The Power of Citizen Science: A Conversation with Dr. Grace Wolf-Chase

Geoff Mitelman: I’m Rabbi Geoff Mitelman, the founding director of Sinai and Synapses. And sitting here in the next Zoom box over to me is Dr. Grace Wolf-Chase, who is a Senior Scientist and a Senior Education and Communication Specialist at the Planetary Science Institute, and has been a consultant on a variety of different really exciting citizen science projects bridging citizen science and faith communities and religious communities. So, Dr. Wolf-Chase – Grace – it’s wonderful to be sitting with you here this afternoon.

Grace Wolf-Chase: Thank you so much, Jeff. It’s delightful to be here. So happy.

Geoff Mitelman: I want to start by talking about citizen science, and what citizen science actually is, because people may know a little bit more about it now since COVID has started – but, citizen science is a really exciting and unique opportunity for people to really advance very important scientific questions. So, can you share a little bit about what exactly is citizen science, and how do people get involved in it?

Grace Wolf-Chase: Sure. So, citizen science is a way of bringing everybody on board to be able to participate in science along with professional scientists. What has motivated citizen scientists most recently is the fact that so many researchers are just swamped with these huge amounts of data – too much data that individual scientists or small teams can actually go through. So what citizen science does is it enables people in general – all ages, all walks of life –around the world, to look at what we are involved in. One specific platform for citizen science is known as Zooniverse. And one of the things that Zooniverse does is it enables people to participate in projects, research projects, across not just the sciences, but also the humanities.

And we talk about “subjects” on the Zooniverse platform. So, a subject can be an image, it can be a graph, it can be a bit of a snippet of text, a video – you name it. What Zooniverse does is, it’s based on projects that use these subjects to ask people around the world to identify things like patterns, specific features, features in these images or videos that people are so good at doing, and machines are not necessarily so good at doing. But it lets these large research teams complete research projects that would be completely untenable without the assistance of tens of thousands, in some cases hundreds of thousands, of people looking through the data with the scientists to identify various features.

And what’s particularly exciting is that, in addition to identifying features that people are asked to look for, they very often spot new things. And sometimes those new things are things that are known by scientists, and sometimes they’re entirely new things – like in the case of these sort of roundish yellow things at the center of my background image there, which are actually very, very young – we call them prenatal star clusters – that were discovered by citizen scientists working on one of the Zooniverse projects called the Milky Way projects. So, in some cases, citizen scientists make exciting new discoveries, and when that happens, of course they’re shared – they get the credit as well as the professional scientists.

Geoff Mitelman: And one of the exciting things about that – it sounds like is that science is often viewed as (and in some ways I think it is; it’s not just the perception, but I think it actually is) arcane and complicated and nuanced. And you’ve got to have a lot of expertise, you’ve got to have a lot of knowledge, you’ve got to be conversant in whatever your specialty and your subfield is. But being able to democratize science – that’s really valuable. People are not asking me to be able to write a peer-reviewed paper that’s going to pass muster in Science or Nature – which would never happen because I don’t have that level of area of expertise – but, being able to at least contribute and bring a small part of that advancement of knowledge that we wouldn’t have had otherwise.

Grace Wolf-Chase: So, that’s a great point, Geoff. And that brings me to the fact that the beauty of citizen science is people can engage at a bunch of different levels. Sometimes people will start a project on Zooniverse and do a few of these classifications and decide that that project isn’t for them, and they give it up and maybe look for a different project. Some people get so interested in the research and the science that they interact with the research teams via discussion boards on those sites. They’re given further resources to explore. And sometimes the citizen scientists become adept enough that they eventually actually help become moderators for the citizen science project. So, there are all possible levels at which people engage.

And I’d like to mention that this can be done on many, many different levels. So we think of citizen science as engaging large numbers of people around the world in relatively simple tasks. You look at the opposite side of research – or not the opposite side, but the higher academic end – mostly advanced undergraduates and graduate students are the ones that get the deep research experiences, right? So you have this at one end, and these sort of simple research experiences at the other end.

I’m really excited to announce that my colleagues and I, Katie Devine at the College of Idaho and Charles Kerton at the Iowa State University, have recently procured a small seed grant from NASA to develop what’s known as a CURE, standing for Course-based Undergraduate Research Experience, that’s actually designed for Astronomy 101. So, think non-science majors; think getting a classroom of kids together and giving them, as an experience in science, an actual way of participating in research – so, a higher-level experience than Zooniverse. We’re actually having them measure things to do with these so-called yellow balls back here, and create graphs and come up with their interpretations based on what they find having gone through these exercises. So we’re very excited about that. So, again, this can be done at many, many different levels, many different kinds of experiences.

Geoff Mitelman: What’s interesting about this to me, and what’s exciting, is that it’s almost granular-level actions, but that are connected to something larger. It’s meaningful. It’s not grunt work for the sake of grunt work. It’s, “I’m doing this grunt work, but I’m doing this to be able to discover new star clusters.” “I’m doing this to be able to create a new translation of an ancient text.” “I’m trying to be able to figure out something in the biological world of ‘What is this animal doing or not doing in its natural habitat?’”

A lot of science education – obviously, I love science, and my kids, who are young, do a lot of science, and there’s a lot of wonderful scientific education that’s done – but they also sort of know in advance what they’re aiming to have happen, right? So, “We’re going to put the baking soda and the vinegar together and we know what’s going to happen.” And that’s, I think, important at a younger level. But I think as people get older, to understand that science is actually what we don’t yet know… this is, “I’m giving you data and we don’t know what this is going to mean, but by contributing to this scientific enterprise, you are advancing the frontiers of human knowledge.”

Grace Wolf-Chase: Absolutely, absolutely. That’s what we mean by “science is for everyone.” And diversity is good for science. Yes, yes – they most definitely are. And there are citizen scientists who’ve gotten prestigious amateur awards for some of their discoveries while participating in citizen science. So yeah, everybody can be part of this process. And I think that’s exciting for kids, especially, who want to explore some of these different fields, thinking that maybe one day they would like to become a scientist – they would like to be a biologist or an astronomer.

Geoff Mitelman: And being able to recognize the importance of the questions, of being able to say, “This is something that we think might be the case, but we don’t quite know, and this is at least giving us information to discover. This is an open question. This is something that we’re trying to figure out.”

Grace Wolf-Chase: Right. So, there are two things that I think are especially important to highlight here. One – this is process-oriented, not fact-oriented. So, the idea is that by inviting people to become scientists with us, we’re inviting them into the whole process to get a glimpse of how science is actually done – because the boundaries of science are always moving. We learn new things every day. And despite what you might hear from some people, I don’t think we’re anywhere near a theory of everything – not a theory that really is a theory of everything. So the boundaries are always expanding, so we’re always learning new things. So, this is very process-oriented.

It’s also empowering because it says, “You can do this too.” And I think that by especially encouraging people to use discussion boards and to interact with the scientists, it puts a human face on the science, which is so very important. It’s not just that, you know, “We’ve got these scientific results.” It’s not just that scientists are a bunch of eggheads in the Ivory Tower. It’s very tangible ­– scientists are human beings. And we can also tell the stories of the scientists who are involved in some of these projects. And people find those kinds of stories particularly interesting.

Geoff Mitelman: One of the important things about this is that it tells a story. You talk about having a story, and that it’s a meaningful opportunity. And, and that’s very much actually in the realm of religion also. Religion is designed to be able to have our story be meaningful, part of something larger than ourselves. And I know some of the work that you do is engaging with faith communities – with religious communities. So I’d love to hear a little bit of how are you engaging religious communities in this work of citizen science.

Grace Wolf-Chase: So first of all, do you mind if I copy and paste a link into the chat here?

Geoff Mitelman: Absolutely. And just share as well, because this will be recorded, so you’ll be able to say.

Grace Wolf-Chase: So I am actually going to paste two links in here, and then we can talk about these. […] That link is to a project that I am doing in collaboration with an organization that both Rabbi Geoff and I are intimately familiar with – the AAAS Dialogue on Science, Ethics and Religion. […] So this project is specifically designed for targeted outreach to communities of faith to engage them in science via Zooniverse – again, with the underlying affirmations that science is for everyone, that diversity is good for science. And we’re specifically trying to reach out to communities that aren’t necessarily plugged into Science Friday or other venues where they would hear about Zooniverse. So, the idea is to build relationships, and also to tell those human stories.

You’re absolutely right. Story is essential in conveying science. And most people are interested in “Why are you interested in science? What drew you to this field?” For 22 years, I worked at the Adler Planetarium in Chicago, and one of the most popular programs was a program called Astronomy Conversations. The reason that was popular is because we would bring out scientists to speak with the public on a daily basis and have these conversations. I would get at least as many questions directed to me personally: “How do you go get a PhD in astronomy? What excited you about science? Why do you do what you do? What’s your favorite star?” People were at least as interested in those kinds of questions as they were in the mechanics of how a black hole works, how a star forms – those kind of “content questions.” I think that’s often the key to piquing interest. So, our colleague at DoSER, Rob O’Malley, talks about engaging different cultural audiences by being strategic, by being respectful, and by being human.

And these stories are part of the human experience – putting that human face on science.

So, I would encourage people, by all means go to that web link. You can read more about the mechanics of this specific project. And at about 3/4 of the way down the page there, there are links to surveys that we’re using in connection with this project. There’s a survey called the “Pre-Participation Survey” – that’s for people who have never participated in Zooniverse before, to sort of assess what might interest them. And there’s also a Post-Participation Survey for people who have, to give us feedback on what worked for them, what didn’t work, what they would like to see, what sorts of features they would like to see on the platform.

Geoff Mitelman: Well, I’m curious, what are you finding in those kinds of conversations? Are there communities that are particularly excited, or are there particular topics that religious communities are really engaging in?

Grace Wolf-Chase: So, as you might imagine, a lot of religious communities are value-oriented, and some are also oriented to just awe and wonder. So, I would say that environmental projects and climate projects are very popular among them. There are a lot of faith based and interfaith communities that are environmental organizations. In Chicagoland, there’s Faith in Place. I’ve worked with the Chicago Muslims Green Team. There’s Interfaith Power and Light, there’s GreenFaith – long story short, there are many, many religious organizations that are particularly interested in stewardship and taking care of the environment. So I would say that from the stewardship side, the environmental projects are of great interest.

But I would also say that religion and science both intersect at this place of awe, majesty, mystery, wonder – and that there is a great yearning, in people in general, for experiencing the numinous – experiencing, you know, the cosmos. And there are a lot of U.S. space science projects that explore that.

And this sort of reminds me of a story that’s in one of Brother Guy Consolmgano’s books, Brother Astronomer: Adventures of a Vatican Scientist, where he describes being in the Peace Corps and bringing out a telescope in Kenya. And the fact that he noticed that even among populations that are starving – have all these physical needs that aren’t being met – there’s still this yearning to connect to something larger than themselves. And how people would, you know, ooh and ahh over the tremendous, beautiful astronomical images that they could see through that telescope. So I think there’s a lot of that as well.

And, you know, we’re trying to address both the, I guess you would say, science-attentive community, and also the science-apprehensive communities – because there are people that are apprehensive of science. And it’s not just based on religious views. It can be based on other views, like the way minority populations have been treated in the past by scientists – of the, say, for example, the traditional white male scientist – how different kinds of underserved populations have been treated.

So, you know, humility, respect, and being willing to actually have a dialogue – meaning me not just talking at someone, but talking to them and gleaning what’s important to them, where they’re coming from, what were their experiences that shaped them – those require a little more time. But they’re very important, because you don’t get very far by throwing a lot of facts up at people. And if one person is talking about “based on evidence…” – is having a discussion based on, well, “the scientific evidence shows this” – and another person is concerned with values and with their cultural identity, that’s people talking past each other. And that’s something that’s not going to produce fruitful conversations and dialogue.

Geoff Mitelman: Well, and I know some of the work that you do is this difference between science and science communication, where the science is whatever the science is, but the communication, by definition, is two-way. It’s not just my saying something; it’s how is the other person or the other community going to be able to hear it. And you don’t want it to be a monologue. You need it to be a dialogue. So, what are some of the ideas for scientists in general to be better communicators?

Grace Wolf-Chase: So, some of the things – I guess I anticipated your question. I’ve covered some of that already. So, the first thing is to be respectful listeners, and to be humble, because there is a perception of – I think a lot of people out there, it’s not that they’re anti-science, but there can be a lot of suspicions around scientists. And scientists are human. They’re fallible like everyone else. And they’re often seen as aloof, as nerdy, as not at all interested in values, interested in “just the facts, ma’am” – cold, hard facts and objectivity. And this is kind of ironic, right? Because science is done not by objects, but by subjects. It’s done by people. And you have to bear that in mind when you’re talking to different audiences.

And this is where you need to know your audience. The way I might approach talking to say, a mainline Protestant community in my own tradition – which happens to be the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America – is different from the way I might approach a conversation with a community that I knew was far more conservative – was on a very different part of the spectrum. You start by sharing stories – again, by sharing human stories, by finding common values, and by building those discussions. You might not start by talking about evolution. You might start with, “Hey, you know, we’ve got these cool images of Mars, we’ve got these scientists that are learning all about the surface of Mars,” or these projects that are based on studying animal populations.

But the idea is again to, as Rob O’Malley would say, to be strategic – start these conversations out by having a dialogue, being respectful of other cultures and other experiences that people have had, and to be human.

And I think here’s where some of the difficulty is, I think for a lot of scientists, Geoff. So, I didn’t grow up in academia. That’s not where I come from. I think part of the reason I can relate, I think, to a lot of different communities is I don’t come from a fifth generation of academics. I was raised by my mother and maternal grandmother. My mother worked seven days a week as a private duty nurse at the Presbyterian Hospital in New York City. And my grandmother had an eighth-grade education. So, I grew up in a lower-middle-class family. And I think that that makes me relatable to a lot of people. And the fact that I’m actually a member of a traditional religious community also can help initiate some of these conversations. Now, that is not by any means to say that a scientist who is an atheist or an agnostic cannot have meaningful conversations with even conservative religious communities – you can. But building trust, building that relationship, may be a little bit harder at first.

You know, one of your former guests, Elaine Howard Ecklund – the research coming out of the Rice Religion and Public Life program talks about “boundary pioneers,” who are people, researchers, who can also speak the language, perhaps, of a religious tradition, and can identify with a religious tradition. And I think that those are important positions, because very often – and very often in my own work – if I’m going to work with a religious community, I would work with the religious leader. For example, with your synagogue, I would want to work with you, and to have a conversation, and to have you bring in things that are important to your particular Jewish community. I think that that’s very important as well.

So, having those conversations, being humble, recognizing you don’t know it all – and to refer to another guest that you spoke with that I happened to hear that was very interesting – your conversation with Michael Shermer – how very often when you speak with somebody who’s coming from a very different position that you are. One, you gain a little bit more insights into your own position. Sometimes it affirms your own position. You come away from that dialogue even more… I won’t say steadfast in your position, but you see, perhaps, the good things about your position. You’re able to see that. But very often, also you’ll find out things about that other person.

And the other piece of advice I would give to scientists is, don’t make assumptions. Don’t think that you know that person based on their cultural, ethnic, or religious identity. I think a lot of people, for example, try to put all “evangelicals” in one basket. And that is absolutely not a good place to start. One of the most productive classes I’ve taken in recent years is Introduction to Interfaith Leadership at Dominican University, which used the materials of Eboo Patel, an American Muslim who started the Interfaith Youth Corps. And this was very, very helpful, because we talked about relating as individuals who relate to their specific religious tradition, rather than assuming that all traditions are a monolith. Because they’re not, right? You can always find a lot of commonality across different traditions. Sometimes the diversity across traditions even seems to be not as great as the diversity within a given tradition. So, the idea is to talk to people as individuals – respectfully. And I think that that’s not just religion – when it comes to things like gender identity, ethnic identity, all of these things we have to approach with letting them tell us about themselves and listening.

Geoff Mitelman: Yeah. I think I was on a podcast recently, and we were talking about vaccinations, and the recognition of people who are not currently taking the COVID-19 vaccine – it’s not a monolith. And coming at it from a perspective of, “Here’s the data, and let me shame you as to why you shouldn’t do this” – that’s actually going to be, in many ways, counterproductive of trying to encourage more vaccinations there. I think it would be more of, “We have a shared value.” If we want to be able to create a society where there’s a level of safety and there’s a level of individuality, people are going to have this tension. There’s a tension always, specifically about vaccinations, but it’s across the board. There is the community dedication and the individual dedication, and we hold both of those. And different people are going to set that bar differently for different people in different kinds of communities.

And so, this idea of being able to at least engage in these questions and say, “What are your values? What are your animating values here? I don’t think you’re trying to kill everybody, because nobody views themselves as the villain of their own story,” but, asking questions and at least engaging in the dialogue and also being able to recognize that I’m not trying to persuade somebody – I think that’s a hard thing for religious leaders, and I think for a lot of scientists to be able to say, “if they just understood, they would get it.”

Grace Wolf-Chase: Yes. Yeah. And again, it’s far more complicated than that, right? I mean, yes, appealing to values – but even that, it’s tough, because the polarization has become so bad that even when you talk about protecting one’s family, for example, and protecting other people, when you appeal to these values – which are values that are broadly held by religious communities – there’s some version of the golden rule in all the major world’s religions. And yet, that still doesn’t seem to be reaching enough people. And that’s why I think it’s important for community leaders, and to have the people who you’re speaking to, the people who you trust, if they’re the people who are saying, “Yeah, I think that it’s important to be vaccinated for these reasons,” if it’s coming from somebody you trust, I think that that’s very important. I mean, you and I – we respect expertise, right? So we respect when the head of the CDC, or we hear Dr. Fauci, or people like Francis Collins, coming on and saying, “Yes, you should get vaccinated,” we trust the scientific expertise.” But for a lot of people, it’s more than that. They need their community leaders to buy in on this as well.

Geoff Mitelman: There’s also a level of social acceptance. There was actually a poll that came out that actually the Interfaith Youth Corps worked on, along with PRRI, and asking questions about what was encouraging faith communities to take the vaccine or not. What PRRI discovered is that actually religious leaders had a big impact there. But what’s also interesting is that there was no change in the Jewish community from March of 2021 to July of 2021 – it was 85% across the board.

And I think what’s been really difficult with a lot of these questions are elements of trust. That’s both a bottom-up problem and a top-down problem, [where] there’s the level of lack of trust of institutions that is political and scientific and religious. And for laypeople, for somebody as a layperson – “I’m looking to see what happens. What does the CDC recommend? But I’m also looking to see what are my friends going to be doing.”

I think what’s been hard is when data changes or when new information comes in or new recommendations arise, for some people, that actually strengthens their trust in science. But I think for a lot of people, it weakens their trust in science, because it looks like, “Why didn’t you know this before?” And the answer is, “Well, we didn’t. The data changed.”

But this difference – and we’ve talked about this on the show a few times – [is] between information that is always going to be the same; information that’s going to change our minds; information that was accurate but is now out of date; things that are well-meaning but inaccurate; and things that are outright deception. And, as somebody who is a recipient of communication, I don’t know what bucket the information falls into. And that entails a tremendous amount of responsibility for religious leaders and for scientists, because they are trusted sources. And if they say something that ends up being incorrect, that may actually hurt their credibility to an extent.

Grace Wolf-Chase: Yes, it can. And that’s why I think it’s so important to really convey science as a process. We do the best we can with the information that we have at the time, but we’re always open to new information. And technology is a big part of that process, too. When I look at, for example, the history of astronomy, our large-scale cosmological views have sort of followed technological developments – the development of the telescope, which enabled more accurate observations to be made; the development of imaging and computers and all of these things. So, there is this process, and you have to do the best you can with the information you have at the time.

I think that’s especially important to think about when we think about, for example, big things like climate science. There is this risk / benefit. We might disagree about little things here and there, but if you look at the big picture, there’s this urgency in the climate crisis that mandates that we have to, even with partial knowledge of things, look towards the horizon of solutions, or at least – how do we deal with this crisis in a way that will mitigate some of the damages we’re seeing? How can we come together as communities?

That also brings to my mind right now, in talking about this, the difference between being oriented toward community and interactive thinking, and sort of rugged individualism. So, there’s the one thing that science has shown us. I was a contributing author to a book a few years ago called Interactive World, Interactive God. And basically, it used this theme that across the sciences, this idea of interaction is emerging as sort of ontological – a basic part of reality. You don’t consider things in isolation. Our world is this web of relationships. And if we proceed with thinking about, “It’s all about me and what I get out of my life and the benefits I get,” then we really run the risk of making life miserable for everybody, destroying that very delicate web of life that’s connected to other life and other species on this planet that are important to us as well.

So how do we get people – I would say almost say – back to being more community-minded, as I think people were, more so in the past than they are today? That’s a difficult thing to do. So if you have insights to share…

Geoff Mitelman: Yeah, I mean, I think that’s a great question, and that’s, in my mind, a big difference between Judaism and Christianity, because Judaism is a religion that is predominantly focused on the responsibilities of the community rather than the rights of the individual, which becomes complicated in Western, Protestant America.

Grace Wolf-Chase: It does. But I would say, don’t paint that picture with too broad of a brushstroke either. For example, in my community, I think it’s Sunday, September 12th, there’s the God’s Work, Our Hands Sunday, which is about going out and serving and being proactive as a community in making things better. So, I hear you. And actually, that is one of the reasons why I – okay, here’s a little part of my religious identity. I very much prefer our “Nicene Creed” to our “Apostles’ Creed.” The Apostles’ Creed starts out with “I believe.” The Nicene Creed starts out with “we believe these things” – these are what we can affirm as a community. And that kind of community thinking – I mean, you can have your own individual perspectives on all these things, but you’re part of a community, and you have to remember that what you do affects other people.

Geoff Mitelman: Absolutely. And that was definitely a gross oversimplification and intentionally a little bit provocative. And I think in every religious tradition, every person actually has to navigate the poles of the individual and the community, and “What’s my connection with others and what’s my responsibility to myself?”

And there’s a classic line, for example, that comes up, of “If I’m not for myself, who will be for me? But if I’m only for myself, what am I? And if not now, then when?” Which is a line from Rabbi Hillel. It’s a line from Pirkei Avot, I think that’s this idea of “I’m connected to something greater than myself. I’m connected to something that is oriented.” And actually, our conversation last week with Dr. David Rosmarin, of “How do I better connect to myself as an individual, to my community and to God?” That’s something that we, I think, need to be able to reorient to. But I think it’s going to be be hard to do because America has such a rugged-individualism perspective.

And I think that framing it as “Here’s your responsibility to do something” – some are going to jump on that and some are going to bristle. This is this question of “How do we mandate something when everything is an opt in choice?”

It looks like actually Dr. Wolf-Chase, her Internet went out. Hopefully she’ll be back in just a moment, so we’ll pause for right now as she tries to come back on. So, we’re exploring these questions of “How do we remain as an individual and part of a community?” This is something that our friend also Dave Desteno has talked about as well in his work. We talked about him and he’s been a guest on the show also of the responsibility we have to ourselves, and to our future selves. And that oftentimes obligating ourselves to others can be a really wonderful thing to think about. And we find that actually being connected with other people can give us tremendous joy, and so we need to look not just at ourselves as an individual, but how do we be part of a community? So, we’ll pause for just a moment while we hope for Dr. Wolf-Chase to come back on. […]

Grace Wolf-Chase: So, I am back. Yes, I am back. Hopefully to stay through the program. Yeah. So where were we?

Geoff Mitelman: About the relationship between the individual and the community.

Grace Wolf-Chase: Yes, yes. Yeah. So that that is a difficult problem to navigate between individual rights and “What are your responsibilities to your community?” And I think faith communities can have a very positive impact on navigating that, because faith communities really are about communities. And I appreciate what you’re saying – the distinction between Judaism and sometimes the way Christianity has, or certain Christians within the Christian community, have operated. But I think that there’s a lot of room for developing those kinds of communities within faith traditions.

Geoff Mitelman: And one of the challenges is that when we talk about values, values are often framed as binary decisions. And I see this in almost every religious tradition. And I frame it like: “This is a sacred value. This is a core value.” You were referencing climate change. We talk about how this is a core value of “I want to protect the earth,” which is, I think, a commendable value for sure. But it’s often not framed as “Look, and there’s going to be a cost,” right?

Our community, my town, just put a thing out of – they’re going to start trying to compost, which I think is terrific and wonderful. My wife and I had to think through, like, “Wait a second, what is this going to mean as a cost for us?” And not just simply, “Let’s help the earth,” but, “Okay, what is the cost? What’s the benefit?” And we decided, “Okay, the benefit is outweighing the cost of this.” And I think that’s something that, for a lot of questions and framing, for people who debate questions of climate change, debate where there’s science, of being able to say, “Okay, it may not necessarily be a core value. Let’s frame this as ‘Yeah, you know what? There is a cost of what you’re doing here, but the benefit outweighs it.’”

Grace Wolf-Chase: Yes, yeah, exactly – cost-benefit. And especially, I think, recognizing that the hardest-hit communities or the first-hit communities are going to be the most vulnerable. And I think that that’s something that is within a lot of religious traditions to want to mitigate that, to recognize that the people who are most disenfranchised are going to be the first to suffer – are the first to suffer – the effects of changing climate, the effects of flooding, the effects of fires, et cetera, et cetera.

Geoff Mitelman: Yeah. And even simple questions of COVID-19, of masks. There are lots of conversations – I think this is going to be a conversation for actually quite a few more months, if not a couple more years, of “Do you wear a mask? Do you not wear a mask?” And again, that’s the kind of thing of – it is a very small cost, it is annoying, it is frustrating, but it is a very minimal cost to be able to do that, with a tremendous benefit as well, to the community as a whole. And I think that’s something that, I value. When people say  “wear a mask and save a life,” sometimes that’s a little bit too extreme – of like, “Yeah, this is going to be annoying for you, but this is also part of what this means to be part of this community here.”

Grace Wolf-Chase: Yeah, absolutely. It’s interesting that you phrase it that way. Very often science is spun that way too. You get a media highlight that kind of oversells what the actual science has shown. And that, too, can work to the detriment of the science – when you’ve got a grandiose claim. And this happens, I think, very frequently in the area of covering what we call “excellent exoplanets” – you know, where we build up that a habitable exoplanet has been found. Well, maybe? But all the science isn’t in yet, you know, or we’ve discovered an Earth-like planet. Well – again, maybe. What does that mean? We’ve discovered a planet that’s roughly the same size and mass as the Earth. We don’t yet know the conditions on that planet. And then you fall into the “boy who cried wolf” syndrome a little bit, in that you come out with all of these spectacular highlights. And then I sometimes wonder, when we do – and I think it’s going to be when – but we can say if or when we do discover evidence of extraterrestrial life, is it going to be “Ho-hum, I’ve heard similar things before, it’s no big deal,” when in fact if that discovery is ever made, it will be a big deal?

Geoff Mitelman: Right. And as you’re talking about space travel, I’m also thinking about one of the things that you were [talking about] as we’re recording this here in August –­ recently, two multi-billionaires had private space flights, Jeff Bezos and Richard Branson. And some of that is absolutely deeply inspiring to be able to see that. And some of it is– the money that could have been used for private space flight could have been used to alleviate so many different social ills. And it’s a cost-benefit question there as well.

Grace Wolf-Chase: It is, and it also – so I’m of two minds of this. I think of Jeff Bezos and his brother going up on this flight and seeing the world from space, and experiencing a reorientation that you hear [from] all the astronauts who have seen the Earth is one space experience. Whether you want to call that, a spiritual reorientation – whatever word you want to apply – there is this feeling that “Yes, I’m a part of this. There are no borders here. This is one world that encompasses every human being and all life that we know about that has ever lived.”

The other thing that I was really happy to see as a woman who actually got to hear some of the Mercury 13 speak at the Adler many years ago – the Mercury 13 being the 13 women who co-trained or trained in parallel with the Mercury astronauts. Of course, at the time they weren’t taking women into space. But the youngest of them is still alive – Wally Funk, I believe she’s the only one who is still alive – and she made it to space on that flight with Jeff Bezos.

And I, personally, again, as a woman, I have to feel a sense of “Yeah, you go girl” with that, because that’s something that I think was far overdue. Now, you’re right, this is a very expensive endeavor. But one hopes that some of all money come out of this enterprise – and granted, it’s going to be the rich that that benefit from this, that they get to take these flights initially. But one hopes that that money will be wisely invested by Bezos and these people into things like exploring different kinds of solutions to the climate crisis. You know, I hate to keep harping on that, but I really think that there are so many issues that are important to us, but I think that if we solve these really big problems. A lot of those other issues may become moot because – not to be too pessimistic here – but if some of our human beings, our planet, might just get rid of us and start again.

Geoff Mitelman: Right.

Grace Wolf-Chase: And start again with – my internet connection’s unstable. Don’t tell me that. Hopefully not. And I’m sorry about this, Jeff. I don’t know what’s been going on with me, but hopefully…

Geoff Mitelman: Well, that’s one of the wonderful things that religion is teaches us – what is outside of our control.

Grace Wolf-Chase: Absolutely. That’s extremely important – and developing a sense of humility. And not to go off on completely different track here – I think it’s a related track. But, you know, I consider the Bible a very important text for my religious identity. You know, the Bible – both the Hebrew scriptures and the Christian scriptures – are very important, but if I had to identify a favorite book, it would probably be the Book of Job, simply because that text is so anti-anthropocentric and really frames some of these questions – really inspires humility. And I think that, although some people might read that as “You’re never going to understand these things, so don’t even try, “ I think there are others, including my friend, Brother Guy Consolmagno, who would read that as a subtle message to learn more, but learn more from a position of humility. We have to first admit our ignorance before we can be open to learning new things..

Geoff Mitelman: That links nicely to what we talked about at the very beginning, of citizen science, of being able to recognize what we don’t know. And I think what’s amazing with scientists – I don’t mean this in a negative way, but the scientists in the Ivory Tower, engaging with people who are average, ordinary people on their computers – being able to say, “There are pieces that we don’t know. We’re going to advance a little bit of knowledge here, we’re going to bring the frontiers of knowledge a little bit further,” and recognize that, by expanding the frontiers of knowledge, we’re going to create all new kinds of questions that are going to get raised – that we need more people to be involved, to hopefully create a virtuous cycle, rather than a vicious cycle, of getting engaged in these kinds of questions.

Grace Wolf-Chase: Oh, I love that. “A virtuous as opposed to a vicious cycle.” I love it. That’s great. I’m going to remember that phrase.

Yeah, so I would greatly encourage – I mean, you know, we’re entering a new phase of this pandemic, of course, and people are looking for meaningful activities. And I think one of the nice things about – you know, I say this ironically with my current computer problems – but through either your computer or your mobile device, there are citizen science projects that people can engage with that are making meaningful increments to human knowledge. And I think that’s a way of feeling like you’re contributing to the pool of knowledge during this time of crisis – feeling like you’re making a difference. And it doesn’t matter whether it’s a small difference – you know, science is built upon the backs of many thousands of people in history. And I think the way it’s taught in school sometimes – if you’ll all pardon my lack of respectful speech here, you might come to the conclusion that science was performed by a bunch of old, dead white guys. Forgive me, you know – this is absolutely no aspersions on white men here whatsoever. I happen to be married to one. So, the aspersions here are more that science has been done by thousands of people throughout history, and those incremental changes have been really as important as the big paradigm shifts.

So, science really is for everyone. And we need to tell some of the stories of the wonderful science that’s been done by minority gender – both “heteronormative” or cisgender people – as well as people who identify in different ways on the gender spectrum. There have been scientists of all persuasions that have contributed to our knowledge.

Geoff Mitelman: – and the importance of individuals. Any community is made up of individuals, and how do we create a more diverse community here? And how can we lower the barriers of entry for people to be in these kinds of conversations? And I think that’s why the work that you’re doing that is so critical.

Grace Wolf-Chase: You know, that’s another reason, Geoff, that motivates reaching out and building bridges to different religious communities. You’re probably aware of this, but some of the other research coming out of Rice’s Public Life program shows how religious exclusion is very intimately linked with […] and gender exclusions – how African American and females very often are excluded also because of their religious identities and other identity factors that play in. So this diversity is extremely important – bringing in people from of all persuasions.

Geoff Mitelman: Well, and that’s why the work that you’re doing is so critical. So thank you, Grace, for taking the time to talk with us here this afternoon. If people want to find out more, they can go to sciencereligiondialogue.org/Projects/Zooniverse. That’s one place where they can go. They can also follow you on Twitter, I believe, @gwolfchase, correct?

Grace Wolf-Chase: That’s correct. Thank you.

Geoff Mitelman: So, in finding out more about the kinds of work in terms of citizen science – and you can find all sorts of great projects to be involved as an individual, as a member of a community, as an educational institution, as a church, as a synagogue – all sorts of different ways to contribute to the knowledge of science. So, thank you for joining us here this afternoon.

Grace Wolf-Chase: Thank you so much, Geoff. And again, I apologize for the computer issues.

Geoff Mitelman: They happen – but we had a great conversation here. We hope that you’ll be able to join us next Tuesday at 2pm on August 10th. We’ll be talking with Dan Rothstein of the Right Question Institute, of: How do we help people in scientific and educational and religious institutions ask better questions to be able to advance democracy and knowledge? So you can join us there at jewishlive.org/sacredscience. You can follow me on Twitter. I’m @RabbiMitelman or @SinaiSynapses. Follow us on social media, and we hope you enjoyed our conversation. We hope to see you again soon. Thank you so much.