Empowering citizen scientists: a hidden dance between the ivory tower of science and lay people

This work revolves around the relation between scientists and lay people in the domain of Citizen Science (CS). In the first part, ‘Context and research question’, it presents a logical collection of relevant key concepts: origin of the term CS; clarification of the meaning of ‘citizen’ and ‘scientist’ used in the text; PUS and PES interpretations of public participation in Science; government interests and efforts in developing CS; risk of presence of the deficit model; some classifications of CS projects and epistemic practices; post-normal science approach to society and empowerment of citizens. The last section of this part is dedicated to pose the research question: ‘How is Citizen Science perceived by scientists of the scientific community?’. In the second part, ‘Conclusions’, some concepts are presented and developed as results: existence of a polarization between scientists inside and outside the ivory tower of science; perception of data quality, objectivity of CS research and peer judgement; authorship and pay of citizen scientists; inevitable growth of CS both for scientific projects and for the bottom-up empowerment of citizens. The work also presents the ‘affiliation principle’ and suggests how a definition of scientist, detached from this principle, could apply to lay people, that is to a broader group of individuals than that of the ivory tower of science.