Having citizens perform scientific research is a great idea for society. Not only will it make scientific research across a large geographic area more feasible, it will also allow for larger sample sizes, a broader range of research topics, and it will do wonders for education in America. Citizen Science is one of the methods for learning science which is informal and would allow people to learn without even realizing that they’re learning. It’s one of the “95 percent” solutions. Even Cohn’s article states that most of the grants given out by the National Science Foundation are categorized as grants for education rather than grants for science. There is a reason for that: having citizens without prior scientific experience help do research will implicitly improve their education in the field they’re researching.

This idea can even benefit the economy. Somebody who participated in a number of citizen science projects would have acquired experience that can be put on a resume, making him more hireable.

My only concern with allowing common folk do research is with the validity of the scientific results it would bring. Yes, the article states that even third graders identified crabs correctly at a rate of 80%. But what if the research needed to be conducted is more complex than simply identifying animals in our ecosystem? Use of specialized tools and research of sophisticated topics requires trained hands and minds. I believe that type of research should be left to the professionals. Allowing non-scientists to participate in science is great, as long as it doesn’t lower the standards for what is acceptable to be accurate data. That would be cause for bad science. Citizens should be allowed to help, but only in the collection of simple data. The citizens should be trained appropriately, and they should be assessed in whether they understand their task before allowing them to commit to it. The prospect of allowing anybody to volunteer and gather data for researchers has only been brought up recently, and according to the article, standards for accuracy have been enforced in the studies. I only hope that it will continue to be this way and that this cheaper alternative for gathering data won’t become a temptation to provide leeway for invalid data.