100% agree on the power of citizen advocacy and engagement to make meaningful, sustainable change - especially when working on climate change. For action on climate change in the US, could be the only path forward.
(Re-posting here): Hi Beth, I just wanted to say thanks for reading the piece and I’m glad that it resonated with you! I completely agree, climate change is an especially compelling case for citizen science since it’s so clear how complex and interrelated the challenges each community faces.
You may find this resource interesting: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=31PyAjy6Nl0&t=2s. It discusses how centralization can be systematically poor at addressing the needs of certain communities and how bottom-up place-based economies could be successful in these communities.
“Despite its potential for transformation, participatory research does have inherent challenges — untrained participants may collect inconsistent or biased data, participation bias can skew results, and projects that don’t properly give back to participants can be downright exploitative.” - This sentence is carrying a LOT of weight in this article. I agree with the merits of participatory research, but I have yet to see a formula that addresses these challenges systematically. Privacy is another major hurdle participatory research needs to overcome to become more widespread. Please reply in the comments if you have ideas on how these challenges can be structurally addressed.
Hi Kumar, thanks for your comment. You are completely right, participatory research can be pretty difficult to pull off. However, I believe that, with the right design, it can be even more robust than traditional research. For example, the eBird citizen science project created cross validation and reproducibility by having multiple bird-watchers independently submitted bird sightings from the same geographic location. A resource that covers this well is the Field Guide to Citizen Science by Catherine Hoffman.
Definitely privacy is still be a concern, but there are many methods for participant anonymization that can be helpful in open access data. To me, the biggest concern is participatory bias. Getting those already inclined to get involved can leave out communities that are in the most need of help and where the least research exists out of the picture. Deliberate effort to counteract this bias can be effective, but there needs to be ways to make this easier and more widespread.
Thank you for the reference. Placing that on my reading list. I understand why you see participation bias as the more difficult hurdle. There is the issue of outreach and science literacy, but also the issue of incentives and, let’s be real, people’s time. I wonder if companies give employees time off to participate in such research similar to the time off they give for voting or charity work.
I took a class on this recently. I study at the TU Berlin. It is something the Berlin University Alliance is aware of, and the German public university systems try and implement such projects through student initiatives and particular speculative branches within. The class was called Blue Science or Blue Engineering, and we learned about transformative science. The theory, process, and implementation of the idea of including a complex, integrated system of academic and non-academic actors into the research being done.
Anyway, I think the two texts we read in there could interest you. One of them is Ten Reflective Steps for Rendering Research Societally Relevant by Pohl et al, the other is Principles for Designing Transdisciplinary Research by Pohl et al.
The first one has a table of steps to follow when conducting transdisciplinary transformative science research, which we also had to try and follow to simulate a research we had to decide on. It was very interesting.
Thanks for sharing those resources melis and taking the time to read the post. I’ll definitely check them out.
Outside of this post, I definitely agree that there are a lot more models of research that we should explore. A few resources that your comment reminded me of that I found helpful were Caren Cooper and her book Citizen Science: How Ordinary People are Changing the Face of Discovery by as well as some of the experiments in research being done by Michael Crow and his work at Arizona State University.
Open source software is another interesting example where the community build the tools they need themselves. The largest mersennes prime was found in this crowd source way and the beast beaver problem was solved this way.
I fully support the approach to participatory and collaborative science. I currently work with many who share a similar vision through NASA's Science Activation program. Collaboration is incentivized and the program impact is transformative both locally and nationally. Check it out here: https://science.nasa.gov/learn/about-science-activation/
Love this! Lots of room for private sector companies to build tools that enable people to partake in participatory science – love the Krado model. Kinsa is another similar one (they’re a smart thermometer that was used as a real-time outbreak tracker during COVID by local public health groups).
This is such a fascinating piece! I think it’s vital to the current trajectory of our world that we give all a slice of the work- but also the reward- that science can bring. 10/10
I agree with the points in this article, and a lot of the projects mentioned here I've never even heard of (such as the Airbox project and Fix My Street).
I'll shout out a couple of other projects that I take part in now, or have taken part in the past, that use citizen resources:
* Globe at Night - relies on people looking up in the night skies to use certain constellations to measure the effect light pollution has on us
* BOINC - the Berkeley Open Infrastructure of Networked Computers - uses PC's to work on problems in science, math, medicine and more
* Zooniverse - a large repository of citizen science project in a wide variety of disciplines
One of the things I like about these projects is that they tend to be open source, meaning, the data and the code used for these are available for the people to see, analyze, and potentially improve.
Now, one thing I'd like to see is a citizen-run radar system for weather prediction. We have plenty of weather sensors running (Weather Underground says that there is at least 250,000, mostly in the Western world), so I wonder if it would be feasible for radar capabilities to be added?
Agree. Science shouldn't just be done to people—it should be done with them.
I wasn't aware of Taiwan’s Airbox project, and while the reference to the Colorado-based initiative was helpful, I found myself wondering if such projects can be initiated (or are already underway) in other regions, from Nigeria to Kenya, from Indonesia to India. Perhaps an online directory of such projects will serve as both a powerful resource for science researchers and an inspiration to other scientifically oriented communities.
Our governance here in the USA has never been worse with local participation (voting) rates falling due to people’s real perceptions that no one is listening or caring what they truly want. How do we enact desperately needed political system reform when our leaders don’t actually listen and are directly benefiting from the current money corrupted political system which enables them to get reelected time & time again without ever actually representing their constituents?
Many of us believe campaign finance reform is desperately needed. Citizens United needs to be overturned, and all campaigns should be publicly financed. Open election primaries, RCV in general elections, 10 year term limits at every level, annual grading of all elected officials based on what they committed to when elected, and mandatory retirement at age 75 like most public companies would be welcome changes. The Electoral College system should be abolished. This would take the power back from the affluent, corporations, political parties, and international bad actors + keep extremists out on the edges where they belong in any well functioning society.
100% agree on the power of citizen advocacy and engagement to make meaningful, sustainable change - especially when working on climate change. For action on climate change in the US, could be the only path forward.
(Re-posting here): Hi Beth, I just wanted to say thanks for reading the piece and I’m glad that it resonated with you! I completely agree, climate change is an especially compelling case for citizen science since it’s so clear how complex and interrelated the challenges each community faces.
You may find this resource interesting: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=31PyAjy6Nl0&t=2s. It discusses how centralization can be systematically poor at addressing the needs of certain communities and how bottom-up place-based economies could be successful in these communities.
Thank you!
“Despite its potential for transformation, participatory research does have inherent challenges — untrained participants may collect inconsistent or biased data, participation bias can skew results, and projects that don’t properly give back to participants can be downright exploitative.” - This sentence is carrying a LOT of weight in this article. I agree with the merits of participatory research, but I have yet to see a formula that addresses these challenges systematically. Privacy is another major hurdle participatory research needs to overcome to become more widespread. Please reply in the comments if you have ideas on how these challenges can be structurally addressed.
Hi Kumar, thanks for your comment. You are completely right, participatory research can be pretty difficult to pull off. However, I believe that, with the right design, it can be even more robust than traditional research. For example, the eBird citizen science project created cross validation and reproducibility by having multiple bird-watchers independently submitted bird sightings from the same geographic location. A resource that covers this well is the Field Guide to Citizen Science by Catherine Hoffman.
Definitely privacy is still be a concern, but there are many methods for participant anonymization that can be helpful in open access data. To me, the biggest concern is participatory bias. Getting those already inclined to get involved can leave out communities that are in the most need of help and where the least research exists out of the picture. Deliberate effort to counteract this bias can be effective, but there needs to be ways to make this easier and more widespread.
Thank you for the reference. Placing that on my reading list. I understand why you see participation bias as the more difficult hurdle. There is the issue of outreach and science literacy, but also the issue of incentives and, let’s be real, people’s time. I wonder if companies give employees time off to participate in such research similar to the time off they give for voting or charity work.
I took a class on this recently. I study at the TU Berlin. It is something the Berlin University Alliance is aware of, and the German public university systems try and implement such projects through student initiatives and particular speculative branches within. The class was called Blue Science or Blue Engineering, and we learned about transformative science. The theory, process, and implementation of the idea of including a complex, integrated system of academic and non-academic actors into the research being done.
Anyway, I think the two texts we read in there could interest you. One of them is Ten Reflective Steps for Rendering Research Societally Relevant by Pohl et al, the other is Principles for Designing Transdisciplinary Research by Pohl et al.
The first one has a table of steps to follow when conducting transdisciplinary transformative science research, which we also had to try and follow to simulate a research we had to decide on. It was very interesting.
Thanks for sharing those resources melis and taking the time to read the post. I’ll definitely check them out.
Outside of this post, I definitely agree that there are a lot more models of research that we should explore. A few resources that your comment reminded me of that I found helpful were Caren Cooper and her book Citizen Science: How Ordinary People are Changing the Face of Discovery by as well as some of the experiments in research being done by Michael Crow and his work at Arizona State University.
Open source software is another interesting example where the community build the tools they need themselves. The largest mersennes prime was found in this crowd source way and the beast beaver problem was solved this way.
Definitely, that's a topic with a very similar underlying philosophy. I actually wrote another post that touches on how to build without a reliance on major centralized institutions: https://anantagrawal.substack.com/p/freedom-from-masters-and-the-next.
I will check that one out
I fully support the approach to participatory and collaborative science. I currently work with many who share a similar vision through NASA's Science Activation program. Collaboration is incentivized and the program impact is transformative both locally and nationally. Check it out here: https://science.nasa.gov/learn/about-science-activation/
Love this! Lots of room for private sector companies to build tools that enable people to partake in participatory science – love the Krado model. Kinsa is another similar one (they’re a smart thermometer that was used as a real-time outbreak tracker during COVID by local public health groups).
Kinsa is a great example! Thanks for the comment Shobha.
Biohacking.
I am definitely using this article with my neuroscience class this fall. Thanks!
This is such a fascinating piece! I think it’s vital to the current trajectory of our world that we give all a slice of the work- but also the reward- that science can bring. 10/10
I agree with the points in this article, and a lot of the projects mentioned here I've never even heard of (such as the Airbox project and Fix My Street).
I'll shout out a couple of other projects that I take part in now, or have taken part in the past, that use citizen resources:
* Globe at Night - relies on people looking up in the night skies to use certain constellations to measure the effect light pollution has on us
* BOINC - the Berkeley Open Infrastructure of Networked Computers - uses PC's to work on problems in science, math, medicine and more
* Zooniverse - a large repository of citizen science project in a wide variety of disciplines
One of the things I like about these projects is that they tend to be open source, meaning, the data and the code used for these are available for the people to see, analyze, and potentially improve.
Now, one thing I'd like to see is a citizen-run radar system for weather prediction. We have plenty of weather sensors running (Weather Underground says that there is at least 250,000, mostly in the Western world), so I wonder if it would be feasible for radar capabilities to be added?
Hi Dylan, thanks for sharing this comment. These are all great examples, I actually wasn't familiar with the BOINC example that you mentioned.
Agree. Science shouldn't just be done to people—it should be done with them.
I wasn't aware of Taiwan’s Airbox project, and while the reference to the Colorado-based initiative was helpful, I found myself wondering if such projects can be initiated (or are already underway) in other regions, from Nigeria to Kenya, from Indonesia to India. Perhaps an online directory of such projects will serve as both a powerful resource for science researchers and an inspiration to other scientifically oriented communities.
Thanks for the shout out!
Well deserved Eric, really excited about what you and the team are doing at Krado! It was actually Elle that notified me about your work.
Thank you! I'll be writing a 3-part series exploring. What solarpunk really means, how capitalism fits in, and how crypto will power it.
Our governance here in the USA has never been worse with local participation (voting) rates falling due to people’s real perceptions that no one is listening or caring what they truly want. How do we enact desperately needed political system reform when our leaders don’t actually listen and are directly benefiting from the current money corrupted political system which enables them to get reelected time & time again without ever actually representing their constituents?
Many of us believe campaign finance reform is desperately needed. Citizens United needs to be overturned, and all campaigns should be publicly financed. Open election primaries, RCV in general elections, 10 year term limits at every level, annual grading of all elected officials based on what they committed to when elected, and mandatory retirement at age 75 like most public companies would be welcome changes. The Electoral College system should be abolished. This would take the power back from the affluent, corporations, political parties, and international bad actors + keep extremists out on the edges where they belong in any well functioning society.
Localize, Localize, Localize. Whenever it's possible, it's better.