ECSA2016: Open Citizen Science – Day 3

[rough version – will be clean up soon!]

Introduction and review of day 2
Muki Haklay University College London, UK

Co-designing research projects:
Citizen science meets stakeholder involvement
Heribert Hofer IZW Berlin, Germany – Exploring stakeholders in citizen science, examples of co-design projects in ecology/conservation science. Looking at impacts on attitudes and behaviours of stakeholders. Challenges and limitations of co-designed projects, but why aren’t more of them?

Stakeholders as citizen scientists – stakeholders are people who are representative of nterest group, and are citizen scientists by definition. The participate through interest in the issue, and they are expert from some kind – the interests that they represent. The example is conflicts of interest in conservvation – say lead poisoning of eagles – but there are many stakeholders – hunters, reserves etc. Participations can be collecting data, cooperation, implementation of own ideas – co-design. If you want to co-design a project, that is essential to ask them before the project start. Example for bushmeat hunting in Tanzania (1991), cheetahs in Namibia (2002) and more. The Bushmeat hunting in the Serengeti looked at bushmeat hunting – who, where ,how much, why nad impacts on many species within a year. Wanted to evaluate the efficacy of the conservation approach. They didn’t look at the species but the hunters and poachers – realising that people move close to the park and identified very large number of poachers – almost 18,000. There are 3.7 hunting trips (1-36) and gained an understanding of the activity. Cheetahs in Namibia because they live in farmland, but then the farmers hunting cheetahs as sport. They looked how many cheetahs are there on my farm. Involved farmers in the radio-collaring of cheetah so they are involved in the process. Involving farmers does create a challenge – need to have communication. Through working with farmers, they managed to move the cattle to match cheetahs movement. They turned farmers as partners. There are clear advantages – learning about cheetah mean that attitudes change and trapping cheetahs only to tag them. In egg collection project, they manage to social control. For the lead poisoning, there is a need to teach people to use lead-free alternatives for hunting. Stakeholder participation solves many challenges. Recruitment,, rewards, data and getting the data in the first place. The stakeholders approach require sysematic recruitment, understanding interests and understand biases. The challenges: developing social skills, flexibility, patience, and sales mentality of convincing people to join you – communicating with not necessarily friendly audience. Need to answer critical questionning on project aims and methods – it’s tough. Limitations – lack of training on how to learn by doing and picking up people with appropriate attitude. Also how to deal with stakeholders refusal to participate, and dealing with biased data – the data is interest driven not by the seeking the truth. Why aren’t more co-designed projects? First, scientists are driven by ivory tower mentality – make society relevant research worthwhile. Secondly, solving societal issues is less valuable than the academic agenda -because of the reward system in academia (need to change indicators of excellence). There is also lack of knwoldge and confidence, which can be solved by training. There are also low expectation – attitude of arogance. There is also no-time/money for the early studies. There are some challenging projects on the offing: for example TB in refugees – there are many medical profession, and including people to which questions that can be done. This bring the problem of scientists concern about loss of control. Co-design can lead to attitudes and behaviour change of stakeholders. There are limitations – sceintists need further qualifications

Citizen Science and the role of museums
Panel discussion facilitated by: Zen Makuch & Poppy Lakeman-Fraser. The panel represent the natural history museums in important countries – and they can think of the many people that visit the museums.
Imperial College London, UK
Johannes Vogel Museum für Naturkunde Berlin, Germany. Natural History museum and the public – this is the result of the work Sloane and he open this collection to the nation – this is something for everyone, this led to the British Museum, which evolved in the NHM in London. For 200-300 years, museums are about giving access to the public. When musuem employ more professional, mean that there is a global scientific infrastructure, with curators focusing on research. With citizen science, we can revert back to a model of re-opening the museum to the public. An NHM can have 30,000 people contributing  to its collection – 550,000 visitors, place where people love to see science in action. They came out of citizen science and should include it more.

Gregoire Lois Natural History Museum Paris, Museum are based on academic collaboration – the collection are from non-professional (which can be experts) and professionals. Moving from arogance and snootiness towards non-professional researchers, to higher engagement and focus on that – the civic science agenda in France was not accepted by other scientists. Because citizen science cross cut the missions of the museum there is more acceptance, but there is more work to do. The museum created ‘museum approved’ citizen science – but that have a risk of new ivory tower, so it is better to have evolutionary approach – so that is why they don’t apply labels. Citizen science have costs, and they have support from the ministry of environment, but not from research and education – no recognition to citizen science, they prefer to wait. They are starting to have bottom-up approach.
Wolfgang Wägele Zoological Research Museum Alexander Koenig Bonn, Germany.  Experience in taxonomy, there is little potential of biodiversity research in Germany – they actually looking for citizen taxonomists in the country, they are usually organised in small associations and organisations. The organised science doesn’t have ability. They created a German barcode of life project that is used to support small societies and 250 experts that are volunteers. It was challenging to engage – there was fear of replacing expertise, but what they explain is to make identification of species – but this doesn’t replace local expertise. There was also issue of exploitation – of who get the credit. They developed a reward system – paying for specimens that are given by the participants, they also teach participants how to use new tools that small societies don’t have access to. Citizen science which cmbines traditional way of identification with molecular approach. They also organised permit to search in national parks, which they wouldn
Andrea Sforzi Natural History Museum Maremma, Italy. Small museum role in citizen science. He is leading a small museum, starting in 2011, but now it is one of the main activites – MNHM doing bioblitz activites to engage people in the museum. They do recording, bioblitzes, training courses for citizens and national survey. They produced maps, scientific papers and maps. For small museum, there is good local knowledge and contacts locally. The weaknesses are lack of funds and personnel, networking sometimes

John Tweddle The Natural History Museum London, UK. The London NHM – 5 milion visitors a year. They are going through the cultural transformation that Joahnes mention, and making citizen science central to the mission. They have support to observers, mass participation, online crowdsourcing, enabling projects and how to encourage more citizen science activities through the galleries and activities – turning the NHM to a gateway to science. Why do that? Funding is very tough. It generate high impact science, deepening engagement with the science and collection – turning from passive to active, enablilng engagement with science outside the museum, and help people to connect with nature. Finally, this helps in advocacy and funding.

Discussion: Poppy: what is the future – key strategies for NHMs. John – advocacy for citizen science, and making it acceptance. Johanes – in university or research insitute – you do science and teach, while museum are there to do science and communicate, which scientists are not experience with. Andrea – museum can play a role within their own space – exhibitions about citizen science, engaging people from within the museum. Wolfgang – the participants don’t like to be called amateurs but they are experts. These societies are aging and they have an opportunity to recruit younger members instead of members that are 40-50, male. They don’t have enough experts in the museum itself. Gregorie – need to have large varieties.

Audience – are there project in which citizen sceintists involved in designing exhibitions? Joahnes – in Berlin they done project with Pandas, in the last 30 days of the exhibition, they empty a cabinet, and ask  people to bring their objects on people’s memory of Pandas. Difficult to do the whole lengthy process of two years. John – designing exhibition properly it is a lengthy process and see which bit should include whom. Wolfgang – they provide specific space for citizen photographers and that works well.

Audeince – contacts with eastern European museums and initatives? Johaness – in EU BON Talinn is leading on citizen science, and there are European projects about it.

Audience -what about campaigning citizen science? Georgie – offering resources, opening data. Museum are politically neutral and there are debates about getting engaged politically, but should stay

Think camp

Plenary Discussion
Farewell by Johannes Vogel – working at EU level will be the big job in the near future. What the big things should be? confusion, getting sceince funding to grassroots groups. Heard too little from the scientists and would like to see more of this. How people reach this conference? I only heard about it through YouTube channel. There is space for self reflection on what we’re doing, citizen science studies. Think of migration and citizen scientists on the move. great for ECSA to support early career postdocs – list of jobs that will be available. Thanking the organisers – the richness of discussion was excellent.

ThinkCamp people – Margaret filmed the discussion for long show and tell that will be share on ‘citizens of science’ youtube channel – things that came out: inclusivness challenge: stipends for those who lack funding, helping grassroots, suject matter networks, co-creating events to see events that the want. WeCureALZ – large legible sans-serif fonts, large images – concept of tree that slowly grow. Communities of Europe – the CSA has a group that is doing such an effort. In the EC there was a conversation and they happy to support it. Search by nature of the citizen science, and the domain of science. Collaborative Writing – ideas of projects with an action plan. Museum data visualisation challenge – taking it out: why maps? what will be the best commmunications – using the visual design. Medium like d3 were considered.  The camera trap challenge – thinking about simpler driver than Raspberry-Pi.

Marisa – the games session: need to ensure enjoyable games and rigor of science, complex games can turn to fun: from gemification to workification. Leaderboards can be hidden because of the humanitarian nature of the project.

Monique – six excellent story tellers – change, communication, translation and visualisation. Ian – For the session on scientific impacts: land use, land cover and athmospheric measurements – there is promise but there are challenge with the sensors. There are saving: calibration and validation. Kathrine – learning and citizen science: looking at science identity, plenty of tweets. Citizen science need to use different learning models for evaluation. Active approaches develop learning best.

Many responses about what citizen science mean: citizen not an idea – it’s the future.
We have many new members from the conference, and hope that people will stay in the association. New working groups, we are welcoming more groups and increasing in our impact.