People and science, an indivisible binomial

Letting people into science and its evolution thanks to their participation, is something that many companies and projects believe in and work towards by involving people in their research to produce information and progress in processes.

Frederic Bartumeus is a researcher at ICREA and the director of Mosquito Alert, a project coordinated by CREAF and CEAB-CSIC, supported by “la Caixa” Foundation, in which scientists, institutions and the general public come together to control the presence and expansion of mosquitoes that transmit global diseases. During an interview for ALMA, he tells us about Mosquito Alert, a tool that enables studying and controlling mosquito populations and the diseases they transmit.

It mainly works through an open source app on which people send photos of mosquitoes or their breeding points. This information is uploaded to an interactive public map which can be accessed and checked.

The public’s collaboration is very important. The data provided are equally reliable to those collected through the traditional method (both have a prediction capacity of 80%).

According to Bartumeus, the system works because people take the project seriously and the information flows reliably in both directions, with feedback for the public and appreciation of their effort. In short, it’s about letting people into science, teaming up and working together, strengthening the link between science and society. Science feeds off people and people feed off science: it’s an undoubtedly indivisible couple, as is the technological element as a channel through which to transmit information and the tool to distinguish the truthfulness of the content.

In our country, there are financing possibilities and entities such as “la Caixa” Foundation, who opt for innovative, responsible and open research.

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