“Trust yourself”: how the citizen science movement proposes a radical rethink of the relationship between scientists and the public

Was Michael Gove wrong to say the public had “had enough of experts”? Not exactly, argues Peter Dennis. In also appealing to the public to trust themselves, Gove touched a deeper nerve, one running back to Kant, the Enlightenment and intellectual autonomy. However, whereas in Kant’s day the public was the same group of people to whom both political and scientific arguments were addressed, this is not the case today. The Open Science and Citizen Science movements attempt to reassociate the political and scientific publics and bring about an “inquiring society”, where participation in (and scrutiny of) scientific research is open to all.