Abstract
In many ways, science has never been as popular as it is now. With an ever-increasing number of popular science books on everything from astronomy to climate change and evolution and entire TV channels devoted to science output, the public seems spoilt for choice. However, paradoxically, there is also an increasing disconnect between science—and scientists—and society, and this is certainly evident in the life sciences. This disconnect comes in two forms: interest and level of knowledge. Indeed, one has only to look at the 2012 US presidential election campaign to see the lack of scientific knowledge possessed by many of the political elite about topics such as climate change. If high profile scientific topics are still so widely misunderstood by those in the public eye, it is unsurprising that there is such a lack of understanding of, and interest in, scientific topics in the general public. It should, in theory, be the easiest to address this discontent in subjects like zoology, where the evidence is all around us and can be easily seen, appreciated, and studied by the world’s citizens.
Highlights
We argue that recent technological developments mean that citizen science has never had as much relevance, or potential, as it does
Citizen science in zoology is a product of our time
Despite clear advantages, citizen science approaches have numerous drawbacks related to, amongst other things, the reliability of data and the statistical issues that can arise from the analysis of presence-only data
Summary
Citizen science in zoology is a product of our time. Historically, there was no such thing as a “professional” naturalist, and nonprofessionals readily collected data and published in major scientific journals well into the 20th century. Citizen science makes use of “citizens” (whether members of the general public of dedicated volunteers) rather than professional scientists to undertake data collection for, often, large-scale scientific studies. International Journal of Zoology have given the scientific world the potential to connect with the public in easy and exciting ways and to access a huge pool of volunteer data collectors.
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