PARTICIPATORY SCIENCE

What is participatory research and science? Despite the various definitions, the French Charter of March 2017 proposes to define it as “forms of production of scientific knowledge in which actors of civil society (individuals or groups) participate actively and deliberately”. Today, there is a great diversity of participatory research projects that respond to citizens’ growing concerns about their diet, environment, health, etc. These projects promote dialogue between science and society, all while helping to raise awareness of the scientific approach. To learn more about participatory sciences, consult the “Participatory Sciences in France” report of February 2016.

These practices date back to the 19th century. However, as science has become more professional, a gap has widened between researchers and the general public. The movement was reversed in the 1990s, when citizens, and some patients in particular, wanted to participate actively in the conduct of science in the field that concerned them, thus giving way to a co-construction of scientific knowledge.

“Participatory Science and the Scientific Approach”, The Conversation, October 2017
The network of Tous Chercheurs laboratories is associated with this idea and offers the possibility of developing participatory research according to a new direction: the actors of civil society participate in the construction of research questions, experiments and analysis of results as part of ongoing research projects, supervised by researchers, and are therefore become fully involved in research.