In Praise of Enthusiastic Amateurs
Experts have their place. Amateurs can meaningfully contribute to science and so much more.
There’s a place for experts, to be sure. Many questions in the world today are dizzyingly complex and both specialists and supercomputers are needed to answer them.
But ordinary humans with access only to normal computers (or no computers at all) are still curious, after all. And nerdy. And adept at pattern recognition, or Googling, or paying close attention to detail. There are many questions that enthusiastic amateurs can (and happily will) help to answer.
For the last three years, I, along with hundreds of others around the region, have been helping with the Pacific Northwest Bumblebee Atlas project: a systematic community science effort led by the Xerces Society for Invertebrate Conservation to document bumblebees and their habitats across Idaho, Oregon, and Washington, with a particular focus on species that are in decline. Volunteers choose a 50x50 km grid cell from a map of the region, and spend a day in a field of flowers catching, photographing, and releasing what might be the cutest insects in the world.
Sound dreamy? It is. And family friendly, and a fun way to explore. You can do it! Go sign up!
Yes, there are sideboards. There are rules and expectations. You might have to brush up on your Pacific Northwest wildflower identification skills (but haven’t you been meaning to do that anyway?). You don’t have to be able to ID the bees correctly; you can try, but an expert will verify your sightings. The main thing is to get good photos — and that’s very important.
The point is that Xerces, banking on enthusiastic amateurs, has set this project up in such a way that anyone with a camera, a rig, and some time and patience can make a serious contribution to pollinator conservation in the Pacific Northwest. And hundreds of people have submitted thousands of verified bumblebee records, dramatically updating the baseline knowledge for this genus in this region. And that’s pretty awesome. And the Bumblebee Atlas is just one of hundreds of communityscienceprojects all over the world that channel the interest and goodwill of amateurs to answer important questions.
I’ve met scientists who scoff at community science, saying that amateur data will never be high quality enough to use. I say, it depends on how carefully you define your questions, and what your goals are. If one of your goals is to cover a lot of territory in detail — to find details across a broad area that are too fine to be detected by satellites — there’s simply no substitute for eyes on the ground. And paying “real” scientists to cover all that ground quickly becomes infeasible. But there are regular people who want to learn, and to help. So tighten up your protocols and lean on them!
There have always been amateur naturalists who’ve made important contributions to their various nerdy niches — indeed, science was “invented” and shaped by enthusiastic amateurs of means, you might say. The recent advent of internet forums, ID and measurement and navigation apps, observation portals like iNaturalist, and the powerful camera-in-your-pocket that is the smartphone have together made amateur scientific contributions more accessible than ever before — accessible for both potential contributors, and for the experts who (usually) define the questions and crunch the numbers.
There’s something wonderful about being outside in the sunshine with a handful of other curious people, learning together about the world we inhabit. I love taking a photo of a plant that is mysterious to me, uploading it to Facebook, and asking a community of plant enthusiasts if it’s native to Oregon. Sure, there are other ways to answer the same question, and certainly, you get your fair share of trolls, red herrings, and people responding “I don’t know” (then don’t respond! yeesh), but the community is part of the fun. (And then you go verify 😏).
The fact that so many people, trolls and all, want to learn and learn together and share and help and joke and keep learning and be corrected and pay it forward — that inspires me. How might we channel that curious, enthusiastic amateur energy more broadly, in our sciences and also in our politics, our communities, our arts and histories and watersheds?
In a world of specialization, smug experts, and silos, I’m so glad that conversations like these still happen, and, through twists and turns, eventually get where they need to go:
Ah yes, of course, Phanias harfordi (maybe). Anybody reading got a better ID? Please, let the community know.
Enjoy! Sincerely,
an amateur
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Christina deVillier is a writer, a gardener, and a fourth-generation explorer of northeast Oregon's mountains, canyons, and communities.