Citizen Science Salon is a partnership between Discover and SciStarter.org.
Deja Perkins loved animals growing up. And by the time she left her native Chicago to attend Tuskegee University in Alabama, she wanted to become a veterinarian, often the only animal-related career introduced to people of color, she says. But it didn’t take long before Perkins realized she’d rather study animals in the natural world. During a spring internship in Minnesota, she witnessed the annual bird migration. It sealed her future as an ornithologist.
Today Perkins researches bird diversity in urban environments as a graduate student at North Carolina State University. And her research has shown how societal bias can carry over into citizen science datasets. Citizen science connects researchers with members of the public who help collect and analyze data. These projects are open to anyone and ask participants to follow the same protocols to help ensure high quality data.
What Perkins found is that some popular citizen science projects let participants choose where they observe birds, which can bias the outcome. That’s because hardcore birders often prioritize finding as many different species as possible each trip.
