Summary 2

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10
Exercise 5
Read the following article about citizen scientists. Write a summary explaining the benefits of being
a citizen scientist, and how the work of citizen scientists has helped scientific research.
Your summary should be about 100 words long (and no more than 120 words long). You should
use your own words as far as possible.
You will receive up to 6 marks for the content of your summary and up to 5 marks for the style and
accuracy of your language.
Could you be a citizen scientist?
From deep space to the sea shore, there’s still so much for us to discover…
Imagine discovering a new planet. You probably think that you would need to be a scientist with a
sophisticated telescope, but actually that is not true. Recently, a UK television series on astronomy
invited viewers to look through a huge collection of images from NASA that was available online.
Two amateur astronomers, Chris Holmes and Lee Threapleton, decided to take up the offer. The
result was unexpected – they found a new planet, by spotting the shadow it made while passing in
front of a distant star. The planet was named after them: Threapleton Holmes B.
These days we have the ability to collect data on everything. What we don’t have, however, are
enough scientists to study it. And that is where citizen scientists come in.
Citizen science is scientific research that is carried out by amateurs, people like Chris Holmes
and Lee Threapleton, often under the direction of professional scientists. This isn’t a new thing –
science has relied on self-taught researchers for a long time – but now, thanks to new technology
and the internet, the variety and scope of projects can be much larger. These large projects often
rely on citizen scientists in order to collect and analyse enough data. One such project, known
as the Big Bumblebee Discovery, was set up in urban areas of the UK. Around 30 000 people
took part, and this enabled scientists to learn more about the preferred habitats of bees. This
information will also hopefully encourage town planners to include more bee-friendly plants in the
urban developments of the future. Another project on a similar scale aimed to monitor the spread
of wireweed. This is a non-native species of seaweed that is appearing on beaches throughout the
UK, and is causing concern to scientists as it is threatening the survival of many native seaweed
species. The researchers turned to citizen scientists for help, and the Big Seaweed Search was the
result. This required people to identify the species of seaweed that they found on various beaches,
and pass on the information to the research team. The citizen scientists who took part reported
feeling that they had made a contribution towards scientific research.
Another attraction of citizen science is the joy of discovery. For example, a man in New Zealand
decided to keep a record of everything he saw in his garden. By making careful and detailed
observations over a period of time, he found a new species of beetle. Science is all about attention
to detail – that is how we spot something new. Once you realise that, you begin to understand how
we know anything at all, from the age of the universe to how many stars there are. You get a greater
appreciation of the world we live in. And it is important to remember that there is still so much to
find out. Consider the fact that just 25 years ago, we hadn’t discovered any planets around other
stars, and now we have found thousands. If you become a citizen scientist, you will become a part
of finding that out, and you might even make history.
© UCLES 2017 0510/21/M/J/17

www.dynamicpapers.com
11
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Could you be a citizen scientist?

© UCLES 2017 0510/21/M/J/17

© UCLES 2017 0510/21/M/J/17 [Turn over

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