Excerpt: I’ve encountered citizen-scientist bankers who turned from climate change skeptics into sustainability advocates, neighbors who sent an industry manager to jail for polluting their air, a community that accepted the weighty responsibility of managing federally designated threatened sea turtles, and online gamers who became ambassadors for science. These amateurs absorb the scientific method, and along with it, a reliance on evidence. They make inquiry a habit. Citizen science stitches fact-appreciative people into the fabric of society.
Source: How tagging butterflies can help you tell what’s real and what’s fake