What is Citizen Science: How The Public Can Further Science
How is the internet helping scientists gain access to the masses and allowing the public to participate in science? Citizen science is one exciting new way of extending researchers’ reach and accessibility. Through online mediums, participants can take note of the night sky, record what ants prefer to eat, play a DNA sequencing game, or interact with any of the thousands of other projects available on sites like scistarter.org. Scientists then collect and analyze the contributions to progress research and knowledge across the world. In this article, the benefits of citizen science will be shown to include solving modern research’s funding problem, empowering the public, and spreading environmental consciousness.
Some existing citizen science projects: Globe at Night, Ant Picnic, and Phylo
Protected Science
Science has not always been this available and it has barriers to entry. Scientific research is funded by three sources with near exclusivity: the government, industry, and philanthropy. Research has been successful and progressive for decades with the help of these resources. However, reliance on private funding is not ideal for science, and government funding has become increasingly scarce.
When companies fund scientific research through R&D departments, an agenda of improving the bottom line causes biases. Studies funded this way trend towards favorable outcomes for things like food products and pharmaceutical drugs. Government funding for basic research, which was around a 70% share in the 60’s and 70’s, dropped below 50% in 2013 and has continued to decrease. The recent decline in government funding means that the private sector, companies and nonprofits, have had to make up the difference for U.S. research. This has led to 75% of clinical trials in the US being funded by private companies, as well as other concerning statistics. These issues indicate a need for further investment in philanthropic funding, or healthy alternative sources. Citizen science may be just right for stirring public interests into such issues.
How People Can Influence Science
Citizen science utilizes public interest to create projects geared towards public engagement and participation from those who are not professional scientists (and even those who are too). It works great at bridging the gap between scientifically interested individuals and real science. This connection can expand to different facets of engagement, including the participation in science forward voting, and a potential solution to the aforementioned funding issues, crowd funded science.
Crowd funded science, although new and still in fledgling status, is beginning to reflect the internet-based startup culture as seen in the business world. Websites like experiment.com allow researchers to receive funding directly from the public. Crowdfunding alleviates potential funder’s bias, grows research related to areas of public interest, and shifts some control of science away from the government and large corporations towards the public.
One’s dollar, however powerful, is not the only avenue for influence. Offering time, interest, participation, and a vote can also be influential scientifically and politically. For the first time in history the masses, not elites or ruling bodies, can have true persuasion over scientific development. Daunting environmental issues plague science politics and the path to a solution involves capturing society’s concern. If citizen science continues to expand and connect, the final result could be a dispersion of the scientific method, and an eventual increase in environmental conscientiousness. This could mean more votes, less meat eating, and greener behavior on an individual or economic level. To learn about economic sustainability as it relates to the environment, check out another PII blog post, How Necessary is Growth in an Economy.
The harnessing and utilization of scientifically-interested internet goers could be monumental in rapid scientific progress and public engagement. Citizen science, with its potential for virality, ease of access, and significant scientific impact is a useful avenue for creating public engagement. The potential benefits are unbound in terms of both scale and scope, so get started today!
For scientific researchers reading this article, we recommend creating platforms to garner participation in citizen science and finding unbiased public funding for scientific research. To science-interested readers, we recommend participating in citizen science projects from websites such as scistarter.org and crowdfunded research projects from experiment.com. Additionally, get started with Penguin-Watch, an example that PII uses to introduce citizen science! For this experiment, mark penguins present in surveillance photos. The data helps researchers keep track of seabird populations and their endangered ecosystems.
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Written by: Samuel Hawk and Neil McNair Jr.