The Citizens of Science's posts: Recent Episodes
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In this interview I spoke to a mother of 2 boys who had only just come to #WSF2014. I asked her what she thought #citizenscience might be, and she had never heard of the term. Although when I explained it, she knew exactly what it meant. She said that in Australia there are lots of these projects, but normally they aren't labelled at Citizen Science.
This young man and his father had been to several #WSF2014 events, having particularly enjoyed the events about polar research. The boy guessed that #citizenscience had something to do with studying people, how they behave and what they do. His father was a little closer, and guessed that it was an opportunity for non-scientists to do science.
The first time I had ever met an astronaut! He was sitting with his friend, and both had been a part of #WSF2014. I asked the astronaut what he thought #citizenscience might be, and he immediately related it to "regular people helping with weather tracking." After an explanaition I asked him he had been involved in any, he said no. But he said he was active in the research community already. His research is at NASA, and he interfaces a lot with the public from the International Space Station #ISS. "Particularly, when there's large weather, like hurricanes or typhoons, we'll oftentimes take pictures from above during and after... so I guess I take part in some respects." Outside of his awesome space adventures in NASA, he would be interested in doing more astronomy or cosmology. His friend took part in a genealogy #citizenscience project which was part of #WSF14.
These two young ladies had not been to #WSF14, and didn't know what #citizenscience was. They guessed: "Science that is related to a particular area, science that is connected to an area - a city." After a small prompt to have a guess after saying she had no idea, the other girl said "involving citizens in the science that is going on in the city." Not bad!
This couple have been part of #WSF14, but had not known the term #citizenscience. The lady described it as "something for people who want science to be used in a good way, for example, not denying climate change..." The man said "I hope it generates interest amongst younger people to become interested in science." After being given a broad definition of it however, they both understood what it was, and had actually taken part in citizen science projects in the past!
This gentleman had not been to #WSF14 and had not heard of #citizenscience. But his guess was: "people that live in a specific area, dealing, or trying to work with scientific events in that region?" Which was close enough!
This gentleman and his friend have both been a part of #WSF14. He described it as "empowering citizens to know the basics of science and to feel comfortable with scientific ideas, and to do some science." And for him empowerment came through education. His friend believed it was 'regular citizens actually doing research and contributing to that research in a group effort." He also talks about some citizen science projects he's been involved in
This lady wasn't part of #WSF14, but she thought it might be about people who are concerned about the future. Her friend, got closer, and guessed that it was a chance for "lay-people who have an interest in science' to have a go at science.
We're looking to find out how many people know what citizen science is, and if so, what projects they're involved in. Please take some time to fill in our very short survey at http://tinyurl.com/PulseWSF2014 , and pass it on to your friends!
Grant Miller is the community manager of the Zooniverse #citizenscience projects. In this interview I ask him what it really means to be a community manager, but also get some great insights into what goes on behind the scenes at Zooniverse
I eavesdropped on a conversation Ben and Jen were having at the #TweetforSci event that was held at the Dana Centre in London recently. They were talking about their concerns that people might not be learning as many scientific skills as they could be doing through many of the citizen science projects. They believe citizen science has an incredible potential, and really hope to see it grow into something that can teach people more about how science works.
Jeff Howe, a journalism professor at Northeastern University, a visiting scholar at MIT Media Lab and the man that coined term #crowdsourcing in a 2006 Wired article. In this podcast, Jeff talks about his upcoming book #Principles, which he hopes will be a compass for a world without maps. Image credit: Daniella Zalcman
Rick Bonney from Cornell Ornithology shares some of the key points from his keynote speech at the Citizen Cyberscience Summit 2014
The 3rd Citizen Cyberscience Summit (#ccs14) will be held on the 20th to the 22nd of February, 2014, in London.
To give you an idea of what to expect, I've spoken to some of the organisers: Francois Grey, Margaret Gold, Muki Haklay and Brian Fuchs.
To find out more about the event go to www.cybersciencesummit.org, follow @CitizenCyberlab on Twitter and use the hashtag #ccs14 or join the Citizen Science Facebook group.
In this final episode exploring the meaning of science, I speak to Dr Helen Roy, an ecologist at the Centre for Ecology and Hydrology. Helen has been fascinated with the natural world since she was a small child, and her love has never wavered. As her career in the natural sciences started to flourish, so did her activities in science communication: spreading the word of what she was doing to those around her, and those interested in her work.
Citizenscience became an automatic and natural extension of her #sciencecommunication. And it is now a two-way engagement with those who are involved in the UK Ladybird Survey
Image credit: UK Ladybird Survey
In this penultimate episode of the #CitizensofScience mini series trying to answer: What is Science? I speak to Louisa-Rose Allen, a London-based secretary. Louisa never liked school science: she said it was very difficult to feel involved. The teachers did experiments in front of the class, but you couldn't do them yourselves. She loved pouring over Encyclopedia's and other books, but school science left her uninspired. It wasn't until she came across #CitizenScience projects like the #FlyingAntSurvey that she rekindled a love for science. And in this podcast interview Louisa takes a crack at defining the word #science for the first time. Not as easy as you might think. Image credit: Alamy
This is the fourth episode in this mini series trying to answer the question What is Science? In this episode, I am having a chat with Duncan Richardson, a music teacher, avid naturalist and citizen scientist. In a previous life he was a mathematician, and has aways kept a love for recording events and analysing them. He's part of several projects: the UK ladybird survey, a few for the British Trust for Ornithology, traps moths for the Butterfly Conservation Database. Anything he sees and identifies correctly he sends to the right people so get a good idea of the bigger picture. To Duncan, his view of science hasn't changed since he started doing citizen science projects. He's always believed that science is a way of trying to explain how things work, and seeing the theories and the relationships between the things around us. The change in definition of science for Duncan comes with the essence of citizen science itself: it is open and accessible to everyone and anyone. He believes that we are brought up to think science is for the incredibly intelligent in lab coats, not the average Joe. Whereas now, anyone can take part, anyone can help. And he thinks social media has the biggest part to play in this. Things like twitter make science and communication so immediate. He will collect data, and ask questions on Twitter to scientists and they respond back with suggested experiments. The interaction is key.
CitizenScience #LadybirdSurvey
In this third episode of the mini series trying to answer the question What is Science? I am speaking to Yvonne Gallagher, a lawyer and flying ant fan.
Yvonne has been watching the ants carefully since she was a child. But it was only in 2008 (with the dawn of the modern BlackBerry phones) that she started taking notes and dates of when the ants became flying ants. She started noticing that they were coming out at roughly the same time every year.
So, she was pleased to find that there was a citizen science project collecting data on this very topic.
So I asked her, as someone with no background in science, what she thought science was BEFORE she joined in with the flying ant survey. She believed it was school science: boring, theory heavy, equation laden school science.
Since joining the project she has realised that there is so much more to science than just what she learned at school. She realised that it was a way of going through life: of looking at the weather, or collecting data on flying ants.
And as someone who hated science at school, she said she would recommend anyone else to give citizen science a go. It gave her an opportunity to see how the other half (the scientists) live. And it was refreshing for Yvonne to see that this was what she had been doing all along anyway.
We would love to hear your views of what you think science is too! Has it changed over the years? Let us know by leaving a comment below or by getting onto the twitter discussions with the hashtag #CitizensofScience.
This is the second episode of a mini series of podcasts in which we are trying to answer the question: What is Science?
In this episode you hear Jem Stansfield's definition of Science. He believes that many poeple don't think about what it means, where as he has had some time to do so. And his conclusion: its a method, regardless of the subject area.
Come up with a theory, test the theory, perform experiment, evaluate, redo etc etc. But the most important thing to him is writing it up so that anyone can replicate and improve. Whether bouncing football or extracting DNA, if you don't follow the method, its not science.
He thinks that if you just apply an equation to an idea, it's not quite the same. In his opinion, it's more like cooking, not science. "You're just taking a recipe, and using that recipe to make something that you want."
Jem didn't like this way of doing engineering at university: he thought that if you could design an aeroplane, without properly understanding what you are doing, and then unintentionally making a bad aeroplane.
"I don't see any difference between using complicated equations to get results, and combining eggs and flower and sugar to get a cake. It's the same thing."
That's Jem's thoughts, but what are yours? Please leave some comments below, or get involved with the discussion on Twitter with the hashtag #CitizensofScience.
What would be even better is if you wanted to get involved with this discussion on the show! Have you got a definition of science that you want to share with the listeners? Please do get in touch, as we would like to have as varied a definition as possible in the next three episodes!
Image credit: 1902, Home Science Publishing Company
This is the first part of a series attempting to answer the question: What is Science? In this introductory episode, I’m joined by Dr Rebecca Nesbit, David Urry and Dr Penny Fletcher, all from the Society of Biology in the UK. We explore what the word science means to scientific researchers, citizen scientists and those organising citizen science projects. For Rebecca, we discover is that there are similarities between the meaning of science when she's a researcher and when she's organising projects: she thinks about the question that she is trying to answer, and how best to answer it. However, when she's taking part in citizen science projects, it's more about making sure all her data is correct. David thinks citizen science is a way of realising that a lot of what we do already can be considered as citizen science. Because he studied science at university, he has a good understanding of the methods of science, and the "rules associated with it.... It is a serious business." For him, citizen science is then when someone else does the hard work for you and you get to do the fun stuff! But since leaving the world of academia, the meaning of science hasn't changed. What has changed is his appreciation of the different ways of being involved in science. He also believes that those who don’t have a scientific background are not at a disadvantage when it comes to taking part. The projects (if designed properly) will give all the details you need to make sure you can contribute. However, there are some projects that require prior knowledge, so it’s really about finding something you are interested in that is at the right level for you. With Penny, we discuss how she got into citizen science projects, and how they led her into going down the route of public engagement. I ask her what she defines science as to the people she explains it to. Her response is an interesting one, as no-one ever asks “what is science?” They just take what you present to them and relate it to their lives and experiences. This is where she believes citizen science projects need to start. After speaking to them individually, we have a group discussion, reflecting on what was said. We realise that it’s a good thing to get the citizen scientists involved in the planning stages of a project, and that the scientists, as well as citizen scientists can gain insights from this close collaboration. But it’s making it easy for citizens to get involved and feel the value of their work that will really improve the projects. #CitizenScience #Science #CitizensofScience #SocietyofBiology Image credit: SciStarter
An audio exploration of what Open Science means to some of the attendees of Mozfest 2013. Open Science has as many meanings as there are people, and yes as so many people talk about it, should there not be some sort of consensus as to what it might mean? Reporter Julie Gould went out to MozFest 2013 to ask some of the attendees what it meant to them. For some, it is the ability to let anyone into science, to remove those ivory towers. For others, it is more about letting anyone learn how science is done by making the methods and data collected more transparent. In this episode, Cindy Regalado talks about what she thinks Open Science really means.
OpenScience #Mozfest2013 #CitizenScience
An audio exploration of what Open Science means to some of the attendees of Mozfest 2013. Open Science has as many meanings as there are people, and yes as so many people talk about it, should there not be some sort of consensus as to what it might mean? Reporter Julie Gould went out to MozFest 2013 to ask some of the attendees what it meant to them. For some, it is the ability to let anyone into science, to remove those ivory towers. For others, it is more about letting anyone learn how science is done by making the methods and data collected more transparent. In this episode, I speak to Peter Murray-Rust and Sophie Kay about what they think Open Science really means.
OpenScience #Mozfest2013 #CitizenScience
An audio exploration of what Open Science means to some of the attendees of Mozfest 2013. Open Science has as many meanings as there are people, and yes as so many people talk about it, should there not be some sort of consensus as to what it might mean? Reporter Julie Gould went out to MozFest 2013 to ask some of the attendees what it meant to them. For some, it is the ability to let anyone into science, to remove those ivory towers. For others, it is more about letting anyone learn how science is done by making the methods and data collected more transparent. In episode 4, I speak to nine year old Nara who describes a drawing she made to represent Open Science, director of Peer Library who thinks Open Science is how science should be, and finally Solan Choudry, a media management student who believes Open Science will have a tricky future.
OpenScience #Mozfest2013 #CitizenScience
An audio exploration of what Open Science means to some of the attendees of Mozfest 2013.
Open Science has as many meanings as there are people, and yes as so many people talk about it, should there not be some sort of consensus as to what it might mean?
Reporter Julie Gould went out to MozFest 2013 to ask some of the attendees what it meant to them. For some, it is the ability to let anyone into science, to remove those ivory towers. For others, it is more about letting anyone learn how science is done by making the methods and data collected more transparent.
In episode 3, I speak to Greg Wilson from Software Carpentry and to Jeff Warren from the Public Laboratory to find out what Open Science means to them.
OpenScience #Mozfest2013 #CitizenScience
An audio exploration of what Open Science means to some of the attendees of Mozfest 2013.
Open Science has as many meanings as there are people, and yes as so many people talk about it, should there not be some sort of consensus as to what it might mean?
Reporter Julie Gould went out to MozFest 2013 to ask some of the attendees what it meant to them. For some, it is the ability to let anyone into science, to remove those ivory towers. For others, it is more about letting anyone learn how science is done by making the methods and data collected more transparent.
In episode 2, I speak to Andrea Sella, Brian Glanz, Billy Meinke, Josh Greenberg and Margaret Gold to find out what Open Science means to them.
OpenScience #Mozfest2013 #CitizenScience
An audio exploration of the makers and shakers at Mozfest 2013, focusing on some of the things being made, and what Open Science is. In this first episode of Citizens of Science I interview Mark Surman, Kaitlin Thaney, Josh Greenberg and more to find out all about Mozfest 2013