run several ‘citizen science’ projects combining contagion research
with wider discussions about outbreaks, data, and ethics. We’ve
studied what networks of interactions look like, how social behaviour
changes over time, and what this means for infection patterns.[30]
Our most ambitious project was a massive data collection effort we
ran in collaboration with the BBC during 2017/18.[31] We asked the
public to download a smartphone app that tracked their movements
to the nearest 1km over a day, and also asked them to tally up their
social interactions. Once the study was completed, this dataset
would help form a freely available resource for researchers. To our
surprise, tens of thousands of people volunteered, despite the
project having no immediate benefit to them. Although just one
study, it shows that large-scale data analysis can still be carried out
in a transparent and socially beneficial way.
In March 2018, the BBC aired a program called Contagion!,
showcasing the initial dataset we’d gathered. It wasn’t the only story
about large-scale data collection in the media that week; a few days
earlier, the Cambridge Analytica scandal had broken. Whereas we
had asked people to volunteer their data to help researchers
understand disease outbreaks, Cambridge Analytica had allegedly
been harvesting vast quantities of Facebook data – without users’
knowledge – to help politicians try and influence voters.[32] Here
were two studies of behaviour, two massive datasets, and two very
different outcomes. Several commentators picked up on the contrast,
including journalist Hugo Rifkind in his TV review for The Times. ‘In a
week when we’ve agreed that data and internet surveillance – boo,
hiss – are ruining the world, Contagion was a welcome reminder that
it can sort of save it a bit too.’[33]
I ’ you to read this book, around three hundred
people will have died of malaria. There will have been over five
hundred deaths from / , and about eighty from measles, most
of them children. Melioidosis, a bacterial infection that you may well
have never heard of, will have killed more than sixty people.[34]