There was a time, not long ago, when a certain kind of exclusion amongst ordinary citizens from the realm of scientific inquiry and experiment was common law; if you had not ascertained a PhD at some point in your life, you were likely not considered a legitimate candidate in the scientific community. Of course, we can extract well-known exceptions from history, most obviously Sir Isaac Newton and Albert Einstein, two men of commonly unimpressive scholarly endeavors who would nevertheless go on to become the two most revered physicists in modern history. However, Newton and Einstein, like few others in history, were exceedingly rare exceptions. The exclusion of ordinary citizens who have sought to make a significant contribution to the scientific community has been a genuine concern of mine for the past several years, however, that concern has gradually begun to ease greater and greater recently.
A 2009 article published in the Oxford Journal of BioScience written by Rick Bonney, Caren B. Cooper, and several other contributing writers, eloquently summarizes the characteristics of citizen science:
“Citizen science enlists the public in collecting large quantities of data across an array of habitats and locations over long spans of time. Citizen science projects have been remarkably successful in advancing scientific knowledge, and contributions from citizen scientists now provide a vast quantity of data of species occurrence and distribution around the world.“
Of course, the study of ecology and biology are not the only available fields of citizen participation. The field of astronomy for example, is a scientific field wildly open to the public. There are several websites in fact that cater specifically toward the citizen study of the cosmos; sites such as Galaxy Zoo, Planet Hunters, Radio Galaxy Zoo, The Milky Way Project, and several others, enlist the aid of volunteer researches to classify and observe the extraordinary surplus of scientific data left unattended due to a shortage of professional scientists humanly available. Data collected from sources such as the Hubble Space Telescope and SDSS Skyserver are available for the public to openly dissect. In doing so, it is the hopes of citizens and scientists alike that such an approach to science will generate valuable research at a much faster pace than ever before, as well as endorse the capabilities for a more scientifically literate society.
For more detailed information regarding the practice of citizen science, visit citizensciencealliance.org and zooniverse.org.
Aether of Infancy 