2022.Feb.16

REPORTS

The 6th BAIRAL Research Meeting for 2021 Report on “Science and the Internet”

On December 9th, 2021, BAIRAL (a study group organized by research assistants of the B’AI Global Forum) held its 6th meeting for 2021 online. The guest speaker was Associate Professor Yuko Ikkatai at Kanazawa University, who has been investigating collaborative research involving both experts and non-experts, such as citizen science and crowdfunding by researchers. In this meeting, she gave a presentation on what citizen science and crowdfunding are with foreign and domestic examples, and this was followed by participants asking and discussing related topics.

According to Dr. Ikkatai, citizen science is a kind of research where citizens and stake holders participate in research activities, and she especially focuses on the participation of non-experts in the processes of obtaining funds, collecting data, and categorizing and analyzing it. Although such collaborations have a long history, they have been particularly promoted in recent years because of the advent of the Internet and the necessity to tackle large-scale and complex projects. There are a variety of well-organized online platforms for citizen science in Europe and the U.S., and the outcomes of some projects have received good evaluation in science communities.

While such participatory research projects have been gaining attention in Japan as well, there were some skeptical opinions on citizen science in the discussion. One participant, for example, indicated the danger of citizen science having a bias for research appealing to the mass, thus reducing the diversity in research themes. Also, since the evaluation systems for collaborative works have not yet been organized, there is ambiguity about how to objectively and ethically evaluate the activities and outcomes of such projects.

As mentioned above, regarding participatory research projects, many problems must be solved, and more investigations should be conducted. It is also true that citizen science and crowdfunding have the potential to energize science communities and develop scientific research, so it is necessary to continuously discuss how to make the environment better.