Responses to Why Citizen Scientists Should be Paid
There were quite a few thought-provoking responses emailed to me. Thanks for all your emails. I summarise them below as best I can. I replied to each individually, but I’m giving further replies here:
1. One reader asked, “What counts as science?” and suggested this puzzle would be difficult to resolve when it comes to paying citizen scientists. In other words, can we really recognise and fairly compensate someone for their contribution to science, given the multitude of variables involved in determining what’s valuable to science and what isn’t? (The actual response is much longer and more deeply considered; I hope this summary gets to the heart of it).
My reply:
I think your “puzzle” relates to what might be called “knowledge pricing.” I believe my and my wife’s work in the field — see https://bee.questagame.com and/or https://bioSMART.LIFE — has shown that ideal knowledge pricing can exist in narrowly defined scientific practice, such as ecosystem mapping. Broader applications may be real but to my knowledge remain undemonstrated.
I think the important thing to understand is that we’re still far behind where the technology allows us to be. That is to say, perhaps the only thing preventing us from developing systems that reward scientific contributions fairly is our inability to believe it’s possible.
Just as Habermas understood his “ideal speech situation” was real but unattainable, I fear the same could be true with ideal knowledge pricing. Hence, we probably know your puzzle has a solution, but we may never demonstrate it.
2. Another reader gave a fascinating account of a natural science project with turtles in Louisiana that didn’t include — but on reflection could have included — a paid citizen science component: “Why couldn’t a grant pay citizen scientists a certain amount per observation to collect that data?” The reader also discusses the value of apps in natural science projects: “My primary reason for using eBird, iNaturalist, and Nature’s Notebook is for keeping track of my own data!” And the reader suggests this is probably true for most users of these apps. The reader also considers a payment model which (apropos to response 1 above?) only rewards work that is credited/included in research. Lastly: “We need to find ways to make citizen science projects useful to people!”
My reply:
I’d suggest people use free apps such as Google, Facebook, Alexa, etc for much the same reason — personal utility. They use Google to search for answers; they use Facebook to socialise; they use Alexa to carry out simple commands, and so forth.
But of course these apps are also using them (as the amazing Shoshana Zuboff has so painstakingly documented). Google is searching them. Facebook is manipulating their social worlds. Alexa is commanding them (by predicting desires that it can fulfil).
That’s the nature of big data combined with the sort of Silicon Valley tech-wave most these apps, including eBird and iNaturalist, have been surfing. When you’re riding that wave, it can be difficult to recognise it as having unique properties, traveling a unique direction; as if there could be any other way.
But there are definitely other ways. For example, we’ve seen a unique set of data privacy laws evolve in Europe (and 10 years too late in California). I’m not arguing that Europe is doing any better; just that it’s different. Or let me ask this: Can a bird submitted on iNaturalist be identified by a user of eBird, and visa-versa? Or can a snail on Nature’s Notebook be identified on iNaturalist? I haven’t seen this functionality. Why not? We assume that’s just how apps are meant to be, each with their own walled properties and ways of doing things — even when the underlying citizen science overlaps.
An example of a different design would be something like what we’ve been working to create here, as a non-profit offering:
Something like SciStarter in the US is making some inroads here as well.
Ironically, the biggest threat to citizen science is probably Big Tech (something like Amy Webb’s ‘Big Nine’ — Google, Microsoft, Amazon, Facebook, IBM, Apple, Baidu, Alibaba, Tencent); which means the natural science apps on your phone should really be working more closely together to protect objectivity and scientific truth; or face extinction.
But the tech wave is fast-moving and powerful — too fast for reasoned debate. A couple years ago, as computer vision began to emerge, I tried to start some discussions about it with the iNat community. Nothing had been discussed publicly, even as iNat was working on the development. My voice was quickly drowned out as anti-progress (me, a tech engineer) — when, in fact, it’s the lack of discussion, the lack of a diversity of viewpoints, that proves most detrimental to any progress we hope to make in biodiversity research and conservation.
On a positive note — a lot of the concerns I was raising are less contentious today than they were 3–4 years ago; so public awareness has shifted.
3. Another reader said they appreciated the articulation, that they are working on implementing some of the ideas, and will share more soon.
4. Another reader felt I “buried the lede,” and wondered if the article was ever going to get around to talking about why citizen scientists should be paid. This reader, by the way, is also a fan of Dr. Liboiron.
My reply:
Agreed, and I appreciate the unearthing you went through. I suppose it’s not all bad for readers to work a bit with their shovels. Good practice and sometimes we dig up the unexpected gem.
5. Another reader said they hadn’t had time to read the article more thoroughly, but expressed concerns about my use of language and how it potentially undermines the article’s argument — particularly my use of “Feynman and his strip clubs” in the same sentence as Marie Curie wearing a high-coloured dress. The reader wrote: “In particular the ‘strip clubs’ are one example of a person whose unprofessional boundaries and misogyny led to him preying on young women and excluding them from physics.” The reader also cited the phrase “sagging beach body” as non-inclusive language.
My reply:
Noted and thank you.
