Episode 628: Citizen Science Communication

You are listening to WREK Atlanta, we hope. And this is Lost in the Stacks-- the Research Library Rock'n'Roll Radio Show. I'm Charlie Bennett in the unreliable studio once again. And the gang's all here, plus some not some, and an extra person, and a guest to be named later. I'm just so excited we're on air, I'm going to skip over the introductions. Each week on Lost in the Stacks, we pick a theme, and then use it to create a mix of music and library talk.

And our show today is called Citizen Science Communication.

Now, while we love our research faculty here in academia, there's a lot of beneficial scientific work that is contributed by everyday folks just doing science out of personal interest.

This may naturally lead one to ask questions. Like, what makes a citizen scientist? What does a citizen scientist do?

How does their work intersect with professional scientists?

How does citizen science get communicated to the world?

And if I take a picture of a really gross bug in my backyard and post it on social media, am I doing citizen science?

Those are all questions that our guest today has thought a lot about. CHARLIE BENNETT: Even that bug one. Well, maybe. We'll find out. Our songs today are about the citizens who do scientific work about taking note of the life and environmental conditions around us, and about being a close observer of nature. And we kick off with, appropriately enough, "Citizen Science," by J. Marinelli, right here on Lost in the Stacks.

Title track. That's awesome, Fred. [J. MARINELLI, "CITIZEN SCIENCE"] Like a child of Eden.

You just heard "Citizen Science," by J. Marinelli. This is Lost in the Stacks, and our show today is called, "Citizen Science Communication."

And our guest is Dr. Megan Mericle, a Marion L. Brittain Postdoctoral Fellow in the School of Literature, Media, and Communication here at Georgia Tech. Megan, welcome to the show.

Thank you. Yeah.

So we met when I came and did a little instruction in one of your classes. And we got to talking, and I mentioned I was-- talked about scholarly communication sometimes, and sometimes talked about it on the show. And you said that one of your interests was citizen science communication, which made me think, OK, well, we've got to talk about that on the show. So before we dive in, let's define some terms. What is citizen science?

Yeah. So citizen science actually has a pretty contested definition because a lot of different things can be considered citizen science. And there's a lot of different terms other than citizen science that are used to describe these practices. So like from community science to participatory science, there's a whole constellation of terms. And so part of my work is looking at those terms, and what they mean.

So there does seem to be-- there has to be a kind of synergistic relationship. It's not just, I'm doing citizen scientist if I'm taking pictures of bugs.

Right. Well, I kind of like Adam Savage, the MythBuster, his definition of science of like, the difference between messing around and doing science is writing it down. So being able to write it down and share it, I think, is a key part of citizen science, and what makes that different from taking a big picture in your backyard that only you look at.

And do you feel like there's any actual like substance to all of the different-- all the different word choices, all the different participatory community? Do those matter, or is it all the thing that we're trying to talk about?

I think it's all the thing we're trying to talk about. But I think the way that we go about talking about it really matters, and it matters because it changes how we view people who are not professional scientists, and how we view their contributions. So, like a key shift in this area has been the move from citizen science to community science, because citizen science is not only enacted by citizens.

More of the collective, I think, the-- that it's a group of people or a community that we're serving, as opposed to a single person. And I like what you just said about citizenship, that, that not being central to us engaging with these folks, right?

Yeah. And then questions of like, who do we consider the community? And if I'm acting as a community member and I'm not acting in my role as a teacher or as a researcher, am I a member of the community, or am I excluded from that group because I have a doctorate degree, you know? I think it's a complex system, and we sometimes draw hard lines between who is the community and who is academia. And so part of my work is looking at where those lines get drawn and the rhetorical work around them.

And you do-- you're a professor here, you have a doctorate, but it's not in a scientific field. So how did you get interested in citizen science?

Yeah. So actually, it began for me in the classroom. In talking to my students, I had this one encounter when I was teaching a class for students in STEM, and it was a writing-centered-- first-year writing class. And I asked them, like-- I referred to them in conversation as scientists, and they kind of like, balked at the term. And they were like, "We're not scientists." And I'm like, "Well, what are you then? You're STEM students."

Did they straight up tell you, "Wait, stop. We're not scientists."--

Right, yeah.

--in class at that moment?

Yeah.

Wow.

I just saw the look on their faces, and I paused, and we stopped, and we talked about it. And finally, one student raised her hand, and she was like, "We're not scientists. We're scientists-in-training." And everybody kind of nodded and agreed on that. So I think it's interesting how we withhold or take on these identities as scientists, as experts.

Do you-- do you blend that into the writing courses? Do you try to-- do you try to make them recognize that they're not in training, but they're actually actively participating early on when you give them the topics or the assignments in the class?

Yeah, definitely. And I think that's a challenge. I mean, I understand that challenge, too. Like still feeling weird about being called an expert, and like, what does that term mean?

Yeah, because if we go by that Adam Savage definition, then college students have become scientists. They have written it down. And it's only if you think to yourself, oh, because I had someone telling me what to do, or who was going to check on my work, that somehow made me not a scientist, only a scientist-in-training.

Right. And we need to all build that accountability together, I think. Like the community needs to check scientists and make sure that what scientists are doing is meaningful for the community. But then the scientists also need to check citizen scientists or community scientists and make sure that they're adhering to protocol and these standards around science. Those are important, too, and not see it as unidirectional.

I just flashed on Francis Bacon stuffing a chicken full of snow, just to see, and like that was a very eminent scientist at the time. No one was checking up on him. Do you all know that story? This is supposedly how the-- Yeah, everyone just went, [EXHALE]. What are you doing, buddy?

It sounds familiar. Yes.

But let me lead into, didn't all scientists used to be citizen scientists? Nobody had-- nobody had the doctorate, right? Nobody had the-- no one had the education from Georgia Tech that stamped them as an expert. Just someone who did an experiment was a scientist.

Yeah. So that's actually one of the arguments that's used for citizen scientists. Is that like, Charles Darwin was a citizen scientist and all of these early scientists. But I think it's important to be careful about the way that the profession of science developed, in like, they were scientists in a very different way than like people engaging in citizen science today are, and keeping those lines clear. Because like Charles Darwin, for instance, like had a different level of access to science.

I was thinking, accessing science can really just be accessing money.

Yes.

And this moment in time, that's very important, also.

Right.

This is Lost in the Stacks, and we will be back with more about citizen science, with Dr. Megan Mericle, after a music set.

File this set under Q126.9.C43.

"Concerned Citizen," by The Consumers, and before that, "Love of Life," by the Swans. Songs about everyday people who appreciate the living world, and people who provide vital knowledge.

This is Lost in the Stacks, and today's show is called "Citizen Science Communication." Our guest is Dr. Megan Mericle, Postdoc Fellow at Georgia Tech, who researches citizen science. In our first segment, we talked about the definition of a citizen scientist. And I feel like we were kind of just starting to tease out this question of access and privilege in science, so I want to keep going with that, and ask, what does citizen science mean in 2025?

Yeah. So I think these questions of privilege and access are really important in 2025, especially as we're thinking more about who historically has not had access to science, and thinking about multiple marginalized people who are raising issues like-- that are considering their own local communities. And I'm thinking of several examples that have really illustrated for me that privilege of like, who has access to scientific tools, and who is safe doing science in the field.

So access to science is not just, do you have the tools, are you able to publish, are you able to pull the information? But also, are you allowed to do the things that we think of as science?

Right. Yeah. I think, we don't always realize that a lot of these actions around citizen science, around doing science in the field, involve going to public places, maybe going on to private land, and having to talk to people. Like cases from this young girl, Bobbi Wilson, in New Jersey, and like from Chris Cooper, which was another very public example of a birder in The Ramble, in Central Park, show us that.

And you didn't explicitly say, but in these cases, race is--

Right.

--the issue that causes the danger and the inability to access what other privileged folks might be able to do.

Right, yeah. Bobbi Wilson was a young Black girl, and Chris Cooper being an older Black birder--

Yeah.

--in both cases. Yeah.

I'm flashing on a thing I saw. Someone did a video showing what one column of the periodic table, what they did when you dropped them in water. Like it starts with just a little frothing, but by the time you get to the bottom, it explodes enough to knock trees down. They had to go out into a desolated area, isolated area, to drop this mineral into a glass of water, and then see it explode.

Yeah, or even like, I actually went on the citizenscience.gov website and looked at some of the projects. And some of them were just like, what I would call, people watching. And I think not everyone has the-- yeah. I mean, that looks different depending on who's doing the watching. And I'm not saying it's strictly like one demographic that might cause concern, but I think anyone could end up being seen as a threat.

Yeah. A white guy loitering in public and staring at everybody would also freak people out. I guess, unless they're dressed like Einstein. Yeah? Like really strange-looking. Yeah?

Like, the US Breeding Bird Survey requires that you drive a certain amount, and then stop, and then drive again, which doesn't look great if you're stopping. There was a case of one Black birder who was talking about having to do his route and stopping in front of a house with a Confederate flag, and not feeling safe doing the observations, and realizing that the white researcher he was traveling with didn't feel the same way.

Yeah. So part of the collaboration between professional scientists and citizen scientists is kind of a stamp of approval, a societal approval.

Right. Yes. CHARLIE BENNETT: Giving them the-- I don't know the language around this. I haven't thought about it very much, but just the societal permission to act oddly, or to do things that are not daily life.

I have to imagine that even professional scientists of color have to think twice--

Definitely.

--about fieldwork, or the choices they make when going out to do science, even if they're working-- whether they're working with citizen scientists or not.

Right. Yeah, it shapes like-- I think a lot of the scientists have had to weigh, scientists of color, scientists from religious minorities, queer scientists, have had to weigh what kind of field research they can do based on their positionality. And some supervisors are more understanding than others, I think, of that.

And so the relationships between citizen scientists and professional scientists, do they go both ways? Are they-- are they initiated by citizens and initiated by professionals, or is it like volunteering, recruiting? What's the shape of that, the start of those collaborations?

I think it really depends. A lot of citizen science projects are started by scientists, and set up with quality control checks in place. But there are a lot of examples of citizen or community science that are brought up by issues that are raised by communities. So like, we can think about Flint and water case-- Flint Water Study as an example of that.

You are listening to Lost in the Stacks, and we'll hear more about citizen science on the left side of the hour.

Hi, I'm Kallie Moore, the fossil librarian. You're listening to Lost in the Stacks on WREK Atlanta. All right, let's go.

Today's show is called "Citizen Science Communication." And we're learning a lot about citizen science from Dr. Mericle, but I thought we'd take some time at this break to demonstrate the value of citizen science by talking about a few recent news items, where ordinary folks-- ordinary, that's what's in the script-- made big contributions to our scientific knowledge, lay people made big contributions. Regular folks.

That's better-worded.

The hoi polloi. OK. In June 2022, two amateur fossil hunters in Florida found an ancient sinkhole, covered by a riverbed, which contained a trove of half a million year old fossils from animals like giant armadillos, giant ground sloths, and prehistoric horses. After professional paleontologists learned about this find, it is being studied at the Florida Museum of Natural History.

(SINGING) See the storm over there.

That was "Melonella," by the Cocteau Twins. And before that, "See the Storm," by Salty Dog-- Woof, woof.

Everybody's in a good mood today.

Songs about butterflies, weather, and other natural wonders that could be researched by citizen scientists.

This is Lost in the Stacks, and our show today is called "Citizen Science Communication." Dr. Megan Mericle is our guest. In this segment, we want to talk more about that communication aspect of citizen science. So when you said earlier, "access to science," my mind went directly to being able to put together an article that has a chance of being published. That's what I was thinking about. But now, we're there. So how is citizen science shared?

Yeah. So I think part of it is, in those examples of citizen science like I mentioned earlier, that are led by professionals, coordinated by professionals, it takes time to build up trust in the data that is collected by members of the community. So in my research, one of the groups I talked to was the Illinois Butterfly Monitoring Network, so this was when I was in my doctoral program, in Illinois.

It almost feels like that's more worthwhile, that since it has to really be proved and has to really be-- gain validity, as opposed to being anointed by what it was published in.

So when professional scientists want to communicate, the standard is like a peer-reviewed journal article in some academic journal, or maybe a peer-reviewed conference paper at a big academic conference. But when citizen science is communicated, there must be other venues that are commonly used to distribute that information, or is it-- or maybe I'm making an assumption there. Maybe it always has to go through that professional science vetting process and get to be an article?

Yeah. I mean, I think it depends on what kind of communication of results you're talking about. I talked to-- another of the projects that I looked at was called CoCoRaHS-- Community Collaborative Rain, Hail, and Snow Network-- and that's a project where a bunch of different people keep rain gauges in their backyards, and check the rain gauges daily, and report on precipitation.

So you can just post it on a website, for instance, and everyone has access to it that way. That's one way to communicate it.

Yeah. And with that comes concerns around--

Yeah. MEGAN MERICLE: --I mean, people-- there are quality checks. Like I mentioned with CoCoRaHS, and people are checking the data and following up. But people also have access to their own data and can do with it what they want. And so there are climate skeptics who have been involved in community science projects, too. So that's another concern.

When you say access to their own data, meaning they have data that they can then do something with? They can try and produce some conclusion from and publish?

Right, yeah.

Oh, this is doing your own research.

Yeah, that's a loaded term.

It really is. I mean, it's crazy that "do your own research" is now politically charged and has a connotation that makes some people frothy in one way or another. But that's what this is.

It's a tension. Like, you want science to be accessible to all and for everyone to be able to contribute. And then on the other side, there's the idea that we are in a time of disinformation coming from all levels and particularly, powerful political levels.

So I'm also kind of wondering if a typical academic scientist uses information from citizen scientists and maybe publishes it in the academic sphere, do they also feel like they should also share it in the public sphere, in popular communications, as well? Do you find that there are more communications in popular venues coming from people who are participating in citizen science?

Yeah. I think there's a huge push to publish community science or citizen science data in open access journals. And also, like you mentioned, to do education and public outreach around community science because the community was a part of working on and gathering this data and sometimes analyzing the data, so they should be a part of the dissemination and benefit from that, too.

Yeah, because otherwise, it might be locked up from their access, right?

Right.

Yeah, I just flashed on DIY open access. Something-- like instead of just saying, oh, yeah, we put it out there in the world, how would you, as a citizen, as a non-academic citizen, how would you recreate the open access system to circumvent not only monetary blocks to publication, but status blocks to publication?

When you talk-- Dr. Mericle, when you talk about communicating citizen science, when you're actually talking to citizen scientists, what do you say to them?

I ask them-- I think one thing that came up throughout my research was that a lot of the community or citizen scientists I talked to told me that they didn't write surrounding their work. They're like, oh, I just go out in the backyard, and I check the rain gauge, or I'm just looking at butterflies.

They get to avoid peer reviewer number two, though. They don't have to deal with that-- that set of comments.

Well, I mean, in CoCoRaHS, they do get, sometimes, quality control checks kicked back. And I have heard some people are not happy when they get those quality control checks. But for the most part, people are generally, like, oh, yeah, I made a mistake. I entered that wrong. I put in the zero wrong, or something like that.

So we're running up against our segment time limit, but I do want to ask, have you done any citizen science yourself?

I have. So I have iNaturalist installed in my phone, and I collect pictures on iNaturalist. And I also got to participate in a butterfly monitoring workshop in my research. So I try to do citizen science when I can, when I have time, when I'm not studying citizen science.

So you've taken a picture of a bug in your backyard?

I have definitely taken a picture of a bug--

Yes. MEGAN MERICLE: --in my apartment, and wondered what it was.

This is Lost in the Stacks, and our guest today is Dr. Megan Mericle, Postdoctoral Fellow in Literature, Media, and Communication, at Georgia Tech, and an expert on citizen science communication. Megan, thank you so much for being on the show. MEGAN MERICLE: Thanks for having me.

File this set under QH31.D2.B746. That one was for you, Alex. [SUNSHINE FACES, "MORE THAN SCIENCE"] Loved ones are prettier than science. Maybe.

"I See the Rain," by Marmalade. And before that, "Plain as Your Eyes Can See," by Jim Sullivan. And we started our set with "More Than Science," by the Sunshine Faces. Songs about scientific observation.

CHARLIE BENNETT: Today's show was called, "Citizen Science Communication," So I think we should ask, has anyone here in the studio done anything like citizen science work? And if so, what was it? And if you haven't, what kind of citizen science work would you really like to do? For me, I would like to do some kind of forestry thing. Especially if I could just go up in one of those observation posts for like six months and stay there and just look at trees, that would be really nice.

I don't think I have done citizen science, but if I could, it would have anything to do with picking up, finding fossils. I think that would be perfect.

I mean, I think you've done a lot of that. That probably counts.

I need to write it, though, I guess, to make it science.

There you go. Marlee?

Yeah, that sounds like you, Fred. Well, I mean, I brought up the people watching earlier because I think that would be up my alley. But then I thought, oh, no, what if people see me as a threat? So maybe I could just like, take notes on all the kitty cats in my neighborhood? What about you, Danielle?

Yeah. So I used to work at the zoo, and a lot of my friends would send me pictures of snakes and ask me to identify them. I got them right about 50% of the time. But i still like to do that, but mostly now, with dog breeds.

So Marlee literally took mine, I was going to talk about kitty cats, but that's OK. So I'm just going to defer to aliens, so extraterrestrial life.

When I got accepted to Georgia Tech, me and my high school friend thought that we had to do a little bit of research in order to go to a research university. So we made some survey about different belief systems and just loitered outside Walmart's and parking lots trying to get people to fill our survey out. We learned the difference between public and private spaces, and then we posted it as a Myspace bulletin to all of our friends to see.

Oh, my God. OK, Fred, roll the credits.

Lost in the Stacks is a collaboration between WREK Atlanta and the Georgia Tech Library. Written and produced by Alex McGee, Charlie Bennett, Fred Rascoe, and Marlee Givens.

Legal counsel and a book with 15 years of citizen-described weather data from the Burrus Intellectual Property Law Group in Atlanta, Georgia. Philip does everything.

Mm-hmm. Special thanks to Megan for being on the show, to citizen scientists everywhere, and thanks, as always, to each and every one of you for listening.

Our web page is library.gatech.e du/lostinthestacks, where you'll find our most recent episode, a link to our podcast feed, and a web form if you want to get in touch with us. MARLEE GIVENS: Next week, we won't be in the studio, the wonky studio, but you will hear a special episode, guest produced by retroTech's Dillon Henry.

Nice. So it's time for our last song today. If you're a citizen with no scientific training, but have a strong sense of curiosity combined with an appreciation of the natural world, you might be just the sort of person to dabble in some citizen science of your own. You don't need to go to an exotic location. There is a lot of science you can do right in your own backyard. You can just take pictures of gross bugs in your backyard, too. That's fun.