Misuse of p-values is common in scientific research and scientific education. p-values are often used or interpreted incorrectly; the American Statistical Association states that p-values can indicate how incompatible the data are with a specified statistical model. From a Neyman–Pearson hypothesis testing approach to statistical inferences, the data obtained by comparing the p-value to a significance level will yield one of two results: either the null hypothesis is rejected (which however does not prove that the null hypothesis is false), or the null hypothesis cannot be rejected at that significance level (which however does not prove that the null hypothesis is true). From a Fisherian statistical testing approach to statistical inferences, a low p-value means either that the null hypothesis is true and a highly improbable event has occurred or that the null hypothesis is false.
Clarifications about p-values
The following list clarifies some issues that are commonly misunderstood regarding p-values:
The p-value is not the probability that the null hypothesis is true, or the probability that the alternative hypothesis is false. A p-value
can indicate the degree of compatibility between a dataset and a
particular hypothetical explanation (such as a null hypothesis).
Specifically, the p-value can be taken as the prior probability
of obtaining an effect that is at least as extreme as the observed
effect, given that the null hypothesis is true. This should not be
confused with the posterior probability that the null hypothesis is true
given the observed effect. In fact, frequentist statistics does not attach probabilities to hypotheses.
The p-value is not the probability that the observed effects were produced by random chance alone. The p-value is computed under the assumption that a certain model, usually the null hypothesis, is true. This means that the p-value is a statement about the relation of the data to that hypothesis.
The 0.05 significance level is merely a convention.
The 0.05 significance level (alpha level) is often used as the boundary
between a statistically significant and a statistically non-significant
p-value. However, this does not imply that there is generally a
scientific reason to consider results on opposite sides of any threshold
as qualitatively different.
The p-value does not indicate the size or importance of the observed effect. A small p-value
can be observed for an effect that is not meaningful or important. In
fact, the larger the sample size, the smaller the minimum effect needed
to produce a statistically significant p-value.
Representing probabilities of hypotheses
A
frequentist approach rejects the validity of representing probabilities
of hypotheses: hypotheses are true or false, not something that can be
represented with a probability.
Bayesian statistics actively models the likelihood of hypotheses. The p-value
does not in itself allow reasoning about the probabilities of
hypotheses, which requires multiple hypotheses or a range of hypotheses,
with a prior distribution of likelihoods between them, in which case Bayesian statistics could be used. There, one uses a likelihood function for all possible values of the prior instead of the p-value for a single null hypothesis. The p-value
describes a property of data when compared to a specific null
hypothesis; it is not a property of the hypothesis itself. For the same
reason, p-values do not give the probability that the data were produced by random chance alone.
Multiple comparisons problem
The multiple comparisons problem occurs when one considers a set of statistical inferences simultaneously or infers a subset of parameters selected based on the observed values. It is also known as the look-elsewhere effect. Errors in inference, including confidence intervals that fail to include their corresponding population parameters or hypothesis tests that incorrectly reject the null hypothesis,
are more likely to occur when one considers the set as a whole. Several
statistical techniques have been developed to prevent this from
happening, allowing significance levels for single and multiple
comparisons to be directly compared. These techniques generally require a
higher significance threshold for individual comparisons, so as to
compensate for the number of inferences being made.
The webcomicxkcd satirized misunderstandings of p-values by portraying scientists investigating the claim that eating jellybeans caused acne. After failing to find a significant (p
< 0.05) correlation between eating jellybeans and acne, the
scientists investigate 20 different colors of jellybeans individually,
without adjusting for multiple comparisons. They find one color (green)
nominally associated with acne (p < 0.05). The results are
then reported by a newspaper as indicating that green jellybeans are
linked to acne at a 95% confidence level—as if green were the only color
tested. In fact, if 20 independent tests are conducted at the 0.05
significance level and all null hypotheses are true, there is a 64.2%
chance of obtaining at least one false positive and the expected number of false positives is 1 (i.e. 0.05 × 20).
In general, the family-wise error rate
(FWER)—the probability of obtaining at least one false
positive—increases with the number of tests performed. The FWER when all
null hypotheses are true for m independent tests, each conducted at significance level α, is:
The discipline of evidence-based toxicology (EBT) strives to transparently, consistently, and objectively assess available scientific evidence in order to answer questions in toxicology,
the study of the adverse effects of chemical, physical, or biological
agents on living organisms and the environment, including the prevention
and amelioration of such effects.
EBT has the potential to address concerns in the toxicological
community about the limitations of current approaches to assessing the
state of the science.
These include concerns related to transparency in decision making,
synthesis of different types of evidence, and the assessment of bias and
credibility. Evidence-based toxicology has its roots in the larger movement towards evidence-based practices.
By analogy to evidence-based medicine (EBM),
the umbrella term evidence-based toxicology (EBT) has been coined to
group all approaches intended to better implement the above-mentioned
evidence-based principles in toxicology in general and in toxicological
decision-making in particular. Besides systematic reviews, the core
evidence-based tool, such approaches include inter alia the
establishment and universal use of a common ontology, justified design
and rigorous conduct of studies, consistently structured and detailed
reporting of experimental evidence, probabilistic uncertainty and risk
assessment, and the development of synthesis methodology to integrate
evidence from diverse evidence streams, e.g. from human observational
studies, animal studies, in vitro studies and in silico modeling. A main
initial impetus for translating evidence-based approaches to toxicology
was the need to improve the performance assessment of toxicological
test methods.
The U.S. National Research Council (NRC) concurs that new means of
assessment are needed to keep pace with recent advances in the
development of toxicological test methods, capitalizing on enhanced
scientific understanding through modern biochemistry and molecular
biology.
A key tool in evidence-based medicine that holds promise for EBT
is the systematic review. Historically, authors of reviews assessing
the results of toxicological studies on a particular topic have
searched, selected, and weighed the scientific evidence in a
non-systematic and non-transparent way. Due to their narrative nature,
these reviews tend to be subjective, potentially biased, and not readily
reproducible.
Two examples highlighting these deficiencies are the risk assessments
of trichloroethylene and bisphenol A (BPA). Twenty-seven different risk
assessments of the evidence that trichloroethylene causes cancer have
come to substantially different conclusions.
Assessments of BPA range from low risk of harm to the public to
potential risks (for some populations), leading to different political
decisions. Systematic reviews can help reducing such divergent views.
In contrast with narrative reviews, they reflect a highly structured
approach to reviewing and synthesizing the scientific literature while
limiting bias.
The steps to carrying out a systematic review include framing the
question to be addressed; identifying and retrieving relevant studies;
determining if any retrieved studies should be excluded from the
analysis; and appraising the included studies in terms of their
methodological quality and risk of bias. Ultimately the data should be
synthesized across studies, if possible by a meta-analysis. A protocol
of how the review will be conducted is prepared ahead of time and
ideally should be registered and/or published.
Scientists have made progress in their efforts to apply the
systematic review framework to evaluating the evidence for associations
between environmental toxicants and human health risks. To date,
researchers have shown that important elements of the framework
established in evidence-based medicine can be adapted to toxicology with
little change, and some studies have been attempted.
Researchers using the systematic review methodology to address
toxicological concerns include a group of scientists from government,
industry, and academia in North America and the European Union (EU) who
have joined together to promote evidence-based approaches to toxicology
through the nonprofit Evidence-based Toxicology Collaboration
(EBTC). The EBTC brings together the international toxicology
community to develop EBT methodology and facilitate the use of EBT to
inform regulatory, environmental and public health.
Background
Evidence-based
approaches were first conceived as a means of anchoring policy
decisions, not to current practices or the beliefs of experts, but to
experimental evidence. Evidence-based medicine
(EBM) was launched slightly later. Its rise as a distinct discipline is
generally credited to the work and advocacy of Scottish epidemiologist
Archie Cochrane. The Cochrane Collaboration
named in his honor was launched at Oxford University in 1993 to promote
evidence-based reviews of clinical medical literature. More recently,
EBM expanded to encompass evidence-based health care (EBHC).
EBM/HC involves the conscientious, explicit, and judicious use of
current best evidence in making decisions about the care of individual
patients taking patients' preferences into account.
Prior to EBM, medical decisions about diagnosis, prevention, treatment
or harm were often made without a rigorous evaluation of the
alternatives. Research in the 1970s and 1980s showed that different
physicians regularly recommended different treatments and tests for
patients with ailments that were essentially the same, and that large
proportions of procedures being performed by physicians were considered
inappropriate by the standards of medical experts.
EBM/HC supporters stress that while evidence always has been important
to the practice of medicine, EBM/HC provides an enhanced approach of
identifying, assessing, and summarizing evidence. EBT's supporters make
a similar argument.
The idea of translating evidence-based approaches from medicine
to toxicology has been percolating for two decades, with proponents in
both medicine and toxicology.
Three research papers published in 2005 and 2006 catalyzed what
eventually became known as EBT by suggesting that EBM's established
tools and concepts might serve as a prototype of evidence-based
decision-making in toxicology.
Process and progress
The First International Forum Toward Evidence-Based Toxicology was held in 2007.
The forum was organized by the European Commission and attended by 170
scientists from more than 25 European, American, and Asian countries.
The goal was to explore the available concepts of EBT, and to launch an
initiative to formally implement evidence-based assessment methods in
toxicology.
The starting point for the discussions were two research papers
suggesting that the tools and concepts established in evidence-based
medicine could serve as a prototype of evidence-based decision-making
for evaluating toxicological data.
Apparent fundamental differences between medicine and toxicology were
carefully considered during these discussions. Forum participants
attempted to bridge the two disciplines in order to make use of the
accrued wisdom and apply this approach to toxicology. (See http://www.ebtox.org/resources/evidence-based-toxicology-explained/ .)
The proceedings of this forum were published as a special issue in Human & Experimental Toxicology.
EBT's proponents include experts in EBM, public health, and
toxicology who believe that EBT can help toxicologists to better serve
the goals of health protection and safety assurance.
They argue that EBT's methodologies for collecting, appraising, and
pooling evidence can help ensure that all available information on a
given topic is evaluated in a transparent, unbiased, and reproducible
manner. They contend that EBT's concept of the systematic review could
prove particularly helpful for the standardization and quality assurance
of novel methodologies for evaluating toxicity, as well as for their
formal validation. In this regard, EBT may prove particularly useful
for assessing the performance of newer non-animal “21st century”
toxicology tools. EBT can also help scientists integrate new
toxicological test methods into test strategies being implemented across
the globe.
In 2010, a group of EBT supporters joined together to convene a
workshop titled “21st Century Validation for 21st Century Tools.”
The session on the potential for evidence-based approaches to assess
the performance of the new generation of non-animal test methods
inspired the formation of the EBTC. The EBTC was officially launched
in the U.S. in 2011 at a Society of Toxicology conference and convened its first workshop in 2012. The EBTC's EU branch was officially opened during the 2012 Eurotox conference.
In 2014, the EBTC hosted a workshop on ‘The Emergence of
Systematic Review and Related Evidence-based Approaches in Toxicology“
with speakers representing US and European organizations that are
implementing and promoting the use of systematic reviews for
toxicological questions. The experts noted that the structured approach
of systematic reviews increases objectivity and transparency but also
made clear that the approach requires a substantial time investment,
which is a challenge to its more widespread adoption. Consequently, the
participants called for close collaboration of interested organizations,
which they determined to be a pre-requisite for the broad and efficient
introduction of systematic reviews in toxicology.
Applications of EBT
Regulatory decision-making
Some
scientists and policymakers would like EBT to help them combine
information from various sources. Toxicological evidence can be
assigned to evidence streams, sets of studies representing the same type
or level of evidence, such as human (observational) studies, animal
studies, in vitro or mechanistic studies. EBT can be applied both
within one evidence stream, and it is especially well-suited to be
applied across multiple evidence streams. Regulators often designate
one study as “the lead study,” then use later studies as additional
information. Many perceive this as unsatisfying, but objective
approaches to combine study results are lacking. The EBM concept of the
systematic review has promise for this application, and some structured
reviews serve as forerunners for this approach.
Evaluating effects of environmental exposures
The
U.S. National Toxicology Program's Office of Health Assessment and
Translation (OHAT) has started to use systematic review methodology for
the program's evaluations. The first systematic review was completed in 2016, reviewing the effects of fluoride on learning and memory in animal studies.
OHAT’s approach is tailored to its mandate, but its seems especially
appropriate for substances with substantial yet conflicting literature,
and hence the need for systematic reviews to sort out somewhat confusing
situations.
Causation
One application of EBT focuses on causation.
It addresses the challenge of tracing a health effect back to a
toxicant, such as lung cancer to smoking. This approach is similar to
legal arguments.
Some experts warn that this approach could increase the evidence
burden for proving causation, and thereby increase the difficulty
involved in banning toxic substances.
Clinical toxicology
Practitioners
of clinical toxicology, which is concerned with the treatment of
patients known to be exposed to toxic substances, are also beginning to
use an EBM-style approach. Guidance documents based on this approach have already been published.
21st century toxicology
The
National Research Council's (NRC) landmark 2007 publication, Toxicity
Testing in the 21st Century, has also been an impetus for EBT. EBT
provides new tools for assessing test method performance. Also, as the
focus of 21st-century toxicology shifts from animal biology to human
biology, EBT provides a method for comparatively evaluating the results
gleaned from new methods of investigating the effects of chemical
exposure.
Limitations and challenges
The specific differences between toxicology and medicine/health care cause challenges for implementing EBT.
Evidence-based methodology of clinical research has been focused on a
single type of study—randomized, controlled clinical trials, which are a
direct measure of the effectiveness of the health care intervention
under scrutiny. In contrast, toxicology employs a variety of different
kinds of studies in three distinct evidence streams: human
(observational) studies, animal studies, and non-animal studies.
Because human evidence is frequently lacking, most evidence is obtained
by using animal and non-animal models, which—by definition—is more
difficult to generalize and extrapolate to humans. This methodological
heterogeneity complicates evidence integration within an evidence
stream, such as when inconsistent evidence is obtained from different
animal species, but even more so across evidence streams. Adding to the
difficulty is the reality that much toxicological evidence, more so
than in medicine and health care, is not readily accessible in the
literature. Moreover, the role of expert judgment, especially in systematic
reviews, needs to be clearly defined, as it is a common misperception
that evidence-based approaches leave no room for it. Systematic reviews
should strive to make expert judgments clear along with the scientific
basis for those judgments in developing conclusions for a systematic
review. Further issues to be worked out include exposures to multiple
substances, the multitude of outcomes observed in some animal studies,
and challenges in improving the experimental designs and reporting of
studies.
An evidence-based practice (EBP) is any practice that relies on scientific evidence for guidance and decision-making. Practices that are not evidence-based may rely on tradition, intuition, or other unproven methods. Evidence-based practices have been gaining ground since the formal introduction of evidence-based medicine in 1992, and have spread to the allied health professions, education, management, law, public policy, and other fields. In light of studies showing problems in scientific research (such as the replication crisis),
there is also a movement to apply evidence-based practices in
scientific research itself. Research into the evidence-based practice of
science is called metascience.
The movement towards evidence-based practices attempts to
encourage, and in some instances to force, professionals and other
decision-makers to pay more attention to evidence to inform their
decision-making. The goal of evidence-based practice is eliminate
unsound or outdated practices in favor of more effective ones by
shifting the basis for decision making from tradition, intuition, and
unsystematic experience to firmly grounded scientific research.
History
For most of history, professions have based their practices on expertise derived from experience passed down in the form of tradition. Many of these practices have not been justified by evidence, which has sometimes enabled quackery
and poor performance. Even when overt quackery is not present, quality
and efficiency of tradition-based practices may not be optimal. As the scientific method
has become increasingly recognized as a sound means to evaluate
practices, evidence-based practices have become increasingly adopted.
One of the earliest proponents of EBP was Archie Cochrane, an epidemiologist who authored the book Effectiveness and Efficiency: Random Reflections on Health Services
in 1972. Cochrane's book argued for the importance of properly testing
health care strategies, and was foundational to the evidence-based
practice of medicine.
Cochrane suggested that because resources would always be limited, they
should be used to provide forms of health care which had been shown in
properly designed evaluations to be effective. Cochrane maintained that
the most reliable evidence was that which came from randomised controlled trials.
The term "evidence-based medicine"
was introduced in 1992. This marked the first evidence-based practice
to be formally established. Some early experiments in evidence-based
medicine involved testing primitive medical techniques such as bloodletting,
and studying the effectiveness of modern and accepted treatments. There
has been a push for evidence-based practices in medicine by insurance
providers, which have sometimes refused coverage of practices lacking
in systematic evidence of usefulness. It is now expected by most clients
that medical professionals should make decisions based on evidence, and
stay informed about the most up-to-date information. Since the
widespread adoption of evidence-based practices in medicine, the use of
evidence-based practices has rapidly spread to other fields.
More recently, there has been a push for evidence-based education. The use of evidence-based learning techniques such as spaced repetition can improve students' rate of learning. Some commentators
have suggested that the putative lack of any conspicuous progress in
the field of education is attributable to practice resting in the
unconnected and noncumulative experience of thousands of individual
teachers, each re-inventing the wheel and failing to learn from hard
scientific evidence about 'what works'. Opponents of this view argue
that hard scientific evidence is a misnomer in education; knowing that a
drug works (in medicine) is entirely different from knowing that a
teaching method works, for the latter will depend on a host of factors,
not least those to do with the style, personality and beliefs of the
teacher and the needs of the particular children (Hammersley
2013). Some opponents of EBP in education suggest that teachers need to
develop their own personal practice, dependent on personal knowledge
garnered through their own experience. Others argue that this must be
combined with research evidence, but without the latter being treated as
a privileged source.
Vs. tradition
Evidence-based practice is a philosophical approach that is in opposition to tradition.
Some degree of reliance on "the way it was always done" can be found in
almost every profession, even when those practices are contradicted by
new and better information.
Some critics argue that since research is conducted on a
population level, results may not generalise to each individual within
the population. Therefore, evidence-based practices may fail to provide
the best solution to each individual, and traditional practices may
better accommodate individual differences. In response, researchers have
made an effort to test whether particular practices work better for
different subcultures, personality types etc.
Some authors have redefined EBP to include practice that incorporates
common wisdom, tradition, and personal values in alongside practices
based on evidence.
Evaluating evidence
Evaluating scientific research is extremely complex. The process can by greatly simplified with the use of a heuristic that ranks the relative strengths of results obtained from scientific research called a hierarchy of evidence. The design of the study and the endpoints measured (such as survival or quality of life) affect the strength of the evidence. Typically, systematic reviews and meta-analysies rank at the top of the hierarchy while randomized controlled trials rank above observational studies, and expert opinion and case reports
rank at the bottom. There is broad agreement on the relative strength
of the different types of studies, but there is no single,
universally-accepted hierarchy of evidence. More than 80 different
hierarchies have been proposed for assessing medical evidence.
Applications of evidence-based practice
Medicine
Evidence-based medicine (EBM) is an approach to medical practice intended to optimize decision-making by emphasizing the use of evidence from well-designed and well-conducted research. Although all medicine based on science has some degree of empirical support, EBM goes further, classifying evidence by its epistemologic strength and requiring that only the strongest types (coming from meta-analyses, systematic reviews, and randomized controlled trials) can yield strong recommendations; weaker types (such as from case-control studies)
can yield only weak recommendations. The term was originally used to
describe an approach to teaching the practice of medicine and improving
decisions by individual physicians about individual patients.[10]
Use of the term rapidly expanded to include a previously described
approach that emphasized the use of evidence in the design of guidelines
and policies that apply to groups of patients and populations
("evidence-based practice policies").
Whether applied to medical education, decisions about
individuals, guidelines and policies applied to populations, or
administration of health services in general, evidence-based medicine
advocates that to the greatest extent possible, decisions and policies
should be based on evidence, not just the beliefs of practitioners,
experts, or administrators. It thus tries to assure that a clinician's opinion, which may be limited by knowledge gaps or biases, is supplemented with all available knowledge from the scientific literature so that best practice
can be determined and applied. It promotes the use of formal, explicit
methods to analyze evidence and makes it available to decision makers.
It promotes programs to teach the methods to medical students,
practitioners, and policymakers.
A process has been specified that provides a standardised route
for those seeking to produce evidence of the effectiveness of
interventions.
Originally developed to establish processes for the production of
evidence in the housing sector, the standard is general in nature and is
applicable across a variety of practice areas and potential outcomes of
interest.
Mental Health
Not
all mental health practitioners receive training in evidence-based
approaches, and members of the public are often unaware that
evidence-based practices exist. Consequently, patients do not always
receive the most effective, safe, and cost-effective treatments
available. To improve dissemination of evidence-based practices, the Association for Behavioral and Cognitive Therapies (ABCT) and the Society of Clinical Child and Adolescent Psychology (SCCAP, Division 53 of the American Psychological Association)
maintain updated information on their websites on evidence-based
practices in psychology for practitioners and the general public. An
evidence-based practice consensus statement was developed at a summit on
mental healthcare in 2018. As of June 23, 2019, this statement has been
endorsed by 36 organizations.
Social policy
There are increasing demands for the whole range of social policy and
other decisions and programs run by government and the NGO sector to be
based on sound evidence as to their effectiveness. This has seen an
increased emphasis on the use of a wide range of Evaluation approaches directed at obtaining evidence about social programs of all types. A research collaboration called the Campbell Collaboration
has been set up in the social policy area to provide evidence for
evidence-based social policy decision-making. This collaboration follows
the approach pioneered by the Cochrane Collaboration in the health
sciences.
Using an evidence-based approach to social policy has a number of
advantages because it has the potential to decrease the tendency to run
programs which are socially acceptable (e.g. drug education in schools)
but which often prove to be ineffective when evaluated.
Scientific research
As with other fields, many practices in scientific research are rooted in tradition rather than evidence, and are unproven. John Ioannidis 2005 paper "Why most published research findings are false"
found evidence that these poor practices regularly result in false
findings and enormous waste. The paper was the most downloaded in the Public Library of Science, and has the highest number of Mendeley readers across all science."
There has since been a movement for the use of evidence-based practice
in conducting scientific research in attempt to address the replication crisis and other major issues affecting scientific research. The application of evidence-based practices to research itself is called metascience.
Metascience seeks to increase the quality of scientific research
while reducing waste. It is also known as "research on research" and
"the science of science", as it uses research methods
to study how research is done and where improvements can be made. The
five main areas of research in metascience are methodology, reporting, reproducibility, evaluation, and incentives. Metascience has produced a number of reforms in science such as the use of study pre-registration and the implementation of reporting guidelines with the goal of bettering scientific research practices.
Metascience (also known as meta-research or evidence-based research) is the use of scientific methodology to study science itself. Metascience seeks to increase the quality of scientific research while reducing waste. It is also known as "research on research" and "the science of science", as it uses research methods to study how research
is done and where improvements can be made. Metascience concerns itself
with all fields of research and has been described as "a bird's eye
view of science." In the words of John Ioannidis, "Science is the best thing that has happened to human beings ... but we can do it better."
In 1966, an early meta-research paper examined the statistical methods
of 295 papers published in ten high-profile medical journals. It found
that, "in almost 73% of the reports read ... conclusions were drawn when
the justification for these conclusions was invalid." Meta-research in
the following decades found many methodological flaws, inefficiencies,
and poor practices in research across numerous scientific fields. Many
scientific studies could not be reproduced, particularly in medicine and the soft sciences. The term "replication crisis" was coined in the early 2010s as part of a growing awareness of the problem.
Measures have been implemented to address the issues revealed by metascience. These measures include the pre-registration of scientific studies and clinical trials as well as the founding of organizations such as CONSORT and the EQUATOR Network that issue guidelines for methodology and reporting. There are continuing efforts to reduce the misuse of statistics, to eliminate perverse incentives from academia, to improve the peer review process, to combat bias in scientific literature, and to increase the overall quality and efficiency of the scientific process.
History
In 1966, an early meta-research paper examined the statistical methods
of 295 papers published in ten high-profile medical journals. It found
that, "in almost 73% of the reports read ... conclusions were drawn when
the justification for these conclusions was invalid." Later meta-research identified widespread difficulty in replicating results in many scientific fields, including psychology and medicine. This problem was termed "the replication crisis". Metascience has grown as a reaction to the replication crisis and to concerns about waste in research.
Many prominent publishers are interested in meta-research and in
improving the quality of their publications. Top journals such as Science,The Lancet, and Nature, provide ongoing coverage of meta-research and problems with reproducibility. In 2012 PLOS ONE launched a Reproducibility Initiative. In 2015 Biomed Central introduced a minimum-standards-of-reporting checklist to four titles.
The first international conference in the broad area of meta-research was the Research Waste/EQUATOR conference held in Edinburgh in 2015; the first international conference on peer review was the Peer Review Congress held in 1989. In 2016, Research Integrity and Peer Review
was launched. The journal's opening editorial called for "research that
will increase our understanding and suggest potential solutions to
issues related to peer review, study reporting, and research and
publication ethics".
Areas of meta-research
Metascience
can be categorize into five major areas of interest: Methods,
Reporting, Reproducibility, Evaluation, and Incentives. These
correspond, respectively, with how to perform, communicate, verify,
evaluate, and reward research.
Methods
Metascience seeks to identify poor research practices, including biases in research, poor study design, abuse of statistics, and to find methods to reduce these practices. Meta-research has identified numerous biases in scientific literature. Of particular note is the widespread misuse of p-values and abuse of statistical significance.
Reporting
Meta-research
has identified poor practices in reporting, explaining, disseminating
and popularizing research, particularly within the social and health
sciences. Poor reporting makes it difficult to accurately interpret the
results of scientific studies, to replicate
studies, and to identify biases and conflicts of interest in the
authors. Solutions include the implementation of reporting standards,
and greater transparency in scientific studies (including better
requirements for disclosure of conflicts of interest). There is an
attempt to standardize reporting of data and methodology through the
creation of guidelines by reporting agencies such as CONSORT and the larger EQUATOR Network.
Reproducibility
The replication crisis is an ongoing methodological crisis in which it has been found that many scientific studies are difficult or impossible to replicate.
While the crisis has its roots in the meta-research of the mid- to
late-1900s, the phrase "replication crisis" was not coined until the
early 2010s as part of a growing awareness of the problem. The replication crisis particularly affects psychology (especially social psychology) and medicine.
Replication is an essential part of the scientific process, and the
widespread failure of replication puts into question the reliability of
affected fields.
Moreover, replication of research (or failure to replicate) is
considered less influential than original research, and is less likely
to be published in many fields. This discourages the reporting of, and
even attempts to replicate, studies.
Evaluation
Metascience seeks to create a scientific foundation for peer review. Meta-research evaluates peer review systems including pre-publication peer review, post-publication peer review, and open peer review. It also seeks to develop better research funding criteria.
Incentives
Metascience seeks to promote better research through better incentive
systems. This includes studying the accuracy, effectiveness, costs, and
benefits of different approaches to ranking and evaluating research and
those who perform it. Critics argue that perverse incentives have created a publish-or-perish environment in academia which promotes the production of junk science, low quality research, and false positives. According to Brian Nosek,
“The problem that we face is that the incentive system is focused
almost entirely on getting research published, rather than on getting
research right.” Proponents of reform seek to structure the incentive system to favor higher-quality results.
Reforms
Meta-research
identifying flaws in scientific practice has inspired reforms in
science. These reforms seek to address and fix problems in scientific
practice which lead to low-quality or inefficient research.
Pre-registration
The practice of registering a scientific study before it is conducted is called pre-registration. It arose as a means to address the replication crisis.
Pregistration requires the submission of a registered report, which is
then accepted for publication or rejected by a journal based on
theoretical justification, experimental design, and the proposed
statistical analysis. Pre-registration of studies serves to prevent publication bias, reduce data dredging, and increase replicability.
Reporting standards
Studies showing poor consistency and quality of reporting have
demonstrated the need for reporting standards and guidelines in science,
which has led to the rise of organisations that produce such standards,
such as CONSORT (Consolidated Standards of Reporting Trials) and the EQUATOR Network.
The EQUATOR (Enhancing the QUAlity and Transparency Of health Research)
Network is an international initiative aimed at promoting transparent
and accurate reporting of health research studies to enhance the value
and reliability of medical research literature.
The EQUATOR Network was established with the goals of raising
awareness of the importance of good reporting of research, assisting in
the development, dissemination and implementation of reporting
guidelines for different types of study designs, monitoring the status
of the quality of reporting of research studies in the health sciences
literature, and conducting research relating to issues that impact the
quality of reporting of health research studies.
The Network acts as an "umbrella" organisation, bringing together
developers of reporting guidelines, medical journal editors and peer
reviewers, research funding bodies, and other key stakeholders with a
mutual interest in improving the quality of research publications and
research itself.
Applications
Medicine
Clinical research in medicine is often of low quality, and many studies cannot be replicated. An estimated 85% of research funding is wasted. Additionally, the presence of bias affects research quality. The pharmaceutical industry
exerts substantial influence on the design and execution of medical
research. Conflicts of interest are common among authors of medical
literature
and among editors of medical journals. While almost all medical
journals require their authors to disclose conflicts of interest,
editors are not required to do so. Financial conflicts of interest
have been linked to higher rates of positive study results. In
antidepressant trials, pharmaceutical sponsorship is the best predictor
of trial outcome.
Blinding is another focus of meta-research, as error caused by poor blinding is a source of experimental bias.
Blinding is not well reported in medical literature, and widespread
misunderstanding of the subject has resulted in poor implementation of
blinding in clinical trials. Furthermore, failure of blinding is rarely measured or reported. Research showing the failure of blinding in antidepressant trials has led some scientists to argue that antidepressants are no better than placebo. In light of meta-research showing failures of blinding, CONSORT standards recommend that all clinical trials assess and report the quality of blinding.
Studies have shown that systematic reviews of existing research
evidence are sub-optimally used in planning a new research or
summarizing the results.
Cumulative meta-analyses of studies evaluating the effectiveness of
medical interventions have shown that many clinical trials could have
been avoided if a systematic review of existing evidence was done prior
to conducting a new trial. For example, Lau et al. analyzed 33 clinical trials (involving 36974 patients) evaluating the effectiveness of intravenous streptokinase for acute myocardial infarction.
Their cumulative meta-analysis demonstrated that 25 of 33 trials could
have been avoided if a systematic review was conducted prior to
conducting a new trial. In other words, randomizing 34542 patients was
potentially unnecessary. One study analyzed 1523 clinical trials included in 227 meta-analyses
and concluded that "less than one quarter of relevant prior studies"
were cited. They also confirmed earlier findings that most clinical
trial reports do not present systematic review to justify the research
or summarize the results.
Psychology
Metascience has revealed significant problems in psychological research. The field suffers from high bias, low reproducibility, and widespread misuse of statistics. The replication crisis affects psychology more strongly than any other field; as many as two-thirds of highly publicized findings may be impossible to replicate.
Meta-research finds that 80-95% of psychological studies support their
initial hypotheses, which strongly implies the existence of publication bias.
The replication crisis has led to renewed efforts to re-test important findings. In response to concerns about publication bias and p-hacking, more than 140 psychology journals have adopted result-blind peer review, in which studies are pre-registered and published without regard for their outcome. An analysis of these reforms estimated that 61 percent of result-blind studies produce null results,
in contrast with 5 to 20 percent in earlier research. This analysis
shows that result-blind peer review substantially reduces publication
bias.
Psychologists routinely confuse statistical significance with practical importance, enthusiastically reporting great certainty in unimportant facts. Some psychologists have responded with an increased use of effect size statistics, rather than sole reliance on the p values.
Physics
Richard Feynman noted that estimates of physical constants were closer to published values than would be expected by chance. This was believed to be the result of confirmation bias:
results that agreed with existing literature were more likely to be
believed, and therefore published. Physicists now implement blinding to
prevent this kind of bias.
Associated fields
Journalology
Journalology, also known as publication science, is the scholarly study of all aspects of the academic publishing process. The field seeks to improve the quality of scholarly research by implementing evidence-based practices in academic publishing. The term "journalology" was coined by Stephen Lock, the former editor-in-chief of the BMJ. The first Peer Review Congress, held in 1989 in Chicago, Illinois, is considered a pivotal moment in the founding of journalology as a distinct field. The field of journolology has been influential in pushing for study pre-registration in science, particularly in clinical trials. Clinical-trial registration is now expected in most countries.
Scientometrics
Scientometrics concerns itself with measuring bibliographic data
in scientific publications. Major research issues include the
measurement of the impact of research papers and academic journals, the
understanding of scientific citations, and the use of such measurements
in policy and management contexts.
Citizen science (CS; also known as community science, crowd science, crowd-sourced science, civic science, volunteer monitoring, or online citizen science) is scientific research conducted, in whole or in part, by amateur (or nonprofessional) scientists. Citizen science is sometimes described as "public participation in scientific research," participatory monitoring, and participatory action research whose outcomes are often advancements in scientific research, as well as an increase in the public's understanding of science. Based on Alexa rankings iNaturalist is currently the most popular citizen science website followed by eBird and then Zooniverse in second and third place respectively.
The term CS has multiple origins, as well as differing concepts. It was first defined independently in the mid-1990s by Rick Bonney in the United States and Alan Irwin in the United Kingdom.
Alan Irwin, a British sociologist, defines CS as "developing concepts
of scientific citizenship which foregrounds the necessity of opening up
science and science policy processes to the public".
Irwin sought to reclaim two dimensions of the relationship between
citizens and science: 1) that science should be responsive to citizens'
concerns and needs; and 2) that citizens themselves could produce
reliable scientific knowledge.
The American ornithologist Rick Bonney, unaware of Irwin's work,
defined CS as projects in which nonscientists, such as amateur
birdwatchers, voluntarily contributed scientific data. This describes a
more limited role for citizens in scientific research than Irwin's
conception of the term.
The terms citizen science and citizen scientists entered the Oxford English Dictionary (OED) in June 2014.
"Citizen science" is defined as "scientific work undertaken by members
of the general public, often in collaboration with or under the
direction of professional scientists and scientific institutions".
"Citizen scientist" is defined as: (a) "a scientist whose work is
characterized by a sense of responsibility to serve the best interests
of the wider community (now rare)"; or (b) "a member of the general
public who engages in scientific work, often in collaboration with or
under the direction of professional scientists and scientific
institutions; an amateur scientist". The first use of the term "citizen scientist" can be found in the magazine New Scientist in an article about ufology from October 1979.
Muki Haklay cites, from a policy report for the Wilson Center
entitled "Citizen Science and Policy: A European Perspective", an
alternate first use of the term "citizen science" by R. Kerson in the
magazine MIT Technology Review from January 1989.
Quoting from the Wilson Center report: "The new form of engagement in
science received the name 'citizen science'. The first recorded example
of the use of the term is from 1989, describing how 225 volunteers
across the US collected rain samples to assist the Audubon Society in an acid-rain awareness raising campaign."
A "Green Paper on Citizen Science" was published in 2013 by the European Commission's
Digital Science Unit and Socientize.eu, which included a definition for
CS, referring to "the general public engagement in scientific research
activities when citizens actively contribute to science either with
their intellectual effort or surrounding knowledge or with their tools
and resources. Participants provide experimental data and facilities for
researchers, raise new questions and co-create a new scientific
culture."
Citizen science may be performed by individuals, teams, or
networks of volunteers. Citizen scientists often partner with
professional scientists to achieve common goals. Large volunteer
networks often allow scientists to accomplish tasks that would be too
expensive or time consuming to accomplish through other means.
Many citizen-science projects serve education and outreach goals. These projects may be designed for a formal classroom environment or an informal education environment such as museums.
Citizen science has evolved over the past four decades. Recent
projects place more emphasis on scientifically sound practices and
measurable goals for public education.
Modern citizen science differs from its historical forms primarily in
the access for, and subsequent scale of, public participation;
technology is credited as one of the main drivers of the recent
explosion of citizen science activity.
In March 2015, the Office of Science and Technology Policy published a factsheet entitled "Empowering Students and Others through Citizen Science and Crowdsourcing".
Quoting: "Citizen science and crowdsourcing projects are powerful tools
for providing students with skills needed to excel in science,
technology, engineering, and math (STEM). Volunteers in citizen science,
for example, gain hands-on experience doing real science, and in many
cases take that learning outside of the traditional classroom setting".
Members of the Cascades Butterfly Citizen Science Team pictured on Sauk mountain
In May 2016, a new open-access journal was started by the Citizen Science Association along with Ubiquity Press called Citizen Science: Theory and Practice (CS:T&P).
Quoting from the editorial article titled "The Theory and Practice of
Citizen Science: Launching a New Journal", "CS:T&P provides the
space to enhance the quality and impact of citizen science efforts by
deeply exploring the citizen science concept in all its forms and across
disciplines. By examining, critiquing, and sharing findings across a
variety of citizen science endeavors, we can dig into the underpinnings
and assumptions of citizen science and critically analyze its practice
and outcomes."
Alternative definitions
Other definitions for citizen science have also been proposed. For example, Bruce Lewenstein of Cornell University's Communication and S&TS departments describes 3 possible definitions:
The participation of nonscientists in the process of gathering
data according to specific scientific protocols and in the process of
using and interpreting that data.
The engagement of nonscientists in true decision-making about policy issues that have technical or scientific components.
The engagement of research scientists in the democratic and policy process.
Further, Muki Haklay offers an overview of the typologies of the
level of citizen participation in citizen science, which range from
"crowdsourcing" (level 1), where the citizen acts as a sensor, to
"distributed intelligence" (level 2), where the citizen acts as a basic
interpreter, to "participatory science", where citizens contribute to
problem definition and data collection (level 3), to "extreme citizen
science", which involves collaboration between the citizen and
scientists in problem definition, collection and data analysis.
A 2014 Mashable
article defines a citizen scientist as: "Anybody who voluntarily
contributes his or her time and resources toward scientific research in
partnership with professional scientists."
In 2016 the Australian Citizen Science Association
released their definition which states "Citizen science involves public
participation and collaboration in scientific research with the aim to
increase scientific knowledge."
In 2016, the book "Analyzing the Role of Citizen Science in
Modern Research" defined citizen science as "work undertaken by civic
educators together with citizen communities to advance science, foster a
broad scientific mentality, and/or encourage democratic engagement,
which allows society to deal rationally with complex modern problems".
Related fields
In a Smart City era, Citizen Science relays on various web-based tools (eg.WebGIS) and becomes Cyber Citizen Science. Some projects, such as SETI@home, use the Internet to take advantage of distributed computing.
These projects are generally passive. Computation tasks are performed
by volunteers' computers and require little involvement beyond initial
setup. There is disagreement as to whether these projects should be
classified as citizen science.
The astrophysicist and Galaxy Zoo co-founder Kevin Schawinski
stated: "We prefer to call this [Galaxy Zoo] citizen science because
it's a better description of what you're doing; you're a regular citizen
but you're doing science. Crowd sourcing sounds a bit like, well,
you're just a member of the crowd and you're not; you're our
collaborator. You're pro-actively involved in the process of science by
participating."
Compared to SETI@home, "Galaxy Zoo volunteers do real work.
They're not just passively running something on their computer and
hoping that they'll be the first person to find aliens. They have a
stake in science that comes out of it, which means that they are now
interested in what we do with it, and what we find."
Citizen policy may be another result of citizen science
initiatives. Bethany Brookshire (pen name SciCurious) writes: "If
citizens are going to live with the benefits or potential consequences
of science (as the vast majority of them will), it's incredibly
important to make sure that they are not only well informed about
changes and advances in science and technology, but that they also ...
are able to ... influence the science policy decisions that could impact
their lives."
Benefits and limitations
Citizen
involvement in scientific projects has become a means of encouraging
curiosity and greater understanding of science whilst providing an
unprecedented engagement between professional scientists and the general
public. In a research report published by the National Park Service
in 2008, Brett Amy Thelen and Rachel K. Thiet mention the following
concerns, previously reported in the literature, about the validity of
volunteer-generated data:
Some projects may not be suitable for volunteers, for instance,
when they use complex research methods or require a lot of (often
repetitive) work.
If volunteers lack proper training in research and monitoring protocols, they are at risk of introducing bias into the data.
The question of data accuracy, in particular, remains open. John Losey, who created the Lost Ladybug
citizen science project, has argued that the cost-effectiveness of
citizen science data can outweigh data quality issues, if properly
managed.
In December 2016, authors M. Kosmala, A. Wiggins, A. Swanson and B. Simmons published a study in the journal Frontiers in Ecology and the Environment called "Assessing Data Quality in Citizen Science".
The abstract describes how ecological and environmental CS projects
have enormous potential to advance science. Also, CS projects can
influence policy and guide resource management by producing datasets that are otherwise infeasible to generate. In the section "In a Nutshell" (pg3), four condensed conclusions are stated. They are:
Datasets produced by volunteer CSs can have reliably high quality, on par with those produced by professionals.
Individual volunteer accuracy varies, depending on task difficulty
and volunteer experience. Multiple methods exist for boosting accuracy
to required levels for a given project.
Most types of bias
found in CS datasets are also found in professionally produced datasets
and can be accommodated using existing statistical tools.
Reviewers of CS projects should look for iterated project design,
standardization and appropriateness of volunteer protocols and data
analyses, capture of metadata, and accuracy assessment.
They conclude that as CS continues to grow and mature, a key metric
of project success they expect to see will be a growing awareness of
data quality. They also conclude that CS will emerge as a general tool
helping "to collect otherwise unobtainable high-quality data in support
of policy and resource management, conservation monitoring, and basic
science."
A study of Canadian lepidoptera datasets published in 2018
compared the use of a professionally curated dataset of butterfly
specimen records with four years of data from a CS program, eButterfly.
The eButterfly dataset was used as it was determined to be of high
quality because of the expert vetting process used on the site, and
there existed a historic dataset covering the same geographic area
consisting of specimen data, much of it institutional. The authors note
that, in this case, CS data provides both novel and complementary
information to the specimen data. Five new species were reported from
the CS data, and geographic distribution information was improved for
over 80% of species in the combined dataset when CS data was included.
Law
In March 2015, the state of Wyoming
passed new laws (Senate Files 12 and 80) clarifying that trespassing
laws applied even if the trespasser's intention was to gather data to
further a U.S. government science program. This hampered some CS researchers who were collecting data while on other people's land.
In September 2015, the European Citizen Science Association (ECSA) published its Ten Principles of Citizen Science, which have been developed by the "Sharing best practice and building capacity" working group of the ECSA, led by the Natural History Museum, London with input from many members of the association.
Citizen science projects actively involve citizens in scientific
endeavour that generates new knowledge or understanding. Citizens may
act as contributors, collaborators, or as project leader and have a
meaningful role in the project.
Citizen science projects have a genuine science outcome. For
example, answering a research question or informing conservation action,
management decisions or environmental policy.
Both the professional scientists and the citizen scientists benefit
from taking part. Benefits may include the publication of research
outputs, learning opportunities, personal enjoyment, social benefits,
satisfaction through contributing to scientific evidence e.g. to address
local, national and international issues, and through that, the
potential to influence policy.
Citizen scientists may, if they wish, participate in multiple stages
of the scientific process. This may include developing the research
question, designing the method, gathering and analysing data, and
communicating the results.
Citizen scientists receive feedback from the project. For example,
how their data are being used and what the research, policy or societal
outcomes are.
Citizen science is considered a research approach like any other,
with limitations and biases that should be considered and controlled
for. However unlike traditional research approaches, citizen science
provides opportunity for greater public engagement and democratisation
of science.
Citizen science project data and meta-data are made publicly
available and where possible, results are published in an open access
format. Data sharing may occur during or after the project, unless there are security or privacy concerns that prevent this.
Citizen scientists are acknowledged in project results and publications.
Citizen science programmes are evaluated for their scientific
output, data quality, participant experience and wider societal or
policy impact.
The leaders of citizen science projects take into consideration
legal and ethical issues surrounding copyright, intellectual property,
data sharing agreements, confidentiality, attribution, and the
environmental impact of any activities.
The medical ethics of internet crowdsourcing has been questioned by Graber & Graber in the Journal of Medical Ethics. In particular, they analyse the effect of games and the crowdsourcing project Foldit. They conclude: "games can have possible adverse effects, and that they manipulate the user into participation".
In March 2019 the online journal Citizen Science: Theory and Practice launched a collection of articles
on the theme of Ethical Issues in Citizen Science.
The articles are introduced with (quoting): "Citizen science can
challenge existing ethical norms because it falls outside of customary
methods of ensuring that research is conducted ethically. What ethical
issues arise when engaging the public in research? How have these issues
been addressed, and how should they be addressed in the future?"
In June 2019, East Asian Science, Technology and Society: An International Journal
(EASTS) published an issue titled "Citizen Science: Practices and
Problems" which contains 15 articles/studies on CS, including many
relevant subjects of which ethics is one.
Quoting from the introduction Citizen, Science, and Citizen Science:
"The term citizen science has become very popular among scholars as well
as the general public, and, given its growing presence in East Asia, it
is perhaps not a moment too soon to have a special issue of EASTS on
the topic."
Economic worth
In the research paper "Can citizen science enhance public understanding of science?" by Bonney et al. 2016, statistics which analyse the economic worth of citizen science are used, drawn from two papers: i)Sauermann and Franzoni 2015, and
ii)Theobald et al. 2015.
In "Crowd science user contribution patterns and their implications" by
Sauermann and Franzoni (2015), seven projects from the Zooniverse web
portal are used to estimate the monetary value of the CS that had taken
place. The 7 projects are: Solar Stormwatch, Galaxy Zoo Supernovae,
Galaxy Zoo Hubble, Moon Zoo, Old Weather, The Milky Way Project and
Planet Hunters. Using data from 180 days in 2010, they find a total of 100,386 users participated, contributing 129,540 hours of unpaid work.
Estimating at a rate of $12 an hour (an undergraduate research
assistant's basic wage), the total contributions amount to $1,554,474,
an average of $222,068 per project. The range over the 7 projects was from $22,717 to $654,130.
In "Global change and local solutions: Tapping the unrealized
potential of citizen science for biodiversity research" by Theobald et
al. 2015, the authors surveyed 388 unique biodiversity-based projects.
Quoting: "We estimate that between 1.36 million and 2.28 million people
volunteer annually in the 388 projects we surveyed, though variation is
great" and that "the range of in-kind contribution of the volunteerism
in our 388 citizen science projects as between $667 million to $2.5
billion annually."
Worldwide participation in citizen science continues to grow. A list of the top five citizen science communities compiled by Marc Kuchner
and Kristen Erickson in July 2018 shows a total of 3.75 million
participants, although there is likely substantial overlap between the
communities.
Education
There have been studies published which examine the place of CS within education. Teaching aids can include books and activity or lesson plans. Some examples of studies are:
From the Second International Handbook of Science Education, a
chapter entitled: "Citizen Science, Ecojustice, and Science Education:
Rethinking an Education from Nowhere" by Mueller and Tippins (2011),
acknowledges in the abstract that: "There is an emerging emphasis in
science education on engaging youth in citizen science." The authors
also ask: "whether citizen science goes further with respect to citizen
development."
The abstract ends by stating that the "chapter takes account of the
ways educators will collaborate with members of the community to
effectively guide decisions, which offers promise for sharing a
responsibility for democratizing science with others."
From the journal Democracy and Education, an article entitled:
"Lessons Learned from Citizen Science in the Classroom" by authors Gray,
Nicosia and Jordan (GNJ) (2012) give a response to a study by Mueller,
Tippins and Bryan (MTB) called "The Future of Citizen Science".
GNJ begins by stating in the abstract that the study The Future of
Citizen Science: "provides an important theoretical perspective about
the future of
democratized science and K12
education." But GRB state: "However, the authors (MTB) fail to
adequately address the existing
barriers and constraints to moving community-based science into the
classroom." They end the abstract by arguing: "that the resource
constraints of scientists, teachers, and students likely pose problems
to moving true democratized science into the classroom."
In 2014, a study was published called "Citizen Science and Lifelong Learning" by R. Edwards in the journal Studies in the Education of Adults.
Edwards begins by writing in the abstract that CS projects have
expanded over recent years and engaged CSs and professionals in diverse
ways. He continues: "Yet there has been little educational exploration
of such projects to date."
He describes that "there has been limited exploration of the
educational backgrounds of adult contributors to citizen science".
Edwards explains that CS contributors are referred to as volunteers,
citizens or as amateurs. He ends the abstract: "The article will explore
the nature and significance of these different characterisations and
also suggest possibilities for further research."
In the journal Microbiology and Biology Education a study was published by Shah and Martinez (2015) called "Current Approaches in Implementing Citizen Science in the Classroom".[73]
They begin by writing in the abstract that CS is a partnership between
inexperienced amateurs and trained scientists. The authors continue:
"With recent studies showing a weakening in scientific competency of
American students, incorporating citizen science initiatives in the
curriculum provides a means to address deficiencies".
They argue that combining traditional and innovative methods can help
provide a practical experience of science. The abstract ends: "Citizen
science can be used to emphasize the recognition and use of systematic
approaches to solve problems affecting the community."
In November 2017, authors Mitchell, Triska and Liberatore published a study in PLOS ONE titled "Benefits and Challenges of Incorporating Citizen Science into University Education".
The authors begin by stating in the abstract that CSs contribute data
with the expectation that it will be used. It reports that CS has been
used for first year university students as a means to experience
research. They continue: "Surveys of more than 1500 students showed that
their environmental engagement increased significantly after
participating in data collection and data analysis."
However, only a third of students agreed that data collected by CSs was
reliable. A positive outcome of this was that the students were more
careful of their own research. The abstract ends: "If true for citizen
scientists in general, enabling participants as well as scientists to
analyse data could enhance data quality, and so address a key constraint
of broad-scale citizen science programs."
History
"Citizen science" is a fairly new term but an old practice. Prior to the 20th century, science was often the pursuit of gentleman scientists, amateur or self-funded researchers such as Sir Isaac Newton, Benjamin Franklin, and Charles Darwin.
By the mid-20th century, however, science was dominated by researchers
employed by universities and government research laboratories. By the
1970s, this transformation was being called into question. Philosopher Paul Feyerabend called for a "democratization of science". Biochemist Erwin Chargaff advocated a return to science by nature-loving amateurs in the tradition of Descartes, Newton, Leibniz, Buffon, and Darwin—science dominated by "amateurship instead of money-biased technical bureaucrats".
A study from 2016 indicates that the largest impact of citizen
science is in research on biology, conservation and ecology, and is
utilized mainly as a methodology of collecting and classifying data.
Amateur astronomy
Amateur astronomers can build their own equipment and can hold star parties and gatherings, such as Stellafane.
Astronomy has long been a field where amateurs have contributed throughout time, all the way up to the present day.
Collectively, amateur astronomers observe a variety of celestial objects and phenomena sometimes with equipment that they build themselves. Common targets of amateur astronomers include the Moon, planets, stars, comets, meteor showers, and a variety of deep-sky objects such as star clusters, galaxies, and nebulae. Observations of comets and stars are also used to measure the local level of artificial skyglow. One branch of amateur astronomy, amateur astrophotography,
involves the taking of photos of the night sky. Many amateurs like to
specialize in the observation of particular objects, types of objects,
or types of events that interest them.
The American Association of Variable Star Observers
has gathered data on variable stars for educational and professional
analysis since 1911 and promotes participation beyond its membership on
its Citizen Sky website.
Butterfly counts
Butterfly counts have a long tradition of involving individuals in
the study of butterflies' range and their relative abundance. Two
long-running programs are the UK Butterfly Monitoring Scheme (started in
1976) and the North American Butterfly Association's Butterfly Count Program (started in 1975).
There are various protocols for monitoring butterflies and different
organizations support one or more of transects, counts and/or
opportunistic sightings. eButterfly
is an example of a program designed to capture any of the three types
of counts for observers in North America. Species-specific programs
also exist, with monarchs the prominent example. Two examples of this involve the counting of monarch butterflies during the fall migration
to overwintering sites in Mexico: Monarch Watch is a continent-wide
project, while (2) the Cape May Monarch Monitoring Project is an
example of a local project. The Austrian project Viel-Falter
investigated if and how trained and supervised pupils are able to
systematically collect data about the occurrence of diurnal butterflies,
and how this data could contribute to a permanent butterfly monitoring
system. Despite substantial identification uncertainties for some
species or species groups, the data collected by pupils was successfully
used to predict the general habitat quality for butterflies.
Ornithology
Citizen science projects have become increasingly focused on providing benefits to scientific research. The North American Bird Phenology Program
(historically called the Bird Migration and Distribution records) may
have been the earliest collective effort of citizens collecting
ornithological information in the U.S.
The program, dating back to 1883, was started by Wells Woodbridge
Cooke. Cooke established a network of observers around North America to
collect bird migration records. The Audubon Society's Christmas Bird Count,
which began in 1900, is another example of a long-standing tradition of
citizen science which has persisted to the present day. Citizen
scientists help gather data that will be analyzed by professional
researchers, and can be used to produce bird population and biodiversity
indicators.
Raptor migration research relies on the data collected by the hawkwatching
community. This mostly volunteer group counts migrating accipiters,
buteos, falcons, harriers, kites, eagles, osprey, vultures and other
raptors at hawk sites throughout North America during the spring and
fall seasons. The daily data is uploaded to hawkcount.org where it can be viewed by professional scientists and the public.
Such indices can be useful tools to inform management, resource allocation, policy and planning. For example, European breeding bird survey data provide input for the Farmland Bird Index, adopted by the European Union as a structural indicator of sustainable development. This provides a cost-effective alternative to government monitoring.
Similarly, data collected by citizen scientists as part of
BirdLife Australia's has been analysed to produce the first-ever
Australian Terrestrial Bird Indices.
Citizen oceanography
The concept of citizen science has been extended to the ocean environment for characterizing ocean dynamics and tracking marine debris. For example, the mobile app Marine Debris Tracker is a joint partnership of National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and the University of Georgia. Long term sampling efforts such as the continuous plankton recorder
has been fitted on ships of opportunity since 1931. Plankton collection
by sailors and subsequent genetic analysis was pioneered in 2013 by
Indigo V Expeditions as a way to better understand marine microbial
structure and function.
Coral reefs
Citizen science in Coral reef studies developed in the 21st century.
Underwater photography
has become more popular since the early 2000s, resulting on millions of
pictures posted every year on various websites and social media. This
mass of documentation has great scientific potential, as millions of
tourists possess a much superior coverage power than professional
scientists, who cannot spend so much time in the field.
As a consequence, several participative sciences programs have been developed, supported by geotagging and identification web sites (such as iNaturalist.org). The Monitoring through many eyes project collates thousands of underwater images of the Great Barrier Reef and provides an interface for elicitation of reef health indicators.
There also exist protocols for auto-organization and
self-teaching aimed at biodiversity-interested snorkelers, in order for
them to turn their observations into sound scientific data, available
for research. This kind of approach has been successfully used in Réunion island, allowing for tens of new records and even new species.
Agriculture
Farmer participation in experiments has a long tradition in Agricultural science. There are many opportunities for citizen engagement in different parts of food systems. Citizen science is actively used for crop variety selection for climate adaptation, involving thousands of farmers.
Art history
Citizen science has a long tradition in Natural science. But nowadays, citizen science projects can also be found in various fields of science like Art history. For example, the Zooniverse
project AnnoTate is a transcription tool developed to enable volunteers
to read and transcribe the personal papers of British-born and émigré
artists. The papers are drawn from the Tate Archive. Another example of citizen science in art history is ARTigo. ARTigo collects semantic
data on artworks from the footprints left by players of games featuring
artwork images. From these footprints, ARTigo automatically builds a semantic search engine for artworks.
Modern technology
Newer technologies have increased the options for citizen science.
Citizen scientists can build and operate their own instruments to
gather data for their own experiments or as part of a larger project.
Examples include amateur radio, amateur astronomy, Six Sigma Projects, and Maker activities. Scientist Joshua Pearce has advocated for the creation of open-source hardware based scientific equipment that both citizen scientists and professional scientists, which can be replicated by digital manufacturing techniques such as 3D printing. Multiple studies have shown this approach radically reduces scientific equipment costs. Examples of this approach include water testing, nitrate and other environmental testing, basic biology and optics. Groups such as Public Lab, which is a community where citizen scientists can learn how to investigate environmental concerns using inexpensive DIY techniques, embody this approach.
Video technology is much used in scientific research. The Citizen Science Center in the Nature Research Center wing of the North Carolina Museum of Natural Sciences
has exhibits on how to get involved in scientific research and become a
citizen scientist. For example, visitors can observe birdfeeders at
the Prairie Ridge Ecostation satellite facility via live video feed and record which species they see.
Since 2005, the Genographic Project
has used the latest genetic technology to expand our knowledge of the
human story, and its pioneering use of DNA testing to engage and involve
the public in the research effort has helped to create a new breed of
"citizen scientist". Geno 2.0 expands the scope for citizen science,
harnessing the power of the crowd to discover new details of human population history. This includes supporting, organization and dissemination of personal DNA (genetic) testing. Like Amateur astronomy, citizen scientists encouraged by volunteer organizations like the International Society of Genetic Genealogy have provided valuable information and research to the professional scientific community.
Citizens in Space (CIS), a project of the United States Rocket
Academy, seeks to combine citizen science with citizen space
exploration.
CIS is training citizen astronauts to fly as payload operators on
suborbital reusable spacecraft that are now in development. CIS will
also be developing, and encouraging others to develop, citizen-science
payloads to fly on suborbital vehicles. CIS has already acquired a
contract for 10 flights on the Lynx suborbital vehicle, being developed
by XCOR Aerospace, and plans to acquire additional flights on XCOR Lynx and other suborbital vehicles in the future.
CIS believes that "The development of low-cost reusable
suborbital spacecraft will be the next great enabler, allowing citizens
to participate in space exploration and space science."
Internet
The Internet has been a boon to citizen science, particularly through gamification. One of the first Internet-based citizen science experiments was NASA's Clickworkers,
which enabled the general public to assist in the classification of
images, greatly reducing the time to analyze large data sets. Another
was the Citizen Science Toolbox, launched in 2003, of the Australian
Coastal Collaborative Research Centre.
Mozak is a game in which players create 3D reconstructions from images
of actual human and mouse neurons, helping to advance understanding of
the brain. One of the largest citizen science games is Eyewire, a brain-mapping puzzle game developed at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology that now has over 200,000 players. Another example is Quantum Moves, a game developed by the Center for Driven Community Research at Aarhus University, which uses online community efforts to solve quantum physics problems. The solutions found by players can then be used in the lab to feed computational algorithms used in building a scalable quantum computer.
More generally, Amazon's Mechanical Turk is frequently used in the creation, collection, and processing of data by paid citizens.
There is controversy as to whether or not the data collected through
such services is reliable, as it is subject to participants' desire for
compensation. However, use of Mechanical Turk
tends to quickly produce more diverse participant backgrounds, as well
as comparably accurate data when compared to traditional collection
methods.
The internet has also enabled citizen scientists to gather data
to be analyzed by professional researchers. Citizen science networks
are often involved in the observation of cyclic events of nature (phenology), such as effects of global warming on plant and animal life in different geographic areas, and in monitoring programs for natural-resource management. On BugGuide.Net, an online community of naturalists who share observations of arthropod,
amateurs and professional researchers contribute to the analysis. By
October 2014, BugGuide has over 808,718 images submitted by more than
27,846 contributors.
An NASA/JPL image from the Zooniverse's The Milky Way Project showing a hierarchical bubble structure
Not counting iNaturalist and eBird, the Zooniverse is home to the internet's largest, most popular and most successful citizen science projects.
The Zooniverse and the suite of projects it contains is produced,
maintained and developed by the Citizen Science Alliance (CSA).
The member institutions of the CSA work with many academic and other
partners around the world to produce projects that use the efforts and
ability of volunteers to help scientists and researchers deal with the
flood of data that confronts them. On 29 June 2015, the Zooniverse
released a new software version with a project-building tool allowing
any registered user to create a project.
Project owners may optionally complete an approval process to have
their projects listed on the Zooniverse site and promoted to the
Zooniverse community. A NASA/JPL picture to the right gives an example from one of Zooniverse's projects The Milky Way Project.
The website CosmoQuest
has as its goal "To create a community of people bent on together
advancing our understanding of the universe; a community of people who
are participating in doing science, who can explain why what they do
matters, and what questions they are helping to answer.
CrowdCrafting enables its participants to create and run projects
where volunteers help with image classification, transcription,
geocoding and more. The platform is powered by PyBossa software, a free and open-source framework for crowdsourcing.
Project Soothe is a citizen science research project based at the
University of Edinburgh. The aim of this research is to create a bank
of soothing images, submitted by members of the public, which can be
used to help others through psychotherapy and research in the future.
Since 2015, Project Soothe has received over 600 soothing photographs
from people in 23 countries. Anyone aged 12 years or over are eligible
to participate in this research in two ways: (1) By submitting soothing
photos that they have taken with a description of why the images make
them feel soothed (2) By rating the photos that have been submitted by
people worldwide for their soothability.
Smartphone
The bandwidth and ubiquity afforded by smartphones has vastly expanded the opportunities for citizen science. Examples include iNaturalist, the San Francisco project, the WildLab, Project Noah, and Aurorasurus. Due to their ubiquity, for example, Twitter, Facebook, and smartphones
have been useful for citizen scientists, having enabled them to
discover and propagate a new type of aurora dubbed "STEVE" in 2016.
There are also apps for monitoring birds, marine wildlife and other organisms, and the "Loss of the Night".
An Android
app Sapelli is a mobile data-collection and -sharing platform designed
with a particular focus on non-literate and illiterate users. The SPOTTERON app creates synergy effects for projects by sharing a common feature set.
"The Crowd and the Cloud" is a four-part series broadcast during April 2017, which examines citizen science.
It shows how smartphones, computers and mobile technology enable
regular citizens to become part of a 21st-century way of doing science.
The programs also demonstrate how CSs help professional scientists to
advance knowledge, which helps speed up new discoveries and innovations.
The Crowd & The Cloud is based upon work supported by the National Science Foundation.
Seismology
Since 1975, in order to improve earthquake detection and collect useful information, the European-Mediterranean Seismological Centre monitors the visits of earthquake eyewitnesses to its website and relies on Facebook and Twitter.
Hydrology
Citizen science has been used to provide valuable data in hydrology (catchment science), notably flood risk, water quality and water resource management.
A growth in internet use and smartphone ownership has allowed users to
collect and share real-time flood-risk information using, for example,
social media and web-based forms. Although traditional data collection
methods are well-established, citizen science is being used to fill the
data gaps on a local level, and is therefore meaningful to individual
communities. It has been demonstrated that citizen science is
particularly advantageous during a flash flood because the public are more likely to witness these rarer hydrological events than scientists.
Plastics and pollution
Plastic pollution
Citizen science includes projects that help monitor plastics and their associated pollution. These include The Ocean Cleanup, #OneLess, The Big Microplastic Survey, EXXpedition and Alliance to End Plastic Waste. Ellipsis seeks to map the distribution of litter using aerial data mapping by unmanned aerial vehicles and machine learning software. A Zooniverse project called The Plastic Tide (now finished) helped train an algorithm used by Ellipsis.
The European Environment Agency
launched an initiative called "Marine Litter Watch" in June 2018. This
uses mobile phones to: (quote) "help individuals and communities come
together to clean up Europe’s beaches."
PlasticPatrol seeks to log and record plastic pollution: (quote)
"The Plastic Patrol app is a real world tool that combines citizen
science and scientific analysis to help us gather crucial insight into
plastic pollution."
Litterati's mission is to eradicate litter: (quote) "When millions of people come together, the impossible becomes reality, and change happens."
Anecdata helps anyone and any organisation to create a project:
(quote) "Anecdata helps individuals and organizations collect, manage,
and share their citizen science data, providing both web-based and
mobile solutions for gathering and accessing observations."
In the UK #2minutebeachclean seeks to purge plastics in coastal environments.
They offer an app and a beachclean board, which can be displayed on
beaches: (quote) "We believe that every piece of litter removed from the
beach matters. So it doesn’t matter if you do 2 minutes or 30."
Examples of relevant articles (by date):
Citizen Science Promotes Environmental Engagement: (quote)
"Citizen science projects are rapidly gaining popularity among the
public, in which volunteers help gather data on species
that can be used by scientists in research. And it’s not just adults
who are involved in these projects – even kids have collected
high-quality data in the US."
Tackling Microplastics on Our Own: (quote) "Plastics, ranging from the circles of soda can rings to microbeads
the size of pinheads, are starting to replace images of sewage for a
leading cause of pollution – especially in the ocean". Further, "With
recent backing from the Crowdsourcing and Citizen Science Act, citizen
science is increasingly embraced as a tool by US Federal agencies."
Citizen Scientists Are Tracking Plastic Pollution Worldwide: (quote)
"Scientists who are monitoring the spread of tiny pieces of plastic
throughout the environment are getting help from a small army of citizen
volunteers – and they’re finding bits of polymer in some of the most remote parts of North America."
Artificial intelligence
and citizen scientists: Powering the clean-up of Asia Pacific’s
beaches:(quote) "The main objective is to support citizen scientists
cleaning up New Zealand beaches and get a better understanding of why litter is turning up, so preventive and proactive action can be taken."
Citizen science could help address Canada's
plastic pollution problem: (quote) "But citizen engagement and
participation in science goes beyond beach cleanups, and can be used as a
tool to bridge gaps between communities and scientists. These
partnerships between scientists and citizen scientists have produced
real world data that have influenced policy changes."
Examples of relevant scientific studies or books include (by date):
Distribution and abundance of small plastic debris on beaches in the SE Pacific (Chile): a study supported by a citizen science project:
(quote) "The citizen science project "National Sampling of Small
Plastic Debris" was supported by schoolchildren from all over Chile who
documented the distribution and abundance of small plastic debris on
Chilean beaches. Thirty-nine schools and nearly 1000 students from
continental Chile and Easter Island participated in the activity."
Incorporating citizen science to study plastics in the environment:
(quote) "Taking advantage of public interest in the impact of plastic
on the marine environment, successful Citizen Science (CS) programs
incorporate members of the public to provide repeated sampling for time
series as well as synoptic collections over wide geographic regions."
Marine anthropogenic litter on British beaches: A 10-year nationwide assessment using citizen science data:
(quote) "Citizen science projects, whereby members of the public gather
information, offer a low-cost method of collecting large volumes of
data with considerable temporal and spatial coverage. Furthermore, such
projects raise awareness of environmental issues and can lead to
positive changes in behaviours and attitudes."
Determining Global Distribution of Microplastics by Combining Citizen Science and In-Depth Case Studies:
(quote) "Our first project involves the general public through citizen
science. Participants collect sand samples from beaches using a basic protocol, and we subsequently extract and quantify microplastics in a central laboratory using the standard operating procedure."
Risk Perception of Plastic Pollution: Importance of Stakeholder Involvement and Citizen Science:
(quote) "The chapter finally discusses how risk perception can be
improved by greater stakeholder involvement and utilization of citizen
science and thereby improve the foundation for timely and efficient
societal measures."
Assessing the citizen science approach as tool to increase awareness on the marine litter problem:(quote)
"This paper provides a quantitative assessment of students' attitude
and behaviors towards marine litter before and after their participation
to SEACleaner, an educational and citizen science project devoted to
monitor macro- and micro-litter in an Area belonging to Pelagos Sanctuary."
Spatial trends and drivers of marine debris accumulation on shorelines in South Eleuthera, The Bahamas using citizen science:
(quote) "This study measured spatial distribution of marine debris
stranded on beaches in South Eleuthera, The Bahamas. Citizen science,
fetch modeling, relative exposure index and predictive mapping were used
to determine marine debris source and abundance."
Making citizen science count: Best practices and challenges of citizen science projects on plastics in aquatic environments:(quote) "Citizen science is a cost-effective way to gather data over a large geographical range while simultaneously raising public awareness on the problem".
White and wonderful? Microplastics prevail in snow from the Alps to the Arctic: (quote) ""In March 2018, five samples were taken at different locations on Svalbard (Fig. 1A and Table 1) by citizen scientists embarking on a land expedition by ski-doo
(Aemalire project). The citizens were instructed on contamination
prevention and equipped with protocol forms, prerinsed 2-liter stainless
steel containers (Ecotanca), a porcelain mug, a steel spoon, and a soup
ladle for sampling."
Citizen sensing
Citizen
sensing can be a form of Citizen science: (quote) "The work of citizen
sensing, as a form of citizen science, then further transforms Stengers’s
notion of the work of science by moving the experimental facts and
collectives where scientific work is undertaken out of the laboratory of
experts and into the world of citizens." Similar sensing activities include Crowdsensing and Participatory monitoring.
While the idea of using mobile technology to aid this sensing is not
new, creating devices and systems that can be used to aid regulation has
not been straightforward. Some examples of projects that include citizen sensing are:
Citizen Sense (2013-2018): (quote) "Practices of monitoring and
sensing environments have migrated to everyday participatory
applications, where users of smart phones and networked devices are able
to engage with modes of environmental observation and data collection."
Breathe Project: (quote) "We use the best available science and
technology to better understand the quality of the air we breathe and
provide opportunities for citizens to engage and take action."
The Bristol Approach to Citizen Sensing: (quote) "Citizen Sensing is
about empowering people and places to understand and use smart tech and
data from sensors to tackle the issues they care about, connect with
other people who can help, and take positive, practical action."
Luftdaten.info: (quote) "You and thousands of others around the
world install self-built sensors on the outside their home.
Luftdaten.info generates a continuously updated particular matter map
from the transmitted data."
CitiSense: (quote) "CitiSense aims to co-develop a participatory
risk management system (PRMS) with citizens, local authorities and
organizations which enables them to contribute to advanced climate
services and enhanced urban climate resilience as well as receive
recommendations that support their security."
Around the world
Africa
In South Africa
(SA), CS projects include: the Stream Assessment Scoring System
(miniSASS) which "encourages enhanced catchment management for water
security in a climate stressed society."
Also in SA, "Members of the public, or 'citizen scientists' are
helping researchers from the University of Pretoria to identify
Phytophthora species present in the fynbos."
In June 2016, citizen science experts from across East Africa gathered in Nairobi, Kenya
for a symposium organised by the Tropical Biology Association (TBA) in
partnership with the Centre for Ecology & Hydrology (CEH). The aim
was "to harness the growing interest and expertise in East Africa to
stimulate new ideas and collaborations in citizen science." Rosie
Trevelyan of the TBA said: "We need to enhance our knowledge about the
status of Africa's species and the threats facing them. And scientists
can't do it all on their own. At the same time, citizen science is an
extremely effective way of connecting people more closely to nature and
enrolling more people in conservation action".
The website Zooniverse hosts several African CS projects, including: Snapshot Serengeti, Wildcam Gorongosa and Jungle Rhythms.
Nigeria
has the Ibadan Bird Club whose to aim is to "exchange ideas and share
knowledge about birds, and get actively involved in the conservation of
birds and biodiversity."
In Namibia, Giraffe Spotter.org is "project that will provide people with an online citizen science platform for giraffes".
Within the Republic of the Congo,
the territories of an indigenous people have been mapped so that "the
Mbendjele tribe can protect treasured trees from being cut down by
logging companies". An Android open-source app called Sapelli was used
by the Mbendjele which helped them map "their tribal lands and
highlighted trees that were important to them, usually for medicinal
reasons or religious significance. Congolaise Industrielle des Bois then
verified the trees that the tribe documented as valuable and removed
them from its cutting schedule. The tribe also documented illegal
logging and poaching activities."
In West Africa, the eradication of the recent outbreak of Ebola virus disease
was partly helped by CS. "Communities learnt how to assess the risks
posed by the disease independently of prior cultural assumptions, and
local empiricism allowed cultural rules to be reviewed, suspended or
changed as epidemiological facts emerged." "Citizen science is alive and
well in all three Ebola-affected countries. And if only a fraction of
the international aid directed at rebuilding health systems were to be
redirected towards support for citizen science, that might be a fitting
memorial to those who died in the epidemic."
Asia
The Hong Kong Birdwatching Society
was established in 1957, and is the only local civil society aiming at
appreciating and conserving Hong Kong birds and their natural
environment. Their bird surveys go back to 1958, and they carry out a number of Citizen Science events such as their yearly sparrow census.
The Bird Count India partnership consists of a large number of
organizations and groups involved in birdwatching and bird surveys. They
coordinate a number of Citizen Science projects such as the Kerala Bird
Atlas and Mysore city Bird Atlas that map the distribution and
abundance of birds of entire Indian states.
The Taiwan Roadkill Observation Network, founded in 2011 and
consists of more than 16,000 members as of 2019, is a Citizen Science
project where roadkill
across Taiwan is photographed and sent to the Endemic Species Research
Institute for study. Its primary goal has been to set up an eco-friendly
path to mitigate roadkill challenges and popularize national discourse
on environmental issues and civil participation in scientific research.
The members of the Taiwan Roadkill Observation Network volunteer to
observe the animals’ corpses caused by roadkill or other reasons in
Taiwan, and upload pictures and geographic locations of the roadkill to
an internet database or send the corpses to the Endemic Species Research
for making specimen. Because the members come from different areas of
the island, the collection of data could serve as an animal distribution
map of the island. According to the geographical data and pictures of
dead animals collected by the members, the community itself and the
sponsor the Endemic Species Center could find out the hotspots and the
reasons of animals’ death. One of the most renowned case is that the
community successfully detected rabies cases due to the massively
collected data and the corpse of Melogale moschata have been accumulated
for years and alarmed the government authority to take actions to
prevent the prevalence of rabies in Taiwan immediately. Another case in
2014 that some citizen scientists discovered birds that died from
unknown causes near an agricultural area, then Taiwan Roadkill
Observation Network cooperated with National Pingtung University of
Science and Technology and engaged citizen scientists to collect bird
carcass. The volunteers collected 250 bird corpses for laboratory tests,
which confirmed that the bird deaths were attributable to the pesticides
used on crops. This prompted the Taiwanese government to restrict
pesticides, and the Bill of Pesticide Management amendment, establishing
a pesticide control system, was passed after the third reading in the
Legislative Yuan. The results indicated that Taiwan Roadkill Observation
Network developed a set of shared working methods and jointly completed
certain actions. Furthermore, the community of Taiwan Roadkill
Observation Network have made real changes on road resign to avoid
roadkill, improved the management of usage of pesticide, epidemic
prevention, and so on.
The AirBox Project was launched in Taiwan to create a participatory
ecosystem with a focus on PM2.5 monitoring with AirBox devices. At the
end of 2014, the public paid more attention to the PM2.5 level because
the air pollution problem became worse, especially in central and
southern Taiwan. High PM2.5 level is harmful to our health, such as
respiratory problems, so it aroused public concerns and led to an
intensive debate about air pollution sources. Some experts indicated
that the air quality was affected by pollutants from Mainland China,
while some environmentalists believed that it is the result of
industrialization such as exhaust fumes from local power plants or
factories; however, no one knew the answer because of insufficient data.
Dr. Ling-Jyh Chen, a researcher of the Institute of Information
Science, Academia Sinica, launched The AirBox Project. His original idea
is inspired by a popular Taiwanese slogan Save Your Environment by
Yourself. As an expert in Participatory Sensing System, he decided to
take this bottom-up approach to collect PM2.5 level data, and through
open data and data analysis to have a better understanding of the
possible air pollution source. In this ecosystem, massive data was
collected from the AirBox device. Data was instantly revealed online to
inform people of PM2.5 level so that they take proper action, such as
wearing a mask or staying at home, to prevent themselves from directly
exploring to polluted environment. Data could be also analyzed to
understand the possible sources of pollution and provide recommendations
for improving the situation. To be precise, there are four main steps
in this project. I) Develop the AirBox device. Developing a
device that could correctly collect the data of the PM2.5 level was
time-consuming. It took more than three years to develop AirBox that can
be easily used, but with both high accuracy and low cost. II)
Broad installation of AirBox. In the beginning, very few people were
willing to install it at their homes because of their concerns about the
possible harm to their health, power-consuming problem and maintenances
of it, so that AirBoxs were only installed in a relatively small area.
Thanks to the help from Taiwan’s LASS (Location Aware Sensing System)
community, AirBox appeared in all parts of Taiwan. As of February 2017,
there are more than 1,600 Air Boxes installed in more than 27 countries.
III) Open Source and Data Analysis. All measurement results were
released and visualized in real-time to the public through different
media, such as their website and Facebook page. Data can be analyzed to trace pollution sources.
Japan has a long history of citizen science involvement, the 1,200-year-old tradition of collecting records on cherry blossom flowering probably being the world's longest-running citizen science project. One of the most influential citizen science projects has also come out of Japan: Safecast. Dedicated to open citizen science for the environment, Safecast was established in the wake of the Fukushima nuclear disaster,
and produces open hardware sensors for radiation and air-pollution
mapping. Presenting this data via a global open data network and maps
South America
Asháninka children in school
In 2015 the Asháninka people from Apiwtxa, which crosses the border between Brazil and Peru,
began using the Android app Sapelli to monitor their land. The
Ashaninka have "faced historical pressures of disease, exploitation and
displacement, and today still face the illegal invasion of their lands
by loggers and hunters. This monitoring project shows how the Apiwtxa
Ashaninka from the Kampa do Rio Amônia Indigenous Territory, Brazil, are
beginning to use smartphones and technological tools to monitor these
illegal activities more effectively."
In Argentina, two smartphone Android applications are available for CS. i) AppEAR has been developed at the Institute of Limnology and was launched in May 2016.
Joaquín Coachman is a researcher who developed an "application that
appeals to the collaboration of users of mobile devices in collecting
data that allow the study of aquatic ecosystems" (translation).
Coachman stated: "Not much of citizen science in Argentina, just a few
more oriented to astronomy specific cases. As ours is the first. And I
have volunteers from different parts of the country that are interested
in joining together to centralize data. That's great because these
types of things require many people participate actively and
voluntarily" (translation). ii) eBird was launched in 2013, and has so far identified 965 species of birds. eBird in Argentina is "developed and managed by the Cornell Lab of Ornithology at Cornell University,
one of the most important ornithological institutions in the world, and
locally presented recently with the support of the Ministry of Science,
Technology and Productive Innovation of the Nation (MINCyT)"
(translation).
Projects in Brazil include: i) Platform and mobile app 'Missions' has been developed by IBM in their São Paulo research lab with Brazil's Ministry for Environment and Innovation (BMEI).
Sergio Borger, an IBM team lead in São Paulo, devised the crowdsourced
approach when BMEI approached the company in 2010. They were looking for
a way to create a central repository for the rainforest data.
Users can upload photos of a plant species and its components, enter
its characteristics (such as color and size), compare it against a
catalog photo and classify it. The classification results are juried by
crowdsourced ratings. ii)
Exoss Citizen Science is a member of Astronomers Without Borders and
seeks to explore the southern sky for new meteors and radiants. Users can report meteor fireballs through uploading pictures on to a webpage or by linking to YouTube.
iii)
The Information System on Brazilian Biodiversity (SiBBr) was launched
in 2014 "aiming to encourage and facilitate the publication,
integration, access and use of information about the biodiversity of the
country."
Their initial goal "was to gather 2.5 million occurrence records of
species from biological collections in Brazil and abroad up to the end
of 2016. It is now expected that SiBBr will reach nine million records
in 2016." Andrea Portela said: "In 2016, we will begin with the citizen
science. They are tools that enable anyone, without any technical
knowledge, to participate. With this we will achieve greater engagement
with society. People will be able to have more interaction with the
platform, contribute and comment on what Brazil has. iv)
The Brazilian Marine Megafauna Project (Iniciativa Pro Mar) is working
with the European CSA towards its main goal, which is the
"sensibilization of society for marine life issues" and concerns about
pollution and the over-exploitation of natural resources. Having started as a project monitoring manta ray, it now extends to whale shark and educating schools and divers within the Santos area. Its social media activities include a live streaming of a CS course to help divers identify marine megafauna. v) A smartphone app called Plantix has been developed by the Leibniz Centre for Agricultural Landscape Research (ZALF) which helps Brazilian farmers discover crop diseases quicker and helps fight them more efficiently. Brazil is a very large agricultural exporter, but between 10-30% of crops fail because of disease. "The database currently includes 175 frequently occurring crop diseases and pests as well as 40,000 photos. The identification algorithm
of the app improves with every image which records a success rate of
over 90 per cent as of approximately 500 photos per crop disease." vi) In an Atlantic Ocean forest region in Brazil, an effort to map the genetic riches of soil is under way. The Drugs From Dirt initiative, based at the Rockefeller University, seeks to turn up bacteria that yield new types of antibiotics- the Brazilian region being particularly rich in potentially useful bacterial genes. Approximately a quarter of the 185 soil samples have been taken by Citizen Scientists without which the project could not run.
In Chile CS projects include (some websites in Spanish): i) Testing new cancer therapies with scientists from the Science Foundation for Life. ii) Monitoring the population of the Chilean bumblebee. iii) Monitoring the invasive ladybird Chinita arlequín. iv) Collecting rain water data. v) Monitoring various pollinating fly populations. vi) Providing information and field data on the abundance and distribution of various species of rockfish.
Projects in Colombia include (some websites in Spanish): i)
The Communications Project of the Humboldt Institute along with the
Organization for Education and Environmental Protection initiated
projects in the Bogotáwetlands of Cordoba and El Burro, which have a lot of biodiversity. ii) In the Model Forest of Risaralda, the Colombia 'proyecto de Ciencia Abierta y Colaborativa'
promotes citizen participation in research related to how the local
environment is adapting to climate change. The first meeting took place
in the Flora and Fauna Sanctuary Otún Quimbaya. iii) The Citizen Network Environmental Monitoring (CLUSTER), based in the city of Bucaramanga, seeks to engage younger students in data science, who are trained in building weather stations with open repositories based on free software and open hardware data. iv) The Symposium on Biodiversity has adapted the CS tool iNaturalist for use in Colombia. v) The Sinchi Amazonic Institute of Scientific Research
seeks to encourage the development and diffusion of knowledge, values
and technologies on the management of natural resources for ethnic
groups in the Amazon. This research should further the use of
participatory action research schemes and promoting participation
communities.
Since 2010, the Pacific Biodiversity Institute (PBI) seeks
"volunteers to help identify, describe and protect wildland complexes
and roadless areas in South America". The PBI "are engaged in an
ambitious project with our Latin American conservation partners to map
all the wildlands in South America, to evaluate their contribution to
global biodiversity and to share and disseminate this information."
Conferences
The first Conference on Public Participation in Scientific Research was held in Portland, Oregon in August 2012. Citizen science is now often a theme at large conferences, such as the annual meeting of the American Geophysical Union.
In January 2015, the ETH Zürich and University of Zürich hosted an international meeting on the "Challenges and Opportunities in Citizen Science".
The first citizen science conference hosted by the Citizen
Science Association was in San Jose, California, in February 2015 in
partnership with the AAAS conference. The Citizen Science Association conference, CitSci 2017, was held in Saint Paul, Minnesota, United States, between 17 and 20 May 2017. The conference had more than 600 attendees. The next CitSci is in March 2019 in Raleigh, USA.
The platform "Österreich forscht" hosts the annual Austrian citizen science conference since 2015.
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