Several young people in a school, sitting at the computer, carry out a task of identifying the number of cells that remain intact, collaborating in a study to develop drugs to attack cancer cells, in a collective effort to collaborate with an investigation involving thousands of volunteers in Portugal, Spain and Brazil.
In a London suburb with pollution problems, several citizens take daily measurements of air quality to use as evidence in negotiations with the London Council, supported by researchers from University College.
A person, in a place in Portugal, finds a plant that he thinks is invasive; photograph it and use an application on your mobile phone to send it to the site's managers, who will validate and mark the sighting on a map.
Other young people from many schools analyze images of the Sun, from a long daily record of the Astronomical Observatory of the University of Coimbra, for a study of sunspots, over a time interval of more than 80 years.
Volunteers from schools and associations carry out regular collections of invertebrates in a small watercourse, in a village in Brazil, to monitor the water quality of this resource, which is a common good.
These are examples of activities carried out by citizens who voluntarily collaborate with a scientific project, making possible investigations that would be impossible or very difficult to conduct without their contribution, or who use a scientific project designed to respond to their needs.
These activities are called citizen science and they have been spreading and becoming more and more frequent and involving more and more participants, all over the world.
Although the first initiatives to involve voluntary citizens in scientific projects are quite old, only in recent years has the movement acquired a global dimension, particularly thanks to the resources of the internet.
Citizen science can be characterized as any initiative of a scientific nature, involving citizens as active participants.
These initiatives can take various forms, originating from the interests of researchers seeking volunteer collaborators, or from citizens seeking to use scientific knowledge to objectively support their arguments or have the possibility of confirming or not their concerns.
Many citizen science projects have a more didactic and educational concern; others seek to promote and protect the value of a good, usually a natural good, such as a forest, a territory, or an endangered species; still others aim to answer fundamental research questions, such as the detection of astronomical phenomena, or applied, such as studies to combat diseases. But, in all cases, we have the active participation of citizens in data collection, sometimes in analysis and even in project design.
Many researchers understand the importance of citizen science, although many others express doubts and fear to get involved in them.
Although the problem of data quality for scientific purposes is critical, in reality this is valid for any scientific project, with methodologies to improve data quality, reduce error and ensure the validity of observations, even if this has to go through simplifications of procedures.
But the biggest problem will be the difficulty in accepting the invasion by citizens of domains that were exclusive. As new generations of scientists are increasingly aware, familiar and available to communicate and disseminate science, so will the habituation with citizen science will happen as projects are diversified and their potential is understood.
Although in Portugal the initiatives have, in general, a limited participation, with exceptions, in other countries, particularly in Europe and the United States, there is already strong planning, with direct support from governments to structures that aim to promote initiatives that clearly bring them closer together. the society of scientific activity and able to contribute to a greater understanding of how knowledge is produced, in societies that are increasingly technological and dependent on scientific knowledge for their development and the quality of life of people.
In addition to these national initiatives, there is even a European Citizen Science Association and the European Union itself is very interested in the phenomenon. Researchers from the University of Coimbra and the Science Museum were involved in a project that produced the white paper on citizen science for the European Union. The document seeks to synthesize what citizen science is and assess what opportunities arise with its expansion and consolidation.
When we talk about citizen science, we are, from the outset, talking about greater citizenship, greater control that citizens can exercise over the space where they live, having the possibility to contribute to solving problems that arise on a scale that has no solution possible, except through the collaborative action of many people, in projects with clear objectives, to collectively collaborate in one of the most beautiful and fascinating undertakings that humanity has ever developed.
Author Paulo Gama Mota
Science in the Regional Press – Ciência Viva
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