Empower citizen science to the benefit of us all

Imagine you’re heading out for a long weekend in the mountains of West Texas. You check the Weather Underground app, which shows you the temperature at hundreds of weather stations people have set up in their backyards and connected to the web. Scanning the temperatures along your route, you decide to grab a jacket for the last leg of your trip, where it’s 15 degrees cooler.

At your destination, as you look up at the night sky, you marvel at how many stars you can see. You occasionally take measurements of night sky brightness and submit them to NASA for its research on light pollution.

These two projects are examples of citizen science, which involves harnessing the power of small efforts by thousands of people to contribute to studies of some big local and global problems: climate change, biodiversity, land use, asteroid hunting, and more. It is a pursuit that has become so popular that it is now recognized on April 13, National Citizen Science Day. As professional scientists, my colleagues and I should do more to embrace such efforts – not only for their contributions to research projects, but also because they build appreciation for science in the public. Texans should engage in citizen science both to raise scientific literacy and to meaningfully contribute to scientific progress.

When professional scientists take time to circle back to citizen scientists to let them know, “Hey, look at what your data helped us to figure out,” public understanding of and motivation to support the scientific enterprise deepens. This ultimately could enhance the research funding that leads to world-changing breakthroughs. Such engagement empowers individuals, through their direct experience with the validity of the scientific method, to resist and push back against the arguments of skeptics, like those who doubt climate change or the efficacy of vaccines. When a person’s own weather monitor is contributing temperature data consistent with a changing climate, he or she might feel more confident in the scientists’ conclusions. Nothing like seeing something in your own backyard, literally.

We live in a time when high quality, relative inexpensive technologies can democratize meaningful participation in the scientific endeavor. Today more than ever before, valuable scientific research need not take place only in government or university labs. Particularly when it comes to big data collection, everyday citizens can contribute to projects on their own schedules and within their own budgets. Anyone using apps to track their heart rate, number of steps, or sleep is already participating in a scientific endeavor, at the very least through the study of their own health, but also potentially, when combined with the larger user community, in identifying health risks and the impact of exercise programs on well-being. For example, see the Apple/Stanford Heart Medicine study of irregular heart rhythms using the Apple Watch.

My scientific colleagues and I can worry less about the implications on our analysis of including data with greater uncertainties, such as might come from inexpensive instruments used by citizen scientists. When the data sets were small or sparse, a single incorrect observation could skew our results. But these days, the sheer volume of data overwhelms the potential errors associated with any given observation.

Colleges and universities could also do more to promote citizen science, such as helping individuals calibrate their equipment, developing student research projects that use citizen-collected data, and hosting forums to discuss citizen science data and its implications so people understand how they’re contributing to the scientific enterprise.

Texans can start by joining one or more citizen science projects that already exist (see SciStarter.org or zooniverse.org), both as a way to learn more about their world and as a means of contributing to some basic and cutting-edge scientific research.

Citizen science projects harness the power of public interest and big data to the benefit of us all.

Morris is dean of natural sciences at St. Edward's University.