Science for the People, by the People

Volunteers participating in the Smithsonian Environmental Research Center’s salt marsh census. Credit: Smithsonian Environmental Research Center

By Madeline Yu

It’s 9:19 a.m. and 73º outside, which is really weird for mid-September in Wisconsin. My classmates and I are in the middle of nowhere — Baraboo, WI — at the Aldo Leopold Foundation for a field studies class. Our professor introduces us to a wildlife identification app, Seek by iNaturalist. We all hunch over, waving our phones around trying to find just the right camera angle for the app to tell us which plant and bug species we are looking at. Although we don’t know it, using the app to satisfy our curiosity is contributing to a much larger research goal.

According to their website, iNaturalist is “a crowdsourced species identification system and an organism occurrence recording tool.” In other words, iNaturalist is a citizen science project, one that many people are a part of without even knowing what citizen science is. The website SciStarter is just one forum everyday people can use to find opportunities to volunteer and contribute to larger scientific research. According to SciStarter, iNaturalist was the #3 citizen science project of 2023 with over 150,000 new contributions.

Participatory science, traditionally known as citizen science, refers to projects where professional scientists rely on volunteers (who are largely not professional scientists) to help them collect data.

There are hundreds of participatory science projects nationwide, and you can find them on websites like NASA, National Geographic, the EPA, university websites, citizenscience.gov, and Zooniverse to name a few places. The longest-running participatory science project in the world is the Audubon Christmas Bird Count, where people have helped researchers collect data on bird populations since 1900.

Although most participatory science projects do not have restrictions or requirements on who can participate, many people don’t know what participatory science is, and even fewer know of local opportunities or other ways to get involved.

Unfortunately, studies demonstrate time and time again that the groups who could benefit the most from participatory science projects are also the least likely to participate. For example, one study focused on a river monitoring project showed that the volunteer demographic was disproportionately white and educated, inadvertently resulting in river sample sites that excluded low-income areas with more polluted water.

At the Smithsonian Environmental Research Center (SERC) in Maryland, Participatory Science Program Assistant Shatiyana Dunn is working to get middle and high schoolers involved in native plant conservation and growth condition research. “I like to work with marginalized communities because that’s the type of community I come from, and so I try to make it a point to work with public schools and leaning towards the more Title I public schools,” says Dunn. Title I schools are schools where a high percentage of students have financial need.

“Classroom Cultivation,” an SERC program organized by Dunn, provides science classes with everything they will need to grow native orchid species in different conditions, including plants and pots, water, soil, watering cans, sheltering units, and lights. Dunn mentions that scientists have been struggling to grow the orchids in labs, and through employing middle and high school classes the program expands the scope of the research and helps get results faster.

Over the course of the two-week program, Dunn visits different schools to help students and teachers get started. Students build shelters, plant and label the orchids, and collect data. “A lot of students like hands-on things when it comes to science, not just looking at a video, not just reading.” Dunn continues. “I don’t necessarily want to create scientists. I understand that the science is hard and it’s not something that everyone does, but I like the term ‘Earth advocates.’”

According to Dunn, “Earth advocates” are people who are aware of their environmental impact, who can see how their actions fit into the science, and “who make conscious decisions that advocate for the Earth, advocate for their local environments.”

Meanwhile at the Field Museum in Chicago, Youth and Community Partnership Coordinator Ylanda Wilhite leads the Green Ambassadors Program, which aims to get young people involved in science. Like Dunn’s project, Green Ambassadors partners with local high schools. These high schools are largely on the South Side and represent a diversity of students, Wilhite explains, and includes a military academy, a selective enrollment public high school, and neighborhood schools.

RiverWatch volunteers monitor stream habitat and aquatic invertebrate populations. Credit: National Great Rivers Research & Education Center

Bruce Colravy, Champaign associate of RiverWatch and Citizen Science Coordinator at the Upper Sangamon River Conservancy, identifies a “deep-seated distrust” between communities of color and white scientists, remembering an interaction where a youth group leader was suspicious of Colravy’s intentions when inviting a group of underserved kids to do science. The group leader assumed ill intent and a desire for free labor, while the project wasn’t actually lacking for volunteers. Colravy says, “You know, history supports that: his distrust. One of the reasons it’s really important to have diversity is because we need to be able to trust each other, and when people are too isolated in their groups, that’s when they start to lose trust.”

In my conversation with Dunn, she discussed the problematic history of white scientists entering non-white spaces, referring specifically to birth control experiments in Latin America that left tens of thousands of women sterile, and a persistent rhetoric that implies Black and Indigenous stewardship practices are barbaric. “You can’t just have a group of white scientists walking up to a community like, ‘Hey, we’re here to do science.’ It helps to have a person of color on your team, more specifically someone from that community that you’re going into. There needs to be some sort of liaison at all times that can relate to that community.”

When it comes to upping engagement, Wilhite says, “The vocabulary we use, like ‘citizen,’ just that word itself can deter people. They might think, ‘No, I’m not a citizen. I’m not gonna participate in anything like that,’ because they’re nervous. There may be uncertainty if is this a situation where the police are gonna pop up and detain them.” Instead of “citizen science,” Wilhite suggests shifting the vocabulary to “community science.”

Many well-known citizen science institutions have begun re-branding what they do as “community science.” One journal article from 2023 listed 16 organizations that have moved away from “citizen science” language. These include the Field Museum in Chicago, natural history museums in multiple states, and the Natural History Museum in London. All but one of these organizations adopted the term “community science” — the 16th group adopted “participatory science.” Every group noted how using the word “citizen” could be alienating, limiting, or discourage community participation.

Beyond the discourse around “citizen science,” Wilhite also mentions an awareness of language surrounding plant ecology and how even terms such as “native” and “invasive” species might lead people to question whether they belong in various spaces, be it the science space or the broader community.

Not everyone agrees with the move away from “citizen” science language. An article published in 2021 in Science argues that the citizen science field should be focused on changes in approach to increase participant diversity, not a name change.

Both things can be true. Changing the language without changing approach could easily come across as performative. Changing the approach could do wonders to increase diversity but some would-be participants will still balk at the term “citizen.”

Another challenge which may limit the diversity of participatory science volunteers is the accessibility of projects. Many people don’t know that there are projects right in their backyards. Even in urban locales like Chicago, participatory science programs offer a variety of ways to get involved, from working in the garden around The Field Museum to lending a hand in the greenhouses at local universities.

There are opportunities to contribute even if you don’t have a local project. Sitting at home, procrastinating college assignments that do not keep my interest in the same way that “science stuff” does, I find myself detouring to Zooniverse again and again. In addition to making 42 classifications for the Chicago Wildlife Watch animal identification project, I have also helped identify cloud coverage on Mars using readings of climate data taken on Mars at high altitudes, identified germinal centers in lymph nodes for breast cancer research, and classified clips of sounds in a study on language and speech development.

I get to choose my projects, and the training has been straightforward, taking no more than 5-15 minutes. I can do however many classifications I feel like, be it one or 20. The open-ended time commitment makes these projects incredibly accessible — something I can choose to do without any pressure. As a college student who also has a part time job, I found the best part of the Zooniverse projects was that I could do them on my own time from anywhere. Simultaneously, I am satisfying my desire to learn and helping further research.

The diversity of project types is vast, and participatory science isn’t limited to just the physical sciences. Some projects ask for help digitizing museum collections, some seek out people who will help transcribe handwritten historical documents, and other projects explore social science topics such as studying human behavior. There is something online for everyone — as long as you have internet access.

For some participants, in-person projects are a must. One cloudy morning in early April, I connected with Wendy Harris, a National Great Rivers Research & Education Center volunteer working on the Winter Chloride Watch. Wendy studied Archaeology and is a Master Naturalist but works in finance for the School of Social Work on the U. of I. campus. She marries her interests in scientific research and environmental justice through volunteering for participatory science projects.

The Winter Chloride Watch asks that volunteers sample water at least three times in the winter season (December to April) using a titrator to collect data monitoring chloride levels in rivers. Chloride levels can be highly variable from month to month, and especially from year to year since a milder winter means less road salt. One of the perks of this project is that participants get to choose their own sample site and sampling itself doesn’t take very long at all.

I tagged along with Wendy to collect her April sample. Wendy picked me up and we drove to Scott Park, her site of choice since it is near where she works. The National Great Rivers Research & Education Center, which runs this project, mailed Wendy everything she would need for sampling free of charge. The package contained a small tube to collect the water sample, a titrator (test strip), and a guide with instructions on how to collect the sample, use the titrator, and get a measurement.

Titration strip from water quality testing at Scott Park. Credit: Madeline Yu

Wendy and I got out of the car and climbed through the dead plants and tallish grasses down to the creek where she filled the tube. At most, it took us 5 minutes to climb down, get the water, and climb back up. In the car, Wendy checked the air temperature to log alongside the data while the titrator sat in the water until the test strip changed colors, indicating that the reading was done. Using the numbers on the titrator and the corresponding values on the little guide, Wendy entered the data on a website, where you can see images people took at their monitoring sites, the air temperature data, the all-important chloride levels, and a map view of the site.

After the data was logged, Wendy dumped the water sample in the parking lot and that was that. Participation in this project was easy, straightforward, and took less than 30 minutes. The organization running the project takes care of getting materials to you, and you don’t need to send anything back. The data entry can be done from your smartphone in minutes. Many participatory science projects, such as this one, require very little technical expertise, allowing large numbers of people to collect many more data points than projects with highly specialized skill set requirements would be able to.

RiverWatch is one of roughly 7.5% of participatory science projects that collect demographic information. According to Colravy, “We’ve done really well with really reaching out. Our age diversity is great, gender diversity is great. We are still working on race diversity. It’s not that there isn’t any there. It’s just that it doesn’t really reflect the population like it should.” This diversity is important, he explains, because “diverse organizations simply do better than organizations that are not. The right thing to do is to give everybody an opportunity to experience science and volunteerism.”

Without a diverse participant pool contributing to these projects, the data collected isn’t truly representative. Expanding diversity in participatory science is a form of environmental justice, actively working to counter the historic exclusion of non-white people from science spaces. By intentionally centering the people most directly impacted by local issues, participatory science projects can foster a greater connection with the community, the environment, and with nature.

If you enjoyed science at any point but aren’t getting enough of it, the wide range of project options is an excellent way to get a little (or a lot) of hands-on science back in your life. There is absolutely something for everyone regardless of where you are or how much free time you have. Anyone can be an Earth advocate. Science is everywhere, and it’s for everyone. You just have to be willing to look.

About the Author …

Madeline “Maddie” Yu graduated in May 2024 with a B.S. in Earth, Society, and Environmental Sustainability and a minor in the Sustainability, Energy, and Environment Fellows Program. Originally from Chicago, Ill., Maddie currently works as a Visitor Services Resource Assistant with the USDA Forest Service in the Columbia River Gorge National Scenic Area.