THE FRONTIER IN YOUR
LIVING ROOM Jake Burton on the unlikely benefits of citizen science.
Y
our Scientists Need You Citizen science, where members of the public contribute to collecting and analysing data to further scientific research, has a long history. One project, the Christmas Bird Count, has been taking place across North America every year since 1900. And though ecological surveys may be the bread and butter of citizen science, they are by no means the only way to get involved. Today you no longer need to traipse around muddy fields on a cold December day to leave your mark on the world of science. Instead you can while away the hours solving puzzles that help determine the structures of proteins. Or cast your eye over images of distant stars, identifying the ‘debris disks’ where planets form. The choice is yours. Whatever you choose, citizen science projects like these have one thing in com-
mon (besides, of course, involving the public) – they generate vast quantities of data. But one of the concerns about citizen science is just how good all these data really are. Houston, We Have A Problem Scientists obsess over eliminating error from their work. That is, the discrepancy between the observations scientists make, and the truth reflected in nature. Though error often arises by chance, it can also be introduced systematically. It is this systematic error that poses a problem for citizen-led science. You see, people are only human, and they make mistakes. For instance, when conducting a survey to identify the animals living nearby, we’re somewhat unlikely to register yet another rabbit. But you’d certainly be telling everyone if you saw something as elusive as a badger! It turns out this can skew the results some-
20
what. Indeed, several bird population surveys have found that the abundance of birds over time is entirely dependent on who is doing the observing. Not, as hoped, the actual abundance of birds. But it would be silly to ban the public from science for not being quite so detail-oriented as the professional scientist. Since citizen science has other benefits. In fact, one of the areas where citizen science has excelled is when it focuses on local issues. The city of Antwerp, Belgium, has been using citizen scientists to track air quality across the city by encouraging people to mount sensors for nitrogen dioxide (an indicator of traffic pollution) to their homes. As well as providing a trove of data on how the urban environment affects the dispersal of pollutants, the project has also landed air quality squarely on the agenda of local elections.
THE OXFORD SCIENTIST | MT20 | WWW.OXSCI.ORG
