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Future Directions for Citizen Science and Public Policy FUTURE DIRECTIONS FOR CITIZEN SCIENCE AND PUBLIC POLICY Edited by Katie Cohen and Robert Doubleday Centre for Science and Policy June 2021 FUTURE DIRECTIONS FOR CITIZEN SCIENCE AND PUBLIC POLICY Edited by Katie Cohen and Robert Doubleday Centre for Science and Policy Future directions for citizen science and public policy Open access. Some rights reserved. This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial 4.0 International (CC BY- NC 4.0) licence. You are free to copy and redistribute the material in any medium or format and remix, transform, and build upon the material, under the following terms: you must give appropriate credit, provide a link to the licence, and indicate if changes were made. You may do so in any reasonable manner, but not in any way that suggests the licensor endorses you or your use. To view the full licence, visit: www.creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/legalcode The Centre for Science and Policy gratefully acknowledges the work of Creative Commons in inspiring our approach to copyright. To find out more go to:www.creativecommons.org The Centre for Science and Policy was set up at the University of Cambridge in 2009 with the mission to improve public policy through the more effective use of evidence and expertise. CSaP does this by creating opportunities for public policy professionals and academics to learn from each other. CSaP has a unique network of over 450 Policy Fellows and 1,750 experts contributing to more dynamic and diverse scientific input to the most pressing public policy challenges. Published by Centre for Science and Policy June 2021 © Centre for Science and Policy. Some rights reserved. 10 Trumpington Street Cambridge, CB2 1QA [email protected] www.csap.cam.ac.uk ISBN: 978-0-9932818-1-5 3 CONTENTS INTRODUCTION 5 Foreword 5 Sir Patrick Vallance Acknowledgements 8 Future directions for science and public policy: Introduction 12 Katie Cohen, Robert Doubleday and Matthias Meller 1. DEMOCRATISING SCIENCE AND POLICY 27 Citizen science and public policy making: A thought experiment 28 Alan Irwin From planets to policy 32 Chris Lintott Citizen science and wellbeing 41 Anna Alexandrova 2. CULTURES OF ENGAGEMENT 45 Citizen science in pandemic times: Lessons across east and west 46 Michiel Van Oudheusden Citizen science for the food system 55 Christian Reynolds, Libby Oakden, Sarah West, Rachel Pateman, Chris Elliott, Beth Armstrong, Rebecca Gillespie and Michelle Patel Citizens assemblies as a form of citizen science: A case study from Cambridge 70 Philipp Verpoort Using citizen science to respond to the policy challenges of the COVID-19 77 pandemic: A case study from healthcare improvement research Ruth Kern 3. PUBLICS, PARTICIPATION AND GOVERNANCE 87 Citizen infrastructures and public policy: Activating the democratic potential 88 of infrastructures Jennifer Gabrys Data governance for the 21st century: Citizen dialogue and the development 94 of data trusts Jessica Montgomery and Neil Lawrence Why is it so difficult to integrate citizen science into practice? 108 Muki Haklay Future directions for citizen science and public policy INTRODUCTION Foreword Sir Patrick Vallance In June 2018, shortly after taking up my post as Government Chief Scientific Adviser, I was invited to speak at the Centre for Science and Policy’s annual conference. I chose to talk about the significance of science to government, and offered some reflections on the relationship between science and policy, and on the importance of high-quality, relevant and timely science advice in improving outcomes for society and the economy. I argued that science must fundamentally aim to improve and enrich lives and keep people safe, and that in order to do this we must recognise that all citizens are increasingly both users of, and participants in, science. 1 Since then, we have been through one of the most traumatic and impactful events of the last hundred years. The direct relevance to all our lives of science (in all its guises) has never been more obvious – not only in the way science advice has informed government decision making, and in the collective effort of the research community to develop diagnostics, treatments and vaccines, but also in the way we have all sought to shape and understand the impact of huge societal impositions and restrictions on health, wellbeing and the economy. This could not have happened without the collective participation of citizens across the UK and around the world; and it could not have happened without access to data. From early on in the pandemic, we saw how crowdsourced data could help generate valuable insights into the spread of the disease, and this has only grown in importance. Later on, we saw large numbers of people participating in trials to identify effective treatments for COVID-19 and 5 Future directions for citizen science and public policy to test the effectiveness of vaccines. We were able to learn from our experience and from that of others, and to use this to improve and adapt our response. Without this level of engagement in science, it would have taken much longer to generate the evidence needed to understand what worked best. The pandemic has shown clearly how, as citizens, we are all participants in science; and we are certainly all beneficiaries of its outputs. It has also demonstrated that although science is about knowledge creation and challenge, first and foremost it can help solve real problems and is relevant to all walks of life. We must not fall into the trap of thinking of science as an elite body of knowledge, understandable by only a few and beyond the reach of ordinary people. Professional scientists must reflect the diversity of the society they serve, and must also ensure that science is accessible and understandable to all. And as scientists in government, we need to work across boundaries, not content just to apply scientific method for its own sake, but framing problems in a way which enables us to develop solutions – solutions which can be understood and used by policy makers to improve outcomes for the citizen. Often the knowledge needed to do this is already there. The ability to bring together evidence drawn from the current body of knowledge, in a way that is relevant, timely and built on excellence, is a critical element of the scientific process. To do this, science must be inclusive, rigorous, transparent and accessible, providing an opportunity for others to test, challenge and validate the conclusions. An absolute priority during the pandemic has been to ensure that these principles are embedded in the science advice provided to government, and that we learn and improve our ability to do this as we go along. And we need to recognise uncertainty, express it clearly, and indicate what is needed to try to address that uncertainty. 6 Future directions for citizen science and public policy This collection of essays embodies these principles, and demonstrates the many and varied ways in which citizen science can improve and enrich all our lives, delivering better science and better outcomes for all. I am very grateful to CSaP for bringing together this diverse group of authors to share their experience of citizen science, enabling us all to better understand the potential it has to contribute to public policy. Sir Patrick Vallance is UK Government Chief Scientific Adviser (GCSA) and Head of the Government Science and Engineering (GSE) profession. Endnotes 1. https://www.csap.cam.ac.uk/news/article-keynote-lecture-sir-patrick-vallance/ 7 Future directions for citizen science and public policy Acknowledgements The Centre for Science and Policy (CSaP) was launched in 2009 and has since pioneered new ways of bringing academia and government together to address public policy challenges. In spring 2019, in response to policy makers’ questions about citizen engagement and public trust, we were keen to explore how a third voice could be brought into the conversation: the voice of the citizen. Fortunately for this project, CSaP was already working closely with two people who have gone on to help shape this collection. Anna Alexandrova, a philosopher of science, was leading the Expertise Under Pressure research project investigating the authority of experts. Jennifer Gabrys, an environmental sociologist, was working on new modes of citizen participation in environmental issues with a project funded by the European Research Council called Citizen Sense. The support of Anna and Jennifer and growing interest from policy makers in our network crystallised the opportunity for CSaP to explore the potential for citizen science to contribute to public policy. Though we knew citizen science was a topical issue, we did not anticipate the traction it would gain as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic. Science- policy relations have sustained newfound pressures over the past year, sparking further interest in citizen involvement in scientific and political processes. We hope this collection will raise awareness among policy makers about the success and variety of citizen science approaches, and point to concrete ways that citizen science methodologies can contribute to effective policy making. This project would not have been possible without support from the Expertise Under Pressure research project at the University of Cambridge. We would like to thank Principal Investigator Anna Alexandrova, Project 8 Future directions for citizen science and public policy Administrator Una Yeung and the rest of the team for enabling us to take forward our interest in citizen science. We are grateful to THE NEW INSTITUTE for its generous funding of Expertise Under Pressure and the University of Cambridge Centre for Research in the Arts, Social Sciences and Humanities (CRASSH) for hosting it. Over the last two years, CSaP has convened discussions that have raised many of the ideas that are fleshed out in this collection.
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