In my previous post I asked whether it was time to up our standards to reflect the growing importance of the “citizen scientist“. I started by thinking about what I thought was important and … where I could/should do better. This may be entirely the wrong way forward – but I think it is worth publishing for discussion.
A charter for citizen scientist websites & blogs.
Revision 0.1
Date: 2014-01-06
Aim
Free & fair debate: The aim of this charter is to ensure that charter members adhere to known standards supporting the free and fair debate & critique which is the foundation of scientific inquiry.
Your obligation
To inform readers how much you conform to this charter: All charter members shall abide by all the following on all their content unless they abrogate from specific parts of this commitment in which case they must make this clear on the website or blog and any content as appropriate.
Membership
Membership is open to all non-governmental bodies, voluntary groups & individuals who agree to their obligation under this charter.
Removal of Membership: We retain the right to remove membership where members do not meet the aims or standards of this charter.
Website Content.
Clarify fact from opinion: Scientific debate is by its nature a mixture of facts, inferences & opinions regarding those facts and inferences. Opinion is part of scientific debate but websites or blogs must clearly distinguish between content which is intended to be of a factual nature and that which is opinion.
Attribute sources: All opinions and any facts for which there is no commonly accepted proof (or well known source) should be attributed in such a manner that their source can be located.
Detail workings: All calculated numbers, figures or graphs should have their working detailed or made available on request so that they can be reproduced.
Check content: All content should be checked before publication and details of checks displayed on the website or blog.
Date content: All articles must have a publication date.
Facts not attacks
Avoid personal attacks: articles referring to specific people or groups of people should not use derogatory language or attack them unless strictly relevant, but even then, these must be backed by referenced facts and clearly indicated as the opinion of a named author.
Right of Reply
Inform those named: named individuals or groups should be informed (where practical) of content when published.
Give them a right to reply: named individuals or groups should be given a right of reply.
Revisions
Detail revisions: substantial changes to the content must be detailed with the content providing details of the change and date/time of its publication.
Amend comments on any revised material: comments referring to any changed content should be edited to make this clear and/or the commenter informed. The commenter must be allowed to remove or edit their comment.
Attribution
Detail the content author: For a website or blog predominantly by one author, their name must be given in the “about” section together with a brief resume of their scientific background. The author of any articles not by the main author should be detailed together with relevant background information.
Avoid anonymity: because anyone referring to your work needs to know its source or as much as they can do about the source. So, although some authors may wish to be anonymous, their articles must be clearly marked as such together with as much information about the background of the individual as is practical.
Comments
Allow comments: charter members must provide a means to publicly comment on all content either by content comments or e.g. a guest book.
All comments should be displayed unless they break rules: all comments making substantive points about the content must be displayed either along with the content or on an easily accessed page such as a guest book. Comments should not be removed or edited (except typos) unless they explicitly break rules.
Display comment rules: the website or blog shall have a list of rules for comment available to commeters. These may be changed at any time and retrospectively applied.
Apply comment rules fairly: charter members should apply these rules fairly to all commenters whether or not they support the views of the website or blog.
No personal attacks: comments which attack other commenters or individuals, rather than addressing issues being discussed, should be removed.
Allow comment deletion: commenters must be allowed to have their comments removed.
Detail comment edits: comments may be edited to remove minor typo corrections but otherwise all comments that are edited or removed shall have a notice displayed instead giving the moderator’s tag and reason for the edit.
Detail comments affected by rule changes: if the rules are changed after a comment is submitted, and comments are edited, the edits must make it clear that a rule change was introduced.
Provide an appeals procedure: The website or blog shall have an appeals procedure for edited or removed comments together with contact details.
Archiving
Content must remain available: website content together with substantive comments (or a summary thereof) must be stored in such a manner it is available to the next generation of citizen scientists.
URLs must be stable: urls are a ubiquitous way to reference internet material. However these change … [Author: not sure what to put here. Please help by adding your comments below!].
Communication
You must be contactable: the website or blog must provide a simple means to contact the editor either through a contact form, email, telephone or address.
Funding
Detail substantial funding: all substantial sources of funding & contributions (such as donations of time or other resources) should be detailed on the website or blog.
Detail government & commercial funding: the charter member must detail the value and/or percentage split in funding between:
- Government or public sector organisations
- Commercial funding
- Large contributions (exceeding $100 in value)
- Small donations
- Anonymous donations
Disputes under this charter
Publish disputes procedure: website or blogs will publish details of their disputes resolution procedure regarding content on their website or blog.
Deal with them: all disputes will be dealt with in a timely manner.
Charter logo
Display the Logo: any website or blog which is a member of the charter organisation may display the logo & link prominently on the website or blog.
Non-members: may not display the logo or in any other way suggest they belong to the charter organisation without our agreement. In practice this means that where there is no dispute about material produced under this charter that it will not need the logo removed if a member leaves.
Now the hard part – how much of this charter do I abide by on this blog?
- Definitely 100% voluntary – so OK there.
- Free and fair debate – OK
- Clarify facts from opinion – that is difficult – can anyone reading this blog know how much is based on facts and how much is opinion. I doubt it.
- Attribute sources … I could do better.
- detail workings … it’s easier to do that when you know the expertise of those reading. Something obvious to one person could need detailed explanation to another.
- Check content …
the only person who will check this is me. (checked by Alexander) - Dated .. yes, it’s automatic.
- Avoid personal attacks – sceptics are actually not too bad and usually do focus on “what someone does” rather than just attack them. But sometimes we may go too far.
- Right of reply – yes – but no one has ever asked.
- Revisions – I often correct typos after publication – but once I know people have read I avoid any revisions.
- Author – I just assume people think it is me. Perhaps I should be more explicit?
- Comment rules … I don’t usually edit or delete comments so I’ve never developed “rules”. Perhaps that is something I should do?
- Appeals procedure … I suspect mine is “post your criticism on the blog and if people agree with you then I’m wrong”.
- Contactable – yes
- Funding – no (just me)
- Archiving & URLs. This is perhaps one of the biggest failings of citizen scientists compared to our academic colleagues. Even on my own websites, I’ve made changes that meant that all the URLs were broken and any reference using them would fail. Science is knowledge, but it is only knowledge if it can be accessed and that is what a stable URL should provide. As for “backup” … what would happen if WordPress or another blog provider were to suddenly close its servers – all that material would be lost. Yes there is the wayback machine – but ???
What is important for citizen scientists is to take a few courses. As Eli wrote a while back
Eli, I would argue almost the complete opposite because what sceptics or citizen scientists have in abundance is perspective, what we often lack is detailed knowledge. So yes there may be a need for for education … but there is no point “the blind teaching the blind to see”. There is no point being far more educated on what amounts to following academics down an intellectual blind cul-de-sac.
And I would argue there is a huge advantage in approaching a subject afresh without any preconceptions as to what the “right” answer should be. We may not do it as elegantly, but sometimes the rough approach gets solutions when elegance does not.
There is after all a great tradition of ideas cross fertilising from one area to another stimulating new ideas and progressing science. Paradoxically the “deep-narrow” mindset of the academics means they are not as good at bring new ideas to bear as the “broad-shallow” approach of the citizen scientist.
You cannot have perspective w/o detailed knowledge. What you are arguing for is Bart Simpson science.
You get perspective by standing back … not by being too close.
It’s the saying “can’t see the wood for the trees”. If you are too close to the wood you cannot see the trees.
The reason this is important is because if you concentrate on one area, you are unlikely to see the advances made in other areas and so will tend to stagnate in the one subject. In contrast, if you tend to jump between subjects, it can be very easy to see how ideas can be adapted from quite disparate subjects into other areas … but you may lack the detailed knowledge to make the most of this disparate knowledge in a particular field.
Sceptics are extremely good at viewing climate from the perspective of people who have a lot of experience in other fields. Climate researchers are probably (should be) far more able in their particular field of study.
In theory, you would get the best of both worlds, if you could bring the two together. Unfortunately climate researchers have rejected the help from sceptics – who I agree haven’t exactly sold ourselves well – but to be fair – we haven’t known how to help and certainly there wasn’t much enthusiasm to ask for our help.