Citizen science and The Conversation

In my previous post, I mentioned the subject of citizen science. For those of you unfamiliar with this practice, there are multiple primers available, including numerous books. Coincidentally, The Conversation just published an article about how the pandemic has impacted the citizen science practice. In fact, the article is titled “Citizen scientists are filling research gaps created by the pandemic“. 

I’m posting about the article for two reasons. First, I think it provides a nice introduction to citizen science, sometimes called community science. Second, I wanted to highlight The Conversation, a unique publication. It is an independent news organization and publisher whose content is authored by academics. Articles are written by faculty from higher education institutions around the globe. In other words, The Conversation brings you content straight from the experts. Is it mediated, yes, in the sense that articles are vetted by an editorial staff but published articles are not written by journalists.

Nonetheless, I would encourage you to check out the article linked above.  You can learn about citizen science and also take a deeper dive into The Conversation. Though the publication does lean left, politically, it serves a unique niche in the science news milieu.