The Role of Citizen Science and Volunteer Data Collection in Zoological

Abstract

In many ways, science has never been as popular as it is now. With an ever-increasing number of
popular science books on everything from astronomy to climate change and evolution and entire
TV channels devoted to science output, the public seems spoilt for choice. However, paradoxically, there is also an increasing disconnect between science—and scientists— and society, and this is certainly evident in the life sciences. This disconnect comes in two forms: interest and level of knowledge. Indeed, one has only to look at the 2012 US presidential election campaign to see the lack of scientific knowledge possessed by many of the political elite about topics such as climate change. If high profile scientific topics are still so widely misunderstood by those in the public eye, it is unsurprising that there is such a lack of understanding of, and interest in, scientific topics in the general public. It should, in theory, be the easiest to address this discontent in subjects like zoology, where the evidence is all around us and can be easily seen, appreciated, and studied by the world’s citizens. Citizen science makes use of “citizens” (whether mem-bers of the general public of dedicated
volunteers) rather than professional scientists to undertake data collection for, often, large-scale
scientific studies. We argue that recent technological developments mean that citizen science has
never had as much relevance, or potential, as it does right now. Furthermore, we assert that, given
a general public interest in animals, citizen science in zoology can dramatically improve public
scientific literacy and provide a gateway into the serious consideration of the many complex
scientific issues pertinent to the modern world. Citizen science in zoology is a product of our time. Historically, there was no such thing as a “professional” naturalist, and nonprofessionals readily collected data and published in major scientific journals well into the 20th century. This changed to a great extent in the mid-to-late 20th Century, as research in zoology, related disciplines like ecology, and subdisciplines like ethology, became hypothesis and experiment driven with increasingly sophisticated exper-imental designs, equipment, and statistical analyses. Such changes were necessary to understand such diverse topics as the neurological basis of behaviour and the ecological mechanisms controlling community structure. However, with these changes came the inevitable decline of the interested amateur in the collection and analysis of scientific data. This polarisation of the amateur and the professional, as well as increasing compartmentalisation of topics, parallels other scientific disciplines. Indeed, the increasing fragmen-tation of the traditional sciences of Biology, Chemistry, and Physics into ever-increasing numbers of subdisciplines in recent years has meant that even professional scientists often know little or nothing about other areas. It is hardly surprising that the public often feels disconnected with modern science.