It’s time to get the scientist we wear inside

Ricardo Mutuberria usually says that he has been ‘biologist since his childhood’. And he remembers, for example, once he had been eating for time and he had not returned home, although he rained to pitchers: the family went looking for him and found him on the other side of the train tracks, soaked and absorbed in the contemplation of a spider. That insatiable curiosity, which we all shared to a certain extent during childhood and of which we have sometimes forgotten in adult life, has a lot to do with scientific calls and with the essence of science. Ricardo naturally studied biology to understand more depth than the nature that fascinated him, but the system disappointed him, because in a sense he kept him away from what interested him: “I had no opportunity to enter a laboratory to the age of 21,” he recalls. How are we going to encourage scientific careers if nobody can do science? Imagine a football player who cannot kick the ball, or a musician who is not allowed to play an instrument: Science is a way to understand life, the universe, what happens around us and in us through experiments. It’s experience! “Argues that this Biscay, which today is in charge of Biook, an association that pursues the democratization of science and organizes the BBK Open Science Festival.

While graduated, his professional career brought him into contact with initiatives such as New York Genspace, the First Community Laboratory of Biology. There were 14 or 15 -year -old children who turned up all summer to carry out projects for a competition, or made makers immersed in bioarte projects that, for example, used organic -class organisms, or a program that analyzed the bacteria of an infected space to see which metabolized the toxic and their reproduction. It also went through the Wacest of Amsterdam, in the Rode Barrio, another room where science embraced with the most varied disciplines: remember for example A fashion school student who wanted to spend his end of the career project on the use of fish skin to make clothing and organic colors produced by bacteria. Behind all these initiatives, the same learning and gamemixte struck that today he still finds in his workshops with school children: «I recently started asking if anyone wanted to become a scientist and nobody responded. We completed the workshop with our self -manufacturing microscopes and were enthusiastic: suddenly everyone wanted to be scientists. You take one of these microscopes of 15 euros in a park and you form a ban on children who want to see leaves, hair, flowers, water, ants … ».

Citizen and Community Science, a thriving movement in recent years, strives to ensure that everyone can do science if you are interested. «It has actually always existed. For example, consider amateur astronomy, or mycology, who have very valid people. And it will also continue to exist. What happened now is that Internet offers the possibility to mobilize more people and to communicate with people who do similar projects, And that has given rise to an explosion, ”says Francisco Sanz, executive director of Ibercivis, a foundation of Zaragoza that works to promote Citizen Science. Sanz quotes entity projects such as Make It Special, which brings the ‘maker’ movement into contact (the application of the philosophy ‘herself’ in the production of the engineering, the ENGINEning, adapting the Engineering. require.

“This movement has two legs,” says Sanz. On the one hand, The talent of society is used, which is increasingly being formed. There are many people who want to do science! On the other hand, The professional scientist can acquire an enormous amount of data, It has an incredible human power and often tackles problems that interests people more ».

Birds and Superheroes

The concepts of civil and community science often overlap, but are usually distinguished by their approach from top to bottom or from the bottom. In general, civil science refers more to Professional projects that include the participation of volunteers, many times via ‘apps’ or even games. The pioneering examples can be the veteran programs for the observation of birds in the United States, but today we find initiatives of this type everywhere and in very varied disciplines: the domestic harvest of strawberries to determine the air in Vitoria, the Barcelona mosquito for the brain of the brain mosen that the brain mugs that the brain mosen moshos that the brain mosen the brain mosen mosene mosen that the brain that allows the brain moshosen To collect data immediately and solidly. People who meet get the teams they need and start science in a house, a garage, wherever. But the two concepts are sometimes permeable, especially in a society such as the current, where many of those citizens have scientific training: for example, the community of La Almozara has a neighbor who is geologist.

Lowering materials and procedures is the other impulse that this movement needed. «Order The first human genome cost millions of dollars. Nowadays, sequencing is a genome in the order of thousands of dollars. As in that example, The costs of instruments and techniques have been considerably reduced. We could compare it to computer science: in the mid -twentieth century, practically no one had access to a computer that was a huge device, and today we have been a more powerful device in the palm, “says Mario Rodríguez Mestre, of Revelbiolab GRX, a Granada initiative to create a community laboratory to create a community laboratoryatorium” About the best possible way to the reality that surrounds us. In our workshops we see from children who are passionate about dinosaurs for the elderly who could not study and that, now that they have time, they stay informed of all scientific progress.

All who are involved in this movement agree that the traditional segregation of science and society is equal to an unfortunate waste of talent, a waste that society should not afford: «For those we are in, it seems to us that everyone knows civilian science, but it is not: There is still a long way to go and a lot of talent to take advantage of », Francisco Sanz concludes. And Ricardo Mutuberria, who keeps that enthusiasm in children by mentioning the experiments of their workshops (by checking how many microplastics we take to measure A knowledge society, with more environmental consciousness, more just and connected to life and also more critical, To set requirements with criteria for the rulers ».

Citizen Science Observatory

Invasive species and satellite archeology

The Ibercivis Foundation, with the support of the Ministry of Science, maintains the Observatory of Citizen Science in Spain, whose website collects approximately three hundred initiatives of this type: from river monitoring or detection of invasive species to satellite archeology or computers simulation caused by the crown Project. In the image, a moment of the fieldwork of the neighbors of the Almozara, in Zaragoza.

The festival that celebrates scientific curiosity

BBK Open Science is a festival that strives to spread and stimulate open and participatory science. Organized by Biook and BBK Kuna, it will celebrate its next edition in Bilbao from 8 to 15 June and allows you to rediscover the most fascinating slope of the scientific method: «In another edition, for example, people produced a detector to determine whether or not they had transgene -mutuberuberuberuberuber. People who had never made science did molecular biology and opened a very interesting dialogue ».