Citizen science as seen by scientists: Methodological, epistemological and ethical dimensions

TLDR

Citizen science has become a focal point for hopes and expectations as a means of science communication and public engagement, offering a win–win scenario where scientists receive public assistance and participants gain meaningful research experience. The study aims to reveal scientists’ experiences in the OPAL citizen science portfolio, highlighting methodological, epistemological, and ethical concerns and encouraging further debate on its potential pitfalls. Researchers conducted qualitative interviews with scientists involved in the OPAL projects running in England since 2007 to gather these insights.

Abstract

Citizen science as a way of communicating science and doing public engagement has over the past decade become the focus of considerable hopes and expectations. It can be seen as a win–win situation, where scientists get help from the public and the participants get a public engagement experience that involves them in real and meaningful scientific research. In this paper we present the results of a series of qualitative interviews with scientists who participated in the ‘OPAL’ portfolio of citizen science projects that has been running in England since 2007: What were their experiences of participating in citizen science? We highlight two particular sets of issues that our participants have voiced, methodological/epistemological and ethical issues. While we share the general enthusiasm over citizen science, we hope that the research in this paper opens up more debate over the potential pitfalls of citizen science as seen by the scientists themselves.