[DIYbio] Re: ECSA stakeholder roundtable

Hey Synenergeners,
yesterday I participated at the Do It Together (DITO) Science EU Program stakeholder roundtable.
This is what the website states about the project:

"Doing It Together Science (DITOs) will implement many innovative participatory event formats across Europe focusing on the active involvement of citizens in two critical areas: the cutting edge topic of biodesign and the pressing area of environmental monitoring. The project will advance the EU Responsible Research and Innovation agenda by moving beyond more traditional approaches into direct engagement that builds upon DIY, grassroots, and frugal innovation initiatives so that in the short and medium term we sustain localised capacity building and in the long term the effects of these grassroots efforts channel into policy action at different levels.
The consortium includes a pan-European network (European Citizen Science Association ECSA - linking practitioners, scientists, and supporting policy makers), SMEs (Tekiu; Eutema), universities (UCL; Université Paris Descartes - CRI; Université de Geneve), science galleries, museums and arts organisations (Kapelica Gallery / Kersnikova; Medialab-Prado; RBINS) and NGOs (Meritum Association; Waag Society). These organisations cross multiple countries and languages, enabling coverage of much of Europe in its native languages.
Dr Katrin Vohland (Naturkundemuseum Berlin), vice-chair of the European Citizen Science Association added: "DITOs provides a great opportunity not only to experiment with different pathways for different persons and communities to engage at different intensities but to enhance mutual learning for lasting effects at the interface of science and society.""

It sounds like smooth language, but in reality, when you meet the people on the spot, it becomes obvious that the only organisations that have any ties and reputation in grassroots citizen science projects are the Waag society and the art people from Kapelica Gallery. The rest of them were classical institutes that understand citizen science in a top down fashion in the style of:
Let the illiterate citizen do the laborous work for the scientists, they will be happy and grateful to make a contribution.
It made the impression as if DITO and ECSA use a lot of not or poorly understood buzzwords like
biomimicry, biodesign, do it together science, mutual learning, Responsible Research and Innovation, Open Science

During the event it got obvious that there is a schizm between grassroots and top down citizen science.
Martin Brocklehurst, Policy, Strategy, Governance and Partnerships for DITO for instance wants citizen science
in a strict top down fashion, citizens as mere data providers to research institutes. unpaid, of course, doing the laborous work in the field.
Somtimes Naturkundemuseum boss Vogel hovers over the scene like a zeppelin, far away and bloated beyond proportion, not involved in the discussion on citizen science and most likely not even noticing the contradictions in the DITO program. At one time a strange Journalist from the TAZ (communist newspaper in germany) grabbed me and questioned me on the relationship between islamic state terrorists and biohackers, which i never heard of to this point. He bought my book and may feature it in TAZ. (not a nice thought to be put in such a context, but at least it would boot the sales :)
Luckily, Waag society leader Lucas Evers a biohack-promoter and beneficiary was speaking up against attempts to criminalize biohacking.
  
In contrast to this top down attitude, Egle, a biohacker and science communicator from Technarium Hackerspace, Lithuania, came unpaid participant to the event. She told me her perspective:
_What does "responsible research" mean for your project?
including everyone in the research process who wants to be included - by doing citizen science, by helping to build lab tools, by organizing the activities; allowing all "citizens" to play a part, if they want to be a part of it
communicate the research process & the results to a wide audience, as clearly as possible, without jargon (blog)
educate everyone involved (as well as just hearing about the project) about what we're actually doing; all citizens have the right to understand, and to ask as many questions as they like
_How is "open science" relevant to your project?
"open" is at the core of what we do at Technarium. We believe the process of science (not just results) needs to be shared with each other, and with the public
open science allows other people to build upon our ideas & our work. What comes out of Technarium is totally free to grab
-          Where do you see common ground between Citizen Science and DIYScience?
both "communities" believe science can and should be done beyond the walls of academia
some DIY scientists are already citizen scientists - we are doing the same thing; except we are completely grass roots, but that is included in the definition of citizen science
we have the same goals: contribute to knowledge gaining, solve major problems like fossil fuels, disease etc., improve the scientific understanding of the public, push the boundaries of science

Another external visitor in the stakeholder meeting, Eugenio Battaglia, Hackeria member and a frequent participant of my workshops and events in Synenergene and co-creator of the Biocommons concept
complained to me about this unpaid work citizens are asked to do when taking part in RRI processes:

"Yea, I did not "work", like I didn't have a contract whatsoever : ^ ) like many of these consortia is not clear the type of engagement, but even if it were only correcting your text writing application trying to connect some value between the two thing, or neurotically translate the paper to in a night of august to put it online, that's for me working. There's no money nor contract involved, and I know! But I value also other types of currencies, like respect. Ah, yea, besides, traveling (not always reimbursed), organizing at my expense the event in Italy, and pretty much a lot of my time and attention connecting with people, and helping you. Yea, "I didn't worked", in fact I don't claimed to have had a contract. I don't blame it to you, of course. but the type of engagement and crowdsourcing of people's brain in such kind of consortia is not always clear. That's why I got nausea of this public stuff."
This struck me personally, as i was the one doing the RRI in the grassroots community for years, asking my friends, colleagues and citizens to participate in the events for synenergen, making the promise we
can actually influence EU comission politics on Citizen Science. I noted this down and read it during the stakeholder workshop to Ron Dekker, Open Science Policy Platform, European Commission, DG Research and Innovation He seemed to understand it and replied something like that we have to build a parallel structure for citizen science, as it is not going to work with this old people
from the institutes (yes, it has something to do with a generational shift in academia!)


In a response to the ECSA show-off in Naturkundemuseum hackteria posted this comment on their facebook page:
"The new schicki-micki scene of citizen science.
As often these days #culturalamnesia Someone yesterday told me: "You pay taxes, and you do citizen science for twenty years or something, then somebody win a grant to understand citizen science, stealing a lot of your concepts, idea and work, apparently ignoring your existence or the existence of what you represent, without respect. But then they know you and they offer you to participate (for free of course!), but only in events organised in the Tuesday morning(!)... because yeah, every citizen science activist is usually free during the week. He/she doesn't have a job. You know? They just go around and do everything for free, that's why we love them, they might think up there". It's a war between poor people, because at the end you cannot even blame any random researcher probably more prekariat than you who ends up doing part of his exploitational PhD or post doc cause the PI happen to be in such kind of consortia #sick #diwym
    https://www.facebook.com/hackteria/?ref=nf


Lucy Patterson, a unemployed grassroots citizen science practitioner (PhD. in moleular Biology and former Science Communicator). She is well known as has a long track record in Citizen Science in Berlin. She founded and leads the Berlin Science Hacking Community (http://www.meetup.com/Berlin-Science-Hacking/), which formed around Science Hack Day Berlin (http://berlin.sciencehackday.org/): a mix of scientists, designers, developers, artists and enthusiasts who hack together in their spare time on interdisciplinary projects that take DIY approaches to scientific ideas, data, or methodologies, repurposing/subverting/celibrating/questioning them for cultural/societal/scientific applications. As a volunteer organisation she says, they are very limited in scope, but their approach, accumulated expertise, and community would offer great potential for knowledge transfer and citizen science. In terms of policy support, their community would request:

_ a way to connect our community to academic science in a more substantial way (i.e. not just PhD students in their limited spare time). I would advocate for funding to support hackspaces, DIY bio labs, or science shops inside universities or (scientific/cultural) institutions that encourage serious collaboration between university/institution researchers at all career levels together with groups/communities from OUTSIDE of those universities/institutions. Good examples are the Imperial College Advanced Hackspace in London (https://www.imperial.ac.uk/advanced-hackspace/) and the Manchester Metropolitan Digital Innovation Space (http://diginnmmu.com/). Both provide support to mixed internal/external communities. Taking full advantage of the potential of these kind of collaborations would make everyone feel like their time was well spent.

_ funded positions for community managers (this work is time-consuming and usually very undervalued), either through grants or as staff positions, perhaps at the kind of hackerspaces mentioned above.

_ instead of only funding new initiatives, offer sustainability funding for pre-existing successful volunteer-run projects that might otherwise die out - rather like funding basic infrastructure for DIY science communities (funding space, personnel, some basic overheads) - this gives such communities the chance to professionalise and start applying for further funding. For example, it is only through this kind of funding that publiclab has become so successful.

_ maker communities bridge the line between citizen science and knowledge transfer - perhaps it makes sense for the two strands to sometimes join forces in terms of policy-making and funding.

_ similarly, DIY science/maker communities have a lot more to offer science than just the development of DIY data collection tools for volunteer data collection. But IMO it's still an open question - is citizen science ONLY about novel empirical research, or does it also include scientific knowledge transfer...?

_ to ensure that DIY science (typically volunteer-run projects/communities, without the resources or capacity to afford conference registration fees or to attend weekday meetings) can expect the same level of representation and support as any other stakeholder in the citizen science movement, if it is claimed that they are part of that movement. (added by Rüdiger: the last event by ECSA cost 380€ entrance fee and there were bodyguards shielding off the public from the venue)

Another person from EU comission level, Dr. Philippe Galiay, European Commission, DG Research and Innovation
told us during the workshop that the EU comission allocated 480.000.000 Euro to Citizen Science.
http://opendays2015.lodzkie.pl/dr-philippe-galiay/
       
Taken together, Naturkundemuseum Berlin, DITO and ECSA are showing off as biohackers and DIYbio people, althought they have no clue what they are talking about (with few exceptions).  
Most obviously, the claims of Biodesign is ill guided and most likely unsuccessfull attempt to override the
emancipatory and anti-authoritatian narrative inherent in biohacking culture, while maintaining the fancy aspects of the topic.
The appearance of DITO and ECSA was unprofessional, showed a lack of knowledge of their very topic citizen science and acted disrespectul and
exclusive to grassroots organisations and individuals. DITO seem to me to be a kind of "potemkin village" for EU commission to cash in using fashionable buzzwords.

In general, the concept and outcomes of RRI need to be critically reviwed. If there is no real world impact, RRI means stealing valuable time of volunteering citizens for nothing.

Lessons learned for Synenergene: We need to make sure to feed our insights and experience to the EU comission level so that our work was not in vain.
The citizen science policy must not be implemented in a top down fashion and the needs and potential of grassroots communities
need to be taken into account and adressed adequatly. This means grassroots Citizens Scientists need to be able to influence
where these 480M Euro will be spent. If not, people will understand quickly that they were tricked and then RRI will a dead concept very soon.
Further, a knowledge transfer between Synenergene RRI practices and DITO to prevent or maybe even reverse the ongoing degradation of the RRI idea is an important move.
Mr. Schomburg and the other policy makers we were working for all these years, the ball is in your field now, show us that RRI and citizen involvment in EU politics is a two way road.

Thanks for reading to the end.
Best,
Rüdiger Trojok