Erinma draws upon her experiences as a Wellcome Trust Engagement Fellow to discuss how connections can be made between research and the outside world. She encourages you to explore your 'hook' or starting point for public engagement.
7. Research Method with social value
Citizen Science
• As an instrument for social impact…. & social change
• Collective intelligence
Benefits & Impact
• Quality of Life
• Improved decision making
• Enhancing curriculum content & informal learning
• Enhanced research advocacy
8. Social vs research value
Principles
•1. Mutual respect
•2. Equality and inclusion
•3. Democratic
participation
•4. Active learning
•5. Making a difference
•6. Collective action
•7. Personal integrity
Professor Sarah Banks, Durham University
14. References
Cagan, K (2007) Working at the Edge, Psychologist, Vol 20, part 4, pp224 - 227
http://www.thepsychologist.org.uk/archive/archive_home.cfm?volumeID=20&editionID=146&ArticleID=1172
Roy, H.E., Pocock, M.J.O., Preston, C.D., Roy, D.B., Savage, J., Tweddle, J.C. & Robinson, L.D. (2012)
Understanding Citizen Science & Environmental Monitoring. Final Report. NERC Centre for Ecology &
Hydrology and Natural History Museum on behalf of UK-EOF. 175pp
http://www.ceh.ac.uk/news/news_archive/citizen-science-review-guide_2012_59.html
Tweddle, J.C., Robinson, L.D., Pocock, M.J.O & Roy, H.E. (2012). Guide to
citizen science: developing, implementing and evaluating citizen science to
study biodiversity and the environment in the UK. Natural History Museum
and NERC Centre for Ecology & Hydrology for UK-EOF.
http://www.ceh.ac.uk/news/news_archive/citizen-science-review-guide_2012_59.html
Riesch H, Potter C and Davies, L (2013) Combining citizen science with public engagement: the open air
laboratories programme.
Journal of Science Communication 1 – 18; http://jcom.sissa.it/archive/12/3-
4/JCOM1203%282013%29A03/JCOM1203%282013%29A03.pdf
Frietag, A, Pfeffer, M.J. (2013) Process, not product: Investigating Recommendations for improving Citizen
Science "Success".
PLoS ONE 8(5): e64079. doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0064079
Banks, S. (et al) (2013) 'Everyday ethics in community-based participatory research', in Contemporary
Social Science: Journal of the Academy of Social Sciences
Haklay M (2012) Citizen Science and Volunteered Geographic Information: Overview and Typology of
Participation. Crowdsourcing Geographic Knowledge pp 105-122
http://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1007/978-94-007-4587-2_7
Hinweis der Redaktion
Thanks for inviting me to speak, excited to be hear, hope you’ve enjoyed the festival –did anyone go to the teddy bear session? Our Teddy bears know everything about us
I’m Erinma – I trained originally as a neuroscientist – for the past year and a half I’ve been exploring citizen science, where the public get involved in scientific research. I’m going to tell you a few stories about that, including what it means to the people who get involved and what we can learn about ourselves, our bodies, the planet and the other species we share the planet with.
But before we get carried away with what I want to tell you – lets find out who the human beings are in the room – like music, gardening, babies, pets, the planets, maps, birds, worms, drawing, wild animals
Citizen science
The public get involved in research everything from collecting and analysing data to interpreting the results and even shaping the research questions.
Wisdom of the crowd to collect and find things out
Relies on technology
About Wellcome Trust - established in 1936 as an independent charity funding research to improve human and animal health. Established to administer the fortune of the pharmaceutical entrepreneur, archaelogist and collector of medical objects, Sir Henry Wellcome. Today it’s a global charitable foundation dedicated to achieving extraordinary improvements in human and animal health.
Culture and society
Culture & Society division aims to explore medicine in its historical, ethical, social and cultural contexts.
- Wellcome Collection, Library and event spaces
grant-giving programmes in medical humanities and history, biomedical ethics and public engagement
Broadcast, games, arts
Engagement fellows & the Hub
The Social Innovation edge & 1959 CP SNOW "the intellectual life of the whole of western society" was split into the two cultures — namely the sciences and the humanities — and that this was a major hindrance to solving the world's problems.
relatively new term… but an old practice - darwin – amateur scientist – crowdsourcing information for his theory on the evolution of species through the letters he wrote to people
Early citizen scientists - DARWIN & FLORENCE NIGHTINGALE
Enables…
Contribute
Collaborate
Community problem solving
Extreme citizen science
takes into account local needs, practices and culture and works with broad networks of people to design and build new devices and knowledge creation processes that can transform the world.
Whilst citizen science could be described as the new rock and roll – there are some important things to balance to get it right
Recognising contribution – eye wire has a leader board, foldit too – but also co-publishes papers with it citizen scientists
Facilitating community – people like to talk and share and be creative – having channels to support that.
Faciltiating learning/ education
Encouraging action and change
Data quality, ethical implications
Measuring impact – what difference did you make
Citizen science as an instrument for social or citizen-led change – do people make better decisions, can it inform policy?
Learning, social bonding, policy
Example from a project I am working on at the moment – Hookedonmusic – all about what makes music catchy
Began with this research group in Amsterdam – Ashley Burgoyne and Henkjan Honning – side project from a bigger research project that could only be answered with lots of contributions
Familiar songs and asks people to say which fragments they find catchiest. Imagine songs you’ll never forget – it will tell us something about musical memory.
Just to give you a flavour – see if you recognise any of these tunes.
Play song mix.
Great challenges for us – getting the songs right in the playlist – the design for the audience – being able to show people how they compare.
The big challenge for me is how it translates into benefits for people with short term memory loss, but music can also have benefits for younger people – enhancing mood.
So its thinking about the wider context of your work – not just the data collection.
Challenges with song data – commercially.
Publishing findings – will preliminary findings be shared ahead of peer review?
Social bonding – dancing to results
Research outputs – new research proposals