Mohamed Adnan
09-23-2013
Professor Adams
Seminar 3
Reflection on “Citizen Science: Can Volunteers Do Real Research?”
“Citizen Science: Can Volunteers Do Real Research?” by Jeffrey P. Cohn focuses on the importance of citizen engagement and interactions in scientific studies. The article discusses the issue of reliability of the data that the citizens collected. I initially believed that this data would contain inaccuracy and inconsistency. Similarly, I believed that Project Feeder Watch would have likely had numerous inconsistencies. However, I was surprised at some of the statistics given for how accurate the citizen scientists were when collecting data. For example, “Even seventh graders got them right 95 percent of the time” and “third graders were right 80 percent of the time, an acceptable accuracy rate for most ecological studies.” Moreover, I was pleased to hear that many of the participating institutions took great measures to enhance the skill sets of the volunteer citizens, resulting in a much more accurate data set. The institutions would train the volunteers or even have a specialist along side to compare data with for accuracy. Through this method, the institutions are able to acquire massive amounts of accurate data at a low relative cost.
Another aspect of the article I found interesting was the motivation and interest that the volunteers had for the studies. These volunteers were not getting paid and were not writing research papers. They conducted the studies just for their own thirst for knowledge and to aid the environment. Moreover, the citizen science program is possibly the backbone for thousands of research papers and discoveries found annually. The reason for this is because they are collecting a massive amount of data and with a minimal cost in comparison to hiring a field researcher. The article stated that each field researcher would have taken over $30,000 each year just to conduct similar studies and procedures to what the unpaid citizen scientists were doing. Additionally, what makes the citizen scientists even more astonishing is the fact that it is their own interest that drives them. Often times, students in PhD programs feel under pressure or may not have the same drive in the field of study as a citizen scientists. The citizens are volunteering because they care and they want to actually learn up close in the outdoors. This was truly astounding because of the fact that the students were studying and were almost experts in scientific research, but the citizen scientists were able to produce quality quantitative data in a similar fashion.
