Harmen: citizen Science
met Mario Parade, he couldn't be here.
Why
fablab and citizen science? Both about research and finding out new
stuff. People coming into a fablab are interrested usually in that.
It is a lab, so it is the environment with the equipment to do research.
They
are citizens, usually, coming in to do something new. Amateur research.
There is a long history of that, in the old days science was a side
activity.
Salon
tradition: citizens getting to see new things. This idea comes back in
science cafe's. The discussion about science used to be more on an
accesible level, because scientists used to be amateurs themselves. Now
that is more difficult, because scientists are more specialized.
Science
shops: connecting citizens to science. Had an office where people could
ask questions, which is a one way information stream. Scientific
outreach is also about showing to the audience, not about participation.
There
are now crowd research projects, but they usually use only the citizens
computer power or time, not their intellect and ideas.
How can we make people really participate in science, bring science back to individual people.
Improve
the tings that are there, like training people to analyze data, and
suggest topics to the researchers. Or maybe citizen initiated science
topics.
Connecting Fablabs to science shops, transition towns etc.
Getting
citizens access to scientific publications is really important. Open
data. Maybe we can think of ways to arrange access to these closed
journals. Maybe we can buy access to this knowledge as a Fablab network.
We
all have a display of things that are made in a Fablab, of things that
have been made there. Why not add research examples to that display.
Science
used to be intuitive, and is now often about more abstract things, like
quantum mechanics. How can we translate those topics to citizens. One
of the first things of Amersfoort University is the course science for
non scientists. About scepticizm: is it true what I found? Using
statistics, etc.
The
article by Feyerabend, called "against method". F says "if I stick with
all rules of science, progress is impossible. The only way for progress
in science is anarchy". We should research this, we can do anarchy.
Things
we can learn from the scientific world. One thing is the way we
document our findings. Also, keeping a lab journal, which we are doing
now, at this conference.
What more do we need? Instruments:
cheap
computation we have, skills differ per lab, advanced fabrication tools
we should work on some more. Sometimes we need far more precision than
we have now. An example is the OpenPCR, look it up. Also OpenROV,
underwater robot for marine research. It's at kickstarter. Pachube
sensor network for acquiring data of air quality, in a global network.
Waiting still for a cheap spectrometer.
Discussion:
What about history and geology? You can do history without a fablab, geology could be nice to connect to fablab.
PeterH:
start small. think about that knowledge is a wide container. What kind
of knowledge do we need for a Fablab? Material knowledge for instance.
There is a lot of knowledge there, but not scientific knowledge, let's
add that.
H: Fablab is a place to learn or do almost anything, not only make.
Can we make the Fablab into a place where we can criticize eachother and regard that as help, respecting eachothers efforts.
We don't need to be cited, we need to be excited.
Advantage
for grassroots science is that we don't have to reinvent everything.
The most exciting discoveries are made in the borders of research
fields. Fields come together, generalists come back into the picture.