Do citizen science programs like Zooniverse contribute to scientific research to a meaningful extent?

[Jurassic Park]

Hello everybody,

I didn't know where else to ask this type of question so I decided to ask it here.I kindly ask mods to put this in the appropriate sub-forum if needed.

OK,here is the thing,I always wanted to be involved in any kind of scientific researches and try to give my humble contribution to it.
Since I was a kid,I planned to became paleontologist,but in my adolescence I developed sever agoraphobia combined with emetophobia that prevented me in achieving that.
I never lost my interest toward paleontology and science and I continue to learn about it online since that was my only option.
Since I have agoraphobia,it means I have basically unlimited free time and I would like to spend it on something meaningful and useful.
I recently discovered by pure accident that online volunteering exists and that people without any experience in field can participate in some projects.
I read that Zooniverse is one biggest websites for participation in various citizen science projects and I was wondering how meaningful are those projects to real scientists in reality?
From what I managed to found online,It's seems like a useful tool for crowd sourcing mass data that computers have a hard time processing.
But is there any real data and useful information that can be obtained by scientists for their researches from participants in this programs?
I would really dedicate myself on doing everything I can to do my contribution since I'm having troubles leaving my home and got tons of free time,but I don't want to spend months and months doing something that may not have any real usage to scientific community.If that's the case I'd rather spend that time to expand my knowledge in other areas like geology etc.
So,after going into lot of details,I'm coming back to my original question:
Does citizen science projects like Zoouniverse have any meaningful impact on real scientific research that would make them important at least to some degree?

Everyone's opinion is more than welcome so feel free to write anything,I'd be glad to hear it.
Thank you for taking time to read this and have a nice day.

 

Edited January 7, 2022 by Jurassic Park

[CharonY]

I don't know Zooniverse, but there are quite a few projects in various areas where volunteers can contribute. Typically (but not always) it does not rely on any specific expertise. Rather, volunteers help out with e.g. collecting samples, or being participants in a range of studies. These are very important for the scientific community. However, most of these initiatives are still researcher driven. I.e. we propose projects and then try to recruit folks for specific tasks. I am certain that there are also projects driven by citizen scientists, but I would suspect that their success can be highly dependent on who organizes them.

[Genady]

I have tried several projects in Zooniverse. Was not impressed by a depth of their science. Simple surveys of images.

I wonder if there are published research papers where the authors acknowledge citizen scientists' contribution or even specifically Zooniverse. 

[Ken Fabian]

Mostly citizen science is about collecting data (or specimens) rather than doing anything with that data - sometimes tedious and uninspiring work, sometimes not going to happen at all unless volunteers do it. What is made of that data is what is going to take the scientific expertise.