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role of the non-professional in discovery and invention may have become
less and less recognised.
Yet, the trend may be reversed, for various reasons. In rich countries an
ever-larger part of the population has pursued higher education, thus contributing
to a democratisation of science and scientific knowledge. In many
fields of scientific endeavour the role of the non-professional has continued,
or has increasingly been acknowledged. In archaeology the role of the
amateur has been extensively debated, as well as in fields such as astronomy,
history (especially local history), botany and plant breeding. In ongoing
phenological research on the effects of climate change on flora and fauna in
the Netherlands, for example, the principal researcher has requested the
audience of a popular radio programme to report the first sighting of a plant
or animal in a given season. The research profits from the vast network of
lay informants or observers provide a wealth of information.
In poor countries, local informants have become a recognised part of research
teams. Take the case of the huge natural inventory compiled by researchers
from the Merck Company in Costa Rica, where local farmer informants
were formally included in the teams (Brush, 1998). Their
knowledge was recognised in subsequent publications. The research would
have been impossible without these trained lay informants.
In Africa, recent studies point to the existence of rich indigenous scientific
knowledge in many parts of the region. [...] The region’s Materia medica
of more than 1,000 animal, plant and mineral products for the treatment of
illness is a resource that Western-trained scientists are widely studying. […]
The challenge seems to be how to integrate this African indigenous
knowledge [...] into mainstream analytical science (Bass, quoted in Adeboye
1998: 177–178).
The success of these approaches lies in the careful linkage of a fairly traditional
(possibly even disciplinary) knowledge with user (or practitioner)
knowledge. The recognition of user knowledge is the key to its sustainability
(Brush 1998). The resulting knowledge network can be remarkably dynamic,
as the Costa Rican and South African cases illustrate. It made good commercial
sense to a transnational company like Merck – just as it made good
scientific sense to the researchers involved. Thus, a dialogue between scientists
and traditional knowledge bearers should be sought and initiated.
References
Adeboye, Titus, 1998, “Africa” in UNESCO World Science Report 1998, Paris: UNESCO, pp.
176–181.
Brush, Steven, 1998, “Bio-co-operation and the benefits of crop genetic resources: The case
of the Mexican maize” in World Development 26 (5), pp. 755–766.