Gamifying science

I’m quoted at the end of a WIRED UK piece on citizen science. This is a longer version of my response to questions.

Q. In what ways does crowdsourcing scientific data analysis offer new opportunities for scientific research, and what potential pitfalls does it create?

The cynical reply is that it offers a chance for science to tap into a lot of free labour. We might see it as “Big society science” in a really negative way which devalues the work of professional scientists and only really offers the public very low-skilled mundane tasks as opposed to meaningful interactions with expertise.

Less cynically, we might hope that the postdoc who used to have to do all that data collection can be freed to do something more interesting (and which applies their skills more effectively). Also, that the data collection can be an invite for a member of the public to learn more about the science and to feel involved in a way which may well lead to more developed interaction. I think the Zoo projects and OPAL have both been quite successful in this, for example.

More pragmatically, there are perhaps pitfalls in terms of quality. I heard of one citizen science project which ended up switching back to a more traditional model of employing professionals because they had to do so much work checking crowdsourced data anyway. But equally, some projects find that they gain a lot from a more tapping into the wisdom and more diverse geographical positions of the crowd. Our notions of what we mean by quality are worth reflecting upon at times, and public engagement can help us do this. It often depends on what the project’s aiming to do. This sort of model doesn’t fit all research projects. Even when it does, it’ll fit in different ways.

Q. Would you agree that the problems tackled by crowdsourced data analysis thus far are the low-hanging fruit, and if so, is this an inherent problem with the approach?

I’m not sure I’d say it was low hanging fruit, or an inherent problem. I think there’s scope for developing  ideas of what we mean by crowdsourcing science and how we do it, and we’ve already seen a lot of innovation, but that you can’t expect it to work across the whole of science simply because science is a very diverse beast, bits of it work very differently from others.

Q. To what extent is crowdsourcing data analysis more about generating awareness of an issue than doing good science?

I’m not sure I’d say it was one or the other – maybe ‘generating a sense of involvement’ is a better phrase than ‘awareness’ – it can be both though. It entirely varies. At its best, I think, citizen science generates a sense of involvement, builds awareness of a range of scientific and science policy issues, does good science and invites people to get more deeply engaged in the political processes which build how we do science as well as learning more about the natural world (and possibly themselves) through science. It can do other things too though, social inclusion for example, or involvement in environmental policy, or ways for citizens to share and do science with one another without any need to feed back to the elite establishment.

Q. With GeneGame and Fraxinus, researchers are gamifying part of the scientific method. If this generates useful data, should this be welcomed or are there risks associated with this trend?

If it works, yes, go ahead. I’d like to see our ideas of ‘game’ pushed a bit in such work, though I think the best projects are already doing that.

Q. Does the failure to crowdsource the methodology as well as the data analysis, an unavoidable result of gamifying the problem, reduce the usefulness of current citizen science approaches?

No. But I’d like to see projects which try involve people with political processes of science at least, if not methods too, otherwise the effect can be rather to paint the public in the role of player, not builder of science.

I’m tempted to argue that we can’t really ‘gamify’ science because the rules of the game of science are never set. Science communication, like science itself, should always be about discussing and unpicking any rules we might work to. But I have hope that people can build games which listen as well as educate and/ or collect data.

Playing games with science

When you are angry, how do you respond? Do you (a) vent it there and then, (b) read, (c) work out (d) tell yourself there are way more important things to get annoyed about than a bloody Find Your Spirit Animal Facebook app from Greenpeace (which the above screen shot is from) and wonder off to do something more useful, but still let it bug you for months and months so eventually you combine it with a load of other petty grumps and write a ranty column about it?

I choose (d). If you have an iPad and live in the UK you can read it in Popular Science UK magazine. If not, it’ll be up on their blog soon, and I’ll edit in a link here when it is.

It’s not the silliness of the idea of a spirit animal which annoys me, it’s the lack of attempt to engage audiences with any knowledge about the animals this app is meant to be promoting the preservation of. I don’t want to pick on Greenpeace though, it’s not like they are alone in applying a rather limited approach to digital “interactivity” (perhaps better call it “activity”, interactivity requires space to listen). Have a go at Energy Ninjas and Richie’s World Of Adventure, for example. A recent Greenpeace campaign even neatly parodied how patronising this sort of content can be, with Angry Bergs. Plus, we’ve been rather bluntly “gamifing” science for a while, way before the web: This one’s from 1804.

I’m tempted to argue that we shouldn’t turn science into games because the rules are always up for debate; we should be discussing and unpicking those rules instead. But that’s a bit simplistic. I think there are ways games can be used well in science communication, and are (the Pop Sci column references some more inspiring examples). Still, I want to see them taken more seriously as a medium for sharing, doing and exploring science. I want to see games that work to connect players with data and invite get them to do creative things with it; games that listen as well as educate. I want to see more ambition and more respect for audiences.