The phrase citizen scientist is
drawing intense publicity these days. It is cool to be involved in this and all
over the world various groups cater to a wide range of interests. For instance,
a Google search yielded ‘about 6,380, 000 results’ in a few seconds. The buzz
of science cover stories, opinion-pieces, blogs and news items has recently
risen into the stratospheric heights of the 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue,
Washington, DC, USA. A motivation for the present piece is to examine this
popular and complex trend. Throughout history lay citizens have contributed to
science. For instance, in the Principia Mathematica to compute the mass of the
moon. Sir Isaac Newton used tidal records from maritime logs On other
occasions such contributions, especially those made by gifted enthusiasts have
made significant additions to the body of science.
Consequently there is a potential for tension in mixing science with people and policy. Many authors don’t differentiate much between the two nouns science and scientist and use Citizen Science and Citizen Scientist interchangeably! However there is a long established tradition of making a clear distinction between the terms and they really mean two very different things.
Also, do citizens have a right to volunteer or boycott any
science, should citizens have a say in what questions a scientist may ask.
are all knowable need to be known to science and should some knowledge be
anathema? In addition what are the boundaries of citizen activity and to what
extent citizens be held culpable? Hopefully, the present piece would motivate
the readers of this journal to help answering these questions.
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