Citizen scientists have been making contributions for centuries. This 1843 microscope was used by amateur naturalist Caroline Bucknall Escourt while her husband, a British military officer, was stationed in the Canadian colonies. Photograph courtesy of the Canadian Science and Technology Museum. Some rights reserved.
The discoverers were citizen scientists participating in an online project called Planet Hunters, which was set up specifically to allow members of the public to sift through Kepler's information. Six of these volunteers were listed as authors in the Sept. 22 paper about the planets, published in the Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society.
The Planet Hunters are only the latest in a series of non-scientists who've made important contributions to science. A team of video-gamers playing a competitive protein-folding simulation game called Foldit also in September worked out the structure of a protein belonging to the Mason-Pfizer monkey virus, an HIV-like virus that causes AIDS in monkeys. It took them three weeks to do what professional scientists had been working on for years.
The value of harnessing public participation through games and projects is not lost on the scientific community. Hundreds of project websites can now be found with a simple Google search. Scientific American recently added an entire section to its website devoted to citizen science.
Yet science literacy remains low among non-scientists. The National Science Foundation concluded in a 2006 report that “most citizens do not have a firm grasp of basic scientific facts and concepts, nor do they have an understanding of the scientific process. In addition, belief in pseudoscience seems to be widespread, not only in the United States but in other countries as well.”
A low level of literacy matters. Take this year's Republican candidates. Minnesota Rep. Michele Bachmann was roundly repudiated by scientists and pundits after she claimed to have met a woman who said her son's mental retardation was caused by the HPV vaccine. Texas Gov. Rick Perry made his illiteracy known on several occasions, with dubious comments about both evolution and climate change.
These people want to be president. They already command high offices, where they no doubt deal with science-related subjects on a daily basis.
Speaking about Congress on WNPR's “Where We Live,” Princeton Physicist and New Jersey Rep. Rush Holt recently noted, “There are 435 people in the House and 420 don’t know much about science and choose not to.”
Ultimately, though, it is the voters who elect leaders. They can't possibly hold politicians to account about science without first understanding it themselves.
Citizen science may be a way to close the knowledge gap, if incentives are put in place to raise its profile and spur interest. That's why an award, given once a year at an ostentatious ceremony, should be established for an individual or group who contributes significantly to the advancement of science.
No such award currently exists. Groups that organize citizen science have prizes, but the citizens themselves have no reward other than fulfiling their passions for discovery.
Rewarding citizen science would break down one more perceived barrier between the “elite” researchers and everyone else. Recognition is known to be a driving force among professional scientists. Their careers are built on getting their names published and receiving awards from their colleagues. We expect scientists to want these rewards. Why wouldn't anyone else want the same thing?
Introducing competition could have added benefits for scientic literacy. Science works because its core dynamics—not its methods or techniques per se—are rooted in pitting intellects against one another,” said Thomas W. Martin, an Honors Faculty Fellow at Barrett Honors College at Arizona State University in Tempe, Ariz. in an essay (that, incidentally, won an award) for Seed magazine in 2007. “Science eventually yields impressive answers because it compels smart people to incessantly try to disprove the ideas generated by other smart people.”
The MNARS paper took a small step toward rewarding the volunteers from Planet Hunters by giving them the status of co-authors. It's a small, but rarely taken, step.
Most importantly, perhaps, is the fact that citizen scientists may end up making huge contributions in the coming years. As Astronomer Phil Plait wondered on his “Bad Astronomy” blog: “Will the first exoEarth be found by a professional astronomer, or instead by some science enthusiast who decided one day to check out this Planet Hunters thing?”
It's a question we should all be seriously considering.
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