Back in 2019 I wrote that more often than not when describing a target audience for scientific output there is a dichotomy between ‘academic’ and ‘the general public’. This still happens and more often than ever projects proposals include an aspect of this 'citizen science' A way of overcoming part of this dichotomy is to actively involve everyone in the science, with data collection. Some big citizen science projects already do that. Anyone , irrespective of their background, can log species seen, on a walk, in their garden, on a big database that allows monitoring species distribution changes and will give scientists location to focus on with sampling campaigns where anomalies are observed. Nowadays is even easier, with apps being developed for the purpose, check some out on the Smitshonian site (USA), on colpo di scienza (it) or the ceh (uk).
Citizen science can be defined as a partnership between members of the public and academic scientists to address scientific questions and issues of common concern that foster and support innovation in science, as well as in policy and society. Citizens can engage at various stages and in various manners from co-design and co-creation, through problem definition, data collection, analysis, and dissemination of results, to participation as interpreters of information and sensors The benefits are shared: scientists enhance their monitoring and analytical capacities and citizens gain scientific knowledge, awareness, and recognition. I was being hopeful in 2019 that this will 'educate and empower more citizen to actually care. Kids and retired, alike. Once people will discover the hidden gems, I believe they will start to care more.' and I still think that if more and more people get involved, this will happen (I know that we cannot convince all citizens to take part, but maybe it's worth focusing on that slice of the population that would be more 'difficult'?). Two recent papers (Garcia-Soto et al 2021 and Kelly et al 2020) focus specifically on marine citizen science, that is expanding more (before it was mostly only terrestrial project) likely due to technological advances, and both recognise the need for including that part of people excluded until now, and in particular expanding this in developing countries. I say including 'difficult' citizens would be even more of a rewarding challenge...
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
Disclaimer: some posts may contain affiliate links. At no extra costs to you, buying through the link will help me in this blogging journey!
Archives
January 2023
Categories
All
|