Citizen science is a term used for projects or ongoing program of scientific work in which individual volunteers or networks of volunteers, many of whom may have no specific scientific training, perform or manage research-related tasks such as observation, measurement or computation. The use of citizen-science networks often allows scientists to accomplish research objectives more feasibly than would otherwise be possible. In addition, these projects aim to promote public engagement with the research, as well as with science in general. Some programs provide materials specifically for use by primary or secondary school students. As such, citizen science is one approach to informal science education. To capture these multiple meanings of citizen science, some workers in the field now refer to “public participation in scientific research.” Citizen science is related to long-standing programs employing volunteer monitoring for natural resource management, and is often employed as a form of education and outreach to promote public understanding of science. In recent years, however, citizen science projects are becoming increasingly focused on benefits to the scientific research. The current form of citizen science, which has evolved over the past two decades, places more emphasis on scientifically sound practices and measurable goals for public education than similar historical efforts. Modern citizen science differs from its historical forms primarily in the access for, and subsequent scale of, public participation; technology is credited as one of the main drivers of the recent explosion of citizen science activity. Paul Feyerabend (in his book Science in a free society, 1978) and Erwin Chargaff (Heraclitean Fire, 1979) strongly pleaded for a “democratization of science” and “amateurship instead of money-biased technical bureaucrats” respectively.
Erwin Chargaff wanted to replace the distorted universitarian science (or better: technology) after 1950 and wanted to go back to the science made by “nature-loving” “amateurs” in the 16th to 18th centuries (for example, Descartes, Newton, Leibniz, Buffon and Darwin). Citizen science networks are extensively involved in phenology, the observation of cyclic events of nature, in order to investigate how global warming affects plant and animal life in different geographic areas. Distributed computing ventures such as SETI may also be considered citizen science, even though the primary task of computation is performed by volunteers’ computers.
In January 2010, Science for Citizens launched a beta website aimed at connecting the millions of citizen scientists in the world; the thousands of potential projects offered by researchers, organizations, and companies; and the resources, products, and services that enable citizens to pursue and enjoy these activities.” The Citizen Science Alliance’s mission is to create online citizen science projects to involve the public in academic research. We believe that by doing this we can not only help everyone share in the excitement of discovery, but that such projects are a necessary response to the flood of data facing researchers in many fields. As data sets have expanded in size due to the rapid decline in cost of computing, detectors, bandwidth and storage, so traditional modes of research have struggled to cope.
While machine learning and computing have been able to take up some of the slack, they are not always adequate replacement for human abilities. After all, our brains have evolved to be extremely good at pattern recognition and we should try and take advantage of this ability where possible. In the early years of this data flood, researchers were able to cope by recruiting more willing collaborators and students, but in many fields this proved to be only a stopgap. We need a much larger workforce than any academic department can provide. Luckily, the web provides a means of reaching a much larger audience, willing to devote their free time to projects which can add to our knowledge of the world and the Universe”. For more information we invite you to visit the link below.
www.citizensciencealliance.org