Project description
Minimising the knowledge gap between science and society through Citizen Science
Our civilization has benefited tremendously from fundamental science. However, the knowledge gap between research and society seems to increase, spawning misconceptions about the content, context and mission of science. The EUfunded REINFORCE project aims to engage and support more than 100 000 citizens to increase their awareness of science and their attitude towards it, eliminating anti-intellectual beliefs in society and providing citizens with the intellectual ammunition needed to become critical consumers of scientific knowledge. This goal will be achieved through four Citizen Science projects in the field of frontier Physics, where citizen scientists will be able to take part in the process of scientific discovery producing high-quality data and adding to our scientific knowledge.
Objective
Large Research Infrastructures in the field of frontier Physics have opened new observational windows to the universe and explore the structure of matter in extreme detail. These advancements require high levels of expertise and sophistication. On the other hand, society, lacking this level of expertise, merely observes these developments through outreach activities but does not actively contribute in the development of new scientific knowledge. This fact induces a gap between frontier science and society that can spawn misconceptions about the content, context and mission of public funded frontier science. The REINFORCE project comes to answer to the questions: a) Can citizens contribute in the development of new knowledge in frontier science? b) Can citizens apply this new knowledge to solve societal problems? c) How can we integrate citizen feedback? REINFORCE goes beyond outreach programmes and aims to minimize the gap between Society and Large Research Infrastructures in the field of Physics through the: i) development and implementation of 4 cutting-edge Citizen Science projects in the fields of Gravitational Waves, Neutrino Astronomy, Particle Physics and Cosmic Ray interplay with geoscience and archaeology with citizens: Citizens will analyze data and support the optimization of sensitive detectors in order to enhance their discovery potential. ii) implementation of a participatory design in citizen science: Communities of citizens will be developed, trained and empowered to contribute in the scientific mission of Large Research Infrastructures. iii) effective inclusion of sensitive citizen groups as well as the active interaction with secondary and tertiary education. iv) Aggregating best practices in a pan-European policy roadmap. REINFORCE aspires to engage more than 100,000 citizens across Europe and beyond, to help enhance society’s science literacy and awareness and to contribute in the production of scientific knowledge by citizens for society.
Keywords
Funding Scheme
RIA - Research and Innovation actionCoordinator
56021 Cascina
Italy