone apps was "revolutionising citizen science"
- The quality of the data collected by citizen scientists had the potential to be excellent however this was not fully recognised by all researchers and policymakers
- It is a cost-effective way of collecting environmental data
- There is huge potential to make more use of citizen science in the future
My feelings are mostly positive when it
comes to citizen science. I think that using technology as a platform to raise
people’s awareness of environmental issues is both practical and exciting. I
think that this could be a way of finally getting people to engage and connect
with global environmental issues such as climate change and loss of
biodiversity in a way that is meaningful and locally relevant.
However I am concerned that by using
relatively new technologies such as smartphone apps, citizen science is
something that is not open to everyone. I think that it is important for
developers to be aware that by increasing the reliance on high-tech solutions
they may be excluding an increasing proportion of the public who may be keen to
participate in citizen science. I think the solution is to promote different
forms of citizen science, for example I think there is a lot to be gained from
groups of volunteers conducting field surveys in their local areas. Certainly I
think citizen science should increase connection and interaction in the local
community as well as collaboration in the global community, as promoted by
technology.
Click here for further information about the role citizen science is playing in the study of UK biodiversity.
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