Text 1
The story of modern science is one of steady professionalization. Where a curious clergyman or country doctor once made real discoveries in a spare hour, today’s frontiers demand costly instruments, formal training, and years inside an institution. The lone enthusiast, however gifted, can no longer keep pace with a funded laboratory. For that reason, meaningful contributions now come almost entirely from credentialed experts; the amateur’s role has shrunk to that of an appreciative onlooker.
Text 2
Yet the sheer scale of modern data collection has quietly restored a role for the amateur. Networks of volunteer birdwatchers log millions of sightings a year, a coverage no research team could ever fund, and ornithologists mine these records for migration shifts they could not have tracked alone. The volunteers seldom design the studies or run the statistics — that work stays with specialists — but without their observations the analysts would have far less to explain.
Based on the texts, how would the author of Text 2 most likely respond to the claim in Text 1 that meaningful contributions now come almost entirely from credentialed experts?
