There is an irony in being a person interested in online engagement with science, digital research, social media and divers public stuff and yet being a person who twizzles up inside when she thinks about writing a blog post. Like Pope Clement VI sitting out the Black Death, I am caught between two fires.
I’ve been telling myself I’d write a post when the results of my PhD oral examination and thesis were properly sanctioned but really, the official procedures take an unconscionable time, hence the embarrassingly long gap. To bring you up to date, back in the summer I survived the oral exam. and the examiners recommended I be awarded the PhD subject to some minor amendments to the thesis. I’m currently waiting to hear if the corrections have been accepted.
However, revenons à nos moutons, next week is Open Access Week around the world so I must ignore the flames of personal squeamishness and stoke the blaze of professional openness.
I will be playing a small part in the University of Exeter’s Open Exeter events, to talk about whether open science can be a shared space for fostering public engagement with science. The fact that citizens, community groups and NGOs are demanding – and in many cases getting – access to evidence that enables us to scrutinise research and participate effectively is widely recognised – for example by the Royal Society. That being so, we have to think about the relationship between professional and non-professional researchers; why might members of the public want to contribute to research? what knowledge and expertise will they bring? what new skills will participants need to develop? how are the contributions of all participants to be valued?
I’ll be helping to discuss the issues a bit further at SpotOn London, in November. With Cindy Regalado and Shannon Dosemagen, we want to explore citizen science as public participation in research. The spirit of SpotOn is very much about collaboration, connection and community discussion, so I intend to be as provocative as I dare! I’ll be starting the session by asking eh question of what we mean by ‘public participation in research’. Can we move beyond the concept of public participants as data suppliers, data organisers and human computers (effective though we might be in those roles and exciting as many people find such participation). How we can open science support co-creation and collaboration? How will the roles of ‘scientist’ and ‘citizen’ change? What happens when scientists are nudged from their traditional role as research designers and decision-makers? How do we value the contribution of the expertise and skills of citizen scientists? What ethical considerations are involved in challenging the notions of what ‘people’ can do? How do we value the validity and credibility of the contributions of citizen scientists? What are the current issues in participatory research in environmental and health research structures?
SpotOn will be livestreamed and tweeted (hashtag #solo12citizen). It will be interesting to see if the conversation goes beyond the room and into the open air.
Ann's Blog 
Fear of expressing oneself online is a strange thing. The real irony of it is that those who are most confident of their opinions are generally the ones with the least to say. The diatribists and trolls don’t appear to notice what simple-minded jerks they are proclaiming themselves so loudly to be. Luckily, trolls are easily scared off by citing Pope Clement and using foreign words, so I doubt you’ll see any of them around here. There’s just us nice folks who are interested in what you have to say. We’re harmless. Talk to us.
In more general terms, open science DOES have to deal with trolls and they can arrive in such hordes that they make discourse impossible. The interweb seems to be getting worse by the day, as all the normal checks on propriety are lost and people can rant gibberish under cover of anonymity. This can be a difficult environment into which to pour one’s speculations and tentative ideas. Even worse than trolls, to my mind, are the arrogant ones who immediately assume they have the answer to your problem, after thirty seconds’ thought, because they assume you’re stupid. Or the ones who think that what you’re missing in life is the opportunity to collaborate with them (by which they usually mean they want some reflected glory while you do all the work). The more clear and plain-speaking we are about our work, the more people tend to assume it’s as simple as we’ve painted it, so there’s a tension between engaging people and rendering that engagement useless. It’s a problem that never existed before, because the barrier to entry was too high for books and pamphlets. In the physical world there are barriers of another kind – nobody strolls into a lab or a church in the way they’d stroll into a shopping mall. Open science is about breaking down barriers like these, but although elitism is a bad thing, so is mob rule. I wonder what the psychological factors are that reward a more meritocratic interchange? How do you keep the barriers low while keeping the quality of discourse high? Someone should get a grant to look into this… 😉