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Life and

knowLedge

at the

center of

science

ollective intelligence is created when livestock fairs, it was hard for an individual to accurately
people work together to manage a large guess the weight of a cow. However, by aggregating the
amount of information and ideas to ad- data from all the participants in the contest, the average
dress a social challenge. It’s not some- of the answers varied only half a kilogram from the actual
thing new. Collective intelligence was weight of the animal. Other examples are the Human Ge-
behind the first Oxford dictionary in the nome, Wikipedia, etc. As a collective, we can consistently
C 19th century when thousands of volun- achieve more than the sum of the parts.
teers contributed by sending words and their etymologies
to the editors. The same applies to the social communication of science.
We face global problems such as climate change, where
Another interesting example occurred in the early 20th decisions based on scientific evidence are crucial. Howe-
century when statistician Francis Galton realized that at ver, communication between the public and scientific per-

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