Bridging the Gap
FEATURES
◀ FIG . 1 : The landing page of the 4 citizen science projects developed in the framework of REINFORCE . Top left : GWitchHunters ; Top right : Deep Sea Explorers ; Bottom left : New Particle Search at CERN ; Bottom right : Cosmic Muon Images .
Scientific research in the frontiers of Physics , has provided humankind with breakthrough discoveries which help unravel the nature of the Cosmos from the very big to the very small . Unlike in the time of Galileo , when a motivated individual with a telescope could change the way we perceive the world , nowadays , research in fundamental Physics is increasing in complexity and progresses through sensitive experiments operated by international collaborations in highly sophisticated , usually public funded , Large Research Infrastructures . The operation of such sensitive large-scale experiments poses considerable challenges ; scientific discovery depends critically on being able to cope with the “ avalanche ” of very large datasets produced by the experiments and to “ mine ” it .
Gap between cutting edge research and public understanding of science ?
Despite the tremendous progress of science and its impact in our lives , a knowledge gap can be observed between fundamental research and society . A gap which might help spawn misconceptions about the content , context and mission of science and may contribute to citizens to fall prey to the lure of pseudoscience which spawns anti-intellectual beliefs and attitudes . The large effort taking place in education and outreach initiatives to increase public understanding of science has borne fruit , yet , while being effective in drawing students ’ and citizens ’ attention to science , outreach initiatives rarely provide opportunities for a sustainable interaction between research and society .
From outreach programs to citizen science
Moving beyond outreach , the emerging field of Citizen Science ( CS ), defined as scientific research conducted with the participation of the public [ 1 ] can be envisioned to act as the vehicle which can effectively bridge the gap between Large Research Infrastructures and society , providing the framework and tools for effective and sustainable interaction between them . Such an approach has potential to create a mutually beneficial situation ; On one hand , researchers can receive help and support to refine their instruments and advance their research , as citizens ’ contributions may be useful in combination with or to retrain machine learning algorithms . On the other hand , citizens are trained in frontier science , they are in constant connection with researchers through dedicated communities of practice , they provide their feedback , they voice their concerns , and they actively contribute to the exploration of the boundaries of knowledge . This approach leads to several questions such as : Are citizens actually able to develop new knowledge and make a contribution in the frontiers of Physics ? How do we design a citizen science project which balances social inclusion and scientific efficiency ?
Research infrastructures for citizens in Europe
To tackle these questions The REINFORCE EU 1 project constitutes a three-year long exercise for the implementation of state-of-the-art level online citizen science [ 2 ] in large research infrastructures . To achieve this goal , REINFORCE , in collaboration with researchers from major European Research Infrastructures launched 4 citizen science “ demonstrators ”: GWitchHunters 2 , Deep Sea Explorers 3 , New Particle Search at CERN 4 and Cosmic Muon Images 5 hosted in the online citizen science platform Zooniverse 6 and requesting citizens ’ support to optimize detector characterization and particle reconstruction algorithms in the Virgo Gravitational Wave detector 7 , in the KM3NeT neutrino telescope 8 , the ATLAS experiment at CERN 9 and the Diaphane muon detector 10 respectively . Following a contributory citizen science approach ,
1 https :// www . reinforceeu . eu /
2 https :// www . zooniverse . org / projects / reinforce / gwitchhunters
3 https :// www . zooniverse . org / projects / reinforce / deep-sea-explorers
4 https :// www . zooniverse . org / projects / reinforce / new-particle-search-at-cern
5 https :// www . zooniverse . org / projects / reinforce / cosmic-muon-images
6 https :// www . zooniverse . org /
7 https :// www . virgo-gw . eu /
8 https :// www . km3net . org /
9 https :// atlas . cern /
10 http :// www . diaphane-muons . com /
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