Is ‘grassroots’ citizen science a front for big business? | Aeon Essays

"It might style itself as a grassroots movement but citizen science is little more than a cheap land-grab by big business....

Citizen science also needs to be understood as occupying the suburbs of a more sprawling reform movement known as open science. Open science is meant to be modular, standardised and capable of execution and scrutiny en masse and online; it’s all about pushing science to be more transparent, to break out of the lab and exit the ivory tower. As a consequence, criticism and kibitzing of research should occur at all stages, from the first literature reviews and data analysis to posted drafts and final online papers. But open science builds off platform capitalism too, where ‘openness’ is regarded as complementary to ownership. In one sense, citizen science provides the requisite reserve army of labour required for the new open-science regime...."