Moving into Nature

Dear friends,

I am rather proud to announce that I have moved! The Pay attention blog is now being hosted by Nature Networks… you can find it here.

I hope that anyone out there who’s been reading my first, tentative postings will follow me over to Nature, where a vigourous community of scientists and science bloggers are chatting away 24/7. I am still trying to fit both blogging and my investigations of global citizen science into my life, but will be posting as often as I can manage it, and hopefully more often as I go.

Warm regards,

Carlyn

Today: two kinds of expert

Two interviews today, one with Fraser Carpenter, a citizen scientist who monitors pine martens in Newfoundland, near Terra Nova National Park, and the other with Shawn Carlson, a MacArthur ‘genius’ fellow in Chicago who left academia (he has a PhD in nuclear physics) sixteen years ago to found the Society for Amateur Scientists (I also learned online that he’s a former professional magician, and a debunker of pseudoscience like astrology, among other nifty achievements). Carlson was bluff, expansive, enthusiastic:

Q. With so much free labour from volunteer scientists, do the professionals feel threatened at all?
A. There’s plenty of universe to go around!

Carpenter, a well-read, crisp-voiced 48-year old, UK-born autodidact with no post-secondary education, who sailed around the world with her late husband for 14 years before alighting in the 30-person community of Burnside in Newfoundland, talked passionately about the disconnect between people and nature, and about the implications for policy of a culture where the average person is not out in nature, observing, becoming familiar with what’s out there–developing a personal sense of its value and consequent desire to protect it. She’s hoping that her volunteer research will help to make a case for sustainable forestry or protection of the East Port forest, which, she tells me, is in imminent danger of clearcutting.  

Interestingly, Shawn Carlson also discussed the political importance of citizen science. The areas that draw the most amateur scientists are the areas where there is controversy and where there are political issues at stake. The obvious example is environmental science, but he came up with another one: the amateur astronomers who become aware of (and distressed by) light pollution. As someone who’s always seeking the inevitable links between science/nature and society/culture/politics/social justice, I’m very pleased to be led to the political aspects of citizen science.

I also came out of today with an invitation to go to Newfoundland to learn more about community forest monitoring and protection initiatives there. I certainly have no way of funding travel to meet all the amateur scientists I’m coming across, or to see all the projects at work… but I definitely hope to make it happen over time. I’ll keep Fraser Carpenter’s kind invitation firmly in mind as I keep on learning.

Cabinets of wonders

Citizen science is of course a poorly or variously defined concept, and so many different endeavours could be considered citizen science. So far I am finding two large categories of what is called citizen science. The greater of them is that of projects promoted and headed up by an organization with professional scientists providing leadership. The other is individual amateur science lovers who initiate research work themselves. In the former category, for example, are the pioneering citizen science initiatives of the Cornell Ornithology Lab, which has done a lot of work even on developing a formal definition of citizen science (and which defines it roughly as collaborations between ‘regular’ scientists and members of the public, while admitting that this definition excludes some serious amateur science).

In Cornell-style citizen science, members of the public are enticed by user-friendly ways of recording their observations, and they become part of a giant research or data collection project. In the other category are the solitary experimenters, who are more self-motivated, more involved in all aspects of whatever project they’re working on. On the other hand, every participant of a large project has their own history and individual involvement in observing nature and often in doing science. And even the independent amateur scientists, like for example Ontarian Aleta Karstad, a nature illustrator who studies slugs, correspond with professional scientists, work with them, and get much of the satisfaction of ‘real science’ by the mentor-type relationship they can establish with the professionals. I find the large-scale, organized projects fascinating in the ingenious ways they find to make science accessible (SO much more to say on that!). But I am still more taken with the independents–the curiosity, persistence and unconventionality of these people makes each one an eccentric and engaging character, and there is something Victorian–Age of Science and Progress! Era of Discovery! Flying machines and cabinets of wonders!–about the willingness to follow one’s curiosity, and the fascination with the world and how it ticks, that I find appealing. I’ll be seeking out the stories of people from both these groups.

New blogger blinded by all the science

I am actually a little tongue-tied. I’m working on finishing my citizen science article for Canadian Geographic. It was basically done last week but I am waiting for responses from the Canadian government–Environment Canada–to questions they didn’t answer in the written responses they sent to my interview questions (they told me there was no real live person to talk to!). I’m also hoping that a possible interview with a resident of the northern Canadian territory of Nunavut–about community-based monitoring of sea ice in which he’s taken part–might pan out in time to meet my extended deadline for the first draft.

Meanwhile, I can’t figure out where to begin blogging. So many interesting things, so little time–as the citizen scientist might say. Too many avenues to pursue in the teensy-weensy format of blog posts. It’s quite different from the sort of writing I’m used to, and the way it lends itself to stream-of-consciousness is a bit of a danger to organized thinking and presentation of ideas (although its creative potential is exciting, too).

This weekend I’ve been in conniptions about our Dear Leader (Stephen Harper, the Conservative prime minister we Canadians have been using to shoot ourselves in the foot, or to spite our faces, or whatever other metaphor you can think of to describe the embarrassing stupidity of not just voting him into power once, but going ahead and doing it a second time). The new Conservative Party budget slashes Canada’s already heinous environmental regulation, failed to invest in our renewable power program, to top up the depleted climate change fund of Sustainable Development Technology Canada, an arm’s length agency of the government, and failed to invest in reducing greenhouse gas emissions. There is more, according to the New Democratic Party, but before I go spouting off here I better read the entire budget myself… anyway, the little I’ve heard so far is all no good news for citizen science. Or science. Or citizens.

What I was thinking I might do to address my sense of flailing about in a sea of great citizen science stories was to start simple, just going over some of the terms and ideas I’ve been learning about. I’ll tag these basic definitions and discussions so that they can become a bit of a Citizen Science 101 over time.

But look, the fatal thought, ‘Stephen Harper’, popped unbidden into my mind, and that was the end of simple, sober posts for this evening–I turned all red and my head exploded. If you live in Canada, you’ll understand how I feel.  

More on Citizen Science 101 later this week.

Last interviews for Canadian Geographic

This is the last week of interviews I’m conducting with citizen scientists for an article on citizen science for Canadian Geographic magazine. If a head cold that has me sounding (to myself at least) as though I’m under water doesn’t stop me, I’ll be calling Nunavut, Nova Scotia and northern B.C. It’s not just geographic diversity, though. The projects I’ll be learning more about range from phenology–the study of periodic life cycle events in nature–to frogs and salamanders to the impact of climate change on migration patterns. After the article is out (in June) I hope to profile some of these amazing people and initiatives here.