This content is stewarded by @Liz Barry

Where did this term come from?

The term community science was first used in the 1980's and 1990's by environmental justice organizations Communities for a Better Environment and Global Community Monitor who were using low-cost monitoring equipment to document industrial emissions. Public Lab organized an event in 2014 with Global Community Monitor and Jackie James of Citizen Science Community Resources called "Community-based Science for Action." Public Lab traces the growth in the "community science movement" including the current explosion of usage in the term community science by institutions around the world to our joining forces with the existing environmental justice monitoring movement. For this story in a longer format, see Dosemagen's piece "Exploring the Roots: the evolution of civic and community science":

Community science in its original intent linked grassroots organizing, socially situated data collection, and accessible technology. This was the model of Communities for a Better Environment, Global Community Monitor (now-defunct), and the many Bucket Brigades that arose from it. The actions of community science can date as far back as the 1980s and early 1990s with models deeply rooted in environmental justice organizing, but the term itself we started using around 2013. In November 2014, aligned with Public Lab’s annual community science convening (the “Barnraising”) and the American Public Health Association annual conference in New Orleans, Global Community Monitor, Louisiana Bucket Brigade and Public Lab co-hosted the first “Community-based Science for Action Convening.” At this event, we featured community science as a track, highlighted how low-cost tools were used in the work of health and justice organizing, and brought together people from around the country that were strategically thinking about applying science to questions of industrial oversight.

Additional lineage

Popular epidemiology

Historical

In an even longer trajectory, community science is understood as a practice of inquiry, or action research, described by Kurt Lewin in the 1940's as ‘a spiral of steps, each of which is composed of a circle of planning, action and fact finding about the results of the action’ (Lewin, 1946/1948, p. 206). Lewin in turn was working in the pragmatic philosophical tradition established by John Dewey, in which knowledge is judged by its usefulness to human problems, and truth is socially shared and serves as the basis for what people hold in common (Dewey ). Dewey wrote about problem solving

Although western science has more recently established a tradition of participation from within its ranks known as "citizen science", professional science is the aberration in the historical record.

“Two centuries ago, almost all scientists made their living in some other profession. Benjamin Franklin (1706–1790) was a printer, diplomat and politician; Charles Darwin (1809–1888) sailed on the Beagle as an unpaid companion to Captain Robert FitzRoy, not as a professional naturalist. The rise of science as a paid profession is a relatively recent phenomenon, dating from the later part of the 19th century. However, citizen scientists have never disappeared, particularly in sciences such as archaeology, astronomy and natural history, where skill in observation can be more important than expensive equipment.” (Silvertown 2009 A New Dawn For Citizen Science) https://sci-hub.se/https://doi.org/10.1016/j.tree.2009.03.017

“Manual workers, tradesmen, and craftsmen, through a trial-and-error process, created the empirical basis for the scientific revolution of the seventeenth century” —from A People's History of Science: Miners, Midwives, and Low Mechanicks. The author, Clifford D. Connor in this interview, writes: "the empirical method, the experimental method, did not come from scholars but from the workshops of artisans"

"Definitional work done by researchers in the scientific authority-driven tradition has come to shape the institutionalization of citizen science at the expense of social movement-based citizen scientists’ visions of social and scientific change." Ottinger 2017 "Reconstructing or Reproducing? PDF

Components of Public Lab's model

• Organizing - local leadership
• Advocacy - campaign strategy

Why we need community science

By @liz, from previous presentations over many years:

To reduce harm caused by regulatory gaps

• Hotspots can be invisible within areas of "attainment," such that regulatory science becomes a barrier to the pursuit of equal human rights

To reduce harm caused by enforcement gaps

• Powerful corporate "neighbors" can evade accountability, and

To reduce harm caused by gaps in government data

• There is missing data at relevant scales about what matters

To reduce harm caused by the structurally unjust burden of proof

• Injustice heaped on environmental injustice

To support empirical observation

• Transforming anecdote to data, enabling people to speak languages of power

To support environmental journalism

• Coverage of complex issues with multiple stakeholders and types of knowledge

To support data-based decision-making at all levels

• The smallest units of government aren't equipped to collect or incorporate epistemologically diverse types of data

To support community organizing

• Because campaigns take years, and stress needs solidarity
• Exchange stories of the pursuit and achievement of justice

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Our first attempt in print at defining Public Lab's model was written up in 2015 by @/shannon and @/gretchengehrke: "…collaboratively-led scientific investigation and exploration to address community defined questions, allowing for engagement in the entirety of the scientific process. Unique in comparison to citizen science, community science may or may not include partnerships with professional scientists, emphasizes the community’s ownership of research and access to resulting data, and orients towards community goals and working together in scalable networks to encourage collaborative learning and civic engagement."

In a Public Lab and TEx worksession in summer 2019, a short list of shared concerns emerged:

• Form equitable partnerships
• Work in a transparent and accessible manner
• Focus on impact towards locally set goals