Harnessing our collective intelligence.

Science is meant to be open.​

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From the time when the  Royal Society was established in the XVII century, science has been meant as an alternative to trust in authority. Rather than believing results simply because someone told us, the idea was to do experiments so everyone could see their results and judge for themselves. That’s an amazing ideal and one we still hold true to this day.

 

Of course, hundreds of years ago it was not actually possible to have everyone witness the results of experiments. Scientists did experiments for each other and published their results in journals, but video recording devices and the Internet hadn’t been invented yet. So scientists did what they could — including in many cases public demonstrations to hundreds of people who had all gathered to see science in action.

 

Today, the ideal of being able to see for ourselves is closer within reach than ever. It’s possible to share electronic data, record interviews, and even livestream key moments. Now a record number of people can be involved, not merely as spectators, but as people who can judge evidence for themselves, the way it was always meant to be.

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Open Science is better science.

 

Science done in public isn’t just more accessible. It can also just be better science. With people watching, it can be easier to catch mistakes, think of new hypotheses, and reach out for help when it’s needed. It is also easier for people to discuss the results and, in some cases, think about the implications of such results for their own lives.

 

Public participation isn’t necessarily easy. There are costs associated with sharing data — time cost, the risk that “someone else will publish first”, to name a couple. It’s also possible for people to discourage the discussion of ideas they don’t like, sometimes on the basis of a misunderstanding of science. The solution is for there to be a dialogue between scientists and the public, with both sides helping to keep each other in check and ultimately working towards the same goals.

 

We imagine a world where a supportive public helps scientists catch errors in advance, and scientists in turn help make the scientific picture of the world — incomplete as it is — more and more understandable to people. Each can help correct and inform the other, with the divide between scientist and public becoming less and less important over time.

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Let’s work together.

 

Of course, these are ideals. In practice, even scientists committing to Open Science will forget to record something, and not everyone who is watching will be kind and impartial. We scientists have a penchant for obscurantism and for using jargon, which we know we need to overcome. The public can be impatient, and that’s something we’ll need to deal with.

 

Ultimately, Open Science is a work in progress. We’re not sure how to do it — The Tadpole Experiment is our team’s first attempt at Open Science, and we’re going to make mistakes. But though it is our first try, we’re sure it won’t be our last. One of the challenges of doing science in the open is admitting that we’re all learning and giving ourselves and each other room for that, while at the same time actually doing good science.

 

We’d like to invite you to join us on the Open Science journey. The Tadpole Experiment is just the beginning. Follow us, share links, join the conversation — and help us push human knowledge forward together. It’s fun!

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