Tracking Science: An Alternative for Those Excluded by Citizen Science

1. What they did

In response to a call for wider discussion of citizen science terms (Eitzel et al. 2017), 29 co-authors propose “tracking science” as a more inclusive alternative, or complement, to “citizen science”. Participants would be called “tracking scientists”.

The authors are inventors, researchers, academics and community workers from Europe, North America and Africa, and 13 trackers from southern Africa. Most of the trackers are San from Namibia and Botswana; most are oralate (non-literate). They took part through oral discussions in the field about exclusion and recognition in research, and their published work is cited as examples. The paper describes each author’s commitment to tracking science, including tracker certification levels.

2. What they found

Why “citizen” is a problem

• The term carries the exclusionary politics of citizenship. This matters for disenfranchised Indigenous peoples and for millions of migrants: the number of international migrants rose from 153 million to 248 million between 1990 and 2015.
• Voting rights for Indigenous peoples often lagged behind others by decades. The Kalahari San lost land rights in Botswana when everyone was declared a citizen.
• Many national parks were created by evicting Indigenous peoples.
• Concerns about the word “citizen” were raised at the first citizen science conference in 2007.

Why other terms fall short

• “Collegial contributors” are placed at the margins of public participation in research.
• “Local knowledge holder” implies mere custodianship and ignores original thinking and scientific reasoning.
• “Independent citizen scientist” still carries “citizen”.
• Terms such as community-based participatory research set Indigenous communities apart from science, which can also block funding when funders only support “citizen science”.

Why tracking works as a metaphor

• Almost everyone recognizes a footprint. For example, a 19-month-old pointed at one and said “shoes”, and a four-year-old found a dinosaur footprint. No other animal tracks by following visual signs the way humans do.
• “Keep track of” is a dictionary synonym of “monitor”, and tracking is already used across science: bird and fish movements, monarch butterflies, comets, eye tracking, cell biology, species over millions of years, and COVID-19.
• Tracking means explaining what is seen through causes that are not seen, as in physics: physicists study particle tracks, not the particles themselves, and Einstein explained Brownian motion as the sign of atoms no one could see. Kalahari San trackers build sophisticated models of animal behaviour from tracks and signs, and make predictions, including novel ones, that can be checked.
• Tracking is gender-equal. Among the Kalahari San both women and men track, and some women hunt independently or with their husbands. Two co-authors are a wife-and-husband tracker team.

Four meanings of tracking science

• Scientific monitoring, or keeping track of things.
• The human capacity for hypothetico-deductive reasoning and experimentation.
• Recognition of Indigenous tracking as the roots of scientific thinking.
• Keeping track of science itself (its history and philosophy).

Definition

The authors define tracking science as “a process that involves empirical observation, experimentation, and causal inference through scientific hypothetico-deductive reasoning, including the creation and testing of hypotheses and theories and making novel predictions, as well as comprising critical discussion and peer review, with the purpose of producing scientific knowledge about the world, regardless of who participates.”

Examples given

Indigenous trackers in research and monitoring in the Kalahari, the Arctic and Australia; Indigenous farmers conserving crop diversity; Aboriginal and Kalahari San fire management; farmers contributing to soil science in the Philippines; the UK’s volunteer-led Biological Records Centre (about 70,000 people); the Blackawton Bees study by 8- to 10-year-old children; and independent scientists such as Darwin, Wallace, Carson, Goodall and Einstein.

The authors do not treat all knowledge as equivalent. They keep the distinction between evidence-based knowledge and mythology, comparing science with science and religion with religion across cultures.

3. What they concluded

• Citizen science has made huge data collection possible, but data collection is different from scientific thinking. The term can make participants’ contributions seem less than science, and marks Indigenous practitioners as “other”.
• Tracking science defines science by its process, not by who takes part, so it includes credentialed academics, citizen scientists, Indigenous communities and independent individuals.
• It is offered as a complement to citizen science, not an immediate replacement. It could give a “breathing space” to those who do not fit the citizen science mould or want to go beyond it.
• When Indigenous people are involved in research, they should be acknowledged as co-authors. Here the Indigenous trackers are co-authors, not “human subjects”, and consented to being co-authors.
• The authors invite readers to join the discussion.

4. How tracking was or was not used

This is an essay, not a field study. Tracking is discussed as a practice (tracks and signs interpretation and following animals using hypothetico-deductive reasoning) and as a metaphor for science.

5. Tracker or observer certification

Twelve of the tracker co-authors are Master Trackers under the CyberTracker Tracker Certification system: ǀAm ǁAo, ǀUase Xhukwe, Di ǁXao, ǂOma Kxao, Horekhwe (Karoha) Langwane, Nǂaisa ǀUi, ǀUi Gǀaq’o, Njoxlau Kashe, Karel Benadie, James Minye, ǀUi ǀKxunta and ǂOma Daqm. Dam Debe is certified at Tracker level. Three of the Master Trackers are women tracker-hunters. L. Mark Elbroch is described as the first accredited scientist to receive the Master Tracker certificate.

6. Other technologies, skills or innovations

Karoha Langwane, Karel Benadie and James Minye are noted as among the first oralate trackers to use CyberTracker software to gather scientific data. Benadie and Minye published their own data supporting a hypothesis they conceived (Liebenberg et al. 1999).

7. Implications for conservation (from the paper)

• Conservation has a history of excluding Indigenous peoples, from the first national parks onward. An inclusive term could help those communities be recognized, and funded, as producers of scientific knowledge.
• Indigenous communities already contribute to scientific research and to biodiversity and environmental monitoring around the world.