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.
