A weekly reflection on life in academia

Most of this last week was spent in San Francisco, at the NISE Net (Nanoscale Informal Science Education Network) network-wide meeting – possibly my favorite meeting of the year (I might have mentioned that before).  This year I had the additional pleasure of opening the meeting in a double-act with Kathy Sykes.  Readers in the UK will be familiar with Kathy – for others, she is a rather smart scientist, communicator, broadcaster, science-festival co-director (she helped create and co-directs the Cheltenham Science Festival) and all-round good egg.  She is also a fellow physicist.  Two Brit physicists opening a US conference on informal science education – not bad eh!

One aspect of this meeting that I love – apart from the glorious location right by Fort Mason in San Francisco – is the eclectic and engaging mix of participants.  It’s one of the few meetings I know where artists, performers, teachers, exhibit designers, communicators, “natural” scientists  (bit of a dodgy term), social scientists and others can get together and share their knowledge around a common theme – in this case, nanoscale science and engineering.

I was here as a NISE Net advisor and as a keynote speaker (“Current perspectives on nanotechnology” – in 45 minutes!).  Because of this, I think people were expecting me to enlighten them (apart the person who asked in the bar “so what’s a Risk Science Director doing talking about nanotechnology?” – then sheepishly admitted the next day “I Googled you…”).  I may have said some useful things – it’s always hard to tell.  But what the organizers and participants probably don’t realize is how much I gained myself from the meeting.

As always it seems at this meeting, listening to and talking with other participants ended up influencing my own thinking about nanoscale science and engineering.  I came away with my brain buzzing with new ideas on how to approach and understand nanoscale science and engineering from a social and educational perspective – largely due to stimulating conversations with people having a very different training and perspective to mine.  What is somewhat bizarre but highly gratifying is that I possibly find more inspiration from meetings like this than from scientific meetings where I’m reasonably familiar with much of the material being discussed.  I suspect it’s something to do with being forced to think differently and more imaginatively about things, and having to approach issues from very different perspectives.

This is probably one added value of NISE Net that isn’t sufficiently recognized.  But it’s a tremendously important one.  NISE Net has developed an innovative process to introduce nanoscale science and engineering to people through science museums and other informal science education venues.  But that process is also educating the “educators”.

So I’m extremely grateful to everyone at the meeting who helped me see the world, and the issues I grapple with, in new ways.

Thank you NISE Net!

Of course, the downside is going to be a whole new string of blogs revolving around nanoscale science and engineering.

Sorry!

PS – there’s still time to vote on the Spider-Goat-Milk story I posted the other day.  This is directly related to the NISE Net meeting – a link that I’ll reveal as soon as enough people have contributed to the poll!

Complete the following:

Setting:

A well known and sometimes off-beat technology commentator explores new breakthroughs on a popular TV science and tech show.

Story:

1. Spiders’ silk is incredibly strong, but in short supply (ever tried harvesting silk from a spider?).
2. So why not take the gene responsible for making spider silk, and splice it into a goat?
3. The result: goats that produce milk laced with spider silk-protein.
4. All you have to do then is extract the protein from the milk and spin it into silk and hey presto – a plentiful supply of a super-strong, incredibly versatile, “natural” material.

How should the story end?

Take Our Poll

There’s a serious point to this question, which I’ll come back to later.  For now though, I’m intrigued as to how people think the story should conclude – remembering this is a TV show for a broad audience.

The spider/goat stuff is real btw – check out this snippet from the US National Science Foundation.

[Update 11/2/10 - the follow-up blog to this piece has just been posted]

Back in August, the American Academy of Arts & Sciences published a collection of essays under the editorship of Donald Kennedy and Geneva Overholster on the (seemingly) increasingly strained relationship between science and the media.  I was too embroiled in the move to Michigan at the time to pay it much attention, but a news release sent out by the Academy yesterday promoting the publication prompted me to sit down and browse through it.

At first, I was worried that this would be just another piece from scientists bemoaning the sorry state of a society that doesn’t “think right”.  This wasn’t helped by the title of the press release: “Science and the Media” Explores Challenges to Scientific Literacy in U.S. Fortunately, I was wrong.

Certainly, there are places here where there are overtones of a community frustrated by a “public” and especially “journalists” who don’t see and understand the world as they presumably should, and who don’t give due deference to experts who do understand things.  This is reflected to a certain extent in discussions around science literacy, which tend to overshadow more difficult questions of how anyone makes informed decisions about the impacts of science and technology in a complex world where multiple factors beyond just the science come in to play.  Interestingly, many of the contributors are in the business of science communication rather than science practice, suggesting that these perspectives are not limited to scientists.  But this emphasis on science contributors also gives the collection considerable value – especially as it reveals a science communication community that is far more diverse than is often thought.

The collection is short enough to read through relatively quickly at just 109 pages long.  And it’s well worth taking the time to read.  Browsing through it this morning, three essays in particular grabbed my attention:

In your Own Voice – Alan Alda

Alda writes a beautiful piece from the perspective of someone fascinated by science on how scientists can communicate more effectively.  His question is the archetypal “dumb question” – the one that seems so obvious that no-one dares ask it, but in consequence is too often ignored or brushed aside:

“…if scientists could communicate more in their own voices—in a familiar tone, with a less specialized vocabulary—would a wide range of people understand them better? Would their work be better under- stood by the general public, policy-makers, funders, and, even in some cases, other scientists?”

Alda goes on to talk about how the actors tool of improvisation might be one tool that can help scientists begin to find that personal voice that connects with people they are attempting to communicate with.

This piece is well worth reading as it represents someone who is hungry for information from scientists, but needs them to communicate, not just lecture.  But the essay is also a model of communication itself.  Alda is engaging, exploratory, humble and passionate – all qualities that draw the reader in and feel as if they are having an intimate conversation with the writer.  And most importantly, it’s short – just three pages.  An excellent lesson in eloquent brevity!

Managing the Trust Portfolio: Science Public Relations and Social Responsibility – Rick Borchelt, Lynne Friedman and Earle Holland

This is probably the most controversial essay in the collection.  Borchelt and his co-authors tackle the sometimes contentious and often misunderstood role of public relations in science communication.

I suspect that most people – scientists and others alike – have a somewhat skewed perception what modern day public relations is all about.  There’s often a sense that it’s a bit of a dirty profession in a bit of a dirty world – selling an image, irrespective of whether the subject of that image is deserving.  But Borchelt et al. do a good job of deconstructing this myth, and presenting a very different perspective on PR.  They write:

“…for some time now, many scientific institutions have unadvisedly relied on retooled scientists and former reporters to crank out an increasing blizzard of peppy news releases, driven by the axiom—now rejected by communications theorists—that “to know us is to love us” … This new Madison Avenue–driven approach has a dim chance of regaining public trust. The scientific community needs to understand what ethical practitioners of public relations have long known: trust is not about information; it’s about dialogue and transparency.”

They go on to add that “As practitioners use the term, public relations is the art and science of developing meaningful “relations” (or relationships) with the “public” (or publics) necessary for the continuing work of an organization or the scientific enterprise itself.”  This seems a useful approach to science communication that begins to open the door to engagement between different groups, and a two-way flow of information rather than top-down instruction.  Indeed, Borchelt et al note that “many corporations have moved away from one-way communication approaches toward more fully symmetrical models.”  In the context of science, they suggest that the goal of such two-way engagements is the mutual satisfaction of scientific organizations or groups and their publics with the relationship that exists between them.

The essay then goes on explore this two-way approach to science public relations in the contexts of trust and social responsibility.

Whether you agree with the construct of science PR that is developed here or not, this is an important piece from the perspective of science communication and engagement, and reveals a more complex relationship between the generators and receivers of information and their intermediaries.  It is controversial – as is reflected in a response from NBC Science and Health correspondent Robert Bazell in the collection.  But it does reveal another side of the dynamic between science and the media.

The Scientist as Citizen – Cornelia Dean

The final essay I wanted to highlight was Cornelia Dean’s piece that turns the spotlight back on scientists.  Through her extensive experience as a science reporter, Dean writes that she came to realize

“…if we journalists were going to improve the coverage of science, scientists would have to help us. But two problems existed. First, many scientists are not good at talking about their work in ways ordinary people—and journalists—can understand. Second, many scientists do not believe they have any reason, still less obligation, to do so. This belief is by far the more serious problem.”

Rather than try and summarize the piece, I would encourage you to read it directly – Dean writes clearly and pointedly on the need for scientists to understand and learn to be comfortable and effective in communicating what they do to a wider audience – including journalists.  And specifically, she notes the need for scientists to receive training on communication.  She concludes with this account:

“A number of students have told me that the issues we discussed and the hints I offered helped them when their publications in scientific journals brought them to the attention of the lay press. One of them recently sent me an email message describing his first encounter with a journalist. “It was just awful,” he wrote. “I fumbled, said the wrong things, contradicted myself a dozen times, you name it.” He contrasted this experience with one he had later, after sitting in on one of my short seminars: “I asked [the journalist] to give me a few minutes to get ready. I went to my office to have a good quiet spot to talk, stood up while talking, and tried to follow your guidelines. It went a lot better this time!” Needless to say, he made my day.

I believe all scientists should encounter this kind of training—a short course, a semester-long program if they want it, or even an internship in a news outlet or policy-making venue. I would not give students advanced de- grees in science until they had heard the message this kind of training offers.

Is this enough to solve the problem? No. But it is a start. Seeding the nation’s scientific establishment with researchers who understand the impor- tance of communicating with the lay public, and who are willing to take the time to communicate, can only be good. More important, the establishment of university programs to advance this goal tells scientists-in-training that their institutions value the effort and regard it as a worthwhile use of their time. That is perhaps their most important lesson.”

Science and the Media is freely available as a download from the American Academy of Arts & Sciences

I couldn’t resist finishing the August in the Archives series with this piece on “silent rave” syndrome, which I am sad to say still seems to inflict the emerging technologies community!

Originally posted October 5 2008

The silent rave might seem a rather bizarre social phenomenon; a group of strangers converging in a public place and dancing to their own individual iPod soundtracks.  But I have a sneaking suspicion that the emerging technology community has been indulging in the new tech-equivalent of silent raves for some time now.

These suspicions are probably the delusional by-product of jetlag.  But traveling back from the latest in a long line of multi-stakeholder nanotechnology meetings last week, the analogy hit a chord…

Imagine a meeting room where people are plugged into their own personal mental iPods: The scientists immersed in Avril Lavigne’s “Complicated” (apart from the toxicologists, who are playing “Another One Bites the Dust”); the industry folk tuned in to “I Did It My Way”; with the NGO’s rocking along to “Holding Out for a Hero” (with either Bonnie Tyler or Jennifer Saunders taking the lead, depending on how “hip” the group is).  And all the while the policy makers in the room listening to Bob Geldof and “I Don’t Like Mondays”—over and over again…

This is a recipe for a great time (for some), little progress, and a lot of noise.  And it seems to be one that is followed at many meetings designed to address the broader social, health and environmental issues of emerging technologies.

The problem is twofold I suspect:  People in different discipline and with different agendas find it hard to listen to and understand other perspectives. And in the absence of a clear focus for dialogue, it is near-impossible to find a common language to facilitate communication.  In the silent rave analogy: People find it really hard to unplug their mental iPods and listen to other tunes; especially if there isn’t a strong communal tune to replace their personal soundtracks.

This is hardly a blinding revelation.  But the point is nevertheless an important one if real progress is to be made in developing sustainable emerging technologies.  The question is: how can people be encouraged to unplug and join the conversation?

I’m not sure what the answer is, but I’m pretty sure one of the first steps will be to find that clear focus for dialogue—not just a woolly desire to talk about ill-defined implications of emerging technologies, but a clear statement of what the challenges are to making progress.  And that might mean dropping pre-conceived ideas of what defines any particular emerging technology (like nanotechnology), and focusing instead on what the science is revealing—and how this challenges conventional approaches to ensuring safe, environmentally sound and socially acceptable use.  Perhaps if this focus is found, it will lead to a communal tune so irresistible that people will start turning off their mental iPods, and tuning in to the group conversation.

In fairness, the meeting that sparked off these thoughts was more productive than many I have participated in.  But more is needed if we (as stakeholders in getting emerging technologies right) are to stop going round in circles and start making some serious headway into a technologically secure future.

And as for what is playing on my mental iPod:  Fortunately, I unplugged myself a long time back.  Funny thing though, no matter which meeting I’m at, I keep hearing strains of Pink Floyd’s “Is There Anybody  Out There?” Strange that!

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The full August in the Archives 2010 series can be browsed here

This was based on a piece I originally wrote for Nano Today – the blog was a slightly extended version of what was published.  Although it was written two years ago, it’s still surprising how few people realize that breathing in nanoparticles is an everyday fact of life, and that to make sense of new risks from engineered nanoparticles, we need to understand what we are already experiencing.

Originally posted April 5 2008

Read some accounts of nanotechnology risks, and you might be forgiven for concluding that a single engineered nanoparticle can kill you.  Of course, a little critical thinking soon dispels this notion—we are constantly bombarded with incidental nanoparticles from sources that include cars, incinerators and fires; we have been since birth.  And as critics of “risk extremists” often point out, we seem to be doing just fine in this nano-rich environment.  But does this mean that the potential risks associated with engineered nanoparticles are little more than a myth?

This was the question I faced while writing an opinions piece for the latest issue of Nano Today.  It’s a question that’s constantly popping up, either because someone has forgotten (or never realized) that nanoparticle exposure is a fact of life, or as a justification for not worrying about the engineered varieties of nanoparticles.

As you might expect, the truth is somewhat more complex than either of these extremes, and still remains unclear.  But to get back to the article; as an “ambience-hack” (the literary equivalent of a “character actor”), I felt it important to start off in a place particularly laden with nanoparticles—my local coffee shop.  Armed with a model 3007 portable condensation particle counter, kindly on loan from TSI Incorporated, I resolutely set out to sample the local nano-aerosols over a good cappuccino.

As coffee and breakfast were being prepared, the particle counter indicated I was inhaling somewhere around four billion particles per minute.  That’s not far off one nanoparticle for every man, woman and child on the planet entering my lungs every sixty seconds.  Yet I was feeling fine.  Clearly my body was doing a good job of handling them—thanks to millennia of Darwinian natural selection giving me lungs that know a thing or two about airborne nanoparticles.

But I don’t buy into the idea that my surviving the coffee shop naturally means all nanoparticles are safe. The trouble is; all nanoparticles are not created equal, and to generalize will be to make mistakes—perhaps costly ones.

And the idea that we are perfectly adapted to breathing in particles is somewhat flawed. Consider these rather sobering facts associated with inhaling particles having a range of sizes: Between 1990 and 1999, there were over 30,000 deaths in the U.S. associated with occupational exposure to airborne materials [1]. Estimates of worldwide deaths from asbestos exposure lie between 250,000 and 400,000; and in the U.K., deaths due to asbestos-related mesothelioma are not expected to peak for another ten years—despite imports and use of asbestos peaking in the 1960’s [2].  In the general environment, estimates of the number of people who died from inhaling particles in the London Smog of 1952 are as high as 12,000 [3]. At a more subtle level, exposure to fine airborne particles has been associated with an elevated likelihood of dying, and there is increasing evidence linking nanoscale particle exposure with impacts on the cardiovascular system [4].

The bottom line is that our lungs, incredible as they are at dealing with each day’s dust burden, have their limitations. Our knowledge of airborne particles in general and incidental nanoparticles in particular can illuminate our approaches to engineered nanoparticles.  But just as the health risks from asbestos, vehicle emissions and welding fume differ, we will not be able to derive everything we need to know about engineered nanoparticles just by looking at the incidental varieties.

It’s interesting to push this idea of differences between particle types further.  Clearly our lungs have evolved to handle naturally occurring nanoparticles.  But does this mean we also have the ability to deal with engineered nanoparticles never previously encountered, and as a species have not had the chance to acclimatize to?  We know that our bodies have a hard time dealing with chemicals that do not occur naturally—will the same hold true for engineered nanomaterials?

And then there is the comparison between the veritable cocktail of ambient nanoparticles we all breathe, and the precision of many engineered nanoparticles. Does exposure to a complex mixture of particles cause harm through synergistic interactions, or does the “soup” we breathe dilute the impact of the relatively few dangerous particles that might be present?  And—if a manufacturer hits on a particular combination of physical and chemical properties that is less than compatible with a long and healthy life—how much more dangerous is an aerosol of this “pure nanomaterial” than the nanoparticles you and I are breathing now?

This leads to the tricky issue of dose—how much material is needed to cause damage.  “The dose makes the poison” is the mantra of toxicologists worldwide—acknowledging that the most toxic substances can be harmless (or even beneficial) at low enough doses, while nothing is good for you in excess.  Four billion particles per minute might sound like a lot, but it is a minuscule amount of material when you consider how much mass there probably is in those particles.  Scribbling out some rather crude back-of-the-envelope calculations, I am probably inhaling no more than 50 nanograms of nanoparticles per minute in the coffee shop.  In contrast, a highly toxic dust like crystalline silica has an occupational exposure limit that equates to inhaling around 1,000 nanograms per minute over eight hours, and the equivalent limit for a material like titanium dioxide is a whopping 300,000 nanograms per minute.  Yet which is the appropriate way to measure dose—the mass of particles, their number, or something else; like surface area?

At the end of the day, I can drink my coffee and inhale the local nanoparticles with no obvious ill effects because I’m not exposed for that long and my body knows how to deal with them.  And there are probably plenty of engineered nanomaterials I could do the same with.  I know that a single nanoparticle won’t kill me—probably a few billion wouldn’t be enough to do much damage.  But I’m under no illusion that all engineered nanoparticles will be safe, just because I’m breathing in incidental nanoparticles all the time.  It all comes down to understanding what causes a new material to be harmful, and how to avoid harm—which means we need to get on and do more research if questions like the ones above are going to be answered.

Now, back to my four billion particles a minute with a cappuccino on the side…

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The full August in the Archives 2010 series can be browsed here

I‘m going to be taking a break from 2020 Science over the next few weeks, as I finally make the move with my family from DC to Ann Arbor.  But rather than let the blog languish, I thought I would use this as an opportunity to revisit some of my old posts.  So through August, I will be digging up and re-posting blogs from summer 2008 that still have some relevance.

These will be posted every Tuesday and Thursday through August – starting on August 3.  You can get them delivered automatically via email by following this link.   Or you can simply check in each week to see what’s new.

Either way, I hope you enjoy the retrospective.

And if you do, please feel free to leave a comment, or retweet the posts on Twitter (you can use that little retweet badge at the top of the page!).

Have a great summer, and see you all in September.

Cheers,

Andrew

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The full August in the Archives 2010 series can be browsed here

I love books – the old fashioned kind, printed with ink on paper.  As a kid, books were my source of education, inspiration and entertainment.  As an adult, I still find there’s something oddly satisfying about picking up a sheaf of printed and bound pages and immersing myself in them.

So it’s perhaps not surprising that, when it came to using my prize money from I’m A Scientist, get Me Out Of Here, I ended up turning to books.

Knowing how to use the £500 prize for being the last scientist standing in the Silicon zone on I’m A Scientist was something of a challenge in itself.  The rules of the competition stated that “The money must be for publicising or communicating the scientist’s research (or research area).” It sounds simple. But £500 lies in that awkward region where it’s too little to do something really big with, but too much to just fritter away.  I suspect the organizers in their wisdom realized this – it’s a sum that forces you to think creatively!

And there was certainly some creative thinking amongst the scientists taking part in I’m A Scientist.  Tom Hartley (runner up in the Imaging zone) came up with the great idea of scanning a teacher using fMRI (an idea he’s still pursuing) for instance, while Stephen Curry – the winner of the Imaging zone – has plans for a follow-up to his “What Science Is Really Like” movie trailer.

But I really struggled with this.  I toyed with the idea of buying an iPad (“I’m sure it’ll get used for communicating science someday…”), or covering the costs of running 2020 Science (a little more legitimate maybe, but hardly creative).  In the end though, it was my love of books that won out.

So the £500 is going toward sending each class that participated in the Silicon zone of I’m A Scientist a copy of a book.  And not any old book – each class is getting a copy of Felice Frankel and George Whitesides’ No Small Matter: Science on the Nanoscale.

Preparing to mail copies of No Small Matter off to classes participating in the I'm A Scientist Silicon zone

The beauty of sending each class a science-related book is that it’s a long term investment.  Hopefully the students that took part in I’m A Scientist will get a kick out of it.  But then, the book will (hopefully) find it’s way to the class or the school library – where it will be a source of inspiration for future generations.

Okay so maybe fewer and fewer kids pick up books these days and read them.  But it’s still easier to flick through an attractive book that is within arms reach than stumble across it while browsing online.

And this is an attractive book.  Not just because it has high production values and contains some great photos, but also because it irresistibly draws the reader in as they browse through it.

What I love about Frankel and Whitesides’ book is that it isn’t patronizing and it doesn’t set out to instruct.  Rather, it opens a window into what it’s like to see the world as a scientist.  This – together with the beautifully written short essays and gorgeous pictures – makes it accessible and engaging to almost anyone who starts looking through it I suspect – whether they are into science or not.

I do hope the students enjoy the book.  And I hope it inspires them – not to become scientists necessarily, but to see and appreciate the world in a different way.

And of course, there’s always the possibility that they will come to appreciate that the printed page isn’t obsolete – quite let!

ASME – the organization that used to be known as the American Society of Mechanical Engineers – has just launched a series of educational podcasts on nanotechnology that are well worth checking out.

Between now and next February, the ASME Nanotechnology Institute will be posting new video and/or audio podcasts on their website every couple of weeks, covering a wide range of nanotechnology topics.

The podcasts are free, but you need to register with the site first before you can access them at http://nano.asme.org/Nano_Educational_Series.cfm However, to give you a feel for series, here’s the introductory video:

You may recognize one of the presenters   I spent a grueling four hours filming with ASME last year for the series – so it’s good to see I don’t look too worn out and exhausted in the video.

I’m not sure where else I will be appearing in the series – we covered a huge range of topics during filming – but expect to see at least one podcast with me addressing some of the environmental and human health aspects of nanotechnology.

Overall, this looks like a well-produced and informative series of podcasts, that should be well worth following if you have an interest in nanoscience and nanotechnology.

With apologies to Chris Mooney, and all the many scientists that really do get the need to listen to people.  And also with a rather large tongue in my cheek:

Dear Mr Mooney,

I’ve been way too busy this week doing important sciency stuff to engage with the trivialities of the popular press.  But this morning I stumbled across your protestations in last Sunday’s Washington Post. You know – the ones about scientists not listening enough to the public?

Choke? I’m still trying to remove bits of masticated Cheerios from my polyester labcoat!

Mr. Mooney, which planet are you on?!  Haven’t you realized yet that the public are just a bunch of raving loonies, obsessed with their own views and impervious to reason? What on earth would justify me listening to their misinformed and irrelevant bleating?

You see Mr. Mooney, what you don’t seem to get is that most of the public don’t think like right-minded people. They’re irrational.  They’re emotional.  And they seem to think that there’s more to how they live their lives than science!

And some of them, Mr. Mooney, some of them are denialists!

And this is what really gets my goat Mr. Mooney.  No matter how much I try and tell these people what’s right, they still insist on holding onto their wrong-headed beliefs.  Not only do they deny my superior intellect – they dare to question the evidence that’s sitting there in front of their face.  Even when I shove it up their noses Mr. Mooney, they just don’t get it!

Now don’t get me wrong Mr. Mooney, I don’t expect everyone to be a scientist like me.  But the public should at least be able to grasp how science works.  Then they might just start listening to me.  Me, Mr. Mooney, me.  Because through hard work and intellectual rigor, I actually have something worthwhile to say.

But I am a reasonable man Mr. Mooney.  And so I thought I would at least give your naive and misguided ideas a go.  So after cleaning up the Cheerios and milk spattered across my Washington Post, I grabbed myself a member of the public and tried listening to them.

As I suspected, it was a disaster.

Accosting the first person I came across, I asked them a few simple questions:

Me:  What’s the second law of thermodynamics?

Member of the public: Err, um…

Me: Okay, forget that.  How do airplanes fly?

Member of the public:  Err, excuse me, could you just loosen your grip a little…

Me:  Come on come on, I’m trying to listen to you – say something intelligent. Please!  Why don’t you accept evolution?  Why do you believe vaccines cause autism in children? Why don’t you understand simple statistics?  Why are you so stupid?

Member of the public:  Get your hands off me now, or see me in court!

You see what I mean Mr. Mooney? There’s no reasoning with these people!  Listen to them?  I’d rather listen to a lamp post.

What we need is more members of the public listening to us. Us Mr. Mooney.  We need to go out and meet them on their own turf – in their bars, in their cafes, in their places of worship – and tell them what’s what.

Now you may think that I’m being a little arrogant here Mr. Mooney.  But I’m really not.  You see, you probably don’t understand this, not being a real scientist yourself, but scientists change their ideas all the time if the evidence is compelling.  I admit it – If the evidence doesn’t fit, I’ll be the first to change my views.  So you see Mr. Mooney, I’m actually quite humble. I can live with the thought of loosing a slanging match against a worthy opponent – no problem.

It’s just that the public aren’t a worthy opponent – never have been, never will be.

So you see Mr. Mooney, listening to the public is a very, very bad idea.  Science isn’t a democracy.  You can’t decide what’s right and what’s not by popular vote!  No, science is about searching for truth and debunking myths (my truths and your myths – naturally).

Okay, so maybe things get a little more complicated when it comes to how science is used.  But then surely Mr. Mooney, the public should leave the difficult decisions to people who know what they are doing – in other words, us scientist.

Imagine where we’d be if we started listened to what people wanted instead of just giving them what they needed.  It’s enough to bring on another choking fit!

Yours knowledgeably,

A concerned scientist.

Joking aside, Chris Mooney’s article on scientists’ understanding of “the public” – which draws on four workshops organized by the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and which provided the inspiration for the Washington Post piece – is well worth reading if you suspect that a more enlightened perspective on science and society is warranted.

Note:  This blog was promoted in part by a rather robust reaction to Chris Mooney’s Washington Post piece in parts of the blogosphere.  For a rather more nuanced set of responses from people that have some experience in this area, it’s worth checking out Andrew Revkin’s post on the Dot Earth blog form last week.

]]> http://2020science.org/2010/07/04/scientist-listen-to-the-public-surely-youre-joking-mr-mooney/feed/ 24 http://2020science.org/2010/06/25/im-a-scientist-2010-ends-and-the-winner-is/ http://2020science.org/2010/06/25/im-a-scientist-2010-ends-and-the-winner-is/#comments Fri, 25 Jun 2010 15:59:40 +0000 Andrew Maynard http://2020science.org/?p=3367

An hour or so ago, the final winners of I’m A Scientist, Get Me Out Of Here were announced.  To my surprise, I made it to the last two standing in the Silicon Zone yesterday, and have been on the edge of my seat today waiting to see whether I was going to be ousted by the rather younger and infinitely more hip Marianne Baker.

And who won?

Before I reveal that, I must say that this has been a brilliant event, brilliantly run by the folks at Gallomanor.  I’m sure there has been frenetic activity behind the scenes, but Sophia Collins, Shane McCraken and a whole host of staff and moderators have done an incredible job of coordinating 100 scientists, several thousand kids, an unbelievable number of live chats and a seemingly inexhaustible stream of questions.  And all the while keeping their sense of humor!

Then there are the scientists.  The four other scientists in the Silicon Zone were fabulous – Paula Gilfillian, Emma Pilgrim, Andrew Leitch and Marianne Baker.  Putting the competition aside (and I seriously don’t know why the students ended up voting for me rather than the others), everyone did a wonderful job of engaging with the kids and providing great answers.  Don’t believe me?  Check out their answers to the questions, and I can guarantee you’ll end up thinking “wow – this is so good they should have won!” – many of my answers were plain and mundane by comparison.

And the students?  What a great bunch!  Their questions stretched and challenged all of us – as well as leading to rather more laugh out loud situations than is probably proper in scientific circles!  Okay so there were some who tested our patience (you know who you are…), but what an enriching experience!

And the winner?

Well, to be honest – it’s the students!  What better way to inspire the next generation of science-savvy individuals than by getting them excited about science in the classroom.

Brilliantly done I’m A Scientist!

Oh, and if you really want to know who the last scientists standing were, here’s the full low-down.

Update:  If you’re inspired to take part in I’m a Scientist 2011 – you can already sign up here!

Update 9/6/10 – Oops, a gremlin crept into Marianne Baker’s link!  Now fixed.  You can also read her blog at Purely a Figment of your Imagination.

Today was a tough day on I’m A Scientist, Get Me Out Of Here – three live chats almost back to back, followed by the first evictions.  And believe me – even though I live to fight another day, the evictions were traumatic!  But more of that below.  At the end of a long day, I mainly wanted to pull together a few notes on the event as it stands at the moment.

First, there have been some great blogs on I’m A Scientist.  You should definitely check out Stephen Curry’s Science and the Importance of Cheese – especially the video (which I will include at the end of this post – wonderful viewing!).  Then there’s Mark Fogg’s Getting IAS Therapy? – a wonderfully energetic blog about how energizing taking part in I’m A Scientist is.

I’m sure there are other blogs out there – feel free to add links below.

Next, there’s a great quote from Larry Bock – Executive Director of the USA Science and Engineering Festival (the first national science festival to be held in the US!).  In a piece from the University of Michigan (my place), Larry calls I‘m A Scientist

“One of those brilliant British ideas that needs to come to the U.S. Like the X-Factor, The Office, and, yes, the Beatles, we need a British invasion of ‘I’m a Scientist’”

Hopefully this is an idea that will catch on, and we’ll see a repeat run over here one day!

Then there were today’s live chats.

These are unique events – up to 30+ teenagers firing questions off to a handful of scientists in real-time, at a rate of one every few seconds.  It’s one of those exhilarating intellectual and physical bare-knuckle rides where you just have to hang on for dear life’s sake, typing and responding as fast as possible until your brain goes numb or your fingers drop off!

When you have an engaged group of kids, the experience is incredible – mental stimulation so intense it’s probably illegal!  But the experience is also a good learning one.  Today, the Silicon zone had a live chat with a small number of kids from a community special school.  We didn’t know where the students were coming from at first, and so were caught off guard, and had to recalibrate rather rapidly how we responded to them.  The questions were… unusual, to say the least.  But once I began to get the measure of things, I felt humbled to have the privilege of talking with students that could so easily be left out of a “science engagement” event.  So often it’s easy to forget that science is relevant to everyone, not just the bright and the privileged.  So thanks for reminding me folks at I’m A Scientist, and the students from this morning’s chat.

And finally, there was today’s eviction.

I’d been prepared to be voted out myself (although I would have sorely regretted leaving the competition).  But I hadn’t been prepared for the shock of seeing one of my fellow scientists go.  This hit me more than I expected – Paula Gilfillain was a great contributor in the Silicon Zone, and was actively involved in a live chat when the news of her conviction came through.  It was a real shame to see her go.  But sadly that’s the nature of the beast.

The reality is though that, as much as we scientists are finding the whole thing a blast, it’s the students that are the important ones here.  And while we might find the evictions hard, they do give the whole event an edge that keeps the students engaged, and the scientists sharp!

I suspect the following evictions will be easier to handle – the first is always the worst.  Will I be around until the end?  I certainly hope so.  But even if I get trounced by one of my remaining competitors, at least I know that the students will have had a great time, and the winning scientist will be worthy of the prize…

Well, almost worthy

Evictions will be posted every day this week on the I’m A Scientist website around 3:30 PM British Summer Time

And here for your entertainment, is Stephen Curry’s rather excellent “What Science Is Really Like” movie – enjoy

]]> http://2020science.org/2010/06/23/im-a-scientist-a-brilliant-british-idea-that-needs-to-come-to-the-us/feed/ 5 http://2020science.org/2010/06/01/im-a-scientist-check-out-the-competition/ http://2020science.org/2010/06/01/im-a-scientist-check-out-the-competition/#comments Tue, 01 Jun 2010 17:09:48 +0000 Andrew Maynard http://2020science.org/?p=3280

Reading the Twitter feeds, it seems that a number of scientists participating in I’m A Scientist, Get me Out of Here have struggled with their profiles.  It’s one thing to design an elegant experiment or write a smart paper – but describing yourself in three words or telling a joke that’s actually funny isn’t something most PhD’s prepare you for!

However, the participants have risen to the challenge admirably, and most profiles are up now – just in time for the web site going live to teachers.

Browsing through the profiles, there are some pretty smart and interesting people here – the competition’s going to be tough!  Here are just a few entries that caught my eye:

Philip Wadler (Beryllium Zone) was clever enough to add a hot link to his three word description of himself, which is a rather cryptic “Not serial killer” – appropriately, he’s a computer programmer.

Antonia Hamilton’s (Oxygen Zone) description of what she does: “I use brain scanners to see how people understand each other” – rather cool!

Paul Roche (Fluorine Zone) “astronomizes.” Is that a word?  If it isn’t, it should be! He also claims to “teach people about life, the universe and (almost) everything” – astronomers!

Zoe Duck (Neon Zone) studies “the surface of the bacterium that causes bubonic plague” which is rather novel. I also see that her answer to “Tell us a joke” is “Manchester City” – hope she doesn’t have any Mancunian students!

Andrew McKinley (Sodium Zone) wanted to be a Ghostbuster when he grew up – I guess “scientist” was the next best thing.

Sian Foch-Gatrell (Magnesium Zone) epitomizes the quality of the jokes in these profiles: “Q: What is the fastest way to determine the sex of a chromosome? A: Pull down its genes.” Ouch!  But if you want a good source of corny science jokes, this is definitely the place to come!

Paula Salgado (Aluminium Zone) has a great pictorial account of her typical day.  She also has a great idea for how she would spend the £500 if she won – “Meet the scientist” – Scientific speed networking.

Andrew Leitch (Silicon Zone) has what must be the most outrageous suggestion for how he would spend the prize money: “I think it’s about time I had an oil-painting of myself to hang in the office…”  As you can guess, this is a rather cheeky response and his serious plans are very different!

Sarah Burl (Clean Zone) is one of the handful of scientists participating who isn’t based in the UK – she is in The Gambia.  She also has a rather novel answer to “What’s the best thing you’ve done as a scientist?” – “Cloned a sheep!”

I rather liked this answer to the same question from Fiona Randall (Brain Zone): “The best is yet to come!”

Leo Carcia (Cancer Zone) has a number of interesting responses in his profile, including his three-word description of himself: “Short, musical, stinky” – there’s a conversation starter!

Reading the responses to “Favourite thing?” is revealing – I liked Rachel Fox’s (Chemicals Zone) “Make lots of mess, but in a productive way…”

Michaela Livingstone’s (Genes Zone) was also pretty good: “Having those little eureka moments when you put together all the bits of experimental data and finally realise what the big picture is.”

Tom Hartley (Imaging Zone) has what must be one of the more unusual ideas for spending the prize money: ‘“Scan Your Teacher” day…’ – you’ll have to read the profile to see what that entails!

Browsing through the profiles of 100 scientists in 20 zones, this is going to be some event!  You can check them all out by visiting the zones from the I’m A Scientist Home Page – the above is little more than a taster!

Oh, and I almost forgot – my profile is sitting here, in the Silicon Zone.  Not as flashy as some maybe, but then the real competition begins when the questions start to flow

I’m A Scientist runs on-line from June 14 – June 25

Update 6/21/10 – corrected Michaela’s “Favorite Thing” above!

]]> http://2020science.org/2010/06/01/im-a-scientist-check-out-the-competition/feed/ 7 http://2020science.org/2010/05/17/im-a-scientist-and-im-going-to-be-hanging-on-for-dear-lifes-sake/ http://2020science.org/2010/05/17/im-a-scientist-and-im-going-to-be-hanging-on-for-dear-lifes-sake/#comments Tue, 18 May 2010 02:23:35 +0000 Andrew Maynard http://2020science.org/?p=3179

I can’t sleep, I’m distracted, I keep breaking out in a cold sweat.  And the reason?  I have a deceptively simple question going my head – and I don’t know the answer!

The question… well, I’ll come to that in a minute.  I’d rather put the moment of embarrassment off for at least a few more lines – because rest assured, I will embarrass myself.   But let me first back up a little…

You may recall me writing about a superb on-line event involving teenagers and scientists held in the UK a few weeks ago.  I’m A Scientist, Get Me Out Of Here was an inspirational exercise in getting teens engaged in science.  Built around on-line chats and Q&A, around 1400 kids interacted with 20 scientists on every topic under the sun over a two week period (and I mean, every topic).  The stroke of genius was that the scientists were competing for prizes (£500 to the winners), and the students had the power to decide who won and who didn’t – with contestants being “voted out” on successive days towards the end of the contest until only the winners were left standing.

So enamored was I by the event that I put myself forward for the next round – to be held between June 14 – 25.  Foolish, foolish, foolish!  I’m only just beginning to understand what I’ve let myself in for!

The next I’m a Scientist event is humongous – 100 scientists, 400 classes, and 8000 students.  Eight Thousand!  The scientists and students are divided into twenty groups, each with five scientists battling it out to be the last one standing at the end of the two weeks, and each group engaging with around 400 students.  This has to be one of the biggest events of it’s kind around – 8000 teenagers getting the chance to talk in some depth with real-life scientists on any subject they fancy (8000 – I can’t get that number out of my head. 8000!)

As you’ll have guessed, I was picked to be one of the “lucky” contestants.  Successful applicants were selected by the students and teachers taking part in the event, as well as the organizers and sponsors, based on a one-line descriptions of what they did for a living (I wrote “Helping people to make science-informed decisions about stuff that affects them” – which I thought was a little lame, but clearly not lame enough).

Looking at who I’m up against, the competition’s going to be tough – really tough.  I’m in the “Silicon” group, which is a general science group.  My fellow scientists – whom I suspect will wipe the floor with me, being younger, brighter and funnier than I am (I’m guessing here – a little paranoia creeping in) – are Marianne Baker from Bart’s Institute of Cancer,  Paula Gilfillan from the Royal Navy, Andrew Leitch from the University of Edinburgh and Emma Pilgrim from North Wyke Research (you can see a list of all the contestants here.)

I’m not too worried about the science questions – having a couple of teenage kids of my own, I’ve leaned to field these over the years (although “have you checked Wikipedia?” is probably not the most responsible answer there is).  What really scares the pants off me though is the left-of-field questions – questions like “Pirates or Ninjas?”, “What color is a chameleon sitting on a mirror?” and – the cause of my panic attacks – “Why did the chicken cross the road?”!

I mean, why did the chicken cross the road?  I don’t buy this “to get to the other side” business – how did the chicken know what a “road” was, never mind how it managed to consciously think to itself why it needed to be on the other side of it in the first place?  It’s a chicken.  It doesn’t think.  It just does stuff!

How can a scientist be expected to answer questions like this?!

I think I’m going to fail…

…Actually, you’ve probably worked out by now that I’m going to have a blast with this!

I still suspect that it’s going to be fiendishly tough surviving ’till the end.  But I’m really looking forward to the experience – chicken questions and all.  What really excites me about the whole thing is that there will be 8000 teenagers who discover that scientists are ordinary people, and that the only thing that makes them “special” is that they are doing something they love and that they think has value.

That’s got to be worth an awful lot.

While the event’s running, anyone can check out the on-line conversations – and I would strongly encourage you to do so (you can follow the proceedings on the I’m A Scientist website, which will be updated closer to when things kick off on June 14).  If the last event is anything to go by, you’ll find them inspiring, humbling, engaging, and totally, totally addictive.

In the meantime, I need to get into practice.  Being one of the few participants not resident in the UK, I need to get my body used to the idea of 4:00 AM on-line chats (caffeine – and lots of it – I think).  And I’ve already started my “Google speed-search” exercises for those occasional questions that temporarily stump me (actually, one of the great features of I’m A Scientist is students discovering that scientists don’t know everything).

Now, if only I could just nail that chicken question…

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I’m A Scientist, Get Me Out Of Here runs between June 14 – 25.  You can follow the questions and answers at http://imascientist.org.uk/.  You can also follow I’m A Scientist on Twitter:  Sophia Collins, the producer, is @imascientist on Twitter; contestants on Twitter can be found here, and I’m A Scientist tweets will be using the hashtag #IAS2010

Having recently finished Robert Winston’s “Bad Ideas?  An Arresting History of our Inventiveness,” I was rather taken by his concluding “Scientist’s Manifesto” – a fourteen-point guide to help strengthen the relationship between science and society.  As well as reflecting much of my own thinking, it embodies many of the ideas coming out of the science communication and engagement community in recent years – although thankfully it lacks much of the jargon that usually accompanies these ideas.

The manifesto is very much a work in progress – Winston refers to it as a “starting point.”  But even in its current form, it challenges scientists to think about their work in a broader context, and to engage more fully with the society that supports them and ultimately stands to be impacted by them – for good or bad:

A Scientist’s Manifesto – Professor Robert Winston

1.  We should try to communicate our work as effectively as possible, because ultimately it is done on behalf of society and because its adverse consequences may affect members of the society in which we all live.  We need to strive for clarity not only when we make statements or publish work for scientific colleagues, but also in making our work intelligible to the average layperson.  We may also reflect that learning to communicate more effectively may improve the quality of the science we do and make it more relevant to the problems we are attempting to solve.

2.  Communication is  two-way process.  Good engagement with the public is not merely a case of imparting scientific information clearly.  It involves listening to and responding to the ideas, questions, hopes and concerns the public may have.  We should accept that this kind of engagement with the public is a matter of good citizenship.  We should reflect that sometimes proper dialogue with various sections of the public may inform some aspects of our work.  Moreover, it can make any technology that is developed from our work more relevant to the needs of the public and less likely be dangerous.

3.  The media, whether written, broadcast or web-based, play a key role in how the public learn about science.  We need to share our work more effectively by being as clear, honest and intelligible s possible in our dealings with journalists.  We also need to recognize that misusing the media by exaggerating the potential of what we are studying, or belittling the work of other scientists working in the field, can be detrimental to science.

4.  We need to recognize that the science we do is not entirely our property.  Whether the taxpayer helps fund our scientific education or not, most of our training and research is paid for by the public – in grants from the research councils or charities.  The public has a major stake in the ownership of what we do.

5.  Whenever possible, we should always consider the ethical problems that may be raised by the applications of our work.  Some scientists have claimed that science does not have a moral value; but while pure knowledge may be ethically neutral, the way this knowledge is gained and the use to which it is put can involve many difficult ethical issues.

6.  We should reflect that science is not simply ‘the truth’ but merely a version of it.  A scientific experiment may well ‘prove’ something, but a ‘proof’ may change with the passage of time as we gain better understanding.  Mere assertion that something is fact will not persuade many people of the rightness of what we say.  It is worth bearing in mind that sometimes two well-conducted experiments can give conflicting results that are equally valid.  Science is not absolute; it is often about uncertainty.

7.  It is understandable and proper that we scientists are immensely proud of what we discover, but it is easy to forget that this special knowledge can sometimes breed a culture of assumed omnipotence and arrogant assertion.  We need to avoid arrogance because it can lead to misinterpretation of data and to conflict instead of collaboration with colleagues.  Moreover, arrogance is likely to damage the reputation of science by increasing public mistrust.

8.  Scientists are regularly called upon to assess the work of other scientists or review their reports before publication.  While such peer review is usually the best process for assessing the quality of scientific work, it can be abused.  When conducting peer review, we should try to ensure that we are fair and scrupulous and not acting out of a vested interest.

9.  We should try to see our science in a broad context, but also be aware of the limitations of our personal expertise.  We should consider that, when talking outside our own subject, we may be more likely to mistake the facts of a case.  We should be particularly cautious about making predictions about the future of science, not least because creating unrealistic expectations can be damaging.

10.  Governments, whether totalitarian, oligarchic or democratically elected, usually have vested interests.  Such interests are not necessarily conducive to good research or to good use of the fruits of knowledge.  Government control of science can have malign influence.  This is certainly true of totalitarian governments, but misuse of science is very common in virtually all liberal democracies, including our own.  It is difficult for scientists to retain independence from politicians, because politicians ultimately make many key funding decisions.  But we need to keep some distance from politicians, and should not avoid criticizing their decisions where we feel they are wrong or dangerous.

11.  Commercial interests, so often promoted by governments and universities, cannot be disregarded if technology is to be exploited for public good.  But scientists need to be aware of the dangers of conflicts of interest and to retain a sense of balance, because commercial interests can be a bad influence on scientific endeavour.  The history of science shows that the over-eager or narrow-minded pursuit of commercial interests can lead to the loss of public trust.

12.  In the Western world, most of our best basic science is done in universities.  But historically, universities have been élite and mysterious institutions, and even today they are sometimes perceived as rather threatening places where the complex and unintelligible takes place.  Those of us working in universities should try to help foster a new culture of open access to our institutions and, where we can, help strengthen activities which involve community service and outreach.  Where possible we should do our best to support whatever aspect of public engagement is taken by the university.

13.  Schools have the most vital role to play in encouraging young people to see the magnificence of the natural world.  But sadly, at present, many schools actively discourage children from appreciation of the wonders of science.  We should try to support initiatives that may promote more practical and experimental work for children, and show our appreciation of inspirational teachers and their teaching.  If we are in a position to do so, we should promote stronger connections and collaborations between schools, school-children and universities, because this is likely to help produce a healthier, safer society.

14.  Just a generation ago, the mark of a civilized person was an appreciation of Shakespeare, Milton, Goethe, Thucydides, Rembrandt and Beethoven.  But the pursuit of science has become so intense and demanding that today’s scientists are more likely to neglect our cultural inheritance.  We may wish to reflect that by broadening our own interests; thus we may help non-scientists to see science as part of our culture.  Shakespeare, Thucydides, Goethe or even Milton may not be directly relevant to our scientific research, but the cultural values such authors represent are universal and deeply important.  The words of the roman poet Terence are of particular relevance: Homo sum: humani nil a me alienum puto – ‘I am a man: nothing human is foreign to me.’

(reproduced with Robert Winston’s permission)

I really like these – having worked at the interface between science and the rest of society (or at least, parts of it) for some years now, they make a lot of sense to me.  But I imagine they are not to everyone’s taste.

So what do you think – are they useful, do they need work, or do you think they on the wrong track?  There’s a big blank comment box below, just waiting for your thoughts!

A guest blog by Barbara Herr Harthorn, Director of the Center for Nanotechnology in Society at the University of California Santa Barbara.

A couple of weeks back, my colleague David Guston wrote here about engaging the public on nanotechnology.   In his piece he gave an excellent overview of the US government’s activities – or relative lack of them – on public engagement in this area.  But I also felt that some questions on why we should encourage public participation in nanotechnology in the first place – and how the government should think about approaching this – were left unanswered.  So to continue where David left off, I would like to explore these questions a little further.

To start with, why do public deliberation on nanotechnology?  The simplest answers are because it’s the right thing to do, and because it’s a useful thing to do.

Let’s take those one at a time:

Public participation is the right thing to do

Public participation in nanotechnology is the right thing to do because it’s a legal mandate – incorporation of some element of public participation is a required element of the Congressional authorization for the National Nanotechnology Initiative (NNI). It also enables citizens to participate more fully in the democratic process.

The normative view is that within a democracy it is right and proper to have all affected parties involved in decisions that may affect them (Fiorino 1989). Such democratic values may indeed compete with technocratic values, but the “participatory turn” (Whitmarsh 2009) with its resultant legal basis for participation is now an established fact in many countries.

If you accept that potentially affected publics have a right to know, at least about risks, the issue of how to gain their ‘informed consent’ to those risks is a complex ethical matter because nanotechnology involves an entire class of technologies that span almost all industries, and the potentially affected include most of society. Public deliberation is one method for achieving informed consent in this upstream context, although a comprehensive public deliberation effort in the US would necessarily be extensive in scope given the potential ubiquity of distribution of nano materials, products, and waste.

Both Centers for Nanotechnology in Society (CNS) established by the National Science Foundation – David’s at Arizona State University (ASU) and the one I direct at the University of California Santa Barbara (UCSB) – have engaged in public deliberation exercises.  But efforts to date have been on a small scale—they’ve necessarily included a very limited number of participants, and have focused only on a limited subset of the spectrum of applications (CNS-UCSB’s 10 public deliberation workshops in 2007 and 2009 focused on nanotech energy/environment applications or health/enhancement applications; CNS-ASU’s 6 workshops in 2007 looked exclusively at human enhancement technologies). On-line deliberation and the linking of selective face-to-face deliberation results with comprehensive survey data for validating opinions and views in national samples offer some potential methods for future larger scale nano deliberations, as long as diverse publics are included. We are pursuing both strategies on a pilot basis at CNS-UCSB.

In terms of public participation in the NNI, fulfillment of the normative purpose would mean allocating sufficient resources to conduct a meaningful public deliberation effort that is iterative and involves both lay persons and scientists.  Even though this might take some resources away from technological R&D in the short term, this would be in the interest of creating “socially sustainable technologies” (i.e., development of nanotechnologies that will be good for society in the long term).

Public deliberation is a useful thing to do

In addition to the normative reasons cited above, public participation is potentially useful for both instrumental and substantive purposes (Fiorino 1989). Instrumental here means that public participation contributes to other goals – for example, building community support for local development; or creating a basis of trust that will sustain support in the event of risk events.  Substantive contributions refer to the actual knowledge and learning that can take place through deliberative processes, particularly the contribution of local knowledge to successful outcomes – for example, better understanding of more useful applications of multi-purpose devices.

There are two foundational resources that have laid the groundwork for the current state of knowledge about this, both of them publications based on National Research Council panels:

Understanding Risk: Informing Decisions in a Democratic Society (Stern and Fineberg 1996) made the case for how making risks understandable to the public and avoiding risk controversies and conflict involve far more than just translating scientific knowledge (e.g. risk assessment). In it, they set out the main framework for “analytic-deliberative” decision making as a process that includes both analysis and public deliberation, brings lay and scientific experts together in an iterative process that promotes co-learning not just for particular decisions, and, when done well, can lead to better outcomes in terms of a number of important criteria.

Much more recently, in Dec 2008 Dietz and Stern’s National Research Council volume Public Participation in Environmental Assessment and Decision Making, reported on a panel specifically convened to address questions of whether public participation in environmental decision making was beneficial to the process and outcomes or if, as some detractors have argued, involving lay people in complex technical decision making slowed or even derailed the process. They concluded that when conducted properly, public participation as a part of government or private sector organizations for assessment, planning and decision making (i.e., not political participation for voting or forming interest groups) contributes to the quality, legitimacy and capacity of decision making.

Getting back to nanotechnology, the NNI has not yet specified the form that public participation should take.

Key aspects of successful public participation and deliberation have been shown to include:

• “early and often” (meaning that you need to begin the process early in development and continue interaction often);
• procedural fairness (even if publics don’t agree with agencies, if they feel they’ve been treated openly, respectfully and fairly, this leads to demonstrably better outcomes, such as less litigation) (Chess and Purcell 1999);
• well managed process, including a clear purpose, adequate resources, genuine commitment of participants to the process, timely outputs, and a focus on learning; and
• implementation that includes breadth of participants, intensity of interaction (particularly face-to-face), and integration of scientific expertise (Dietz & Stern 2008).

Thus, in addition to the political will to include participation as an element of the NNI, there is considerable basis for asserting that public participation in nanotech R&D can be beneficial to the quality, legitimacy and capacity of the NNI. Public participation in nanotechnology development that:

1. addresses needs and concerns of publics (and publics for this purpose would include businesses, NGOs, and communities, as well as individuals),
2. reduces mistrust between stakeholders (e.g., academic or industry labs and surrounding communities), and
3. results in all participants (including scientists) being better informed about the issues and about one another, and produces meta-learning about participatory processes

would be a highly successful outcome for the NNI. On the other hand, one enduring and detrimental feature of public participation efforts has been the “reluctance of government to grant influence to participatory efforts,” and another common cause of poor public participation outcomes is when participation is aimed at “boosterism” for an agency or program (Chess and Purcell 1999).

Clearly, public deliberation in the NNI, if it is to be effective, needs to take heed of these hard-won lessons, and knowledgeable researchers will be reluctant to take part in an effort that is likely to fail for such predictable reasons.

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References

Chess, Caron and Kristen Purcell. 1999. Public participation and the environment: Do we know what works? Env Sci & Tech 33(16): 2685-2692.

Dietz, Thomas and Paul C. Stern, Eds. 2008. Public Participation in Environmental Assessment and Decision Making, Panel on Public Participation in Environmental Assessment and Decision Making, National Research Council. Washington: National Academies Press.

Fiorino, Daniel. 1989. Environmental risks and democratic process: A critical review. Columbia Journal of Environmental Law 14:501-547.

Stern, Paul D. & Harvey V. Fineberg, Eds. 1996. Understanding Risk: Informing Decisions in a Democratic Society. Committee on Risk Characterization, commission on Behavioral and social Sciences and Education. National Research Council. Washington: National Academies Press.

Whitmarsh, Lorraine. 2009. Review of Dietz and Stern, Public Participation in Environmental Assessment and Decision Making. Environmental Science & Policy 12:1069-1072.

The politics of science fascinates me – the more so because there are still some naifs who think that science is apolitical.  And like all politics, sometimes it gets nasty.  I was reminded of this rather starkly while reading an interview with Ben Goldacre this morning in the latest edition of Imperial College’s science magazine I, Science.

Ben – for those of you not into the UK science scene – is a British Doctor, a columnist for The Guardian newspaper, and a celebrated debunker of suspect science and science-related goings-on.  You can find his blog at Bad Science. In the Spring edition of I, Science (published this past week), Ben gives a candid interview with Ben Kolb, a Science Communication student at Imperial College in the UK.

The interview certainly has its moments – Alice Bell, Ben Kolb’s prof and a lecturer in Science Communication at Imperial, called the transcript “a bit bloody brilliant” on Twitter this morning.

But the transcript also reveals an uglier side of science communication when Ben Goldacre lays into Robert Winston – Professor of Science and Society and Emeritus Professor of Fertility Studies at Imperial College.

Having just finished Winston’s latest book – “Bad ideas? An arresting history of our inventions” (more about this in later blogs), I was taken aback to read Goldacre’s description of him as “a man who I regard as laughable.”  The full conversation goes like this:

Kolb: So what’s next for you? Are you planning Bad Science II or Worse Science perhaps?

Goldacre: Hahaha, cool man, you should be in Marketing, that’s for sure. Well I don’t know. There are a lot of “Bad…” books now aren’t there? There’s ‘Bad Ideas’ by Robert Winston, a man who I regard as laughable.

Kolb: I don’t know if we’ll be allowed to print that. He’s Professor of Science and Society or something…he’s got a powerful position here at Imperial.

Goldacre: Yeah, he collects powerful positions and makes very, very boring TV shows and also personally endorsed a commercial product containing fish oil and appeared in all their adverts. Adverts which were subsequently banned by the Advertising Standards Authority because they breached their conditions on truthfulness and accuracy…

Robert Winston is a widely respected doctor, scientist and science communicator, as well as an active member of the British House of Lords.  He has introduced millions of TV viewers and readers over the years to science and the roles it plays in their lives.  And in my experience, he brings a thoughtful and humble perspective to working out the complex relationships between scientists and the rest of society.

So why on earth is Ben Goldacre accusing him of being “laughable” and “boring?”

Is it simply Goldacre trying to oust the old alpha male in the science communication hierarchy and squeeze himself into the spot (he’s previously referred to Winston and others as ‘the old guard of “public engagement in science”’)?  I hope not, because this type of ego-sparring can only harm efforts to engage people in science.  Yet the exchange above has all the hallmarks of making a personal point irrespective of the evidence – something Goldacre is usually helping expose rather than indulging in.

Deconstructing the exchange, Goldacre starts off labeling Winston as someone he finds “laughable” – a good tactic for denigrating your opponent without the need for evidence (Goldacre is the voice of authority in this interview, remember).

He then moves on to describing Winston as someone “who collects powerful positions.”  It’s true that Professor Winston holds a number of prestigious positions – he is a professor at Imperial College, Chancellor of Sheffield Hallam University, a member of the House of Lords, and Fellow of a whole string of professional organizations.  Given his achievements, I suspect that he has earned these positions, and is fully justified in holding them.  To describe the man as collecting “powerful positions” borders on implicit accusations that are distasteful to say the least – and hints at questionable practices with no evidence to back them up. (out of interest, I ran a Web of Science search on both Winston and Goldacre.  A search for peer reviewed articles authored by “Winston, RML” brings up 122 entries.  A similar search for “Goldacre, B*” brings up 2 entries – one of which isn’t associated with the Ben Goldacre as far as I can tell).

Then there is the accusation of Winston making “very, very boring TV shows.”  Well, I guess Dr. Goldacre is entitled to his opinion.  But I think that when it comes to communicating science, it is the opinion of those being communicated to that counts; and the fact that Winston is a regular figure on British TV and watched by millions – repeatedly – suggests that the “boring” accusation is not one upheld by the people that actually matter here.

Ending the exchange, Goldacre brings up the fish oil adverts.  I’m not going to comment on the rights and wrongs of these adverts as I don’t have all the information to hand – although you can read the Advertising Standards Authority assessment here.  What is more interesting is the way Ben combines multiple disconnected things to create the illusion of a suspect character – a tactic used widely by activist groups and less scrupulous journalists.  The reader is left with the impression that being laughable, collecting powerful positions and making boring TV programs are somehow linked to Winston’s participation in a questionable advertising campaign.  They are not of course – there is no substantive connection between Goldacre’s personal views of Winston and the ad campaign alluded to.  But the the impression the association leaves is a seductive one.  It’s exactly the tactic some activists and journalists use to make it appear that unconnected pieces of information can be joined together to support a predetermined position.

Political and personal maneuvering like this is ugly.  It gives science a bad name.  But it also undermines the efforts of many to reach out to people who aren’t that engaged with science.  The sad thing is that Goldacre is a talented communicator.  If only that talent could be focused more on building up science in society, rather than bringing down the pillars of science engagement and communication.

Language is often seen as a barrier to communication.  But sometimes it provides a valuable buffer between hearing, understanding and responding, and allows unique perspectives that are often drowned out to be heard.

A few weeks ago, I was interviewed by Brazilian TV presenter Luís Fernando Silva Pinto for the TV Globo program Ciência & Tecnologia on nanotechnology’s broader social and scientific implications.  As you would expect, when the documentary came out this week in Brazil, my very English segments were surrounded by a sea of Portuguese.  And having had a very “proper” English upbringing (i.e. I’m appallingly bad with other languages), I was completely at sea when it came to understanding how my comments were being framed.

Looking for some enlightenment, I asked the Brazilian-born Portuguese journalist Andréia Azevedo Soares (currently on sabbatical at Imperial College in London) for some help in getting a sense of what was being said in the program.  What I got back was a wonderfully candid running commentary on her response to the documentary.

Andréia’s notes were never written to be published.  But I found them so interesting that I asked if I could post them here – and she very kindly agreed.  In watching the documentary, she approached it both as a journalist and as a consumer.  And as a result, her comments shed considerable insight on how the story is presented, and how she as a consumer and Brazilian responded to it.

But the real beauty of her notes is that, because the documentary was in Portuguese, I was privileged to see it from her perspective – without the preconceptions, assumptions and biases I would usually bring to such a piece.  Very much a case of the message being found in translation!

The documentary – Nanotecnologia nos alimentos – can be viewed here (Update: thanks to Andréia for letting me know how to embed it):

Watching it, Andréia wrote:

0.0 Luís Fernando Silva Pinto picks the example of warnings on the cigarettes packages to make a parallel with nanotechnologies & food. When you smoke, you are fully aware of the risks you are taking. But what about food? He says: “If there was anything in your food that could be bad for your health, would you like to know? We are entering into the world of nanotechnology.” I understand the point the was trying to make with the parallel between labeling in tobacco industry and nanotechnologies, but putting it at the very beginning made me a bit scared. My body associated the smell of cigarettes with food that can be bad for me, and my head noted that nanotechnologies may have a role in this story. I am not sure about the connection between tobacco/food labeling (“If there was anything in your food that could be bad for your health, would you like to know?”) and the discipline itself in a broad sense (“We are entering into the world of nanotechnology”). The world of nanotechnology is not only about smelly evil foods, is it?

01.00 – 02.20 Luís Fernando says nanotechnology is becoming more and more a part of our lives – shampoo, soap and even equipment like the “electronic tongue.” I loved it! I’m now curious to know more about the electronic tongue. This is truly exciting. A scientist explains that a special layer can protect fruit and make it last longer. Luís Fernando asks questions like: “is it safe?” Andrew answers by explaining the uncertainties in the field (you have a plaster on a finger!) [You noticed!  The result of mishandling another “cutting edge” technology! - AM]. Luís Fernando says that even though we haven’t all the answers now, information provided by science will help us to control of and make informed decisions on our food. (Curious how science appears here as a solution to solve problem created by nanotechnologies – it makes me think about soaps made of greasy materials that clean… grease). I’m feeling more relaxed now. There are solutions in the pipeline. Luís Fernando uses words like “discussion” an “informed decisions,” and I feel empowered as a citizen.

02.20 Footage from Embrapa, in São Paulo [Embrapa is a research center connected to the Brazilian Ministry of Agriculture, Livestock and Food Supply - AM]. They produce new equipment and solutions focused on nanotechnologies applied to the farming business. It is said that this is a unique research centre in the world. I don’t know their work and feel excited about the science being done in Brazil. The reporter Flávio Ventura explains that they receive ground coffee from all over the country and they evaluate the quality of the product. Gustavo de Paula, an engineer (materials), introduces us to the “electronic tongue” and explains how it works. I love it! He says there are nano structures in it that can “taste” the coffee.  They complement the work done by the human taster – one thing is not going to replace the other. Gustavo de Paula explains things very clearly, I think I want to visit Embrapa at some point!

04.50 Details are given on what exactly the nano scale is, how scientists can “see” it, what equipment is required. The reporter says: “We live in a nano world but we simply are not aware of it.” He says that the pollen of flowers has a nano-metric element. He adds: “The proteins that make our body, and the DNA itself, is nano as well”. Then appears the nano specialist Eduardo Caritá, overexcited, saying: “The DNA controls all life in the universe – it is something with [a scale of] 2 nanometers. Do you think nature would have chosen this scale, this form, this structure if it were not the more efficient?” He conveys a lot of information in a very well-packed sentence (TV reporters probably love him), but I’m very very picky with DNA metaphors and get quite annoyed here. DNA is an inert molecule, it doesn’t control anything. Mother nature doesn’t have intentions, she doesn’t choose anything – things evolve. *eyes rolling* I take a deep breath and try to think Brazil is a country with almost 200 millions people and that TV Globo is a mainstream channel – it is amazing having a specialist talking about molecular structures on TV in such a simple and enthusiastic way. Language also evolves according to its context. Ultimately, the objective is to communicate. He does that very well.

06.00 New products. Nano-capsules that release chocolate flavors. Humidifiers that release rejuvenating particles (allegedly). The reporter says a brilliant sentence: “The nano world is becoming less and less invisible.”

07.40 Back to Embrapa. Engineer Gustavo de Paula stresses that *any* technology can do good or harm. “Nanotechnology is no different. We need to understand it at great detail to control the possible risks it might offer.”

08.05 Back to Andrew Maynard! Luís Fernando says you are a physicist, have studied in Cambridge (UK), and specialised a decade ago in this field. He adds that since 2005 you have been an active voice on regulation. And here comes the interview bit… [Andréia declined comment on my bits! - AM]

10.10 Back to Embrapa, focusing on fresh fruit and the film using nano-particles that helps to protect them from oxidation. The Embrapa researcher Odílio Assis explain that in Brazil nearly 50% of fruit are wasted during transportation and storing processes. He claims that this technology would ensure that 80% to 90 % of the crops effectively reach the sellers/consumers. The reporter says that the researchers are already sure about the safety of this anti-aging film for fruit, but they will do further toxicology research on it anyway. The Embraba researcher explains that nanotechnology cannot be understood as a single technology, and mentions that the nature of different particles should be taken into account. In that sense, an organic nano particle is different from a metallic one, he says. At Embrapa, he adds, they deal with natural particles obtained from a corn protein – so there is nothing to fear about, he suggests.

INTERVAL

13.30 Back to Andrew. Luís Fernando says that the lack of information is the main problem now. He adds that you believe that further and serious research is needed. And then comes the interview bit (I like the pink lamp on the desk) [It’s not mine - it belongs to a colleague.  Honest! - AM].

15.00 Fiocruz scientist William Waissmann says that we don’t yet understand all the possible outcomes of nanotechnologies, and adds that a great deal of their impact in humans remains unknown. Waissmann says there is no regulation on this matter in Brazil. He tries to be optimistic nonetheless, underlining that there are good scientists beginning to work in the field.

16.30 Luís Fernando says you believe science is in a position to provide answers. However, he says, you believe further and better research is needed and, therefore,  the  researchcinvestment should be more generous (figures are mentioned). I really enjoy your comments, they make me alert and willing to engage in the debate but not too scared. This is important. Scared people don’t engage in debates – they scream (I do, at least).

18.00 Back to Waissmann (I like the way he conveys the message – he says Brazil is completely unprepared to face nanotechnologies issues and, still, I didn’t panic yet). He says that people form opinions not only by gathering information from scientific sources but mainly from their cultural context (friends, small talk, etc.). He says that not as a problem itself but as someone who is trying to understand reality to better cope/deal with it. It did not escape my notice that all interviewees have good communication skills – and as a Brazilian citizen, I’m happy about this.

18.30 Back to Andrew. The silver Tupperware bit. I realise that there are too many objects behind you, Andrew.  I should not be paying attention to pink lamps and US flags – please try to do an uncluttering operation before giving interviews. You are infinitely more interesting and appealing than an US flag, but absent-minded people like me can get distracted with these details. [I should add in my defense that Luís Fernando decided to film me at a colleagues desk - I don’t normally surround myself with pink lamps and American flags! - AM]

19.30 Back to Waissmann. He underlines the possible effects not only on human health but also on the environment (I love it when someone tries to show things in a less anthropocentric way). He also explains why the same material can act differently depending on its form – the example given is comparing refined salt to coarse sea salt. Why has the latter less “power” than the former? I like the example but I suspect it covers the surface/contact/reaction bit rather than the fact that at the nano-scales particles behave differently (e.g. gold). But I am not the expert – he is and you are. And for the program, the example works brilliantly. He says that, in terms of toxicology, it is a new world we are entering in.

20.50 Andrew again.

22.20 Wrapping up. Luís Fernando says that it is up to us, consumers, to make informed choices. Even though the program finishes leaving me surrounded by uncertainties, I feel fine about the challenges to come. I believe it is difficult to talk about food safety and, at the same time, to leave an optimistic note at the end. I am curious to know more about the electronic tongue. I want to discuss what I’ve learned here with my partner as it is him who’s in charge of the supermarket duties.

I am deeply indebted to Andréia for taking the time to do this, for her candid insight, and for he willingness to allow me to publish notes that were never written for publication – thank you!

__________________________________

Andréia Azevedo Soares blogs at Bordado Inglês – in Portuguese.  She can also be followed on Twitter, where she writes about science, literature  language and the media (amongst other things) – and often in English

Update 4/26/10:  Corrected a few typos (including spelling Andréia’s name wrong – slapped wrists and big apologies!), and embedded the Ciência & Tecnologia video.

There’s a bit of a brouhaha over nanotechnology safety brewing over at AOL Online.  A few weeks ago, investigative reporter Andrew Schneider posted a series of articles questioning both the safety of nanotechnology-enabled products entering the market, and the US government’s response to the emerging challenge.  Today, Clayton Teague – Director of the US National Nanotechnology Coordination Office – hit back with an opinion piece calling Schneider to task…

I mention this because earlier today, Andrew Schneider posted a new article in his nanotechnology series that examined a recent report from the President’s Council of Advisors on Science and Technology – a report which Teague describes in his op-ed as “Perhaps the best and most impartial review of the nation’s efforts in the realm of nanotechnology safety and oversight.” In this new piece, Schneider quotes me on yet another document that is germane to this debate.

Confused yet?  Let me try and explain.

When Schneider’s original series – “The Nanotech Gamble: Bold Science.  Big Money. Growing Risks” – came out, the feds were understandably upset; they didn’t fare too well in the assessment, and felt that they – not to mention the science – were a little hard done by.  So they set to work on developing a strategy to counter the pieces.

As it happens, the US National Nanotechnology Initiative was due to hold a public workshop on nanotechnology risk and ethical issues a few days after the AOL series was published.  At this meeting were a number of invited speakers and guests from academia, business and elsewhere – a perfect venue for public questions about nanotechnology-related risks, but also a potential opportunity to put some misunderstandings and misconceptions to bed.

I’m not privy to the events between the publication of the AOL pieces and the so-called Capstone meeting, but I do know that they resulted in some (not all) of the invited speakers and guests being issued with “response points” – just in case they were asked some tricky questions.

These response points were circulated widely, and as a result copies of them landed in my email box – this wasn’t a restricted document.  I mention this because Andrew Schneider’s latest piece not only refers to them, but also quotes my response to reading them (I’m not going to cite myself – you can read what I had to say here).

However, as their existence is now out in the open, I thought it only fair that I let others see what Schneider was referring to:

AOL Story about Nanotech – Some Response Points

• AOL Web site is running a three-day series on nanotechnology by a reporter who has spent months reporting the story, including interviews with many agency scientists.
• Takes an alarmist perspective: Despite the lack of evidence that anyone has ever been harmed by an engineered nano product, it presumes that nanotechnology (wrongly construed to be a singular entity) is inherently dangerous until proven safe, ignoring reality that nanotech encompasses an enormous range of materials and products whose risk—if any—depends on where and how they are made and used.
• Uses irrelevant examples, for example: Cites a study finding DNA damage in mice fed nano-TiO2 (used in paint and sunscreens), but no studies have shown a convincing link between this widely used chemical and human illness and the story does not mention (but we have checked and learned) that exposures in the study were more than 10 times those allowed in food by FDA regs.
• Claims that “most federal agencies “are doing little to nothing to ensure public safety” and are “ignoring warning signs.” Truth is the U.S. is the global leader in research into nanotech’s potential environmental, health, and safety (EHS) risks.
  • Between FY 2005 and FY 2009 the National Nanotechnology Initiative (NNI) will have invested $254 million in research whose primary function is to understand EHS issues—more than all other countries in the world combined. And that does not count the large amounts of research that contribute to health and safety knowledge indirectly, such as basic research on how to measure the stuff in the first place.
  • Federal research dedicated to nano-related EHS research has grown substantially from $34.8 million in FY 2005 to $74.5 million in FY 2009 and an estimated $91.6 million for FY 2010. The FY 2011 request is a record $116.9 million.
• Risk must be balanced against benefits, and the essentially theoretical risk that has so far been identified should be balanced against the benefits in terms of sophisticated products and economic growth and jobs created by this expanding industry.
• Just yesterday (Thurs) PCAST released its report on the National Nanotechnology Initiative—the the 10-year-old, multiagency initiative that has supported this fledgling science of the extremely small to the tune of about $12 billion over the past decade—finding that the U.S. is the global leader in nanotech by any number of measures (including patent filings, scientific journal citations, and investments in R&D).  This is a young and promising industry we can still own as a Nation, so we should not let fear overtake common sense, even as safety studies and regulatory updates continue.

(Circulated by the federal government to some external guests and speakers at the March 30-31 NNI Capstone meeting on March 26)

Great fodder for a case study on how a government initiative investing in a new technology responds to public criticism, don’t you think?

A guest blog by Sophia Collins, producer of the on-line teen science event “I’m a Scientist, Get me out of Here!”

“itz hometime but we want to stay and ask questions”

These are the words of a 14 year old student, at a school in inner-city London. The school has some of the poorest academic results in the school district, well below the national average. And yet a classroom science activity had the students so gripped that when the bell went for the end of the school day, they insisted on staying for another 15 minutes to ask more questions.

The students were having an MSN-style online chat with some scientists. They’d started with fairly simple questions, ‘How long have you been a scientist?’ and ‘Why is the sky blue?’. But then something happens – the immediacy of the chat format, the inventiveness of teenage brains, the unexpected experience of a grown-up seriously answering their questions – and the chat starts getting richer. You can see the ideas bouncing off each other and going in all directions. By the end of the chat this class had moved from a question about whether science could ever stop aging, to discussing what the world would be like if people didn’t die.

And there were all sorts of other random conversations along the way. Everything from favourite pop stars, to how blood circulates, to what it feels like if another scientist scoops your work. After another chat, one of my staff (a usually cynical young man) brought a tear to my eye by declaring it was “an honour to be associated with the event”.  When I asked why, he said, “The kids are so excited, and they are asking questions I know I’ve never asked or even thought of…”

Live chats like this are part of the event I run, I’m a Scientist, Get me out of Here!, which Andrew blogged so kindly about a couple of weeks ago. We were blown away the first time students insisted on staying after their lesson finished, “when normally they’ve got their coats on before the bell has finished ringing” as one teacher told us. After a while though we started taking it for granted, it happened so often.

As well as these live chats, students submit questions for the scientists to answer on our website. This gives an opportunity to go into more depth, and extend the conversation over days Feel free to have a browse, if you don’t mind getting distracted for the next couple of hours. We’re constantly amused, intrigued and impressed by the questions students ask, from “What is it about humans that led to us inventing science?” to “Do you think that robots will ever rule the earth?”.

One scientist told me that this was “the most science-related fun I’ve had in ages,” while a teacher emailed to tell me her class was splitting into fan clubs for the different scientists, “with the sort of devotion they’ve only had for pop stars up until now.”

Teenagers are notoriously the worst audience to engage, so what is it that gets this response from them? I’ve spent years working on this event format, and naturally I’ve got a few theories.

Doing it online makes it less intimidating and more intimate.

Before you all write in and complain, I’m not saying we should do away with face-to-face. I think that can be a great way of getting kids engaging with scientists. But do you remember people coming in to school to give talks when you were a teenager?

Who put their hands up to ask questions at the end? Usually, the clever kids who can think of questions the teacher will approve of. And possibly the naughty ones who want to be cheeky.

I’ll tell you who didn’t. Not the shy students. Not the ones who got lost five minutes into the talk and really would have liked to ask what the guy was actually talking about. Not the ordinary middling students who can’t think of a smart question but desperately want to know if it’s scary sometimes being a policemen or where astronauts go to pee. Doing it online makes it much easier for kids to ask the questions they actually want to ask, and then they can start getting interested.

Teenagers are actually desperate for the chance to talk to grown ups.

For many kids the only adults they ever get to talk to are their parents and their teachers. They are on the cusp of the big scary adult world, they really don’t know what it’s going to be like and they want people to answer their questions!

Once they realise these real live scientists are actually going to do this, those questions about the adult world start pouring out. “Do you get on with the people you work with?”, “Do you ever get bored at work?”, “How did you decide what to study at University?”.

I also think sometimes they can’t quite believe they’ll be able to pull off being a grown up (I’m 38, and I still have that doubt…). And becoming a scientist? Way too intimidating! Lots of teenagers are convinced that scientists are all Einstein-like geniuses, so they couldn’t become one themselves. When they realise, as one girl put it, that “scientists are just like normal people!” it’s a revelation. The scientists talk about their holidays, their pets, their favourite jokes and suddenly students can see that these are people like them, and they could grow up and be a scientist too.

And lastly, the true secret weapon…

Giving students some power engages them much more deeply.

The scientists are competing for a prize of £500 ($770) to communicate their work and the students are voting who gets it.

This makes the young people feel that they are being taken seriously, for once. Don’t we all get turned off things if we aren’t listened to and feel we don’t have a say? No-one wants to be lectured at, but that is what happens to teenagers all the time.

But it’s not just that they feel less ignored; giving students a vote and some money to allocate makes everything real – it’s not just an essay or a classroom debate about science ethics. It’s not an academic exercise. We’re saying, here’s some actual money – who do you think should get it?

To answer that question for themselves, students have to really think.  And they raise all sorts of issues: How can we know what the outcome of research will be? How can we weigh one kind of knowledge against another? Imagine you had a medical advance that would save a small number of lives, how could you possibly weigh that against a different medical advance that improved the lives of a much bigger number of people? These are thorny issues in science funding and teenagers engage with them, because they are actually being asked to decide.

I’m not pretending that all the teenagers cast their vote for the highest of reasons. Some will vote for the scientist who likes the same band as them. Or whose joke made them laugh. Or who’s got the nicest photo. But I’m prepared to bet they still do that having thought more about complex science and society issues than they were probably going to otherwise. And it leaves them with a sense that these issues are something it’s possible for them to have a say about, so it’s worth them thinking about them.

We need a populace who can engage with science and engage in discussions about science. There are decisions that have to be made as a society, not by experts behind closed doors. Students who’ve cast their vote in I’m a Scientist feel that science is a thing they are part of. And that makes all the difference.

____________________

I’m a Scientist, Get me out of Here! was run in the UK for two weeks between March 15-26.  Around 1,400 teenagers in 70 schools around the UK participated, probing and evaluating the work of 25 scientists through on-line questions, answers and chats.  The next event in the UK is scheduled for June 14 – 25 2010. The event is kindly funded by medical research charity the Wellcome Trust, to promote public engagement with biomedicine. For more information on how to participate as a scientist, check here.  For teachers, further information (including Creative Commons teaching resources which anyone can use) can be found here.

Sophia Collins is producer of the on-line teen science event “I’m a Scientist, Get me out of Here!” and its sister event, “I’m a Councillor, Get me out of Here!” which gets teenagers engaged with local politics. Her background was in science communication, mainly in TV science shows, before getting involved with I’m a Councillor in 2004.

To coincide with my move to the University of Michigan, Seed Magazine has just published a series of ten questions and answers on what I do and what motivates me as a scientist.  You can read how well I fared (or didn’t, as the case may be) with questions as diverse as “How do you explain your job at cocktail parties?” to “Why do you do science?” on the Seed Magazine website.

I was surprised to hear that Seed sometimes have to hard-sell the idea of this series to scientists – who doesn’t want to pontificate about what they are reading, or who they would most like to meet?  But I must confess, answering questions like “Why do you do science?” and “What inspires you?” was tougher than I imagined.

Previous articles in Seed’s “10 Questions” series include:

• James Kasting on the odds of finding another earth-like planet and the power of science fiction;
• Kirsten Bomblies on the immune system of plants and how young scientists can keep inspiration alive;
• John Rinn onwhy we should dumpster-dive in our genomes and the inspiration of a middle-distance runner; and
• Amy Cannon on low-energy solar cells, training scientists to weed out toxicity, and what makes benign chemistry such a good business proposition.

]]> http://2020science.org/2010/04/06/cultivating-ingenuity-humility-in-an-increasingly-complex-world/feed/ 1 http://2020science.org/2010/04/04/making-sense-of-nanotechnology-a-piece-of-cake/ http://2020science.org/2010/04/04/making-sense-of-nanotechnology-a-piece-of-cake/#comments Sun, 04 Apr 2010 19:54:43 +0000 Andrew Maynard http://2020science.org/?p=3025

The quality’s a bit flaky, but I thought I would upload this video for a bit of fun.  It’s the first – and possibly the last – time I will simultaneously attempt to unravel the mysteries of nanotechnology… while baking a cake!

Filmed at the National Museum of American History as part of Nanodays 2010, the presentation was part of a public dialogue on  nanotechnology.  My task: help set the scene for a discussion on who should oversee the responsible development of nanotechnology.

Wanting to try something a little different, I thought I would play around with cooking as an analogy for nanotechnology.  The analogy is a useful one – I only scrape the surface of where it could be taken here.  But whether it was a wise decision to actually cook in public – well, I’ll leave judgment on that one to you!

One thing the video doesn’t show is how the cake turned out.  I would like to say that it was light, moist and delicious.  However, just in case someone posts pictures of the actual result, I have to be straight with you – it sucked!  Personally, I blame the lab oven provided by the Smithsonian – I can cook, honest!  Perhaps a bonus lesson though is that, even with the best preparations, unanticipated consequences are always possible – whether baking a cake or making the latest nanotech-enabled gizmo!

A guest blog by David H. Guston, Director of the Center for Nanotechnology in Society at Arizona State University.

The President’s Council of Advisors for Science and Technology (PCAST) has recently put the National Nanotechnology Initiative (NNI) through its biennial paces.  Launched in 2000 by President Clinton, authorized in 2003 by the 21^st Century Nanotechnology R&D Act, and reviewed in 2005 and 2008 by PCAST (yes, an odd vision of “biennial”), the NNI is now a decade old.  For better and for ill, it is starting to show its age.

First, full disclosure.  I direct a Nano-scale Science and Engineering Center (NSEC), funded by the National Science Foundation (NSF) under the NNI to investigate the societal aspects of nanotechnologies.  So my Center for Nanotechnology in Society at Arizona State University (CNS-ASU) gets a bit more than $1M per year from NNI.  Second, as can be seen in the recent PCAST review document [PDF, 4.8 MB], I also testified before the working group that produced the report.  Third, one of the PCAST members is my college roommate’s mother (but that’s *not* why I was called to testify!).

Whew!

Since the early days of NNI, as well as since the 2003 Act, public engagement with nanotechnology was supposed to be on the agenda.  The early reports by NSF on the societal aspects of nanotechnology refer to the productive role that public engagement can play, and the relevant passage from the 2003 Act 2(B)(10)(d) authorizes:

“public input and outreach to be integrated into the Program by the convening of regular and ongoing public discussions, through mechanisms such as citizens’ panels, consensus conferences, and educational events, as appropriate.”

Bluntly, however, public engagement has not been implemented as robustly as it might have been.

In May 2006, the NNI offered a promising if tardy start with a large workshop on public participation, organized by the National Nanotechnology Coordinating Office (NNCO) and sponsored by the Nano-scale Science, Engineering and Technology (NSET) Subcommittee.  The two-day program generated considerable excitement among the larger-than-expected number of attendees.  Yet, while the presentations from the workshop are available on line, no report on the workshop seems to have ever been finalized for distribution on the NNI website.

The major messages of that meeting, as well as almost all relevant scholarship in public engagement in science and technology over the last decade and a half, are that:

• Communication between the lay-public (which is not monolithic) and the scientific community (which isn’t, either) needs to be two-way.
• Such communication needs to be not just about scientific facts but also about technological applications and social values.
• And the purpose of this communication must not be limited to the faulty formula of “more knowledge on the part of the public will mean more support for research and technological applications.”

Nevertheless, the nanotechnocracy has generally cast public engagement in terms entirely instrumental for the success of, well, nanotechnology.

The first PCAST (2005:38) report [PDF, 4 MB], e.g. argued directly that:

“[t]o sustain this [high level of public] support, the scientific community and the Federal agencies that fund scientific research must communicate more directly with the public, not through surrogates such as the entertainment industry…. Through the NNI website and through outreach activities at the NSF-funded centers and DOE user facilities, the NNI has established channels to communicate with members of various stakeholder groups, including the broader public.”

Similarly, recommendation 6.1 of PCAST (2008:34-35) [PDF, 1.3 MB] was to:

“[d]emonstrate more clearly to the public the value of nanotechnology and NNI-supported research and development.”

The first report (PCAST 2005:38) even attempted a pre-emptive defense of its practices, reporting that its working group “has held open meetings focusing on nanotechnology issues, which have provided the public with several opportunities to provide input.”  But the ability of the general public – as opposed to organized and special interests – to participate substantively in “open meetings” of executive agency committees is highly constrained, which is likely why the passage in the 2003 Act cited above calls for open, interactive public forums like citizens’ panels and consensus conferences.

Taking guidance from this specific language, CNS-ASU has made public engagement a centerpiece of its activities.  In Spring 2008, CNS-ASU organized the most ambitious public engagement activity around nanotechnology in the US, the National Citizens’ Technology Forum (NCTF).  Modeled after the Danish consensus conference but distributed across six locales across the United States, the NCTF on “nanotechnologies and human enhancement” demonstrated that a high-quality deliberative activity can be organized at a national scale in the US, and that a representative selection of lay-citizens can come to discerning judgments about nanotechnologies while they are still emergent (Hamlett et al. 2008, PDF 184 KB).  While there are reasonable concerns about the quality of the particular online component of the process (Delborne et al. 2009, PDF, 160 KB) and the demands that such intensive activities place on citizens (Kleinman et al. 2009), the NCTF process is a sound demonstration upon which to build future citizen deliberations (Philbrick and Barandiaran 2009).

In other words, large-scale public engagement activities around nanotechnology are ready for prime time.  As we move into a next decade of large-scale funding and the first forays of regulation, it is time for the NNI to follow through on the early promise of its vision of public engagement in nanotechnology for the benefit of the public, and not just for the benefit of nanotechnology.

This week, the NNI is holding a workshop on Risk Management Methods & Ethical, Legal, and Societal Implications of Nanotechnology, which includes a 15 minute slot for public comment.  David Guston will not be there – the workshop clashes with Passover – AM

]]> http://2020science.org/2010/03/30/public-engagement-with-nanotechnology/feed/ 24 http://2020science.org/2010/03/24/im-a-scientist-seriously-addictive-science-engagement/ http://2020science.org/2010/03/24/im-a-scientist-seriously-addictive-science-engagement/#comments Wed, 24 Mar 2010 14:41:05 +0000 Andrew Maynard http://2020science.org/?p=2993

The website “I’m a Scientist – Get me out of here” should come with a government warning – something along the lines of “Visiting this site could seriously disrupt your professional, social and personal live while altering your perceptions on getting kids hooked on science – proceed with extreme caution.”  In fact I would probably say that, unless you are immune to addiction, have no sense of humor or couldn’t give a toss about science, just don’t go there – it’s not worth the risk!

Frivolity aside, I’m a Scientist... is a brilliant concept. For two weeks between March 15-26, around 2000 teenagers in 70 schools around the UK are probing and evaluating the work of 25 scientists through on-line questions, answers and chats.  And one by one they are voting out or “evicting” their least favorite “contestants” – leaving five winners who walk away with a £500 prize – think X-factor, Big Brother or American Idol for scientists, and you begin to get the picture!

Participating kids are free to ask the scientists anything – and I mean anything – as long as it doesn’t contravene the House Rules.  Which means that they clearly have the upper hand here.  But this also breaks down barriers, encourages dialogue, and leads to very effective engagement (for the scientists as well as the kids).  Recent questions have ranged from the bizarre to the deep, including:

• Do you like green eggs and ham? (Both love and cringe at the response given!)
• Pirates of Ninjas?
• Have you ever regretted choosing a career in science or maths? and if so why? when?
• What is the most interesting thing you have ever done?
• What colour is a chameleaon sitting on a mirror? and
• Does the Fibonacci sequence and the golden rectangle appear in genetics? (as it is generally everywhere in nature)

This is only a small smattering of the hundreds of conversations going on – previous warnings aside, I would seriously recommend you check these and others out if you are at all interested in enthusing, educating and engaging kids on science.  The beauty of the event is that, while it is primarily for the participants, anyone can poke around and take a look at what’s going on!

But the questions and answers are only part of the event’s success.  The evictions – hard as they may be on the unlucky scientists – make the thing all the more addictive.  This aspect of I’m a Scientist is clearly grabbing the kids’ attention and pulling them in big-time.  But it’s also holding the scientists’ feet to the fire, and helping them hone their skills as communicators – a perfect win-win!

This particular event finishes on March 26 – so you need to move fast if you want to see it in action.  The first evictions were yesterday, and between now and Friday there will be one set of eviction per day, leaving the winners as the last scientists standing on Friday afternoon.

But be warned – it could seriously alter your perceptions of how to get kids hooked on science!

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For more information on I’m a Scientist check out http://imascientist.org.uk/more-info

The event is split up into five zones.  Follow the links to see recent questions in the Brain Zone, the Genes Zone, the Helium Zone, the Hydrogen Zone and the Lithium Zone

If you liked this – and what’s not to like? – the next I’m a Scientist event in the UK is scheduled for June 14 – 25.

It seems the UK government Department for Business, Innovation and Skills is having a “leaves on the track” moment this morning (a scathing cultural reference, for those of you Brits too young to remember!).  The newly-minted UK nanotechnology strategy – launched today – is unavailable… because of technical difficulties it seems.

Seems to me that if the country wants to lead the world in advanced technologies, it needs to come up to speed with existing technologies first!

I had intended reviewing the strategy today on 2020 Science.  Looks like this will have to wait.  Fortunately a friend of a friend managed to pass on a copy from the bowels of BIS, so I should be able to write about it sooner rather than later.

In the meantime, if you want to try your hand at getting a copy of the new and improved strategy, the link is http://interactive.bis.gov.uk/nano/

Good luck!

Update 3/18/10, 8:55 AM – Frank Swain has kindly uploaded a copy of the UK Nanotechnologies Strategy here [PDF, 2.4 MB]

Update 3/18/10, 9:05 AM – Looks like the BIS website is now up and running again.  Review coming later today…

Update 3/18/10 2:20 PM – review of strategy now posted here.

I was at a meeting a couple of weeks ago where engaging the public (or “publics” to be more accurate) in science came up.  In the course of discussions, I mentioned an initiative by Research Councils UK to involve members of the public in developing a call for research proposals on the use of nanotechnology in healthcare. To which one eminent US scientist responded with words to the effect of “that sounds like a really bad idea!”

The exchange confirmed a suspicion I have had for some time that public engagement on science isn’t taken that seriously in the US.  Sure, there’s lots going on at various levels to communicate science to the US public, and to make sure people put science “in its rightful place” in their lives – which to most scientists is somewhere above God and family.  But strategic and coordinated action on engaging people – entering into a two-way exchange of ideas that potentially influences both sides – that’s much harder to find.

So I was fascinated by a series of documents that landed on my virtual desk this morning from the UK that outline Britain’s approach to public engagement on science – including why anyone would want to do it in he first place!

The documents are from Research Councils UK (RCUK) – a strategic partnership between the seven UK Research Councils that enables them to work together synergistically on key issues.  The documents set out RCUK’s strategy for public engagement with research, provide a guide to researchers and teachers  on engaging young people with cutting edge research, and outline the benefits of public engagement for researchers.

The three documents map out a clear rationale for why public engagement on science is important, and how the UK intends to pursue it.  Take this for instance from the updated Public Engagement with Research strategy [PDF, 80 KB]:

“If we involve and listen to the public (and encourage our research communities to do so) then our decisions and research will be informed by their views, and therefore more likely to have enhanced impact in return for the investment.

Similarly, if we talk with the public (and encourage our research communities to talk to the public) about the outputs of our research and their implications and applications then society will share in the benefits of that knowledge, whether for their health, wealth or culture, and therefore helping to maximise the impact of that research.

And if we encourage researchers to interact with schools to enrich students’ experiences then we can help improve the supply of skilled people to the research base and the UK economy and encourage more to act as informed citizens.”

There follows a detailed strategic plan for recognizing and responding to public views, inspiring young people and supporting researchers.

The second of the three documents takes on interactions between young people and research.  Titled “Engaging Young People with Cutting Edge Research: a guide for researchers and teachers” [PDF, 900 KB], it provides clearly laid out information for researchers and teachers, together with resources for both groups.  The guide doesn’t hedge – headlining the section for researchers [the first section in the guide] is the question

“Working with schools and young people – how can it benefit me as a researcher?”

This is a hundred and eighty degree departure – and a very welcome one – from old-school approaches, which inevitably asked what young people can get out of science.  Here’s a quick summary – from the report – of what researchers might expect to gain from working with young people:

The third report builds on this theme by addressing the broader benefits of public engagement to researchers.  In the rather aptly titled “What’s in it for me? The benefits of public engagement for researchers” [PDF, 1000 KB] RCUK examine four benefits to researchers of engaging with the public through the eyes of researchers themselves.  In a series of case studies, the document coniders career inspiration, raising your profile, developing skills and enhancing your research.

It’s that last point that particularly grabbed my attention when reading through the document, as it gets back to the heart of response I found from that US researcher to the idea of the “public” actually having an influence on research.

This section of the report consists of twelve accounts where researchers have benefited from engaging with people a long way removed from the lab.  They span medical research to environmental research to astronomy.  And the unifying factor – research that is enriched and better-informed by talking with and listening to others.  Take this quote from Dr David Chadwick for instance from North Wyke Research. Talking about engaging people as part of his work studying how the management of livestock and their manures affect water quality, David said

“It vastly changed networking opportunities, bringing different experts together, and has been the most enjoyable project in my career to date”

Or this from Dr Paul Curzon at the University of London on engaging with the public on research into topics related to human error:

“The data obtained from this was used in a publication which won a best paper prize, and has opened up a novel research methodology.”

The accounts are anecdotal.  But nevertheless they attest to the power of opening up research to people who are affected by it, interested in it and have something to offer to it – given half the chance.

The UK has been bitten by the failures to engage people on science effectively in the past, and is learning rapidly from past mistakes.  The result is a strong strategy that changes the dynamic between researchers and the public; gives more people than ever before the opportunity to be active partners in science rather than passive observers; and adds considerable value to research and innovation.  Rather than retreating into the attitude of “that sounds like a really bad idea,” Britain is developing a “technology ratchet” that could give it a valuable edge over the coming years.

As a Brit, that gives me a sense of pride in the country – we seem to have got this one right, or at least seem to be on the right path.  But as a Brit living in the US, I can’t help thinking “what on earth has gone wrong on this side of the Atlantic?”  Why is is that, while the UK is developing strategies to make more people an integral part of the science endeavor, the US is still plagued by an attitude that the public should be seen and not heard.

I suspect it’s because the momentum of the vast US science and technology enterprise has carried it forward despite a growing need to rethink the relationship between science and society.  But that momentum won’t last for ever.  And when it runs out, how will the US go about getting science back on track?

I don’t know the answer to that one.  But at least they will have an excellent role model a mere pond-hop away come the crunch

A new report released today from the UK Department for Business, Innovation and Skills (BIS) Expert Group on Science and Trust emphasizes the need to address risk and uncertainty in developing and using science and technology within society.  “Acknowledging risk and uncertainty” is the second of eight broad aspirations from the independent group, established to develop a UK action plan to “enhance society’s capabilities to make better-informed judgements about the sciences and their uses in order to ensure that the “license to operate” is socially robust.”

The report “Starting a National Conversation about Good Science” [PDF, 478 KB] is a rich, informative and insightful document, that demands careful consideration.  It comes out of a group assembled to consider new mechanisms to increase public trust in science and engineering; review the impact of the existing science-related ethical code of practice; examine how movement of knowledge and people across the different sectors can be facilitated in order to maximize the benefits and impacts of science and society activities; and think about better ways to evaluate the impacts of science and society initiatives.  Despite this being a purely British affair, many of the recommendations are relevant far beyond the confines of a UK-centered “national conversation,”  and will hopefully stimulate a global dialogue on what is a global challenge.

Amidst the eight “broad aspirations” of the group, which span public judgment about science and awareness of the scientific process, to underpinning science-informed decision-making and good science governance, I was particularly struck by an emphasis on risk and uncertainty.  This may be because in a few weeks I will becoming increasingly involved in risk, uncertainty and science-informed decision-making, as I take over as Director of the Risk Science Center at the University of Michigan.  But beyond this, I was struck by the group’s recognition that, from the publics’ various perspectives, uncertainties surrounding science and technology – their implications in particular – are often more important than the science and technology themselves.

The overarching aim of the Science and Trust Expert Group -  and of this report – was

“To enhance society’s capabilities to make better-informed judgements about the sciences and their uses in order to ensure that the “licence to operate” is socially robust.”

In this context,the group recommended that

“Expert advice to Government should identify and characterize uncertainties; policy makers should communicate clearly actions that take account of inevitable uncertainties; efforts should be made to support public judgements about risks and uncertainties.”

In particular, the report emphasizes the need to address uncertainties surrounding the potential impacts and benefits of emerging technologies “in the wider context of science and society relations.”

This emphasis on uncertainty is particularly welcome, and closely aligns with where I hope to be taking the University of Michigan Risk Science Center over the next few years.  New technologies – or innovative ways of using existing technologies for that matter – lead to inherently uncertain futures.  There is a great danger of mistaking this uncertainty for risk (risk is a reasonably well-understood chance of something bad happening; uncertainty is a poor understanding of whether good or bad will come out of a course of action) – with the result that there is a tendency to shy away from potentially beneficial technologies, simply because we don’t know how they are going to unfold.  On the other hand, uncertainty means that we do need to move forward carefully, in case there are very real and relevant risks lurking in the shadows.  The trick is to develop better ways of handling uncertainty so that the best possible choices are made.

Being up-front about uncertainty and potential risks associated with science and technology is a critical step toward developing conversations and actions that underpin a science-informed approach to minimizing and otherwise handling uncertainty and risk.  One particularly good resource that the report recommends is A Worriers’s Guide to Risk [PDF, 222 KB] – a one-pager intended to help everyone make more sense of the seemingly unending series of stories on risk.

In its specific recommendations and actions, the Science and Trust Expert Group includes:

• Support Government to take better account of risks and uncertainties in policy making;
• Support public judgements about risks and uncertainties inherent in the scientific advisory process;
• Support policy makers to take better account of public attitudes and values to the risks, benefits and uncertainties in the governance of emerging technologies;
• Enable wider discussions in the media and elsewhere on uncertainty inherent in the scientific process; and
• Enable greater discussion of risk.

Although these are aimed fair and square at the UK, they provide a valuable template for a global conversation about good science, and its role within society.  Hopefully, now that the UK has set the pace, we will see this develop as an International conversation about good science.

Prompted by a blog post by Stephen Hill this morning – and a flurry or Twitter responses to it – here’s a quick question on science and trust:

Take Our Poll

More on this in a later blog.

A guest blog by Gary Kass, Principal Specialist in Strategic Futures at Natural England

The London-based Science Media Centre (SMC) describes itself as “an independent venture working to promote the voices, stories and views of the scientific community to the national news media when science is in the headlines” and sets out its “ultimate goal” as being “to facilitate more scientists to engage with the media, in the hope that the public will have improved access to accurate, evidence-based scientific information about the stories of the day.”

Recently, the SMC produced a discussion document on “Climate Science in the Media” aimed at scientists and science press officers to encapsulate “some of the lessons we believe science has learned from previous media frenzies.”  The SMC acknowledges that people may disagree with some of the advice and wants to stimulate a debate.  Roger Pielke’s blog already has a discussion going on this already and this is my contribution to the debate.

Having been a scientific adviser to the UK parliament and government when MMR and GM broke and being responsible for delivering the government’s policy on public engagement with science between 2004 and 2007, I can fully understand why SMC is doing this and agree with much of the advice set out in its guidance…

For me, though, Point 9 (headed “Hang on in there – it will calm down”) is the most helpful.  It includes a great a quote from Michael Simmons, Director of Populous: “People tend to make judgements over time based on a whole range of different sources.” This is the most important point in the SMC’s advice:  don’t panic!  And there are good reasons to support this.

The social amplification of risk discourse supports the idea that people (let’s not pigeon-hole individuals under the patronising heading of ‘the public’) are sophisticated consumers of media:

• people calibrate their media (i.e. they rarely every access only one source and they play different sources off each other to arrive at their views)
• the media gives people things to talk about but does not tell them what to think; and, as they get new things to think about, people change their opinions – but, crucially, there’s no way that you can predict how they’ll change them
• finally people will often consume media that supports their own views anyway (psychologists call this confirmation bias).

When things like ClimateGate happen, many (but not all) in the science community panic, but in my view much of this is down to some scientists’ continued misunderstanding of both the public and the impact of media.  I have argued long and hard about the need to turn Public Understanding of Science on its head and to build capacity in the science community for scientists to understand the publics (from PUS to SUP).

It is not ‘science’ or ‘scientists’ that people distrust (I commissioned two national opinion polls over a number of years that showed this quite clearly).  What people are uneasy about is the ‘governance’ of science and technology.  Where people smell a rat and suspect collusion they will react against it.

But here’s the rub:  often the only way that they can really express their views is through negative reaction against the science or technology at hand (be it climate change, nanotech, GM, MMR or nuclear power)… It is what the social scientists call ‘affect’:  people don’t really take against technology itself, but many dislike arrogant (and often this means American and multi-national) companies and the feeling that Government is colluding with them to force it down their throats.  This feeling is not specific to any single area of science or technology, but is a manifestation of wider social trends such as declining trust in government and big business.  If scientists had a better understanding of publics and what’s behind much of the reaction they rail against, they might sleep easier in their beds.

But while science is about contested knowledge, in the media-driven, circus-like atmosphere we live in now, scientists can’t expect to have the luxury of the time, space and seclusion for considered reflection, testing and evaluation… it’s science in the wild (or ‘post-normal science’ as Jerry Ravetz and Silvio Funtowicz would have it).

However, many in the science community, in not understanding this fully, tend to think that ‘the public’ (and many only ever see the multiple publics in the singular) reaction is against the technology itself and then compound this error by extending this to a belief that because people are against a particular technology that they are against all areas of science and all technologies – often manifest in accusations that people are ‘anti-science’, ‘luddite’ or ‘irrational’.  This is a dangerous fallacy.  In a democracy, we should neither expect nor desire everyone to be unquestioningly supportive of all science and all technology in all situations… North Korea anyone?

Lastly, while in government I tried (with limited success) to convince the natural science community to realise that in situations like this it is perhaps best to go to the social science and humanities experts to get their views about these wider issues.  It is insufficient to rely on natural scientists to defend their science and the way they do it.  While scientists have a role in identifying risks, they are not judge and jury and the scope for wider stakeholder and public perspectives in framing, evaluating and managing risks is vast.

I ask this as a natural scientist who woke up to this need to be ‘reflexive” in the early 1990s after banging my head against a brick wall with what I thought  was the classic ‘sound science and professional judgement’ approach.  The simple fact is that the world doesn’t work like that and there are decades of social science and philosophy that have explored the nature and workings of science and the interactions with publics from which we can all learn.  For me, the key lesson is to avoid assuming a deficit of either understanding or trust on the part of ‘the public’ towards ‘science’ and to focus more on building a trustworthy system for science and technology – with an ARTful (accountable, responsible and transparent) governance at its heart.

I wouldn’t wish to give the SMC advice, but clearly, enabling greater reflection by scientists on their capacity and willingness to gain a more sophisticated understanding of publics and their limitations in addressing public concerns and shaping policy, might not go amiss.

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Gary Kass is currently Principal Specialist in Strategic Futures at Natural England, one of the UK’s statutory environmental advisory bodies.  Prior to this, Gary was Assistant Director, Science and Society in the UK Government’s Office of Science and Innovation and Senior Scientific Fellow at the UK Parliamentary Office of Science and Technology.

Well I guess I set myself up good and proper – I should have realized that in asking people for their questions on nanotechnology safety last week, they would actually want answers!

Having failed miserably to compile a catalog of websites that provide clear and concise answers to the questions asked in last week’s blog (I gave up after the 6th question),  the least I can do is provide some my own answers.  So here they are…

This being a blog and it only being an hour ’till lunchtime,  the answers are rather brief and off the cuff.  Hopefully they are of more use than not.  But if something doesn’t seem right, please check it out – and let me know.

Before I begin though, I must thank the brave souls who did attempt to provide links to answers in the previous blog – thank you!

The Questions, and some Answers:

1.  What sort of nano budget does FDA have?

If you look at the National Nanotechnology Initiative budget – a compilation of US federal agency investment in nanotechnology – FDA does not have a specific nano budget.  That said, the agency does have a number of people working on regulatory issues associated with nanotechnology in general, and engineered nanomaterials specifically.  FDA also supports the National Toxicology Program in the US, which is investigating the toxicity of a number of engineered nanomaterials, and has its own labs at the National Center for Toxicology Research, which are involved in nanomaterial toxicity studies.  So while it is tough to get a handle on the agency’s nano budget, this doesn’t mean they are not working in the area.

2. With something like nanosilver, is it possible to design out the hazard while keeping the “benefits”?

This is a tough one.  It would be nice to be able to do this, and there may be some possibilities here.  The main way silver kills microbes is to release silver ions, which are toxic to many microbes.  Silver nanoparticles are useful in that they release ions (effectively they dissolve) faster than the same quantity of larger particles, and they can be added to a wide range of products.  There is also some evidence that the nanoparticles themselves might be harmful to microbes.  The big problem here is that you have to have the ions to be effective – and if you are releasing the silver ions into the environment, they could do more than just kill the microbes you want them to.  But if there was a way to limit the rate of release and ensure only the microbes you want to get rid of come into contact with the silver ions, it might be possible to reduce possible risks while increasing benefits.  Some of the smarter uses of silver as an antimicrobial seem to be taking this approach.  The thing we really don’t want to do here is release silver nanoparticles into the environment without much thought, where they will continue to release ions and potentially cause damage.

3. What are some of the most interesting nanoparticles found in nature (not manufactured in the lab)?

I guess it depends what is meant by “interesting.”  Certainly, nanoparticles are a fact of life, and were long before humans were around.  Anything that burns and many things that get very hot release nanoparticles – think fires and volcanoes.  Liquid sprays that contain small amounts of dissolved substances can also produce nanoparticles as they evaporate – sea spray for instance is a great source of nanoparticles.  And then you have reactions between different chemicals in the atmosphere that produce nanoparticles.  Photochemical smog is a great example of man-made atmospheric “nanoparticle factories.”  But nature was there before us – terpenes released by trees can form nanoparticles in the atmosphere (the blue haze associated with the Blue Ridge Mountains is a result of naturally occurring nanoparticles).  These are all certainly interesting nanoparticles.  But they usually differ from engineered nanoparticles in that they are usually complex mixtures of nanoparticles and other stuff.

4. When will we know if it’s safe enough? I understand toxicity eg nanotubes. Do we think we can mitigate? What is safe enough?

I’m afraid that “safe enough” is a question that only policy makers, citizens and others can answer.  Science can provide information on how safe – or how risky – something is.  But then it’s up to others to work out when this is okay, and when it is not.  When it comes to nanotechnology, the first step is dividing nanotech into specific materials and products, as each will present different safety questions – including how safe is safe enough.  For example, safe enough for a cancer treatment will be very different from safe enough for a baseball bat.  We then need to work on where the plausible risks are – the materials and products that are more likely to present safety issues that we are not set up to handle well.  Then, we can start to work out where the knowledge gaps are, and how to fill them.  Governments and industry around the world are a good way along this path, although there is a long way to go still before some products of nanotechnology can be deemed “safe enough.”  For instance, we still don’t have a good handle on how to use carbon nanotubes safely, or what the safety issues around developing nanoscale food ingredients are.  On the other hand, there are nanotech-related products that, on the current balance of evidence, appear to be reasonably safe – I would consider sunscreens using well-engineered nanoparticles of titanium dioxide and zinc oxide in this category.  The bottom line though is that we still need to work on defining what is safe enough, and identifying new safety issues that emerge as nanotechnology progresses.

5. Given the nano-size of the particles, are there any effective respirator filters to guard against inhalation?

Yes.  There are some unanswered questions here, but in general, respirator filters are better at capturing nanometer-sized particles from the air than larger particles.  It sounds counter-intuitive, but the secret lies in Brownian motion.  Smaller particles are batted around more than larger particles by air molecules, and as a result are more likely to collide with and stick to the filter fibers or membrane.

6. What do you feel the repercussions are for extended life through utilization of nanotechnology?

Interesting question.  I think there are profound implications associated with the possibility of extending life – especially extending the span of productive/high quality life.  And nanotechnology is one of a suite of technologies that could lead to significant extensions to lifespan. Yet I’m not sure that nanotechnology per se raises questions as much as the implications of extending life – no matter what the technology used.  In thinking about the “repercussions” (I prefer “implications”) of extending life more generally, a lot has been written on this.  The possible implications are both fascinating and challenging – ranging from the possibility of severe planetary over-population, to extreme (and divisive) divides between those with and without access to life-extension technologies, to the possibility of greater environmental and social awareness as people become more aware that they have to live with the consequences of their actions.

7. How are safety tests carried out in nano tech?

There are suites of toxicity tests that are used to determine the hazard associated with chemicals.  Which ones are used depend on the regulations governing the material and how it will be used.  For instance, the toxicology tests on a new drug are substantially more comprehensive than those that would be used on a new cosmetic.  Some of these use cell cultures – in vitro tests.  Some of them are able to provide an indication of hazard without cells, by probing the chemical nature of a substance.  In other cases, computer models are used to get a handle on how toxic a new substance might be.  Most toxicologists agree though that most of these tests only go so far in predicting how a new substance might harm humans, and at some point tests with animals are needed – in vivo tests.  There are moves around the world – and rightly so – to minimize animal testing, and to find alternatives where possible.  Unfortunately, when it comes to brand new materials such as some engineered nanomaterials, it is extremely hard to predict how these materials might behave in a living organism from modeling and cell cultures.  This problem is compounded by some established toxicity tests that have been devised for chemicals not working well for some nanomaterials.  So the toxicologists face a quandary – do they rely on non-animal tests that may not be adequate, and risk allow products on the market that could cause serious harm, or do they test these materials on animals, to minimize the chances of something bad happening?  It’s a tough question.  But the bottom line is that most people involved in ensuring people are not harmed by new products will use the best possible suite of tests to provide them with the best possible information on product safety.

8. Seems that (nano)tech is moving v.fast. Is there a risk that results of safety testing will be out-of-date as soon as printed? How to keep up pace?

This is a challenge for sure.  I don’t think that sound toxicity tests will be quickly out-dated.  But I do think that there is a danger of increasingly sophisticated engineered nanomaterials being produced and used before we have a good handle on how to evaluate their risks, and develop protocols for safe use.  I would argue that in order to keep pace with the technology we need to rethink how we approach safety:  We need to work out how to reduce possible risks before we have all the safety data (by reducing exposures for instance); we need to learn how to predict possible hazards, and work out how to engineer them out of products during development; and we need better ways of tracking new developments so that we can respond quickly to safety issues.  We’re making some progress here.  But we have a heck of a long way to go still.

9. Is it possible/ necessary to regulate the use of materials which don’t yet exist?

It’s tough to regulate something that doesn’t exist!  What we can and probably should do is to use regulation, and other forms of oversight, to create frameworks within which emergent risks will naturally be identified and addressed – more a set of principles than hard command and control regulation.  The trick here is not to think of regulations as a list of “do not’s”, but as sophisticated tools for reducing uncertainty and increasing safety as businesses develop new materials and products.

10. We all want safety decisions to be informed by sound science, yet decisions must be made (indeed are being made) now, in most cases with relatively little useful data. What’s the soundest way to approach such decision making?

The million dollar question, as new materials and products come along faster than the safety science can keep up!  I would argue that we always have to come back to evidence-based decision-making as the foundation of what we do here, but that we desperately need new tools for making decisions in the absence of hard data.  There are a number of approaches to this that are emerging.  Control banding for instance is an approach to reducing risks in the workplace in the absence of good exposure data, and may be extend-able to working with new nanomaterials.  Multi-Criteria Decision-Making is another approach that is being developed to make decisions where data are lacking, or where the data are complex.  Then there are a number of approaches to filling gaps in toxicity and exposure data when trying to develop safety guidelines for new materials.  So we have some tools in the toolbox here for making decisions in the absence of data.  But the reality is that, looking to the future, we are going to be increasingly faced with situations where the data are incomplete, or the evidence is complex, and we are going to have to get increasingly sophisticated with how we make decisions in these cases.

11. Are their any lessons learned (societal/ethical issues) from GM foods that could be applied to the engineering or mechanical manipulation of foods through nanotechnology?

Enough to fill a book is the answer I think.  I’ll just touch on a couple here though.  First, issues associated with nanotechnology is very different from the issues surrounding genetically modified foods, and it is dangerous to compare them too closely.  For one thing, while GM foods are reasonably well-defined, nanotechnology is an umbrella term encompassing a huge diversity of technologies.  But looking to the GM food debate (some would say debacle), two critical issues were perceived heavy-handed tactics from big industry, and a lack of transparency – it seemed that what people really didn’t like was companies making decisions on their behalf, then not telling them about it!  Looking to nanotechnology, there are a number of important lessons to be learned here about how to engage with people when developing and introducing a new technology, to ensure that it is what people want, that they understand the pros and cons, and that they have

12. What should consumers know about nano-foods that labels won’t tell them?

“Should” is a strong word.  But I do think that many people would like to know that they could find out more about how nanotechnology was being used in the foods they were eating – and I’m sure regulators would like a better handle on this as well.  In terms of information that would be useful, I think you have to look at the ingredients list – a simple “nano-inside” sticker is a non-starter as it contains no useful information, while possibly raising speculative and in many cases unsubstantiated concerns.  On that ingredients list, I think it would be useful to identify where something has been specifically engineered at the nanometer scale and added to the food to add value to the product.  This could simply be a case of adding a “n” before the ingredient – nSiO2 for instance.  But this in itself isn’t of much use to the user – without more information, they won’t be able to tell whether that “n” is a good thing, a worrisome thing, or nothing worth fretting about at all.    What I think would be far more helpful is finding a way to link from product labels to more detailed information on the web.  Imagine for instance that you could take a snapshot of the bar code on a product using your smart phone, and be taken to a database that let you know what was in the product and why.  This would be a farm more effective way of providing people who were interested with useful information on the nano in their food – if and when it gets there (and there are remarkably few food products on the streets that clearly and unambiguously contain engineered nanomaterials).  The good news is that this is a technology which is already gaining ground.

13. Nanotech pervades all sectors and there is a huge range in riskiness between the applications. How can we develop a meaningful triage system to prioritize sectors, product classes, products and materials with respect to safety?

Short answer – stop talking about nanotechnology, start talking about specific technologies and the products that use them, and make sure we ask scientifically plausible questions about potential risks, rather than being driven by speculation.  This is a huge issue – not just for nanotechnology – and more thinking is needed on how we begin to identify and address plausible safety issues, without being side tracked by questions that, while interesting, are more speculative than scientifically sound, and run the risk of distracting attention from more important issues.

14. How will we deal with imported nano products and how will we know they are nano?

With great difficulty I think.  Oversight of imported products – whether nano or not – is a major issue in today’s globalized market.  It’s a problem that has got regulators the world over worried.  Add nanotech in, and the problem becomes even greater – because now you have products with components that may lead to new safety issues, that do not have to be identified, and are not easy to detect!  I suspect though that part of the solution is to avoid getting too hung up on nanotechnology, and to start focusing on specific materials that raise new safety issues, and develop ways of detecting and overseeing the use of these materials.

15. What is the risk of NOT developing nanotech (in health care, environmental protection, economic development)?

I suspect that the answer to this question will differ wildly according to who answers it, but my opinion is that we cannot afford not to develop new technologies such as nanotech.  I would argue (and have done so on this blog) that the challenges facing humankind over the next 50 plus years cannot be solved using conventional technologies alone.  Access to nutritious food and clean water; disease treatment and prevention; clean, renewable energy – these are all challenges that we currently do not have the tools to address effectively.  Of course, nanotechnology is one of a number of emerging technologies that can help.  And any emerging technology-based solutions must be integrated with social, economic and conventional technology innovations if we are to ensure the focus remains on solving the problem rather than simply playing with the next new “technology toy.”  That said, I suspect that a failure to develop responsible and sustainable nanotechnologies will have a severe impact on people’s lives and the environment in the future.

16. What is the risk overall? Technology has not made us necessarily healthier and happier – although life expectancy has undeniable risen. Will the advances in 100 sectors be nullified by one “bad sector” (say nano use in weapons)?

I’m not sure you can talk about the overall risk of something as broad as nanotechnology.  Thinking as broadly as possible, there are risks associated with developing nanotechnology without appropriate checks and balances, just as there are risks associated with impeding its development at the expense of people who need food, water, medical treatment, energy…  But it’s far more useful to think about the pros and cons of specific applications of nanotechnology.  Of course, there is always that chance that, because we are working under this “brand” of “nanotechnology”  if something bad happens in one sector – say a new nano drug goes badly wrong – it will have a knock-on effect on other areas where nanotechnology is being used.  This is a possibility as so much has been lumped together under the banner of nanotech.  But I suspect that people are sophisticated enough not to stop using their nanotech baseball bat because the latest nano drug has problems.  Of course, this won’t stop equally sophisticated people from using nano-problems to push other agendas, if they see the opportunity.

17. We may need new bioassays. Can they be designed to simultaneously address animal welfare issues? Can they become models for use in non-nano contexts? Can there development be justified, financed and sped up on that argument?

As new toxicity testing challenges arise with some engineered nanomaterials, I see no reason why this cannot be used to stimulate further research towards minimizing the use of animals in tox testing.  In fact, I would argue that it is important that every opportunity is grasped to find more humane ways to evaluate material and product safety (this was something I highlighted as being important with my colleagues back in 2006 in a commentary in the journal Nature).  Nevertheless, I do feel it is important to ensure whatever assays are used, they lead to the use of products that will not end up inadvertently harming the user.

18. What is the difference between nanotech, biotech and synthetic biology?

Get ten experts in the same room, and they’ll give you at least twenty different answers to this one.  But here’s my take:  Biotechnology is a very broad technology that covers the use of biology in agriculture, food and medicine.  The term often refers to intentionally manipulating the genetic code of organisms – usually at a fairly crude level – to change them in ways that are perceived as being beneficial.  Nanotechnology is about engineering matter at a scale just a little larger than atoms and molecules, and taking advantage of the new and unusual properties that can result from such fine-level engineering.  Nanotechnology is often (but not exclusively) thought of as involving non-living materials.  Synthetic biology on the other hand is all about manipulating the genetic code of organisms at the nanometer scale, to either alter them in useful ways, or to create new organisms.  The truth of the matter is though that each of these terms is a clumsy shorthand for a continuum of science and technology innovation that is providing us with an increasingly sophisticated level of control over matter at the finest level – whether that be in living systems, dead systems, or combinations of the two.

19. Is there sufficient attention to the “soft science” of safety research? Governance, ethics, public relations, process research, organizational research, etc?

I would certainly argue that more need to be done here – much more.  Think about it – we live in a world where not only do we need to make decisions in the absence of information, but the very dynamics of decision-making the world-over are changing.  “Hard” science is not enough on its own to cope in this new world.  We also need to know how it fits in to a complex and shifting social, political and economic environment.  And for this, we need expertise in areas like engagement, governance, social decision-making, and a whole host of other “soft” areas.

20. The problem I have with the whole issue is that nanotech is not a “single” field, like polymers or vaccines, drugs or pesticides, say. Instead it’s a vast area of sci-tech defined rather arbitrarily by the size of the entities/particles involved. We need some way to ensure policy makers are not forced into a corner where they throw a blanket over all nanotech. How can that be achieved?

So true.  I think I touch on this a couple of times above, but somehow we need to decouple the products of nanotechnology from the brand of nanotechnology – so we can have science-informed dialogues on issues that are well-defined.  But how to do this?  We could start making sure that people have access to good information, and that they are fully engaged on the issue for a start.

21. How do we assess long term impacts in short term safety tests & decide it is safe enough?

The unfortunate truth here is that we still struggle to do this with non-nano substances, never mind the products of nanotechnology.  There are ways in which we can get a handle on what some long term impacts might be – the various assays for potential genotoxins, carcinogens etc. are helpful here for instance. But we still have a long way to go.  Maybe we should see this as an opportunity for engineered nanomaterials to stimulate some new ideas and approaches here.

22. Who is accountable if we do miss long term impacts?

Huge question.  I guess, depending on which country you are in, the lawyers would say whoever you can sue is accountable!  But beyond the possibilities of litigation, who is accountable for the impacts of decisions made – or not made – now?  Businesses developing new products are accountable to their shareholders and, perhaps surprisingly to some, their stakeholders in many cases – including customers (a number of businesses have strong value systems and codes of conduct that place stakeholders above shareholders).  This naturally leads to some degree of short to medium term accountability.  On the other hand, looking at government, it is hard to find any true accountability for the medium to long term consequences of actions – especially in an area like nanotechnology which cuts across so many departments and agencies.  Clearly, this is something that needs to be addressed.

23. What % of gov and business budget should be spent on safety?

A few years ago, a number of groups were arguing that 10% of the US nanotechnology research and development strategy should be devoted to health, safety and environmental impact-related research.  These days, I would argue that how the money is spent is at least as important as how much money is spent.  If you don’t start out with the right questions and a reasonable idea of how to get the answers, no amount of funding is going to get you to where you need to be.  That said, once you have a sound strategy, 10% of nanotech R&D is not a bad starting place.  A couple of years ago I was on a congressional testimony panel when a colleague from BASF was asked how much industry invest in ensuring the safety of a new product.  From what I remember, the answer was around 15% of the R&D budget.

24. How do we get companies to share their safety data to add to the body of evidence on safety?

Find mechanisms by which companies can share useful safety data without compromising their business, and develop trust and partnerships between businesses and other stakeholders to make data sharing easier.  This is a tough one though.  Most people in the business think it’s important and should be possible, but no-one’s come up with a viable solution yet.

25. When will 2020 Science learn to count?  (my apologies – realized after posting that I had missed four questions!)

Come off it, I’m a physicist.  Counting’s for engineers!

My apologies for the lack of links and citations here.  Time didn’t allow for more than a quick fire response – maybe this is something that needs to be added in at a later date.

Last Friday I posted 24 questions on nanotechnology safety provided by folks on Twitter and FaceBook, in a naive attempt to see if people could find matching answers on the web.  Predictably perhaps, there weren’t too many responses.  This wasn’t too surprising – I’m beginning to realize that asking for feedback on the web is about as effective as inviting complete strangers at the grocery store to come round and clean your bathroom; not that attractive a proposition.  On top of this though, the questions were tough, and web-based answers scarce.

In posting the questions, I wanted to see how easy it was to get useful information on nanotechnology safety from the web, and whether there were any resources that rose to the top of the pile as being particularly useful.  Unfortunately, I have to conclude that there are remarkably few web sites out there that clearly and directly answer the types of questions people are interested in.  It’s not only the low response rate that led me to this conclusion – I tried finding useful sites myself, and gave up after the 6th question!

It seems that, ten years after the US government launched the multi-billion dollar National Nanotechnology Initiative that put nanotechnology on the map, it’s still nearly impossible to get  straight (and fast) answers to the sorts of questions people are asking…

Of course, there are some decent resources out there if you want a general introduction to nanotechnology.  Nano & me remains one of my favorite*.  And if you are specifically interested in nanotechnology safety, there are a number of Frequently Asked Questions lists – check out the NIOSH FAQ for instance, or the SafeNano FAQ.  But there’s a curious disconnect between these lists of questions, and the ones submitted to 2020 Science.  It almost seems as if these sites are answering the questions they think people are asking, rather than the ones they are.

Whichever way you look at it, despite all the information on nanotechnology safety that you can find floating around on the web, it seems that people are still struggling to find answers to the questions that matter to them.  Rather than FAQs, they are faced with QSAs – Questions you Should Ask.

Maybe it’s time for a true nanotechnology safety FAQ (or wiki or whatever – I suspect FAQ’s are so last decade) that provides answers to the questions people are really asking, rather than the ones “experts” think they should be asking.

Wouldn’t that be a novel idea!

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Having thrown the gauntlet down here, I feel I should do something about those 24 questions that are still hanging out there without many good answers.  So I’ll see what I can do about posting some short A’s to the Q’s from my perspective – stay tuned. [Update: link to my answers here]

*To those in the know, The US National Nanotechnology Initiative website – http://www.nano.gov – is deep well of nanotech information.  Sadly, you also need to bring along a long rope, flashlight and other spelunking gear to get anything useful out of it.  The good news is that a major update is planned for the website – maybe the new and improved nano.gov will even have some real Q&A for real people – you never know!

]]> http://2020science.org/2010/02/12/nanotechnology-safety-weve-got-the-answers-now-what-was-the-question/feed/ 1 http://2020science.org/2010/01/18/no-small-matter-taster/ http://2020science.org/2010/01/18/no-small-matter-taster/#comments Mon, 18 Jan 2010 20:28:38 +0000 Andrew Maynard http://2020science.org/?p=2826

To accompany the review just posted of Felice Frankel and George Whitesides’ book “No Small Matter: Science on the Nanoscale” the authors kindly allowed me to post this series of excerpts.  What I wanted to capture here was the synergy between the images and the prose – and how together they pull the reader in.

This is just a small taste (bad pun – sorry) of what the book offers.  If you enjoyed it and want to see more – I’m sure you know your way to a good bookstore by now.

As people seem to expect this these days, I should be clear that this is an independent review, using a copy of No Small Matter purchased from my own hard earned cash!

How do you write a book about something few people have heard off, and less seem interested in?  The answer, it seems, is to write about something else.

Felice Frankel and George Whitesides have clearly taken this lesson to heart. Judged by the cover alone, their new book “No Small Matter:  Science at the Nanoscale” is all about science in the Twilight zone of the nanoscale – where stuff doesn’t behave in the way intuition says it should.  Open the cover, and you are drawn into a seductive world of stunning images and poetic prose, that reveal as much about the authors’ passions and delights as the science that drives them. Finish the book, and you will have a far more sophisticated grasp of nanotechnology than most of your friends and, dare I say it, many of the people currently working in the field.  Because this is the sleight of hand that Frankel and Whitesides pull – by not writing about nanotechnology, they have published what is perhaps the best book on the subject to date!

But all this is besides the point.  Because more than anything, No Small Matter is about the delight of understanding and appreciating better the world in which we find ourselves.  This is a book that is simple enough for a child to appreciate, and subtle enough to keep the most cynical intellectual engaged.  It’s the sort of book I would strongly recommend you read (and read again) – not because I think you should, but because I think you’ll enjoy it.

The key to this remarkable book – and I choose my words carefully here – is the synergy between Frankel’s images and Whitesides prose (see these excerpts for an example).  Whitesides’ writing is poetic, engaging – it draws you in.  Even re-reading the book for this review, I find myself savoring the lines.  It’s not that Whitesides avoids long words and complex ideas – try this one for size for instance: “Anthropomorphizing capillarity into affection or avarice is misleading but unavoidably appealing.”  But he writes with an openness, enthusiasm and deceptive simplicity that pulls the reader in – you can almost see the glint in his eye as you read.  Take this passage for example from the book’s introduction:

“This book is about small things.  They’re different – sometimes really, and enthrallingly, different.  We humans have always been fascinated by “small”: the gears and springs of a fine watch, embroidery, a jumping spider – each is a distinct kind of marvel.  We think of ourselves as master artisans, and we have a connoisseur’s appreciation of delicate work.”

Rather than lecturing, Whitesides seeks to help you see the world through his eyes.

But the prose – beautiful as they are – are only part of the equation here.  The real genius of the book is the merging of Whitesides’ writing with Frankel’s images.  On their own, many of the images appear mundane (although the skill behind them is far from trivial).  Placed alongside Whitesides’ writing, something special happens.  The images draw out the full flavor of the prose, seasoning them to perfection.  Take this description of combustion:

“The smallest flames share features in common with the largest: a burning candle tells the story as well as a coal-fired electrical power plant; only details are different in a coal fire and a diesel engine.  Here, the heat from the flame melts the hydrocarbon candle wax; the liquid wax climbs up the wick; heat radiated from the flame vaporizes the wax; the vapor mixes with air; a complex series of chemical reactions in the hot region – the flame – convert wax and oxygen to carbon dioxide and water.  At an intermediate point in the flame zone, small particles of unburned carbon – at a temperature of approximately 1000 C – glow yellow.  When combustion is incomplete, unburned carbon particles cool to smoke or soot.”

The story is elegantly told.  But it is Frankel’s exquisite photograph of a candle flame beside it that connects the description to reality, and helps you appreciate the intricate science involved in an apparently simple process.

Another wonderful example comes in Whitesides’ discussion of wave-particle duality, which is dominated by his thoughts on math and poetry:

“We’re burdened by a curious conditioning that blinds us to one of the greatest—perhaps the greatest—of art forms. We live for poetry; we live in terror of equations.

We see a poem, and we try it on for size: we read a line or two; we roll it around in our mind; we see how it fits and tastes and sounds. We may not like it, and let it drop, but we enjoy the encounter and look forward to the next. We seen an equation, and it is as if we’d glimpsed a tarantula in the baby’s crib. We panic.

Equations are the poetry that we use to describe the behavior of electrons and atoms, just as we use poems to describe ourselves…

Poetry describes humanity with a human voice; equations describe a reality beyond the reach of words. Playing a fugue, and tasting fresh summer tomatoes, and writing poetry, and falling in love all ultimately dissolve into molecules and electrons, but we cannot yet (and perhaps, ever) trace the path from one end (from molecules) to the other (us). Not with poetry, not with equations. But each guides us part way.

Of course, not all equations are things of beauty: some are porcupines, some are plumber’s helpers, and some are tarantulas.”

And the accompanying image?  A photograph of Louis de Broglie’s wave equation – hand written.

But I don’t want to leave you with the impression that the images are merely an illumination for the text.  Some of them  capture perfectly the world of the nanoscale.  Others are cleverly crafted metaphors – a glass apple with a cubic shadow for instance; a metaphor for quantum objects that have attributes that seem irreconcilably at odds.

The heart of the book is sixty short essays, accompanied by images.  These are divided into seven sections, loosely covering “smallness;” strange behavior at the nanoscale; living things; why science at the nanoscale matters; dangers and challenges; and whether this is all the next big thing, or merely a storm in a teacup.  The essays are loosely linked, but each stands on its own.  Taken together, they seem at first to follow a random walk through Whitesides’ imagination – a comfortable mix of personal reflection and science on subjects that pique his curiosity.  But rather cleverly, they coalesce to provide a coherent sense of nanoscience.  And in doing so, provide what is perhaps the most honest and clear sense of nanotechnology that I have read.

The challenge here is that nanotechnology is not back and white – it’s not easy to say “this is nanotechnology; that is not.”  Other writers have tried to draw clear lines around the technology.  But in doing so, they have come perilously close to diminishing the wonder of seeing how the world works at the nanoscale, or the innovation that comes from using this knowledge.  Frankel and Whitesides on the other hand don’t draw boundaries – they are content with talking about stuff that is small, and different, and exciting, and awe inspiring.  They are happy working in gray areas that defy clear definition.  And they set out to enlighten, not instruct.

The result is a book that will delight anyone with an interest in the material world and an appreciation of poetic prose and eye catching images.

A series of image and text from the book can be seen here.

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As people seem to expect this these days, I should be clear that this is an independent review, using a copy of No Small Matter purchased from my own hard earned cash!

For more information on the book and the review, check out the 2020 Science Facebook page

Hype, scare mongering, obfuscation and just plain misinformation – the scientific community are reasonably clear about what they think of Tabloid science reporting much of the time.  So I wasn’t too surprised to see the headline “‘Grey goo’ food laced with nanoparticles could swamp Britain” in today’s Daily Mail, following the release of a new report on nanotechnologies and food from the UK House of Lords.  Here we go again I thought – cheap misrepresentation to pull the punters in and never mind the fallout.  But on closer reading, perhaps this piece isn’t as crass and misleading as I initially thought…

Partly as a bit of fun, I thought I would deconstruct the piece, to try and work out whether there is some sense here behind the apparent madness.  But I also have a bit of a soft spot for its author, Fiona Macrae.  Fiona was largely responsible for educating me in the ways of Tabloid reporting a few years ago.  It was the launch of the Project on Emerging Nanotechnologies Consumer Products Inventory, and I was talking with a group of reporters at the UK Science Media Center.  I remember Fiona clearly – she was smart, engaged, asked intelligent questions.  I was effusive in my answers.  And shocked when I saw her story the next day.

Rather than telling my story, she told hers.  Under the banner “‘Hidden danger’ in anti-ageing cream” she appeared to take my carefully considered words and turn them on their head.  Of course, it didn’t help that, in the course of our amiable interview, I had told her “We are using humans as guinea pigs with a lot of this.”  The lesson: she was a skilled reporter, and I was naive!

Having been on the sharp end of her pen, I was interested to read today’s story with a slightly more dispassionate eye.  Here’s what I thought, section by section:

The headline: ‘Grey goo’ food laced with nanoparticles could swamp Britain

What an emotive headline – a new danger, infiltrating our food, and threatening to overcome us!  From a purely literary perspective, the imagery is wonderful – “‘grey goo food’” brings back recollections of old-style British cuisine, while “laced” and “swamp” are loaded with menace.  But is it inaccurate?  Placing grey goo in inverted commas tells us that this is shorthand for something, and not to be taken too literally.  According to the report the piece is based on, food could hit the shelves that contains nanoparticles (and is probably already there) – “laced” is descriptive, but not inaccurate.  Saying Britain could be swamped with these foods is a bit of an exaggeration – but it is possible that in the future significant numbers of food products could use nanomaterials in some way.  So while the headline is attention-grabbing, it avoids being plain wrong.

Britain is on the brink of a massive expansion in foods containing controversial ‘grey goo’ nanoparticles, according to the former head of the Food Standards Agency.

Low-calorie chocolate and beer that doesn’t go flat could be on sale within just five years, Lord Krebs said last night.

Is Britain on the brink of a massive expansion of foods containing nanomaterials – aka “‘grey goo’ nanoparticles”?  Not unless industry and government do something to ensure the safe and successful development of the technology, according to the House of Lords report.  But the statement isn’t too far from the truth.  And the chocolate and beer examples are accurate.

However, he and other peers believe there will be no requirement for the hi-tech products to be labelled as containing nanoparticles – microscopic compounds that can worm their way into the brain, liver and kidneys with unknown consequences.

Here we see the real skill of the Tabloid writer – technically correct writing with worrying embedded subliminal messages.  Sure the Lords writing the report didn’t believe labeling is the way to go – although they did come up with another solution to ensure people had access to relevant information.  And some nanoparticles can get to the brain and kidneys, with unknown consequences.  But by saying they ‘worm their way in’ Macrae conjures up images of slimy parasites and worse – would you want anything “worming” its way into your body?

But critics said the public have the right to know what they are putting into their bodies, and point out that new legislation will mean that cosmetics that contain nanoparticles will have to be clearly labelled.

Correct.  And the full report addressed this.

Once derided by Prince Charles as ‘grey goo’, nanoparticles are tiny particles – 300 million would fit in a pinhead – with powerful properties that make them of interest to food companies.

Although they are small, they have a large surface area at which key chemical reactions can take place. This means that relatively low numbers of sugar nanoparticles can have the same effect as a large amount of normal sugar, creating tasty chocolate or cakes with a fraction of the calories.

The same principle could be applied to fat, allowing the creation of low-fat icecreams and mayonnaise that taste like the real thing.

Nanotechnology-inspired packaging promises to improve food shelf-life, and in the U.S. plastic beer bottles have been lined with ‘nanoclay’ to stop the brew from going flat.

This is all good and useful information.  Having grabbed the Tabloid reader’s attention, Macrae is now feeding them some useful information.

Lord Krebs chaired an inquiry by the House of Lords science and technology committee into the safety of nanotechnology in food, which found that although there is no evidence that the tiny particles are harmful, there are ‘large gaps’ on our knowledge.

The committee called for the Food Standards-Agency to compile a database of nanoproducts that can be accessed by the public. The FSA is not in favour of nanoparticles being declared on food labels, saying they are cluttered enough already.

This is accurate reporting – still on a roll here.

The inquiry also criticised the food industry for being unnecessarily ‘ secretive’ about the products it has in the pipeline. It said this seemed mainly to be because it was concerned about the public’s reaction.

Julian Hunt of the Food and Drink Federation said: ‘Given that nanotechnology is in its infancy in the food and drink sector, and that bringing innovations to market is a long and complex process, we are surprised that the report seems to criticize the food industry for an apparent reluctance to communicate extensively on this subject.

‘There are many questions and unknowns about the potential future uses of nanotechnologies in our sector, and there is much work still to be done by scientists, governments and regulators, as well as the food and drink industry.’

And we finish with the report’s critique of the food industry – which was the main thrust of the associated press release – and a response from an industry representative.

And at the end of the piece, I have to say that it is largely accurate and informative – emotive maybe, but not seriously misleading.  I would actually go further and say that, once the in-your-face headline and opening sentences have pulled readers in, they might actually learn something!

Of course, the fear is that readers will miss the nuances and not read past the headline and, as a result, get completely the wrong end of the stick.  I wonder how likely this is in this case though. Do people really believe in “grey goo” or is the joke on over-sensitive scientists here?

There are obviously major issues surrounding science reporting in the Tabloids, and I don’t for one minute want to give the impression that I am supporting dangerously misleading and disingenuous reporting.  But in this instance, there’s little of substance to complain about once you get beyond the occasionally jarring language.  And it might actually lead to some readers having a better grasp of what nanotech has to do with food… possibly!

Go Fiona!

By Ruth Seeley, No Spin PR.

A little over a year ago, Ruth Seeley – a freelance communications consultant – rather bravely approached me with a proposition:  She would help me develop a social media strategy for 2020 Science, if I would let her write the experience up as a case study.  Was she mad?  Did she not know how impossibly contrary scientists are to work with?  Or was she simply a sucker for punishment?  Twelve months on, I’m pleased to say that Ruth is still speaking to me.  But how did the experiment go?  To find out, read on… -AM

Despite having once shared an award for client service with a much more senior colleague, I would be the first to admit that client service – in the sense of getting along with and working closely, productively, and harmoniously with clients – has never been my strong suit. As an ex-global public relations employee gone (briefly) ‘corporate’ and now a solopreneur, I’ve had many challenges, not least of which was aligning myself with the kind of clients who don’t need a lot of handholding and who have either a learned or an instinctive understanding of what public relations is and what it can do for them. Managing client expectations and educating them is fine and dandy when you have a client willing and able to pay for their learning curve. Being asked to teach, explain, or worse, being second-guessed at every step of the way (which is what tends to happen when your client is another solopreneur with little corporate experience and a miniscule budget) is, frankly, both intolerable and unprofitable. Another real stumbling block for me was the fact that I no longer had a team – virtual or in-person – to draw upon. Nor an IT department to help me with technological challenges, ranging from viruses to actual laptop meltdowns. Couple that with the fact that I decided a decade ago that it really was time to stop and smell the roses, and I was faced with a dilemma when I decided to give public relations one more shot in late 2008 and see what I could make of No Spin PR.

Having decided that I wanted to focus on clients in the nanotechnology and clean energy technology sectors, I set up a Google Alert on nanotechnology and started doing my research. Among the first of the nanotech blogs I found was Andrew Maynard’s, and to my delight, one of the first 2020science posts I read was this one. As an English major I felt myself on firm ground – he was talking about books, after all, one or two of which I’d actually read. Emboldened by the reading I’d done to date on social media in general and the blogosphere in particular, I didn’t hesitate to comment. Twice, in fact, on that post. I also did some research on Andrew Maynard, and particularly liked what I saw of the way he handled himself on the Fred Friendly Town Hall simulations and how obviously genuine he was as evidenced by the Twinkie Guide to Nanotechnology. He wasn’t smooth and he wasn’t exactly succinct [so much for practicing in front of the mirror! -AM], but his passion for his subject matter, his desire to communicate effectively and his patience, humour, wit, and intelligence shone through. The fact that he was obviously having a good time, more than anything else, made me want to work with him.

When I concluded I could no longer ignore Twitter as I began my social media immersion, I searched for, found him, and started following him on Twitter in late 2008. To my surprise,  he was busily conducting a social media experiment – five tweets per day (and only five) over the course of a week, in an attempt to impart meaningful information on emerging technologies, including both nanotechnology and synthetic biology, 140 characters at a time (there were no links in those tweets). And so I approached him via email to ask if I could help him develop a social media strategy for 2020science.  Surprisingly, he agreed. Our formal terms were simple: I would provide my services on a pro bono basis if he would allow me to write a case study at the end of 2009 that would demonstrate both my social media and nanotechnology expertise (and he would have the right to review and approve the case study).

From the beginning, Andrew was an amenable but amusing client [I was clearly a little confused about the client-consultant relationship –AM]. I started writing plans using the formulas I’d been taught – call them RACE (research, action, communicate, evaluate – here’s an example of one campaign using that formula) or whatever you like, you begin with four basic questions: Where are we now, where do we want to be, how will we get there, and how will we know we’ve arrived? Situational analysis, objectives, strategy, tactics that map to strategy, and some form of measurement. I did MindMaps (he liked the MindMaps) [J -AM]. I urged him to create YouTube channels, Facebook and LinkedIn profiles. I nagged him to get Google Analytics on the blog. I touted the benefits of podcasting [repeatedly, I recall –AM]. I attached dates to various initiatives. Somehow this led to several blog redesigns in the first quarter of 2009, for which I was inevitably blamed (I had said nothing about redesigning the blog, I swear!).  In terms of goals, I think the only one I could get him to commit to was the overarching goal of having fun. I stopped talking about goals, although I do recall saying our target for Twitter followers for the year should be 5000 followers. Looking back at my plans, I see that on January 21, 2009, 2020science was following 48 people and had 191 followers. I urged Andrew to take his personal branding a little more seriously, and to at least create an email signature that included his blog address and his Twitter ID. He saw the good sense of that suggestion and immediately implemented it. We stopped revising the plan.

And it was at that point that all sorts of good things began to happen. Andrew created an Alltop channel for 2020science. In mid-February, Lon Cohen recommended Andrew in a Mashable post on Twitter professors, and the next month Andrew himself approached Mashable about writing a post on tweeps (primarily although not exclusively science folks) who would change your perspective on reality. Except, of course, being British, he was adamant about referring to them as twits rather than tweeps. I had some input into the choice of those he recommended, and Andrew took some of my advice (ok, in this instance he was actually pretty tractable, let me do some editing, and he certainly honoured my wish not to be included in the list! Because, you know, I am not the story – he’s the story). And no one seemed to mind, although the sudden increase in followers led some of the 13 listed to conclude their computers had caught a virus – it didn’t occur to me till after the article was posted that we should have given them a heads up that they were about to be mentioned in the article [put it down to being British again, but I did get a chuckle from watching the 13 tweeps go through the same confusion I experienced after appearing on Lon’s list – I seriously thought I was the unwitting victim of a spam-attack! –AM] . Less than three months after beginning to approach his social media efforts more strategically, 2020science had more than 5000 followers on Twitter.

In terms of other forms of measurement, the blog’s Technorati  authority has increased from 11 on January 21, 2009, to 122 as of January 3, 2010 [although with the new rating system, I have no idea what this means – AM]. Almost 500 people now subscribe to the 2020science RSS feed (up from 8 on 21/1/09) – and more than 5700 followers on Twitter. I was initially concerned about Andrew’s following:follower ratio (he is still only following 195 tweeps – fine – twits). But by assiduously checking his @messages he has been able to interact with far more than the 195 folks he follows, and has also, I gather from our last conversation, managed to not drive himself insane attempting to cope with the tsunami of information that is Twitter while continuing to hold down a full-time job, stay married, and actually be present in his relationship with his children.

More important, he has embraced the principles of social media so surely and so instinctively that he has made working with him a constant pleasure and a continuous learning experience for me. He’s (a little stiffly, mind you, and with properly British reserve) embraced Facebook and if you don’t contribute your suggestions regarding what you’d like to see on the 2020science blog you will not be eligible to win one of the brilliant (and my current favourite coffee-drinking vessel) 2020science blog mugs. But in addition to maintaining his own enthusiasm for blogging and communicating about science, technology, society and innovation, he has also succeeded in creating a community of folks who are asking some of the questions that need to be asked in these still-early days of the 21^st Century: who really benefits from the scientific research that’s being done? How can we share the innovative technology we’re capable of producing? How do we communicate effectively – and by that I mean, how do we manage to both listen and to express our own point of view or that of our organization in order to arrive at agreement rather than polarized entrenchment of existing views? From my own perspective, what he’s taught me is that letting go of the message, giving the client his head, as it were (or, you know, enough rope to hang himself), and adopting a far more hands-off, coach/consultant role rather than creating scripts that must then be memorized and delivered after arduous rehearsal, is the way to go, and is the future of public relations rather than its death knell.

2010 – the year of the 2020science podcast series? Stay tuned. My middle name is Persistence.

Despite my quips above, this has been a great year working with Ruth.  At the beginning of the year, I really didn’t know where I was going with 2020 Science.  I still don’t know, but now I don’t know with style!  Actually, that’s not true – as she says, Ruth forced me to take the blog—and the 2020 Science brand—seriously, and think more clearly about what I was trying to achieve.  In some ways I was a difficult client – I listened patiently to Ruth’s suggestions, then happily went off and did my own thing!  But at the end of the day we forged a partnership that worked very well.  In reality, she coached me to work effectively with social media—acting as a guide, sounding board and, occasionally, a taskmaster (but not often).

So was the experience worthwhile?  Absolutely!  2020 Science always will be something of a niche blog.  But at least it’s now a social media-savvy niche blog, written by someone who has a slightly better idea of why he’s doing it than he did a year ago.

But I do draw the line at podcasts–for now… -AM

Now you see what I’m dealing with – he asks me to write a guest blog and thinks he can have the last word!

Andréia Azevedo Soares has just posted an excellent blog on how to interview scientists over at YS Journal – an on-line journal written, edited and published by students.  The piece is aimed specifically at students from 12 to 20 years old who are engaged with the Young Scientists Journal project from around the world, and Andréia – an established journalist herself – cautions that it might not be of much use to professional journalists and science writers.  But I suspect that anyone on the giving or receiving end of science-related interviews will find the piece informative.

In writing the blog, Andréia corresponded with a number of scientists about their experiences being interviewed, including me.  Having send her copious off the cuff notes, I thought it might be worth-while posting them here – if only so you can see how a good writer separates the wheat from the chaff in such situations

Andréia was interested in my thoughts on being interviewed as a scientist and someone who writes and talks to people about science.  This is what I emailed her (edited superficially from the original, where I became grammatically challenged in the heat of the moment).  Remember, these thoughts are aimed at students between 12 – 20 years old, rather than established writers:

Over the past few years I’ve been interviewed by many journalists – mainly over the phone, but sometimes face to face, and occasionally for TV and Radio.  In most cases the experience – and the results – have been positive.  Perhaps most importantly, the experiences have helped me understand how best to work with journalists as a scientist.  But they have also given me some insight into how journalists can get the most out of scientists when talking with them.

I’ve always found that interviews go best when the interviewer is prepared – when they have read up on the subject, when they know who I am and what my expertise is, and when they have a clear sense of the information they are interested in.  The worst interviews are fishing expeditions – where the journalist doesn’t seem to know why they are talking to me, and they are simply fishing for information they might use as the basis of a story.

I find a prepared journalist instills confidence in me, and helps me to convey what I want to say clearly and effectively.  They don’t need to be experts in the subject.  In fact I see it as an important role of the interviewer to ask the sort of questions their readers would want to ask – even if they seem scientifically simple and naive (there’s no such thing as a stupid question, but ignorant questions are another matter).  But it helps if they know where they are going with the interview.

I don’t find small-talk helps at the beginning of an interview – I have better things to do than talk about the weather usually!  But starting with straight-forward questions does help.   I often find that I am providing my clearest answers at the end of an interview, because this is when I have relaxed sufficiently to start communicating well with the interviewer.  Some simple warm-up questions help speed up this process.

The questions I dread are the open-ended ones: “what is nanotechnology?” is a perfect example of a question that potentially ends up with me rambling, because I don’t know how much information the interviewer wants.  Of course, as a person used to being interviewed, I should have stock answers to such questions – but I’m not that disciplined!  This is actually an important point – the clearer it is what the interviewer is looking for, the easier it is to provide clear answers.

Some of my richest conversations with journalists have come from what is usually the last formal question – “is there anything else you think is important, or that you would like to add?” – this is an open-ended question at the end of the interview that is okay to ask.  What I find at this point is that I start to chat more informally with the interviewer about things that weren’t covered in their questions, or things that I think might be relevant – including emphasizing and clarifying things that I have said previously.  And as a result, occasionally I say something that hits a chord with the interviewer, and we spend several more minutes exploring something that wasn’t in the original interview plan, but nevertheless finds its way into the final piece.

Ending interviews politely and keeping in touch with the interviewee is always important.  It’s always good to be informed personally when the piece is published – whether or not you have been quoted.  On occasions, I’ve had journalists send me the piece and explain why my comments haven’t appeared.  This can sometimes be a bit of an ego blow, but it does raise my respect for these journalists.  It also helps cement a longer lasting relationship.  Developing a working relationship with scientists you may use as a source multiple times seems extremely important.  It provides you with a list of sources that you are confident in, and who trust you.

This question of trust is critical, and it is mutually beneficial.  A scientist is more likely to speak to a journalist that they have had good experiences with, and who does a good job in representing their work.  This trust is built on how the interview goes, feedback after the interview, and the quality of the piece that is published.

When I see myself quoted in a piece, I first check that the quote reflects what I was trying to say – I’m not too worried about the minute details, but the broad sense of the quote and the context are important to me (I have colleagues who think very differently on this, but I always assume that in synthesizing and summarizing the science, some of the detail and scientific accuracy will be lost.  This doesn’t bother me – as long as the science is not wrong, or that the implications of the quotes are inaccurate or inappropriate).  If I am uncomfortable with the quote, I first check back to thinking whether the fault lies with me – did I express myself poorly?  Most times, I am the one who could have done better.  If I feel that the journalist has represented my work and my point of view poorly, I might send them a polite message noting this – although I usually acknowledge that I could have done better in expressing myself.  On very rare occasions, I might say something in public if I feel the article is dangerously misleading – but this is an extremely rare occurrence.  More often thought I just let it go – but I don’t tend to work repeatedly with journalists who do not do a good job of representing what I say.

That said, most journalists I have worked with are genuinely interested in feedback on their pieces – especially on whether they got the science right.  Asking for feedback builds trust with sources – even if you write the occasional piece that isn’t perfect!

This is something of an aside, but there are a number of media advisors working with scientists who suggest scientists ask to check stories prior to publication.  I’m not sure where this advice is coming from, but it seems naive, inappropriate and unfeasible in many cases to me.  There are publications that will come back and fact-check the science, and even check that quotes are correct.  But very few publications will allow sources editorial control over articles – and rightly so.  However, young journalists should be prepared for scientists to think that they can somehow check over the work before publication – and work out how to politely decline!

I sat down this morning to write a light-hearted blog about the UK government’s “Science: So what? So everything” campaign.  The angle was going to be:

Why write about this when people want to read about this?

But the more I dug around, the more apparent it became that this is an initiative that seems to have lost its way – and in need of more than a cheap quip about substance (ab)use…

The “Science: So what? So everything” campaign was launched with a flourish by the British government Department for Business Innovation and Skills last January.  It was aimed at engaging people in science, and shaking off the perception of science as being elitist.  A string of celebrities – including Terry Pratchett, Bill Bryson and David Attenborough – put their weight behind the campaign as Prime Minister Gordon Brown kicked it off.

According to the British Science Association,

A key aim of the campaign is to reach and spark interest in science among a wider audience, dispelling the myth that science is too difficult or out of bounds for all but scientists. The involvement of well-known figures from the media and popular culture will help to convey this message. As well the help of celebrities, the campaign has enlisted the support of UK research councils, learned societies and other government departments and hopes to extend its reach with the involvement of business and other organisations outside the world of science.

So what has happened since then?

I ask because British Science Minister Lord Drayson as just embarked on a review of the campaign.  As he announced on Twitter earlier this week:

I’m afraid as a scientist I don’t fit into Lord Drayson’s target audience here.  But his tweet – and some of the responses to it – did drive me back to the Science: So What? campaign to see what was going on.

And I must confess, what I found was a little disappointing.

The “campaign” (more about those inverted commas in a second) revolves around the Science: So what? So everything website.  This is a slick website – it’s attractive, it’s neatly laid out, it draws you in to a series of articles that are related to science.

But it’s a website, not a campaign!

In fact, the more I browsed, the clearer it was that the Science: So what? website is little more than a mediocre popular science portal, with a hint of government science evangelism about it.  I’m not even sure I would have known that this was the hub of a campaign if it hadn’t been for Lord Drayson’s tweet, and archived news coverage of the launch (the original BIS press release isn’t available by the way as far as I can tell – links like the one here lead to dead ends).

If this is a campaign, where’s the action plan?  Where are the deliverables and the indicators of success?  More to the point, where are all those celebrities who were brought in to launch it – and the accompanying publicity machine?

So let’s forget about the “campaign” for a moment, and just look at the website.

The website is certainly visually attractive and functionally smooth.  But does it succeed in reaching out to an audience and engaging people – does it, in the words of mjrobbins, “add value?”

I’m not sure it does.  There are a ton of great science websites and blogs out there – most of them offering far more in the way of reader-oriented content.  If you want information on the latest science news, to be titillated and entertained by science and technology, or to to be enlightened by the view from the lab bench, you are spoilt for choice.  So why would anyone visit – and re-visit – Science: So what?

I’m struggling with this.  It’s not that the content is bad.  It’s just that there’s equally good or better stuff elsewhere.  The articles are limited compared to what you get at New Scientist, the BBC or Discover Magazine (for instance).  There is no community here – a key driver of site visits and loyalty (where are the links, the guest articles, the commentaries, the controversial discussions?).  The “events” page seems rather limited in scope. There’s a DIY Science page with three (three!) articles on it, two of them discussing that old chestnut of putting Menots mints in coke.  And the “get involved” page – judging by the number of comments received – hasn’t inspired many to actually get involved.

I don’t really want to diss Science: So what? – it’s a laudable effort to address a very real issue, and the website is trying to make a dent within a tough web space.  And at the end of the day it is an experiment in using new media to reach out on science.  Tim Jones, who publishes the science and technology blog Zoonomian, wrote “I can also see this is something of a sandbox for experiment, so deserves to be cut some slack” on the Science: So what? metablog.

But he also points out the need for review and decision-making on the website, and highlights a number of areas requiring attention.

Looking at where Science: So what? doesn’t hit the mark for me, and where it might do better, two issues scream out.

The first deals with engaging people.  Despite trying to move away from an old-school science communication framework, it still seems to set out to inform rather than engage.  It smacks of messages that someone thinks people should be reading, rather than content that people want to read.  In other words, despite efforts to move away from this rather outdated stance, it’s “preachy.”

Take the opening paragraph on the “about” page:

In the UK, many of us don’t value science as much as we should, but it lives beneath the surface of everything we touch and taste. It’s the key to our prosperity, one of the driving forces of our economy, and it creates thousands of jobs that keep Britain at the leading edge.

This is about telling readers what’s good for them, not asking them what they think.  Okay so it’s a message that I and many scientists have a lot of sympathy for.  But as a first step to pulling people in? I’m not sure I would be so brave as to use it!  The art of selling is knowing what your customers want, not telling them what they should want – something that seems to be missing here.

Of course, I may be wrong and Science: So what? may be thronging with visitors.

I haven’t seen any web stats for the site so it’s hard to speak with any authority here.  About the only indicator of engagement I do have is a post that links directly back to 2020 Science.  As far as I can tell, I have only had one referral from Science: So what? since that post was published (Tim Jones had a similar experience with the link to his blog).  Contrast this to a link to 2020 Science posted in the comments on P.Z Myer’s blog Pharyngula on November 15 – from which I had 148 referrals in ten days.

This is a dubious comparison in many ways, but it does beg the question why an associate professor at the University of Minnesota seems to be engaging people on science far more effectively that the UK government.

Then, there is the problem of this being a government website.

Think about it.  Where’s the first place you would turn to for broad, unbiased, eclectic, entertaining and educating information on science.  The government?  Not me!  If there’s one thing you can guarantee with a government site is that there will be a constraining agenda behind it – and why would I elect to have my science input filtered by an organization I know is trying to feed me specific information for a predetermined purpose?

This brings me back to where I started – my “Why write about this when people want to read about this?” question.  Engagement is partly about building communities that can have the conversations they want – which is why there’s been considerable chatter on the web today about LilWizz’s piece, but nothing as far as I’m aware on the Science: So what? article.

It’s hard to imagine Science: So what? posting pieces about feeding new-borns opium draughts.  Yet without this freedom to truly engage, it’s even harder to imagine Science: So what? reaching out to the audience it so desperately wants to.

So what’s the answer?  I’m not sure I  have any great answers, but here are four things that BIS might think about:

• Develop a strategic, multi-faceted and transparent campaign to establish science as an integral part of British society, with the web site being just one component of this.
• Make key celebrities, scientists, communicators and organizations central pillars of the campaign.
• Support bloggers, producers, broadcasters and other communicators in developing networks and communities around science and technology – without heavy-handed government interference.
• Further develop efforts to engage people in science and technology – enabling them to be an active part of the process, rather than passive bystanders.

Much more is needed than this if science and technology are to be developed and used effectively within society.  But it’s a start.

When the Science: So what? So everything campaign was launched, Pallab Ghosh wrote on the BBC website

Without a sustained long-term plan, however, there’s a risk that any momentum this latest campaign generates will be lost and go the way of previous attempts to turn the public’s obvious admiration of science into something that’s a part of their daily lives.

Sadly, his crystal ball seemed to be working pretty well that day.  Nevertheless, integrating science into society remains an important issue.  The UK government started well with the Science: So What? campaign.  Maybe it’s now time to get out of the sandpit, and start to build something more concrete.

But don’t take my word for it – check out Science: So what? So everything for yourself.  Talk about it on the Science: So What? metablog.  And don’t forget to get back to the ever-accessible Lord Drayson on Twitter with your thoughts and ideas.

Back in July I wrote a short blog about Tim Jones’ Exquisite Corpse of Science project – an innovative project to explore what people think about science and it’s place in their lives and society, through the medium of drawing and film.  Four months on, I though it was worth a quick update.

One of the most striking aspects of Tim’s original work was a nine-minute movie, exploring three people’s perspective on science through drawing (you can see the movie here).  Since its release, the movie has been picked up by two science film festivals – the Imagine Science Film Festival in New York City, and the Serbian Science Film Festival, where it is scheduled to be screened in December.

Pretty impressive – but understandable once you’ve seen the movie.

In the meantime, Tim is building a mosaic of exquisite corpse submissions from anyone motivated to put sharpie to paper. This is well worth exploring – there’s surprising depth to some of the submissions so far.  But there’s also plenty of room for new tiles to be added.

So if you’re passionate about science and have a few minutes spare, don’t procrastinate – put your thoughts on paper, and send the result to Tim (instructions here).  You don’t have to be an artist (as I shamelessly demonstrate here) – just someone with something to say on what science means to you.

Sitting 3000 miles away from London in Washington DC, I’ve been following the dismissal of Professor David Nutt as the UK government’s senior scientific advisor on the misuse of drugs, with interest.  Not being steeped in British drugs politics, I was only vaguely aware of the tensions between the Advisory Council on the Misuse of Drugs, which Nutt chaired until Friday, and UK policymakers.  So as the story broke, I found it tough to disentangle whether this was a case of a respected scientist demonstrating a blindingly naive understanding of policy, or a government forfeiting science in favor of ideology.  But the more I dig into the situation, the more it seems to highlight a worrying disdain for science and evidence* amongst policy makers.

Nutt’s dismissal will undoubtedly have long-term repercussions on the effectiveness with which UK policies prevent people’s lives being destroyed by drug abuse.  But it also calls into question how science and evidence are used in making policy decisions.  And this is what really worries me – in a science and technology-based society, where information is no longer controlled and constrained by an elite few, playing fast and loose with “evidence” is a politically and socially dangerous game that threatens to marginalize experts and undermine legitimate authority.

David Nutt’s case struck a particular chord with me.  In my day job I work with people who advise on, advocate for and formulate policy.  And I’m constantly surprised at how hard it is to ensure that recommendations and decisions are informed by “evidence,” rather than the evidence being cherry picked and massaged in support of predetermined ideas.  Even in a supposedly science-savvy administration, this is a very real challenge.  For a whole host of reasons, the system is biased towards people who see knowledge as a tradeable and malleable commodity, and who have a startlingly loose attitude toward evidence.  Even well-meaning players in the policy arena sometimes seem to struggle with listening to what the evidence says, rather selectively using it to make a point.

But the grounds for Nutt’s dismissal also struck a more personal chord. Having a son at middle school and a daughter at high school, I have been dismayed at how “evidence” is sometimes misused in the push to prevent children from abusing drugs (both legal and illegal).  My evidence is largely anecdotal, but it seems that in their “drugs education,” there is a tendency for inconvenient facts to be avoided and, on occasion,  information to be “massaged” in the effort to steer the kids toward a safer and healthier lifestyle.

Both of these examples speak to a systemic disdain for evidence – and the science on which it is often built – that results in it being a political tool, rather than a policy foundation.  And this I find truly worrying – whether dealing with drug policy or a number of other issues, we’re in danger of building a foundation-less house of cards that will collapse at the slightest touch if evidence isn’t handled with integrity and respect.

To be very clear here, I am appalled at the horrific damage caused by drug abuse to individuals and society as a whole and, like most people, I see this as a social problem that desperately needs solutions. But I struggle to see how the problem can be solved by ignoring the evidence, and promulgating what can only be described as “un-truths.”  Certainly, policy decisions need to take into account far more than just the current state of knowledge.  But without transparency, honesty, and a foundation of truth, how will people be empowered to make wise and informed decisions?

In an effort to understand whether David Nutt’s dismissal was a product of this culture of evidence-disrespect, or simply down to his political naivety, I actually took the time to read the paper that led to his removal.  It was presented to the Center for Crime and Justice Studies in the UK last week, and can be read in full here.

Given the fuss that it led to, I was expecting an outspoken and ill-considered attack on current drugs policies in the UK.

I couldn’t have been further from the truth.

Nutt’s paper – “Estimating drug harms: a risky business?” – is authoritative, insightful, pertinent, and cognizant of the broader context in which policy decisions are made.  His arguments – and the science and investigations on which they are based – were sound and well-presented.  And I found the conclusions he drew to be reasonable.

It is very clear that Nutt understands the broader social context in which policy decisions are made, and that evidence is just one of a number of factors that need to be addressed.  But he makes it very clear that this evidence should be foundational – and as a consequence, needs to be robust, available, listened to, and not distorted.

I would strongly recommend anyone tempted to weigh into this debate to read Nutt’s paper first, including Home Secretary Alan Johnson.

Especially Alan Johnson!

Perhaps Nutt’s greatest crime is that he sincerely – and altruistically I believe – tried to speak truth to power.  He attempted to provide decision-makers with a sound scientific and evidence-based foundation on which to base policies that would improve people’s lives.  Contrary to my earlier fears, it is clear that he did this with a full understanding of the the broader framework within which policy is made.  His downfall was that he was working with a government that seems to believe in speaking power to truth rather than truth to power – deciding what is right first, then bolstering this up with evidence!

Sadly, this is a model of government that is not sustainable in this day and age – I’m not sure it ever was.  Without a doubt, policy decisions need to be evidence-informed, not evidence-dictated.  But you still need to start with the evidence.  Corrupt this, and you end up harming the people you are trying (supposedly) to help.

Hopefully the rather unfortunate case of David Nutt’s dismissal will shake people up, and lead to renewed attempts to place evidence – and science – at the heart of policy making.

If it doesn’t, I’m afraid we’re in for some rough times ahead!

___________________________

*It’s common to talk about science-based decision making in policy.  But here I decided it was more appropriate to use the idea of evidence-based decision making – reflecting the language and discussions that tend to occur in policy circles.  “Evidence-based decision-making” encompasses science, but is sufficiently broad to encompass the use of multiple sources of robust, quantfiable and verifiable information.

As scientists, how we love to rail against the incompetence of the media.  As self-proclaimed keepers of the truth, we decry – usually rather vocally – the misinterpretation and misuse of our precious studies.  And as we commiserate together on the injustices of the world, we inevitably get to thinking that if only journalists could see the world as we do and get that down in writing (or on tape), things would be so much better.

Except, it isn’t always the journalists who are to blame for how science is portrayed in the media!

Take this case that landed in my metaphorical in-tray this morning for instance:

Yesterday, Texas A&M University put out a news item with the title “Technology may cool the laptop.” The piece starts:

Does your laptop sometimes get so hot that it can almost be used to fry eggs? New technology may help cool it and give information technology a unique twist, says Jairo Sinova, a Texas A&M University physics professor.

Aided by a short video, Professor Sinova, a co-author on the research being referred to, notes that

Laptops are getting increasingly powerful, but as their sizes are getting smaller they are heating up, so how to deal with excessive heat becomes a headache… “Theoretically, excessive heat may melt the laptop,” he adds. “This also wastes a considerable amount of energy.”

This is an important issue, although I suspect that the vision of melting laptops goes a little far.  But it gets you wondering what this amazing new breakthrough is that is going to prevent those embarrassing laptop melt-downs and inadvertent griddle emulations.  The answer? The Spin Injection Hall Effect, or SIHE – a relatively recently discovered phenomenon that results in electrons with different “spin” in a semiconductor leading to a measurable magnetic field.

The paper that the Texas A&M University news item refers to is “Spin-injection Hall effect in a planar photovoltaic cell” in the journal Nature Physics.  It appears in the September edition of the journal.  It’s an interesting and scientifically sound paper.  It describes work where an experimental semiconductor device is used to show that the Spin Injection Hall Effect can in principle be used to encode information in the spin state of electrons, then “read” that information back.

It is research that could be useful to new ways of transmitting and storing information in the future.

But keeping laptops cool?  Hardly!  And certainly not imminently.

So what’s going on here?  How do we get from some pretty esoteric research on electron spin to preventing “laptop-burn?”

The most generous explanation is that, in one possible future, this science could underpin technologies that lead to lower energy microprocessors, and that this is what the researchers latched on to in an attempt to make their work relevant to a broad audience. But this is an incredibly huge leap.  It’s the scientific equivalent of playing the lottery – speculation in the extreme.  There’s a small chance that the science might lead, through a long chain of events, to microprocessors 12 – 50 years down the line that are faster and more efficient.  But making your MacBook Pro run cooler?  Give me a break!

Another explanation is that Texas A&M wanted to sex the research up – raising their profile at the expense of informed science reporting.

Or maybe someone just got hold of the wrong end of the stick – or the wrong stick entirely.

I’m not sure which of these is closer to the truth.  But what is clear is that this type of misrepresentation of the science at source is not uncommon, and it is highly damaging to understanding of and engagement in science within society.

In this case, the assumptions and speculations behind the laptop claims weren’t clarified, and little attempt was made to distinguish between the science and the fantasies it inspired.  As a result, media outlets that picked up on the story simply propagated the misinformation – including Science Daily.  And as many readers would not have access to the original paper, they would not have the means to test the claims being made.

If research institutions misrepresent the science they are involved in, what hope is there for informed science coverage in the media?  And more importantly, how on earth are people to get an informed sense of emerging science and technology, and engage in a meaningful dialogue on its development and implementation?

I’m all for imagining where different avenues of research might lead.  But fantasizing about future applications as if they are just around the corner is naive at best, and just plain cynical at worst.  And the sad thing is, it ends up further disengaging people from the process of science and technology innovation – robbing them of the ability to participate effectively in a science and technology-driven society.

Effective science coverage in the media is under threat, and there many factors at play here.  But surely this makes it even more important that scientists and research institutions don’t simply add to the problem.  I’m probably being a little unfair picking on Texas A&M here – they aren’t the only ones feeding the media with questionable material.  But it seems that if the science community is serious about good science reporting, it needs to get its own house in order before pointing too many fingers at others.

After all, journalists and others reporting on science and technology are only as good as their sources.  Garbage in, garbage out, no matter how hot or cold the laptop is running!

]]> http://2020science.org/2009/10/30/do-scientists-encourage-misleading-media-coverage/feed/ 32 http://2020science.org/2009/10/23/risk-innovation-you-what-desparately-seeking-advice/ http://2020science.org/2009/10/23/risk-innovation-you-what-desparately-seeking-advice/#comments Fri, 23 Oct 2009 14:07:39 +0000 Andrew Maynard http://2020science.org/?p=2348

Here’s something I’ve been chewing over for the past few weeks:  How do you capture succinctly the idea of developing innovative new approaches to identifying, assessing, managing and otherwise dealing with risks to human health?

What I’ve ended up with is “Risk Innovation” – but I’m not convinced it works.

So I thought I would see if anyone else had any other bright ideas!

This is the challenge in a nut shell:

When dealing with the possibility of substances harming people, there are well-established science-based approaches to identifying and quantifying the risks, backed up by a standard set of approaches to dealing with them (with regulation typically rising to the top of the pile).  But these aren’t always effective – and as technologies become more complex, development life cycles become faster and societal hierarchies shift, there’s going to be an increasing need to find new ways to deal with possible health impacts arising from substances.

In fact, the life cycle of new technologies is becoming so short that it won’t be long before they are superseded long before conventional approaches to assessing and managing risks have kicked in.

In other words, technology innovation has to be accompanied by innovations in how we handle risks, if things are going to get better rather than worse for us in the future.

This is a young area of research that is developing rapidly.  It’s stimulating, exciting and, above all, crucial to the success of emerging technologies (as well as dealing with new problems emerging from previous technologies).

But it doesn’t have a convenient “handle.”

“Innovation in risk identification, assessment, management and governance” gets to the nub of the idea.  But it is also on the soporific side of engaging.  Not to beat about the bush, it’s just not sexy!  The same goes for various other permutations that try to capture accurately the idea of developing new approaches to handling risk.

So what I’ve ended up with is “Risk Innovation.”

My problem though is that, while the phrase is catchy, it’s wide open to interpretation.  It could mean anything from innovative approaches to dealing with risk, to innovative ways of increasing risk – not something most self-respecting health professionals would want to be associated with!!

But what’s the alternative?  Or am I being over-sensitive here?

Any thoughts here (please use the comments area below) would be more than welcome.

Thanks!

Part 8 of a series on rethinking science and technology for the 21^st century

Much to my embarrassment, I’ve just realized that it was over four months ago that I wrote the previous blog in this series – a series that was supposed to evolve over just a few weeks!  Most inconveniently, other priorities ended up interfering with my well-laid plans and I found myself distracted from completing the series, just three posts before its conclusion.

The good news though is that this gives me an excuse to provide a lightning summary of the story so far, which goes something like this:

• We stand at a nexus of unimaginable technological potential, and unprecedented global challenges.  How we develop and use science and technology over the coming decades will determine the quality (and possibly even the quantity) of life for coming generations.
• Three factors in particular are influencing the challenges we face, and the tools we have at our disposal to meet them.  These are the rate at which knowledge and ideas are propagating and influencing people, the increasingly strong links between human actions and environmental re-actions, and the ability of scientists, technologists and engineers to bend the material world to their every whim; from atoms and molecules to global weather systems.  These are my three “C’s” – communication, coupling and control.
• The coupling between human actions and environmental re-actions is cumulative, non-linear, and rapidly increasing in importance.  Which means that we are now facing global challenges that are more complex and further reaching than any previous generation has had to deal with.
• Rapid changes in how we communicate with each other are rewriting the rules on how society operates, from the global scale to the local level.
• High-impact advanced in science and technology are being driven increasingly by advances in control over materials at the scale of atoms and molecules.  Atom-level control over everything from DNA to advanced materials to smart drugs is poised to vastly extend our technological reach as a species.
• Separately, these three factors confront us with new challenges and new opportunities.  Together, they demand a new way of thinking about science and technology if we’re going to ride the wave of the future, rather than being engulfed by it.

The obvious question at this point – and the subject of this blog – is “how effective are current approaches to developing and using science and technology, and what (if anything) needs to change if we are to adapt and thrive as a species?”  In other words, how as a society can we make decisions that will ensure we have the necessary scientific understanding and technological know-how to overcome emerging challenges and realize the opportunities facing us, without creating more problems than we solve?

And that means we need to talk about science and technology policy.

Effective science and technology policy depends on a robust a framework for decision-making that helps ensure an appropriate level of investment in science and technology, and a good return on that investment.  Every developed country/economy has well-established approaches to science and technology policy—whether formally expressed, or simply in the form of a prevalent set of assumptions or beliefs amongst policy makers.  And these approaches have worked okay in the main over the past fifty years or so.

But are they flexible enough to weather the looming challenges of the 21^st century?

In the United States, approaches to science and technology policy still reflect largely the thinking of Vannevar Bush.  In 1945, Bush presented President Truman with a vision of science in Science, The Endless Frontier that started with basic research, and ended with social and economic growth.  While thinking has evolved since then, many policy makers are still strongly influenced by his ideas.

In crude terms, Bush’s concept was that pure research (directed predominantly by scientists) leads to applied research, which in turn leads to technological innovation.  This in turn stimulates economic growth, which leads to more jobs, more money, and a better quality of life for citizens.

This top-down, linear model has worked well over the years in the U.S. – scientists have been funded reasonably well by the Federal Government, and have been given considerable latitude in what they do.  And in the U.S. at least, this investment seems to have resulted in considerable technology innovation and wealth generation.

But I’m not sure the same approach has got what it takes to address the very different challenges of the 21^st century.

Although current approaches to science and technology policy tend to be more sophisticated than Bush’s model, there is still a tendency to take a top-down linear approach.  Typically under this model, goals for science and technology investment are crafted, funding levels decided, and mechanisms and routes by which those funds will be allocated are identified within government.  It is then assumed that this up-front decision-making will lead to innovation, which will lead to jobs, wealth and, at the end of the day, a better quality of life for citizens.

The degree to which policy makers adhere to or diverge from this (admittedly simplistic) overview depends on where you are in the world.  But this general approach still plays a large role in determining the direction of and funding for science and technology policy in many countries.

Yet this very hierarchical approach to decision-making may not have what it takes to ensure scientific and technological success over the coming years.

First up, it assumes that heavy investment in basic research will naturally lead to technology innovation.  This over-simplistic assumption has been questioned repeatedly over the past decades, perhaps most notably by Donald E. Stokes in his book Pasteur’s Quadrant: Basic Science and Technological Innovation – it’s an assumption that is likely to be further challenged as the interplay between science, technology and society becomes increasingly complex and dynamic.

Then it assumes that up-front investment in science and technology will naturally lead to an improved quality of life through wealth creation.  Yet the values on which the model is based are beginning to look a little simplistic—dated even—in today’s diverse and interconnected world.

And finally, it supports a top-down approach to science and technology policy that encourages policy lock-in.  This occurs when there are few mechanisms to rethink policy decisions that don’t work—a very precarious position to be in where the policy process potentially lags a long way behind technological progress.

In other words, the widely used linear model of science policy could well fall flat in a world where communication, coupling and control demand responsive and adaptive approaches to guiding and utilizing science and technology.

So what’s the alternative?

A complete rethink of science and technology policy frameworks is way beyond the scope of this blog.  But two issues stand out as being at the top of the rethink-list: the need for a less hierarchical policy framework, and the need for more effective feedback mechanisms.

Starting from the bottom, most people would agree that the end goal of investing in science and technology is improved quality of life.  But what this means and the route to achieving it will vary, depending on a number of factors.  The concept that technology innovation and wealth generation will automatically lead to an improved quality of life is one perspective—but it isn’t the only one.  As social and political boundaries are redrawn through new ways of communicating and technology-driven possibilities advance at an increasing rate, I suspect this perspective will begin to look a little naïve.  An alternative approach is to have multiple goals for the science and technology endeavor—recognizing that wealth, jobs, quality of life etc. are important and intertwined, but not necessarily linearly connected.  In other words, recognizing that quality of life may depend on more than making money!

Similarly, I suspect there will need to be a rethink of the relationship between setting top-level goals for science and technology policy and the means of achieving those goals.  Rather than a top-level steer on science and technology policy, it is going to become increasingly important to flatten the process of crafting policies that determine the direction research and development is pointed in, how much is invested in it, and how the money is spent.

But perhaps most importantly, there will need to be increased feedback between what comes out of science and technology policy, and what goes in.

In any complex and dynamic system, feedback is the key to ensuring stability and adaptability.  The Bush-type hierarchical model of science and technology policy has relatively little in the way of feedback.  But this will need to change if policies are to lead to scientific research and technological innovation that achieve what they set out to.  Rapid advances in communication, coupling and control are pushing us a long way out of equilibrium—without effective feedback loops, the consequences could be catastrophic.

A robust science and technology policy framework will depend on many and varied feedback mechanisms.  But amongst these, the ability to review inputs against outputs, and the participation of people and organizations affected by policy decisions, will be essential.

From this perspective, a revised science and technology policy framework that will help us rise to the challenges of the 21^st century might look something like this:

This is still rather simplistic.  It also reflects to a degree changes in science and technology policy that are already occurring in some countries.  But it does provide some insight into how approaches to science and technology might be crafted that will help us not just cope with life in the 21^st century, but to thrive—to ride the wave of the future rather than being engulfed by it.

I’ll look at some of these approaches to science and technology in the next blog in the series – Completing the circle: Coupling science & technology outputs to inputs.

Notes

Rethinking science and technology for the 21st century is a series of blogs drawing on a recent lecture given at the James Martin School in Oxford.  This is a bit of an experiment—the serialization of a lecture, and a prelude to a more formal academic paper.  But hopefully it will be both interesting and useful.  I’ll be posting a “rethinking science and technology” blog every week or so, interspersed with the usual eclectic mix of stuff you’ve come to expect from 2020science.

Previously: Confluence: Where communication, coupling and control collide

Next: Completing the circle: Coupling science & technology outputs to inputs [Coming soon]

Since when did peer review journals start to put press hits before published data?

Scientific peer review journals are a cornerstone of modern science – providing an authoritative repository of scientific discovery that researchers and others can examine, test and build upon.  Publication in peer review journals is the primary route by which new science is made available to people, and the “gold standard” against which science coverage in the media is evaluated.

Yet over the past couple of months, I’ve come across two cases where journals were more interested in publicity than publication – releasing information to the media and the public on forthcoming publications before the papers were generally available.  The result is media coverage that cannot be validated against the original research, and a dangerous shift in authority from scientists to journalists and press officers…

This cannot be good for balanced science reporting!

Back in August, the European Respiratory Journal sent out an embargoed press release on a potentially high profile paper associating nanoparticle exposure to seven cases of severe lung disease and two deaths in China.  When the embargo was lifted, the study was covered in the media (including a suite of articles on 2020 Science) – but the paper remained unpublished.

Concerned that this story was being driven by the journal’s press office and journalists, with readers and researchers having no way to check the facts and assess the study for themselves, I contacted the press office.  This is what I said in an email to them:

…I have written about the paper on my blog at http://2020science.org, and have been concerned that the link to the paper is still not live. As well as putting me (and journalists who have also linked to the paper) in an awkward position, it prevents the scientific community from evaluating the paper for themselves.

I will be posting a blog on this apparent disconnect on my blog very shortly. But before I do, I wanted to check whether the ERJ will in fact be posting the paper on-line asap. I also wanted to provide you with the chance to comment on the time delay between the press release and posting the article, before I say something in public.

Unfortunately, I was specifically asked not to quote the reply I got back from the journal.  However, the gist of it was that journalists could access the paper, and the journal would respond more directly to my question… when they had time.

(And believe me, I fully appreciate the irony of not providing the original reply here in a post about not having access to source information!).

The good news in this case is that the journal did respond to my emails and eventually published the paper on-line – but only after pressure had been applied.

Then this morning I received notification of another paper which was preceded by its press release.  Here’s the opening of the Eurekalert press release that was posted by Inderscience Publishers – publishers of the International Journal of Nanotechnology:

Nanotech protection

Current safety equipment may not be adequate for nanoprotection

Writing in a forthcoming issue of the International Journal of Nanotechnology, Canadian engineers suggest that research is needed into the risks associated with the growing field of nanotechnology manufacture so that appropriate protective equipment can be developed urgently.

Followed by

Dolez and colleagues suggest that as this area of manufacturing grows it would be prudent to develop adequate workplace protection sooner, rather than later. Indeed, those workers most likely to be exposed to nanomaterials will be working in cleaning, bagging and formulation activities as well as surface functionalisation of nanoparticles.

This is a potentially important paper – it questions the adequacy of current safety equipment when working with engineered nanomaterials, and concludes that more work is needed to ensure safe workplaces.

But if you want to know what the authors base their conclusions on, you’ll have to wait – unless you are a journalist that is, in which case you can request a pre-publication copy of the paper.

I emailed the journal this morning to find out when the paper will be available to non-journalists (including scientists and interested members of the public).  The answer?

The issue should be published on 1 December 2009.

In other words, the only information most people will have access to on this study for the next six weeks will come from the journal’s press office, and from science writers!

These aren’t isolated cases.  It seems that, in the push to survive the digital revolution, some peer review journals are putting publicity ahead of integrity – encouraging science reporting that cannot be verified against the source, and preventing readers from assessing the validity of the studies they read about.

At a time when the soundness of science coverage in old and new media is already under scrutiny, surely this type of behavior is tantamount to the scientific community shooting itself in the foot!

Not every journal is guilty of playing the publicity card.  But to prevent the bad players from giving science reporting a bad name, perhaps it’s time for a peer review journal code of conduct that establishes principles of responsible behavior.  Amongst those principles, I would suggest a commitment to the integrity of the scientific process, and an agreement not to put out  media “teasers” ahead of publications.

The alternative is the spectacle of a once-respected tradition dissolving into disrespect, while further compromising the already-tenuous authority of science reporting.

And this cannot be good for science, or the society it aims to serve.

Postscript

I should be clear that I have no beef with embargoed press releases that are sent out ahead of a publication – as long as the respective paper is made generally available at the same time as the embargo is lifted.  This approach – used by some journals – gives journalists the opportunity to digest new research and write informed pieces, without the pressure of being scooped by less thorough colleagues. And in many cases it strengthens the integrity of science reporting.  What is unconscionable in my opinion though is issuing a statement or lifting a press release embargo without publishing the original study.  This can surely only be a cynical move to increase publicity for the journal, rather than disseminating the science.

Sunday morning breakfast – a croissant, a coffee, and a stress-free morning.

But wait a minute…

I wonder how healthy all that butter is?  When did I last have my cholesterol levels checked?  Were they high?  Will my crisp, moist butter croissant push me into a French pastry-coronary?

And how about the coffee?  Didn’t I hear that caffeine gives you cancer?  Maybe that was just the Daily Mail on another cancer scare spree.

But there’s no smoke without fire…

Bother – what am I going to do?  I can already feel the panic rising!

Hang it all, I’ll just head out to MacDonald’s for a Sausage Egg and Cheese McGriddle, with a couple of hash browns on the side.  After all, didn’t someone say it’s healthy to start the day with a good breakfast?

Okay so I’m not really sitting down to croissants and coffee (more’s the pity), and I’m not going to rush off for a MacDonald’s breakfast.  But it is a Sunday morning, and with my brain in weekend mode (i.e. slow, relaxed, prone to roaming, uninformed speculation…), I found myself ruminating over something a friend said in an email a few days ago…

It concerned apparent resistance to having H1N1 flu shots in some quarters – an issue that is still bubbling away in the news.

I’m not going to write about the H1N1 vaccine directly – that would be irresponsible given my limited knowledge and my Sunday morning torpor.  But the issue does raise an interesting question of what happens when we are forced to consciously make decisions we might usually take for granted.

Martye’s email came on the tail of the latest poll from the Associated Press and GfK on people’s intentions to be vaccinated against H1N1.  The poll suggested that people were more wary of the new vaccine than “normal” flu vaccines, even though each year’s batch of flu vaccines is tailor made for that year’s prevalent virus strains – something that Martye had witnessed himself anecdotally.

He wondered how this played into people’s trust of science, scientists and government, and the role of mis-information in the decisions people make.

Because this is a Sunday morning, and there are important Sunday morning things to do (like find those croissants), this is a question that will have to wait until another day.  But it did get me thinking about the degree to which too much information, or a particular focus on an issue, can create a quandary by shifting the decisions we make from the subconscious to the conscious level.

As a species, we’re pretty adept at letting the subconscious parts of our brains do the heavy lifting when it comes to making decisions.  Just imagine how tedious life would be if we needed to analyze the pros and cons of every move or decision we made – much like the coffee and croissant illustration above, we would become paralyzed by indecision.  But we’d also more than likely end up making decisions that were more based on what we were comfortable with, rather than what was good for us.

This raises a real dilemma though, and one I don’t have a good answer to.  A major thrust of what I do is advocating for and enabling informed, evidence-based decision-making.  It’s something I believe in strongly – that in a science and technology-driven society, people should be enabled to make the best possible decisions for themselves and their society based on good evidence and strong scientific principles.

Yet it seems that where the decisions people need to make are far from black and white, forcing them to think about things could end up leading to choices that are more harmful than helpful.

The H1N1 flu vaccine seems to be a case in point.  If it was rolled out as just another annual flu vaccine, many people would have accepted it without question – the decision-making would have been at the subconscious level.

But because the issues of its importance and possible downsides have been raised explicitly, people are being forced to make a conscious decision whether to have it or not.

And kicking up the decision-making process from the subconscious domain to the conscious level has led to confusion and indecision.

So what should we do?  Should complex decisions be left in the hands of “experts?”  Should information – evidence – be withheld from people who don’t have the ability to process and use it?  Should we just accept that others are more informed than we are – and trust them?

At this point, every bone in my body is screaming that transparency, access to information and personal decision-making autonomy are moral obligations in a mature society, and that a hierarchical technocracy is not the way to go. Yet, if this is the case, we need to face the fact that more information isn’t necessarily a good thing on its own.  We need to develop the social tools to use it wisely, empowering individuals to make decisions that benefit themselves and society without leading to undue paralysis and harm.

This is a tough task.  I’m sure there are mountains of scholarly works that address it.  But I’ve yet to see any clear routes forward emerge.

Yet if we are going to cope with new challenges in a world where information spreads like wildfire, it seems more important than ever to work out how to empower people to make responsible and informed decisions on risks and benefits, without becoming paralyzed, or forced into relying on comfortable but possibly unhelpful decision-making shortcuts.

It seems that too much choice could be bad for the health.  But I suspect that not enough choice – and a lack of help, guidance and other tools for making informed decisions – will be worse for the health in the long run.

But that is most definitely a Monday morning problem.

Now, back to that croissant and coffee…

]]> http://2020science.org/2009/10/11/is-too-much-choice-bad-for-the-health/feed/ 14 http://2020science.org/2009/09/28/so-you%e2%80%99re-curious-about-nanotechnology%e2%80%a6/ http://2020science.org/2009/09/28/so-you%e2%80%99re-curious-about-nanotechnology%e2%80%a6/#comments Mon, 28 Sep 2009 14:53:17 +0000 Andrew Maynard http://2020science.org/?p=2283

Curious, concerned or just plain confused about nanotechnology?  The new website Nano & Me might be just what you are looking for.

Nano & Me - a new website for everything nanotech

Funded in part by the UK department of Business, Innovation and Skills (BIS) and developed by the Responsible Nano Forum, Nano & Me is aimed at providing clear and balanced information on an emerging technology more usually associated with hype and speculation.  I’ve been aware of the pending website for some time, but it’s only recently that I’ve had the chance to test-drive it.  And I must confess, I am impressed – Nano & Me is quite possibly the best one-stop-shop for down to earth information on nanotech around.  Whether you simply heard about nanotech on the radio and want to know more, were wondering why your tennis racquet was nanotech-enabled, or are scratching your head over the latest nanotechnology claims and counter-claims, there’s something here for you…

There’s been tremendous investment in nanotechnology over the past ten years or so – for instance, in 2008 a whopping $18 billion was invested in nanotech R&D by governments businesses and others around the world according to Lux Research. Not surprisingly, a certain level of “marketing” has accompanied this investment—we’re told nanotechnology will transform our lives, solve global problems, stimulate economies and create jobs.  On the flip side, there are plenty of groups—researchers even—warning that the new technology could cause more problems than it solves if we don’t get our act together.

So you’ve heard that nanotech is the next big thing, that it is important, that it could be dangerous, what’s your next step—where can you get an honest perspective that cuts through the hype and tells you want you need to know?

Surprisingly, your options are remarkably limited.  You could pick up a popular book on nanotechnology – Nanotechnology for Dummies say, or Richard Jones’ Soft Machines.  But these are not for the faint hearted—you need to be pretty dedicated to learning about the science of the small to get through them.  Alternatively, you could check out the various websites dedicated to nanotech—the US National Nanotechnology Initiative website for instance, or Nanotechnology Now.  But most of these sources present nanotechnology in a certain light —even if it’s simply a desire to tell you how great nanotech is.  And to be honest, most of them are impenetrable unless you know exactly what you’re looking for.

The sad fact is that if you have a passing interest in nanotechnology, you don’t have an advanced degree in science or technology, and you have no stomach for hype, your options are limited.

It’s this void that Nano & Me attempts to fill.

Nano & Me was established through funding from the UK Government and the Esme Fairbairn Foundation to be an information hub for nanotechnology, and a focus of debate for anyone interested in its development, its use and its implications.  Quoting from the website,

“Nanoandme.org is a website for anyone who wants to know more about nanotechnology. You might have heard something on the news you wanted to check out, or be a small business thinking about using a nanomaterial and want to know about regulation or safety issues. You could be a school child needing information for a project or just be curious to know what on earth it is.”

On opening the website, you are faced with an attractive scene of urban and rural bliss, dominated by a central signpost directing you to different areas on the site.  Despite its seeming simplicity, this opening screen is deceptively sophisticated.

First off—and admittedly this may be a cultural thing—it draws you into the site.  This looks like a welcoming and comfortable space to find out about nanotech in.

Secondly, the central signpost directs users to where they would like to go in an intuitively clear way—whether you are interested in what nanotech is, where it’s being used, safety issues, regulation, or social and ethical issues.

But here’s the clever bit—pass your cursor over the hospital, the cosmetics commercial, the flowers, and a hundred and one other parts of the opening screen, and you are provided with access to more information on how nanotechnology relates to these areas.  Here’s an example:  Place the cursor on the bottle of sunscreen and you get:

“High factor nano sunscreens are transparent, not white and gloopy.”

along with a link to more information.  Or select the river, and a bubble appears telling you that when it comes to water treatment,

“nanoparticles bind with pollutants in contaminated water and help to clean it up.”

I like this interface.  It’s attractive.  It’s engaging.  And it provides a fast and intuitive portal to more information in areas that users are likely to be interested in.

Clicking on the signpost takes users to one of six areas on the website: What is nano? Nano products;  Nano safety; Social & ethical; Regulation; and The nano debate.  Each area follows a similar format:  The right side of the page list the various topics covered, “chapter-style,” while the center of the page provides clear and concise information on the current topic.  The left of the page provides links to more in-depth information on the topic selected.  While surrounding the main content are links to other related resources, and relevant nano-factoids.

To give you a feel for how this works, this is a screenshot of the “Nano products” page:

Nano and Me products page

Down the right hand side of the page are the chapters—twelve areas where nanotechnology is making a difference to the products we use.  Clicking on one – Environment, say—brings up basic information on how nanotechnology is being used in that area, and what the pros and cons are.

Nano and Me environmental products page

To the left of the screen are links to further information, including future directions of nanotechnology uses in the environment, and safety issues.  While to the right is a link to the Project on Emerging Nanotechnologies Consumer Products Inventory—a free web-based inventory of consumer products allegedly based on nanotechnology.

While the content changes according to which area of the website is being viewed, the format is similar—starting off with simple information, but allowing viewers to delve deeper into it if they want.  This is an approach that seems to work well.  You don’t feel overwhelmed with information.  But you are given the option of finding out more if you want.

Rather than go through each section, it’s far better if I leave you to explore the website yourself.  I think you will be pleasantly surprised at both how easy it is to navigate, and how relevant the information is—whether you are a complete nano-novice, or have been interested in the field for some time.

This is an impressive website from a number of angles.  For one, it seems to avoid the trap of either hyping up nanotechnology’s promise, or placing undue focus on possible risks.  Rather, it provides an honest perspective of where we’re going with this, what the possibilities are, and where the speed bumps might be.  But it also does all of this in an incredibly intuitive way.  I can imagine young kids having no problem using the site and learning something.  At the same time—and this is really smart of the website designers—Nano & Me is sophisticated enough to appeal to adults.  And not only those with a passing interest in nanotech—I have a sneaking suspicion this will find its way onto the bookmark list of policy makers, researchers and non-government organizations engaged in nanotech as well!

The bottom line here is that nanotechnology isn’t the most significant thing happening in the world, but it is important—and more and more people are trying to work out what on earth it’s all about and what it means to them.  Nano & Me fills a vital gap here.  For anyone who struggles with science and technology, it’s the perfect way of learning about nanotechnology without being intimidated.  But it also has enough depth to satisfy anyone faced with making tough decisions on nanotech—from whether to buy the latest nano-cosmetic to whether to regulate the next nano-material.

And—importantly—it provides a forum for anyone – anyone – to get involved with the nano debate.  If you are excited, concerned, or just plain confused about nanotech—this is the place for you to make your voice heard.

The Nano & Me website is a work in progress, and users are encouraged to chip in their thoughts on where it can be improved.  But even so, it’s pretty slick.  It may not be perfect.  But at this point, it’s the best all-round go-to place for information on nanotechnology.

My recommendation: Use it!

Okay, so I’ve been letting work interfere with my blogging life over the past few weeks, which has led to an interminable series of impenetrable blogs on nanotechnology.  I promise I’ll try and lighten up over the next few weeks (although I’m afraid there are still a couple of nano blogs to come over the next week or so).

However, since I have been on a bit of a nanotech roll, I thought I would slip in this additional short blog about a couple of things that metaphorically whacked me over the head on recent travels – before they fade into the mists of my middle aged brain.

Nanotechnology as a brand

The first comes from Graeme Hodge – a law professor at Monash University in Australia.  Or to be more specific, something he said at a recent meeting on nanotech regulation in London.  In amidst the discussions around similarities between US and European approaches to regulating nanotechnologies (thrilling stuff – don’t you wish you were there?), Graeme made what I thought was a profound observation: Nanotechnology is a brand.

Now of course nanotechnology is associated with all sorts of very concrete advances in working with matter at a nanometer-scale, and is backed up with some rather cool science.  But it’s always been hard to pin down exactly what it is, and why people get so excited about it.  And it’s been even harder to work out what the implications of this new technology are, and how to handle them.

However thinking of nanotech as a brand rather than a technology per se might help resolve many of the problems we’ve been grappling with in making sense of the technology.  Brands are usually based on something tangible, but also incorporate loyalties, perceptions, emotions etc. that add value to them in ways that are compelling while not quite tangible.

This sounds very much like nanotechnology – a grand idea that has stimulated new research funding, motivated renewed interest in science and technology and led to innovations that go beyond the sum of their contributing parts.  Sure there’s some really interesting stuff going on at the nanoscale.  But the real value here seems to reside the power of the idea – the brand of nanotechnology.

On the flip side, if nanotechnology is as much a brand as a technology, talking about possible health and environmental impacts can get a little complex. The intangible values that branding brings to a product cannot be assessed in toxicology studies, or measured in the environment.  Perhaps this is why discussions of nanotechnology safety have floundered so often.

Maybe reframing nanotechnology as a brand will help unravel some of the knots we’ve got ourselves into over the technology, and enable faster progress on developing responsible products based on nanoscale engineering.  I’m looking forward to hearing more on the idea from Graeme in the future.

Stimulating stakeholder dialogue through drama

I had the good fortune to spend this last week at the Nanoscale Informal Science Education Network (NISE Net) annual meeting.  Always a stimulating conference, I was particularly struck by a reading of a short play.

Anyone with a passing interest in drama will know that actors and plays can enable a powerful and very public airing of thoughts and ideas that people often find hard to share.  I’ve rarely seen this used to great effect in bringing stakeholders together in grappling with complex science and technology-based issues.  But this particular reading left me wondering whether there is an important role for drama in multi-stakeholder forums addressing the development and implications of nanotechnology.

The reading in question was given by two actors from the Science Museum of Minnesota, and involved a sometimes heated discussion between two sisters on the possible pros and cons of nanotechnology.  Both were passionate about the technology and aware of the current state of the science. But while one was working for a company to ensure the safety of new  products, the other was worried about the use of the technology in the absence of hard safety data.  The result was a compelling and complex dialogue between the siblings that effectively articulated fears and hopes that many stakeholders have, but few are brave enough to share in public.

While watching the reading, it struck me that this merging of science, technology and art is powerful in two ways.  First, it enables strong and valid but opposing opinions to be explored by proxy – stakeholders watching the drama would be likely to end up with a sense what others thought and felt, without the emotional baggage of those (sometimes impassioned) opinions coming directly from colleague sitting across the room from them.  Secondly, it acts as a bridge between people coming from very different perspectives – providing a shared experience and understanding that could form the basis of a fruitful dialogue.

Could drama be used in this way at multi-stakeholder nanotech meetings?  I don’t know, but I am dying to try it out.  It might just break us out of the repetitive circles many of these meetings end up go round in.  Just so you are forewarned therefore – expect to see the odd nanotechnology meeting organized by me with a rather unconventional agenda in the future…

Nano for kids

And finally, I was reminded while traveling back to the airport in San Francisco after the NISE Net meeting that Dragonfly TV has a great series on nanotechnology – accompanied by a really good web resource.  If you’ve got kids or teach kids, this is an excellent source of stuff on nanotechnology – from video clips from the programs to a huge selection of nanotech resources.  And if you’re not a kid?  I highly recommend you close the door, turn down the sound and browse the sight while no-one’s looking.  But be warned – it’s addictive!

Addendum:  After playing around some more with the Dragonfly TV website, I just had to add this link.  Regulators, NGO’s industry folk and others out there – want a mature perspective on nano-labeling?  Check out these comments… from kids!

]]> http://2020science.org/2009/09/18/enough-with-the-nano-already/feed/ 3 http://2020science.org/2009/09/03/hooked-on-science/ http://2020science.org/2009/09/03/hooked-on-science/#comments Thu, 03 Sep 2009 23:33:59 +0000 Andrew Maynard http://2020science.org/?p=2146

How exactly did I get hooked on science?  It’s not something I’ve thought about too much before. But an invitation to discuss how to inspire the next generation of scientists, technologists and engineers next week has got me thinking…

Next Monday (Sept 7) I’m taking part in a discussion on science role models, as part of the British Science Festival – hosted by the UK Department of Business, Innovation and Skills (BIS).  It’s shaping up to be a fascinating event, and certainly not one to miss (you can sign up for it here) – not least because it is happening in the virtual world of Second Life (a first for me).  The discussion will be delving into what inspires people to get into science, technology, engineering and mathematics – and how those of us already hooked can help to inspire others.

I don’t want to give too much away before Monday – although I can reveal that the great Dr. Karen James of Twitter, Mashable and The Beagle Project fame will be a co-panelist, and that the event will be the place to be between 6:00 PM – 8:00 PM London time on Monday.

However, to limber myself up for the big event (while providing something of a teaser), I thought I would delve into my own past and revisit some of the inspirations that led to me becoming a scientist.

So without further do (apart to apologize for cultural references that may not make sense to all readers), here are ten inspirations from my youth that got me hooked on science:

1.  My father. I know it’s a bit of a cliché – for which I apologize – but looking back, my father undoubtedly played a major role in sparking my interest in science.  He was a technician for most of his working life – starting off in TV’s, moving on to nuclear power with the UK Atomic Energy Authority, and later on working as a lab tech in a sports science department.  He was fascinated by science and technology and what it can be used for (still is), and his spirit of inquiry, questioning and investigation rubbed off – big time.  He also taught me the value of a good technician – without which most scientists would be marginally less productive than a two legged horse.

2.  A defunct radio. When I was around four, someone kindly provided my preschool with a large old fashioned radio – with large Bakelite knobs, impressive dials, and valves (or “tubes” as Americans quaintly refer to them).  It didn’t work, but I was absolutely convinced that I could fix it; and spent hours fiddling around in its innards with a screwdriver.  I failed (nothing to do with my age I’m sure – the previous donors had given us a real dud!), but the experience was the beginning of a long love affair with anything electrical.

3.  My first home chemistry kit. I can’t remember what was in that first kit or even who made it.  What I do remember is being able to replenish it from the local chemist – something that you can’t do these days sadly – and  “augmenting” it with exotic new additions. Irresistible

4.  DIY Science books. Where would I be without local libraries?  Not where I am now I suspect!  I used to devour books on science experiments for the home.  The experiments often didn’t work, I must confess (good training for later days).  But armed with an arsenal of basic household supplies, a good tome from the local library, and my augmented chemistry kit, I was in kid-heaven.

5.  Jacques Cousteau. I still remember the feeling of anticipation – sitting in front of the TV in my pajamas, way after my proper bed time, waiting for the latest nautical adventure from Cousteau and his crew.  Looking back, it was the sense of discovery that had me glued to the set on these rare occasions – I wanted to be informed and inspired, not entertained.

6.  “Teach Yourself Atomic Physics.” I owe so much to this little book (possibly by James Moncur Valentine – I can’t be sure) – which must have gone out of print decades ago.  It was my father’s, but I purloined it and poured over it for hours on end, trying to understand the mysteries of the universe.  I even started to tell people I was going to be a nuclear physicist when I grew up (I was rather young at the time).  I only achieved half of my childhood dream (the physicist bit) – but that was in part because of this book.

7.  Judith Hann. Actually, I would include many of the old Tomorrow’s World team – Raymond Baxter, Michael Rodd, Bob Symes and a number of others. The program had its critics, and in later years tried too hard to grab fleeting attentions – becoming rather shallow.  But as a child growing up, Judith and the others were an inspiration.

8.  Doctor Who. Okay so this one took me by surprise as well – was I really inspired by an individualistic fictitious character with an authority complex?  Looking back, I think I was.  I have a sneaking suspicion – never articulated until the confessional of this blog, that I wanted to be just like John Pertwee or Tom Baker – using science and superior intellect to save the world while cocking a snoot at the establishment.  Come to think about it, I suspect I still do…

9.  Isaac Asimov. There are a number of science-realistic fiction writers I could insert here: Arthur C. Clarke, Brian Aldiss, H. G. Wells – I read them all.  And while many (not all) of them fell short of writing good “literature,” they nevertheless set my mind ablaze with new ideas and new possibilities.  If this was what science was about – I wanted in!

10.  Mr. Tranquada. Mr. Tranquada (I think I have the name right – it was a long time ago) was a high school physics teacher I had for one year only. I had two other physics teachers at high school who were less than inspirational – although the pot-smoking hippie brought an interesting flavor to the subject, until he got busted!  But the year I had Mr Tranquada was a revelation.  He wasn’t flash.  He didn’t strain to entertain.  And he could be a real sarky so and so.  But when he taught, it was as if he opened a window into a universe of full of new ideas – and the more I experienced, the more I wanted.  He also taught me that there’s no such thing as a stupid question – one of the more important lessons of my youth.

These weren’t my only inspirations that led to me becoming a scientist – but they are amongst the more prominent ones.  Interestingly, there weren’t too many traditional role models there (unless you count Doctor Who of course…)  The people who attracted me were those who expanded my knowledge and understanding – it was what they offered that hooked me, not who they were.  I wonder whether this is just a personal predilection, or whether it hints at something more universal.

Finally, as I compiled this list, I was intrigued by the things that didn’t get me hooked on science as a youth.  Here are just three:

1. My careers advisor. Mr. Barlow was his name.  I asked him once what it took to become a research scientist.  His answer: “You don’t want to do that!”

2.  Dead people. I’m sorry to admit it, but dead scientists just didn’t do it for me.  Things are a little different now. But then, given Newton or an apple, I’d go for the apple.

3. Carl Sagan. Okay, so I may be the only scientist of my generation to admit to not being inspired by the great Carl.  Not having a TV when Cosmos was shown in the UK may have something to do with this   But it just goes to show that you don’t always need a superstar to get someone hooked on science.

Well, that’s the introspective retrospective over.  If you have your own thoughts and ideas on how to hook people on science, join us on Monday -  in the flesh if you are at the British Science Festival, or via Second Life if you are not – details here.

See you there.

Asked to conclude the Fourth International Conference on Nanotechnology, Occupational and Environmental Health in Helsinki this year, I rather rashly came up with the above title for my talk—thinking that I would find inspiration in the multitude of new research on nanotech safety being presented at the meeting.

As it turns out, events conspired against me and I ended up unavoidably missing most of the conference!

Faced with the tricky task of wrapping up a meeting that I had been embarrassingly absent from, I decided to share a rather more personal perspective on nanotechnology safety—my own reflections on things I think people should know.

This list is far from complete, and is heavily biased towards workplace safety.  And given that it was prepared for a crowd of conference attendees who were most likely maxed out on nano and more interested in where the nearest bar was, it’s a little light on detail.

Nevertheless, it is hopefully interesting and informative, and causes at least one person other than myself to stop and think afresh about how to ensure safety in the face of a new and rapidly developing technology.

So without further ado, and in reverse order, here is my highly subjective list of ten things everyone should know about nanotechnology safety…

10.  There’s no such thing as “nanotechnology safety”

Actually, this isn’t quite true.  Nanotechnology safety is clearly an important and legitimate goal.  It’s just that when you get down to the business of protecting people and the environment, the big idea of “nanotechnology” can become more of a hindrance than a help.

These are just two traps that discussing “nanotechnology safety” can open up:

First, we have the problem of definitions.  If we are going to discuss “nanotechnology safety,” we need to know what we are talking about.  Unfortunately, the generally accepted definition of nanotechnology—“the understanding and control of matter at dimensions between approximately 1 and 100 nanometers, where unique phenomena enable novel applications” is what the US National Nanotechnology Initiative uses—is one of expedience, not of science.  It serves the purpose of stimulating new research and technology innovation in an exciting new area brilliantly.  But it doesn’t clearly define a set of products and processes that have common and specific safety issues; and it was never intended to.

As a result, attempts to apply the generally accepted definition of nanotechnology to material and product safety ends up in a messy mismatch.  Materials that are probably benign come under suspicion, while others that we should be worried about potentially slip the net.

Second, there is the problem of generalities.  The products of nanotechnology are infinitely varied; each behaves in a different way and potentially presents a different set of risks.  This is obvious when we think about it.  Comparing the potential benefits and risks of scanning tunneling microscopes, semiconductor chips and smart drugs (for instance) is nonsensical, even though each can legitimately be claimed as a product of nanotechnology.  The trouble is, focusing on “nanotechnology safety” seems to result in rationality by-pass sometimes, leading to the questionable assumption that nanotechnology presents a common set of safety problems, which can be solved by a common suite of safety solutions.

In the extreme, this type of generalization can lead to experiences with one nanotech product being applied to others—safety concerns over titanium dioxide nanoparticles in sunscreens being driven by inhalation studies using carbon nanotubes for instance; or consumers potentially avoiding “nano” branded goods because they heard that “nanotechnology” isn’t “safe.”

Perhaps more to the point though, nanotechnology—like most technologies—is safety-neutral.  It isn’t the technology so much as what is done with it that is important.  Which means that rather than talking about “nanotechnology safety,” it makes a lot more sense to talk about the safe handling, use and disposal of specific materials, products and processes that arise from its application.

9.  We’re living in a post-chemistry world

Having debunked the idea of “nanotechnology safety,” I should really talk about what might be important when it comes to working with and using the products of nanotechnology as safely as possible—because without a doubt, some of its uses will lead to new safety challenges.

One class of products that raises some interesting safety questions is “nanomaterials”—materials engineered at the nanometer-scale so they exhibit scale-specific properties.  These materials are intentionally designed to do what they do because of their physical form, as well as their chemical makeup.  So it seems reasonable to ask whether what they look like at the nanoscale also leads to new safety issues.

Of course, for physical form to be relevant to human health or the environment, the material first has to get to where it can do harm.  For people, this means that chunks of it need to be small enough to be inhaled, ingested, or penetrate through the skin.  No exposure—no harm.

However, for nanomaterials that can get into the body, there will be some cases where their physical form—their size, shape, physical structure—can lead to them being dangerous above certain concentrations.

But here’s the rub.  Over the past fifty plus years, we’ve got used to assessing the likely risks associated with materials by considering their chemistry alone.  As a result we have a bit of a blind spot when it comes to materials that are potentially harmful because of something more than just their chemical composition.

This is a bit of an oversimplification of course.  In the field of occupational health we have had to deal with asbestos and other fibers that cause harm because of their chemistry and their physical form.  And it’s long been recognized that different sized airborne particles present different risks if inhaled.  But these are the exceptions rather than the rule, and there is still a tendency when assessing risks to ignore physical form, or to struggle with what to do with it.

However, as engineered nanomaterials become increasingly sophisticated, this will need to change if we are to work with them safely.  We are living in a post-chemistry world, where functionality and safety depend on more than just what something is made of.  And if we are to ensure the safety of emerging engineered nanomaterials, we need to learn how to survive and thrive in this world.

8.  Current understanding of nanomaterial risks has more holes than a Swiss cheese

So we know that we might need a new perspective on the potential risks associated with engineered nanomaterials and how to manage them.  But here we hit a problem—when it comes to answering questions that seem to be important, there’s a distinct dearth of information.

Quantifying the human health risks (for example) associated with a material—a normal step in ensuring their safe use—requires answers to many questions, including:

• How can the material enter the body?
• Where does it go and how does it change once it gets there?
• What aspects of the material end up causing harm?
• How much material is needed for serious harm to occur?
• How should the toxicity of the material be assessed?
• How will people end up being exposed to the material?
• How should exposure be measured? And
• Can exposures be adequately controlled?

When it comes to new nanomaterials, these are just some of the questions we still don’t have complete answers to.  And they only address occupational exposures.  What happens when these same nanomaterials get out into the environment?

If we are going to get a good handle on working safely with engineered nanomaterials and other products based on nanotechnology, these holes will eventually need to be filled.  And as the diversity and sophistication of engineered nanomaterials continues to grow, research into assessing and managing their possible risks will need to be well funded and strategically targeted if it is to keep up.

7.  Engineered nanomaterials are accomplished shape-shifters

It is probably something of an exaggeration to refer to nanomaterials as shape-shifters, but without a doubt, one of the big challenges of ensuring the safety of engineered nanomaterials is that their behavior changes depending on where they are, and where they’ve been.  A freshly minted nanoparticle may have a surface that is crammed full of highly active chemicals.  Ten minutes later, these chemicals may have lost their potency—with a resulting reduction in the material’s ability to cause harm.  Small particles may agglomerate with others to form large particles over time.  Or large agglomerates may separate out into smaller ones once inhaled.  Particles moving through the air might pick up a coating of other chemicals in their vicinity and, if inhaled, will behave differently to “naked” particles.  Nanoparticles in the lungs or blood may become shrouded in specific biological molecules that dictate where they go and how the body responds.  Nanoparticles may be suspended in liquids, compressed into pellets, or embedded in plastics.  Nanotechnology-enabled products may shed material that changes as it moves through the environment, and moves through the environment differently as it changes.  And nano-products disposed of at the end of their life may once again liberate nanomaterials that bear little resemblance to the stuff they were originally made of.

In short, the qualities that make a nanomaterial potentially harmful change over the material’s lifetime.

This complicates matters when it comes to ensuring safety.  Just because a nanoparticle in a workplace is considered safe, doesn’t mean that it will still be safe several steps down the road.  The converse is also true—a nanomaterial that needs to be handled with care in the workplace may be relatively benign after it has been incorporated into a product.

There are no easy answers to dealing with this shifting risk profile.  But one thing is certain: If engineered nanomaterials are to be used safely, their potential for causing harm, and the means to manage this, needs to be considered across their life cycle.

6.  The technology’s new, but that doesn’t make old safety practices redundant

In the face of a new and, in some cases, radically different technology, there is a temptation for imaginations to go into overdrive and assume that these new technologies automatically demand new safety measures.

Fortunately, even though we are facing a nanotechnology safety future that is complex and riddled with holes, we do have some tricks at our disposal for helping to ensure the safer handling of nanomaterials.

It seems that established occupational hygiene practices go a long way to preventing exposures and reducing risks.  Guidance from the US National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health (NIOSH), BSI, the International Standards Organization (ISO) and others makes it very clear that by taking reasonable precautions with how materials are handled, control measures are established and workers are protected, the chances of something untoward happening are reduced substantially—even if hard data on a new material’s toxicity are lacking.

Undoubtedly there will be situations where conventional practices don’t go all the way to ensuring the safe use of nanomaterials—just one more reason why more research is needed. But we do know that airborne nanoparticles can be removed from the air with conventional local exhaust ventilation systems; that air filters do a good job of reducing exposures; and that bad workplace practices increase the chances of harm occurring, whether the materials being handled are nanoscale or not.

So the good news is that we don’t need to throw out decades of experience with working safely with nanomaterials.

On the other hand, it’s probably not a good idea to be complacent—old tricks may work with new technologies, but probably only up to a point.

And just to be clear, there is a world of difference between safe and safer.

5.  Lower exposures mean lower risks

Continuing the theme of old tricks, reducing risks through controlling exposure does seem to be an area where established wisdom has a role to play with engineered nanomaterials.

As a rule of thumb, lowering exposure levels is likely to reduce potential risks from nanomaterials, even in the absence of hard toxicity data.  With few exceptions, the human health risks of materials tend to follow a general trend of increasing response with increasing dose.  There are subtleties here involving the shape of the relationship between dose and response, the period over which effects occur, how dose is measured and whether a dose exists below which no response is observed.  But these aside, most of our experiences with harmful agents—whether gases, liquids or particles—suggest that less stuff means lower risk.

This is helpful when handling new engineered nanomaterials, because we can be reasonably sure that every step towards lowering exposures is a step in the right direction.  It means that equipped with the most basic exposure control technologies and an instrument capable of measuring some aspect of the nanomaterial concentration, potential risks can be reduced.

But helpful as this approach to reducing risk is, there is a problem: how low is low enough?

4.  Measurement without meaning is like a car without an engine

If you measure the concentration of nanoparticles in a workplace—say you measure the number or mass of particles per cubic meter—what does that measurement mean?  And how can you use it to increase safety without impacting unnecessarily on operating costs?

Exposure measurement is a tricky subject.  Numbers—hard data—can be comforting.  But without a clear idea of their relevance, they can also be misleading. A measurement of airborne nanomaterial concentration can be used to reduce exposure, but how far should it be reduced?  Alternatively, measurements can be used to try and eliminate exposure altogether.  But there’s always that lingering doubt that exposures are occurring below the instrument’s detection threshold.  And rather annoyingly, the lower the concentration of material an instrument will detect, and the harder it will be to get a zero reading.

In other words, measurements without the means to interpret and use them are a bit like a car without an engine—pretty, but useless!

The reality is that without guidance on how to interpret and act on them, measurements can cause more problems than they solve—especially if the cost of reducing exposures to some arbitrary level becomes prohibitively expensive.

What would be helpful here is a benchmark against which exposure measurements can be assessed—a reference that enables measurements to be translated into actions.  Where solid risk-related data are available, these benchmarks are the exposure limits set by governments and other organizations familiar to any occupational hygienist.

But what do you do in the absence of such limits?

One option is to take a stab at estimating reasonable benchmark limits, based on the best available information. For instance, in “Nanotechnologies – Part 2: Guide to safe handling and disposal of manufactured nanomaterials,” BSI has recommended a series of rules –of-thumb, based on reasonably well-understood materials, which help establish working benchmark levels for new and untested materials.  The idea is that in the absence of any better information, exposure limits for analogous materials are used as a starting point.

The methodology is rough and ready, and doesn’t sit well with every expert.  But at least it provides a useful way of assigning meaning to measurements; as long at the working benchmark levels do not become set in stone.

3.  When the data run out – innovate!

This question of measuring exposure in the absence of well-established exposure limits is just one part of a larger issue—how do you make smart safety decisions in the absence of good information?

Even if we can use established practiced to lower risks, we are still faced with a barrow-load of unknowns and uncertainties that pull the rug out from under conventional approaches to quantifying and managing risks.  And even if did manage to fill in all the current knowledge-holes, the chances are that we would be facing a whole new set of uncertainties sooner rather than later.

So what do we do – apart from panic?

The answer is: Innovate! More than ever in the future, we will have to rely on new and innovative approaches to managing risks; ones that enable decisions to be made in the absence of hard data.  Something of this was seen in the observation that lower exposures mean lower risks—a concept that enables risks to be reduced even in the absence of toxicology data.  Yet more inventive approaches will be needed if engineered nanomaterials are to be used safely in a world where a science-based understanding of the risks looks increasingly like a Swiss cheese, no matter how hard we try.

Vladimir Murashov and John Howard recently highlighted some possible innovations in the journal Nature Nanotechnology. Writing on essential features for proactive risk management, they discussed a number of ways to manage risk in a data-deficient world.  In particular, they stressed the need to consider “soft” (or qualitative) approaches to assessing and managing risks such as using expert judgment, and control banding.

These recommendations are a good start.  But much more is needed if we are to learn to make smart choices in the face of uncertainty.

2.  It’s good to talk

The adage “a problem shared is a problem halved” is rather a trite one, but it does contain a grain of truth.  Where companies and workers face difficult challenges in ensuring the safety of their workplaces, drawing on the collective wisdom of the community can be a great boon.

In their article, Murashov and Howard stressed is the need for global stakeholder cooperation in ensuring the safe use of engineered nanomaterials.  This makes perfect sense.  Safety shouldn’t be a competitive issue—it’s in everyone’s interest to share information and experiences that will prevent harm to people or the environment. Information sharing encourages faster, better solutions to challenges. It allows smaller outfits to tap into a wealth of experience and expertise that would otherwise be beyond their reach. And it reduces the chances of competitors making a mess of “nanotechnology safety” in a way that undermines the credibility of the technology as a whole.

The good news is that people are talking—not as much as they should perhaps, but at least the lines of communication are open.  The NanOEH2009 conferences is a great example of information sharing, and there are many more—ISO and OECD initiatives for instance, and the work of the International Council On Nanotechnology.

But I wanted to highlight one initiative in particular, in part because I had a small hand in the initial idea, but mainly because I think it has great potential to get the global nanotechnology safety community working together to find solutions to the challenges they face.  And that is the Good Nano Guide.

Designed as a community forum and resource, this is developing into an important place for learning about other people’s experiences of working safely with nanomaterials, and for sharing your own.  As people begin to contribute to it and use it, it could turn into an open-access goldmine for know-how on working as safely as possible with engineered nanomaterials.

1.  People matter

And finally my number one thing that everyone should know about nanotechnology safety—people matter.

This may seem simple, or obvious, but it’s something that can get left out of the equation all too easily.

At the end of the day, human risk research is about protecting people from injury, disease and death, and ensuring a high quality of life.  It isn’t about the buzz of new discovery.  It isn’t about getting rich and famous.  It isn’t about making a profit.  And it isn’t about sustaining ideologies.

All of these have their place, and in many cases are good and important.  But the primary focus of risk research should be the people it ultimately impacts.

This is part of the culture of risk-based research professionals who have come up through schools of public health, government research labs and similar institutions.  It may get buried at times.  But generally there is that recognition that the rewards of the work are more safe and healthy people, and fewer injuries, diseases and deaths.

(It goes without saying that a similar ethos exists for environmental risk research)

But when it comes to nanotechnology risk research, I am concerned by the influx of researchers and decision-makers into the field that don’t come from this culture of focusing on people’s health and safety.

This is a very personal perspective, and I may be wrong.  But it seems that with increasing interest in, and funding available, for nanotechnology-related risk research, there has been a shift in emphasis away from traditional risk-research experts and towards researchers with primary expertise in other areas—chemistry, materials science and drug development for example.

This isn’t necessarily a bad thing.  But it does mean that research programs, strategies and policies are increasingly being influenced by people who lack a professional cultural bias toward focusing on the individuals their work and decisions will affect.

That is not to imply that these people do not care—in many cases, they clearly do.  But without that ingrained culture of putting others first, I wonder whether there is a danger of nanotechnology risk research being driven more by political expediency and the promise of economic gain, and less by the need to protect people.

If this isn’t the case, I am willing to stand corrected.  But if it is, we need to work out how to get people back at the center of the nano-risk enterprise.  This may need some careful thought over where research funding goes and how strategic research decisions are made.   But I suspect it will also rely on the willingness of the emerging nanotechnology safety community to rethink and reaffirm its values.

At the end of the day, despite the clear economic and social justifications, getting nanotechnology “right” will be a hollow achievement if we end up neglecting the very people who will make its success possible.  Let’s hope we don’t.

Following on from yesterday’s update on my quest to track science influence on Twitter, I’ve posted a bubble-chart of the August “influence stats” for all 523 scientwists in David Bradley’s list over at Many Eyes.

Using the chart, you can quickly explore the number of followers, secondary followers, social capital and a handful of other Twitter stats on the scientwists.

The chart draws on data that Mike Chelen kindly compiled using Twinfluence.

So how do you navigate around these bubble charts, and what do they show?  Here’s a quick tutorial.  (for the adventurous, you can dive straight in here)…

Getting started

First, open this link to the bubble chart at Many Eyes.  The chart on the screen shows “bubbles” representing the number of followers each scientwist has.

Open the bubble chart at Many Eyes, and select "username" from the Color menu

From the “Color” menu at the bottom right of the screen, select “Username”

The screen will now look like the screenshot above, with the scientwists listed to the left of the screen.

Finding specific scientwists

To highlight a particular scientwist, either select them from the list to the left of the screen, or type their name in the search box:

Use the menu on the left or the search box to find specific scientwists

Placing the mouse over the scientwists bubble provides more information on the information being displayed.

To get back to the normal display, either click in the white space surrounding the bubble chart, or clear the search box and hit “Enter”

Showing the number of friends each scientwist has

From the “Bubble Size” menu (bottom left) select “friends_count”.  The bubble chart now shows bubbles with areas that represent the number of people each scientwist is following.  To see the data associated with any bubble, simply position the mouse over it.

To see how many people each scientwist is following, select "friend_count" from the Bubble Size menu

Showing second order followers, social capital, and other stats

Simply select the information you want to see from the Bubble Size menu.  As well as second order followers and social capital, there are a few stats that Twinfluence provides.

Choose the info you are interested in from the Bubble Size menu

Why the bubble charts?

As well as being visually attractive (I’m revealing my shallowness here), the bubble charts at Many Eyes have a couple of advantages in displaying data like these:

• Because the data are represented in two dimensions (area) rather than one (bar height, for instance) it’s a lot easier to compare large and small numbers.  for instance, @guardiantech has over 200 times more followers than @2020science.  On a linear plot, you wouldn’t be able to see @2020science – using the bubbles, where area represents the data – you can see both scientwists together.
• As the bubbles are displayed in two dimensions, it becomes easier to spot interesting patterns and associations.

And finally…

These data were collected by @MikeChelen using an API he wrote specifically to gather large amounts of information from Twinfluence.  And while we’ve used this technique here to look at scientwists, I suspect that it could also be used to great effect to examine other groups of twitter users.

]]> http://2020science.org/2009/08/24/visualizing_scientwists_aug09/feed/ 0 http://2020science.org/2009/08/23/science-influence-on-twitter-august-update/ http://2020science.org/2009/08/23/science-influence-on-twitter-august-update/#comments Sun, 23 Aug 2009 22:38:25 +0000 Andrew Maynard http://2020science.org/?p=2066

It’s the middle of August, and time for my regular two-monthly update on science tweep influence on Twitter.

Back in April I posted data on three indicators of “influence” for ~400 science-focused Twitter users – based on David Bradley’s list of “Scientific Twitter Friends.” This is the third update of the indicators – the second was back in June.  This time round, Mike Chelen (@MikeChelen) was kind enough to put together an application that grabbed the data directly from Twinfluence.

As usual, I’ve posted the data on Many Eyes to allow you to play around with it, and get a better feel for how these indicators vary with person and time.  This time round though, there are separate bubble charts for primary followers, second order followers and social capital (follow the links, and select the data for August – the charts default to the April data).  If you get lost, check out the screencast on navigating the bubble charts in the June update.

Not a whole lot has changed since June.

Number of SciTweeps (vertical) versus number of followers (horizontal). Watch out for the logarithmic x-axis!

The modal number of followers per SciTweep has dropped a little, but overall the distribution of followers per SciTweep hasn’t shifted too much.

Number of SciTweeps (vertical) versus number of secondary followers (horizontal). Watch out for the logarithmic x-axis!

Perhaps the most obvious change is in the distribution of secondary followers amongst SciTweeps.  This has shifted to the right slightly overall, but there are fewer SciTweeps with large numbers of secondary followers.  Either some tweeps with mega-followings have been dropping SciTweeps from the people they follow, or the figures reflect a re-alignment within Twitter that has impacted the data.  Either way, my number of second order followers was hit badly over the past couple of months!

Number of SciTweeps (vertical) versus social capital (horizontal). Watch the logarithmic x-axis!

The range of SciTweep social capital values has narrowed over the past couple of months – more people with a higher social capital, but fewer with a mega-high social capital.

And that’s pretty much it for now.  The plan is to have another update in October, although I may also ask for suggestions on a better way to track SciTweep influence over the long term – including thoughts on putting together a more representative group of tweeps to follow.

Notes:

The data shown here are derived using Twinfluence.  The August data were collected by Mike Chelen.

Where the number of second order followers topped out on Twinfluence, it was capped at 20,000,000 in April, and 30,000,000 in June.

My thanks to David Bradley for compiling the list of “Scientific Twitter Friends” in the first place.  This is largely a self-selected list of science-types on Twitter, and in no way represents the full scientific community there.  But it does provide a highly useful cohort of people who profess to have a science-perspective, and can be tracked over time.  This series of analyses uses the list as it stood mid-April.  To preserve the group, I haven’t added new SciTweeps from David’s list.

A quick word on the plots:  These are a rather crude way of presenting the data, but provide a good qualitative indication of distributions and trends.  The number of science Tweeps represented by each step in the plots represents the Tweeps with primary followers, secondart followers or social capital lying within the range of the step.  As the horizontal axis uses a logarithmic scale, the range of values covered by the steps increases dramatically going from left to right.  As the data are roughly logarithmically distributed, this makes visualizing, comparing and analyzing the numbers easier.  But care should be taken when interpreting the plots, given the logarithmically compressed horizontal axis.  In particular, modal values are dependent in part on the use of a log-axis, and would be different if the data were plotted with a linear horizontal axis.

I‘ve just posted a series of five attention-grabbing talks on future technologies from TED (the Technology, Entertainment, Design conferences) over at Mashable, where I contribute the occasional guest blog.  If you are more interested in the transformative power of technology than the latest gizmo from Apple, you might want to check them out.  Speakers include Patti Maes, Christopher deCharms, Aubrey de Grey, Juan Enriquez and, of course, Ray Kurzweil.

One video I got a kick out of but that didn’t quite make the cut is this talk from Joshua Klein.  Watching it, you’ll probably understand why: there’s little mention of future tech… until the very end!

Enjoy

Reviewing Unscientific America: How scientific illiteracy threatens our future, by Chris Mooney and Sheril Kirshenbaum

My name is Andrew, and I am scientifically illiterate.

Just thought I’d get that off my chest!

And before you protest too much, I do have some pretty convincing evidence.  Math makes my head ache.   I cannot recite the Earth’s geological timeline from memory.  And there’s a one in ten chance that I’ll stumble over pronouncing terms like artemisinin and Bovine Spongiform Encephalopathy.

The problem lies of course with what is understood by “scientific illiteracy” rather than my abilities—at least I hope that’s the case.

The idea that modern society only works if it is based on a common understanding, appreciation and use of science has been around for a while.  It seems to make sense – in a society that is increasingly dependent on science, widespread scientific ignorance is likely to lead to non-democratic leadership by a scientific elite, or ill-informed (but democratic) decisions that are ultimately destructive.

The solution would seem to be to replace scientific ignorance with scientific literacy.  Get everyone thinking and acting like scientists, and the world will surely be a better place.

Unfortunately, this perspective turns out to be rather naïve.  Dividing the world into scientific illiterates and literates devalues the many other skill sets and perspectives that contribute to healthy decision-making within society.  It also encourages an over-simplistic approach to the challenges of critical thinking and evidence-based decision making—namely that educating people more about science will result in them making the “right” decisions.  And it has a tendency to lead to scientific literacy being measured in ways that have little bearing on a person’s ability to make informed decisions…

Over the past decade or so, scholars and policy makers have come to realize that more sophisticated approaches are needed if science-informed, yet democratic, decisions are to be made by people.  As a result, rather than talk about scientific literacy, discussions now tend to revolve around the ideas of dialogue and engagement – empowering people in a complex society to make personal and group decisions that are ultimately constructive.

So it was with some trepidation that I sat down to review Chris Mooney and Sheril Kirshenbaum’s new book “Unscientific America: How Scientific Illiteracy Threatens Our Future.”

Fortunately, it didn’t take much reading to convince me that their perspective is rather more sophisticated than the book’s title suggests. Unscientific America is a laudable attempt to tackle science’s place in American society in an easily accessible way.  Highly readable, largely enjoyable, occasionally infuriating, the book takes on the challenge of how to empower members of society to make the best use of science.

There was a lot that I liked about the book – and a lot that resonated with my own views.  But there were also points where I felt the book fell short of what it could be.

Despite the book’s rather sensationalist subtitle, Mooney and Kirshenbaum do a good job of placing scientific illiteracy in a modern context.  Chapter 2 on “rethinking the problem of scientific illiteracy” provides an accessible overview of current thinking – and does it reasonably well.  The notion of a “public” that will make the “right” decisions if only they are sufficiently well educated – the so-called deficit model – is introduced, examined, then carefully put aside.  The problem, Mooney and Kirshenbaum point out, is that the deficit model can all too easily be used to exempt scientists from the responsibility of ensuring their work is an integral part of the society they belong to:

“It’s an educational problem, they say, or a problem with the media (which doesn’t cover science accurately or pay it enough attention), and then they go back to their labs.”

But rather than discard the term “scientific illiteracy,” Mooney and Kirshenbaum prefer to redefine it, in their words “getting past issues of finger-pointing and buck-passing and the misconception that our problems can be reduced to what non-scientists say in response to survey questions.”

Their solution: emphasize an aspect of scientific literacy that stresses citizens’ awareness of the importance of science to politics, policy, and a collective future.

This makes a lot of sense, and is in many ways the lynchpin of the book.  But I do have my reservations over their adherence to the idea of scientific literacy.

When scholars began to realize that the deficit model wasn’t particularly helpful to integrating science and society (for a multitude of reasons), they began to move away from talking about “science literacy” and towards talking about developing dialogues and engaging people in making science-informed decisions.  These approaches complement broader discussions on the roles of critical thinking and evidence-based decision-making; integrating science into a more holistic perspective of modern society.

Having established the central focus of the book, Mooney and Kirshenbaum present their ideas in a series of connected essays.  From a distance, the structure makes sense.  Chapters 1 and 2 set out the challenge as seen by the authors.  Chapters 3 and 4 continue on to fill in the historical background – how American culture’s apparently strained relationship with science got to where it is now.  Chapters 5 – 8 then deal with specific issues that highlight the current state of play—science in the media, science and popular entertainment, science and religion, and science and politics.  Finally, chapters 9 and 10 begin to explore possible solutions to the “problem” of scientific illiteracy – culminating in a short conclusion that attempts to pull everything together.

Some of these chapters are a good and informative read.  I was enjoying myself immensely up to chapter 8.  But then I felt that the book began to run out of steam.  Repeatedly, I found myself intrigued by questions set up by Chris and Sheril, then disappointed by a lack of resolution.  In an attempt to try and keep things simple I suspect they ended glossing over a lot of things (see my comments below on the book’s endnotes). But in the latter chapters I was increasingly aware of a lack of depth behind the points being made.

A good example is “Bruising their religion”—the chapter on science, religion and the “new atheists.”  This particular chapter has ruffled plenty of feathers throughout the blogosphere already, and I don’t intend to ruffle more by adding my two cents worth to Mooney and Kirshenbaum’s perspective.  But I do want to highlight the intellectual letdown that I felt when reading the chapter – something that I experienced with increasing frequency as I progressed toward the end of the book.

In this chapter, Mooney and Kirshenbaum roundly criticize vocal and intellectually aggressive proponents of atheism—a crowd that will stop at little it seems to denigrate religious beliefs and humiliate those who adhere to them.  They argue that the crude combative and even ignorant tactics employed by people like PZ Myers and Richard Dawkins do more to undermine scientific literacy than they do to support it.

This makes sense—intellectual bullying doesn’t often have pride of place in communications manuals!

Mooney and Kirshenbaum then state that the divide between science and religion is a false one, and the two are not mutually exclusive.  But they give no concrete evidence for this, beyond citing a handful of scientists who held (or hold) religious views.

The result is a reader who is left high and dry.  I wanted to know how science and religion may be reconciled, and why the preaching of the new atheists is intellectually as well as socially suspect.  But what I got was little more than opinion and unsubstantiated statements.

The following chapters in the book suffer from a similar glossing over of arguments—although perhaps not to the same extent as this chapter.  And as a result, I was left feeling frustrated at the lack of substance in what I was reading.

Unscientific America culminates in a six-page conclusion titled “A new mission for American Science.”  Reaching this point, I was full of expectations—this was where the meat would be (I thought), where I would finally learn how science illiteracy threatens our future, and what the answers are.

In the event, I found it a bit of a let down.  While I had enjoyed the book – which is only 132 pages long if you discount the extensive endnotes – I felt that I hadn’t been convinced that scientific illiteracy does indeed threaten America’s future.  And as for the solution to this apparently looming problem, everything seemed to lead up to Mooney and Kirshenbaum proposing that the responsibility for integrating science into society lies with scientists. After all the buildup, this seemed a little too easy.

To be fair, it’s an important conclusion.  If science is to be integrated into society, scientists as a group need to be a part of that society rather than apart from it.  It’s something that we are still a long way from achieving, but I would argue it is essential if future decisions are to help rather than hinder social development.

And to be honest, Mooney and Kirshenbaum do a good job of bringing this need to a broad audience.

But I can’t help feeling that Unscientific America falls short of what it could have been.  Mooney and Kirshenbaum clearly have a political and ideological bias that ends up being woven through the book, and at the end of the day this weakens its authority for me.  The Bush administration’s “war on science” for instance is cited repeatedly as hindering science literacy over the past 8 years, and Mooney and Kirshenbaum stress the need to move on from “an administration widely denounced for a disdain of science unprecedented in modern American history.”  Indeed, Chris Mooney has written about this in his previous book—The Republican War On Science.

Yet framing a book on science in such a strong political light is likely to alienate some readers, and will lead to diminished authority over time.

On top of this, I feel that Mooney and Kirshenbaum never quite succeeded in making a watertight case for why scientific illiteracy threatens our future—leading to the central premise of the book coming across as ideological rather than a persuasively argued and clearly defined challenge.

And that brings me back to the issue of scientific illiteracy.  From where I sit, it seems to be a phrase fraught with problems—it reinforces an “us” and “them” mentality, it has the potential to create arbitrary and often meaningless divisions.  And, to be frank, it gets some people’s backs up.  Joking aside, I could well be labeled “scientifically illiterate” under some measures of literacy.  Yet I think I have been somewhat successful in my career as a scientist, policy advisor and communicator.   So I struggle with a book so overtly focused on scientific illiteracy.  Mooney and Kirshenbaum have done a good job of framing scientific illiteracy in a sophisticated and accessible way.  But in the long run, I wonder whether the book would have had greater authority and a longer shelf life if it had made the break from dated concepts, and fully embraced the need for dialogue and engagement when integrating science into society.

So to wrap up – should you read this book?  Absolutely.  But read it forewarned.  Understand where the authors are coming from.  Accept that in 132 pages of writing for a general audience you won’t be taken on a deep and intellectually challenging journey.  And don’t hesitate to chapter-hop – I particularly liked chapter 2!

And above all, enjoy it – whether you agree with Mooney and Kirshenbaum or not, they are entertaining and talented writers, and Unscientific America is an enjoyable—and not too taxing—read.

Endnotes

About the endnotes in Unscientific America

Although Unscientific America only stretches to 132 pages it is complemented by 66 pages of endnotes, comprising citations and additional comments.  I’m not a great fan of this format—especially as the endnotes aren’t cited on the pages they relate to.  But it is an extensive resource for those who are interested in delving further into the points Chris and Sheril make.

I do have a problem though where there is extensive commentary included in the endnotes.  While reading the book, you have no idea whether a particular idea or comment is fleshed out later on, unless you keep one finger in the endnotes. This is not a comfortable way to read a book!  I understand why the book is published this way – it keeps things simple for readers (I almost wrote “scientifically illiterate readers” – slapped wrists for that!).  But it isn’t half a pain for anyone seriously interested in what the authors are trying to say.

It’s far better, in my opinion, to ensure that the relevant stuff is incorporated into the main text, not sequestered away where no-one will read it.

More on science and society

Many people have studied the complex interplay between science and society, and reams of work—from the scholarly to the popular—has been written on the subject.  To get a good feel for current thinking, I would recommend “What can we learn from 25 years of PUS survey research? Liberating and expanding the agenda” by Martin Bauer, Nick Allum and Steve Miller [PDF, 116 KB].  Also check out Matthew Nisbet’s blog, Framing Science, and the Cultural Cognition Project at Yale Law School.

And a final comment…

Since it was released several weeks ago, Unscientific America has been the subject of a number of reviews.  Although I’ve caught some of the chatter surrounding these, I have made a conscious effort not to read them before writing my own rather belated piece.  So hopefully these thoughts are mine, and not simply a regurgitation of other people’s ideas.

Now to see whether what I’ve written is completely out of step with the rest of the blogging world…

The internet is littered with videos of science lectures and science talks – witness the recently posted “100 Incredible Lectures from the World’s Top Scientists” for instance.  But it’s not easy to sift through the tedious, the impenetrable and the down right boring, to arrive at a core of science talks that really are worth watching.

One source that consistently comes up trumps thought is TED (standing for Technology, Entertainment, Design) – an incredible organization bringing innovative thinkers together to spark off “ideas worth spreading.” It’s no surprise that many of the BestCollegesOnline.com 100 lectures are, in fact, TED talks.

TED speakers are challenges to “give the talk of their lives”  in 18 minutes or less – and to deliver it in front of a crowd of celebrities, thought-leaders, and others who have little time for waffle and obfuscation.  The result is some truly inspirational talks from some of the world’s leading scientists and science communicators – many of which are freely available online.

But now potential viewers are faced with another problem – where to start amidst such great audiovisual riches?

In an attempt to help out, I’ve just posted a new guest blog over on Mashable that picks out “5 TED Talks on Science That Will Blow Your Mind” – 5 of my favorite talks, that also come together to tell a roughly coherent story.  I had a little help from some great Twitter followers in picking these – more of that at the end of this post.

Rather than re-list the five videos here, it’s easier to pop over to the Mashable blog where they can be viewed directly (although to whet your appetite, they star Margaret Wertheim, Craig Venter, Penelope Boston, Brian Cox and Sir Martin Reese).

What I did want to do though is to include a couple of great TED science talks here that didn’t quite make the cut – a 2020 Science bonus if you like.

The first comes from astronomer Clifford Stoll, and is a study in channeling ADD…  It’s not actually (although you’ll see what I mean when you watch the video) – rather, Clifford gives an incredibly energetic and deeply personal perspective on science and learning.  It’s also highly entertaining:

The second bonus TED talk comes from physicist Stephen Hawking, tackling the origin of the universe and the possibility of extraterrestrial life.  The contrast between Hawkins’ and Stoll’s deliveries couldn’t be starker.  Yet Hawkins’ razor-sharp clarity of thought makes this video compelling viewing:

These are just a taster – catch the rest of the recommendations at Mashable.com

Acknowledgements

When I started to put the Mashable blog together, I asked my faithful Twitter followers for their recommendations on great science videos.  I got some great suggestions in return – some appearing here and on Mashable, some stashed away for another day.  My thanks in particular to @WordsAbtNumbers, @LizRobillard, @aBigHairySpider, @thegovier, @physicus, @bookhling, @tswaterman, @classroomtools, @ettagirl, @mactavish, @SteveHeggie, @pondenperson and @ruthseeley – I owe you one!

]]> http://2020science.org/2009/07/22/ted-talks-science/feed/ 0 http://2020science.org/2009/07/18/anything-i-can-do-you-can-do-better/ http://2020science.org/2009/07/18/anything-i-can-do-you-can-do-better/#comments Sat, 18 Jul 2009 17:30:57 +0000 Andrew Maynard http://2020science.org/?p=1959

Art makes a mockery of experts and empowers the marginalized. At least that’s how I feel at the moment!

Having broadcast the news of Tim Jones’ fabulous Exquisite Corpse of Science project, I thought it only fitting that I do what I’ve been telling everyone else to do, and get out my Sharpie.  And here’s the result:

My entry for the Exquisite Corpse of Science project - don't laugh!

(For the uninitiated, the idea is to get as many people as possible to draw what they think is important about science and submit these to Tim – who will then stitch them together into one large mosaic).

This has been a lesson in humility for me – I may know a thing or two about science, but I’m hopeless when it comes to expressing this through drawings.

Yet it’s precisely because of my artistic deficiencies that I thought it worthwhile posting my rather crude contribution here – if this is the best I can come up with, think what someone with a good eye and uninhibited imagination could do!

Just to prove the point, this is what my twelve year old son came up with:

My son's entry for the Exquisite Corpse of Science project - vsibly superior!

Tim’s Exquisite Corpse of Science concept is intriguing precisely because it humbles people who think they know stuff while empowering those who know they don’t – and in doing so it reduces many of the barriers to effective science engagement.

It’s also a lot of fun – once you’ve chilled out a bit and realized that there’s no such thing as a bad drawing here!

So now you know how low the bar is, grab your pen and pad and get drawing (details on what to do here).  The more people who contribute, the better the end result will be!

End Notes.

Something I did try here was to record an audio commentary while drawing the pictures – I got my son to do the same.  This is a lot more work than simply doing the drawing (although Tim is accepting accompanying audio files) – but the end result did help make sense of some otherwise rather obscure doodlings.

These are the results.  Alex’s first…

Then mine…

]]> http://2020science.org/2009/07/18/anything-i-can-do-you-can-do-better/feed/ 4 http://2020science.org/2009/07/15/biggest-science-art-project/ http://2020science.org/2009/07/15/biggest-science-art-project/#comments Wed, 15 Jul 2009 18:27:32 +0000 Andrew Maynard http://2020science.org/?p=1948

Okay, so there may be a dash of hyperbole there, but following up on the success of his Exquisite Corpse of Science project (see my previous post), Tim Jones is hatching an ambitious plan to create the world’s largest interconnected montage of drawings representing peoples’ impressions of, aspirations for and concerns about science.

The plan is really simple – and it involves you!

Simply send a sketch of what science means to you to Tim at corpse@communicatescience.com, and he will do the rest.

There are some simple rules:

1.  Draw – in your own style and without getting hung up on technical or artistic ability – what you think is important about science

2.  Anyone can participate – young, old, scientists, science drop-outs, stay at home mums (or dads), janitors, Nobel prize winners, even economists – everyone is welcome.

3.  The picture should be connected to points roughly one and two thirds of the way along the edge of the page (each side and top to bottom) – allowing your doodlings to be connected to every one else’s.  If this sounds confusing, take a look at the example below.

4.  The picture should be square.  It can either be drawn free hand and scanned, or drawn directly on the computer.  Either way, it should be 1000 pixels by 1000 pixels large when finished.

5.  The final compressed file is smaller than 500 KB.

6.  You should sign your art work

7.  And if you want – feel free to add an audio commentary.

More details can be found on Tim’s blog – which I would encourage you to read – together with some really good explanations on what on earth all this is about!  I’d especially recommend watching the video at the end of the page.

Any questions – pop over to Tim Jones’ blog Zoonomian and post it in the comments section here.

And while I (and Tim) are probably being a little tongue in cheek about this being the biggest science-art project in history, with enough submissions it could be.  So be a part of history, and get drawing!!

[Update 7/22/07 - check out my entry here, then feel inspired to grab a pen and produce something better - it won't be hard ]

Tim Jones has just posted a video of a new science engagement technique he’s working on over at his blog Zoonomian.  I was so impressed with the result that I asked his permission to post it here also.

Before explaining what this is, take a look at the video – it’s ten minutes long, but well worth watching in its entirety:

The Exquisite Corpse of Science from Tim Jones on Vimeo…

Tim and colleagues adapted the Exquisite Corpse techniques developed by the Surrealist movement to mesh together drawings of what four very different people thought about science and its impact and relevance.  He describes the process here.

I love the result.  It has an openness and honesty that draws you in, and provides far more insight into what each of the contributors are thinking than interviews alone would.  And the end result is visually stunning.

It also engages  viewers as well as participants in thinking about science from their perspective, as they see it visualized through the eyes of others.

It just goes to show that, sometimes, effective science and engagement just needs a Sharpie [felt tip pen to any Brits reading this], a drawing pad, and a bit of imagination!

[If, as me, you liked this - spread the word.  It would be great to see what others do with the technique]

When I was a kid, I was told by my physics teacher that there’s no such thing as a stupid question.  Clearly, he hadn’t been to enough scientific meetings!

Actually, it’s a philosophy I’ve adhered to pretty closely over the past thirty years.  If someone wants to expand their knowledge or understanding, the fewer barriers that are put in their way the better.  Honest questions should never be seen as an opportunity to ridicule or belittle the questioner, or parade the ego of the questioned.  If anything, I would prefer to look foolish in helping someone increase their understanding, and I have little time for people who use the apparent foolishness of others to emphasize their own smartness.

But…

It’s a philosophy that wears a little thin at scientific meetings.

Having been to more meetings than I’ve had hot dinners, I’ve had plenty of opportunities to watch the antics of people in the question and answer sessions that invariably follow presentations.  To be sure, plenty of people have honest questions at these gatherings.  But we’ve probably all experienced the person who hijacks the microphone (for the hundredth time it seems) and launches into a 10 minute tirade which – if you can understand it – seems to have little bearing on the issues in hand, while preventing others from entering the conversation.

So I thought it about time that we had some sort of code of conduct for questioners at meetings – before I or someone else snaps and does something we will probably live to regret.

If I was to draft out such a code – and I’m only doing this because a Google search on “code of conduct for asking questions at scientific meetings” comes up with zero results – it would look something like this:

1. Do say who you are and where you are from. You may be a big shot, but there will still be some ignoramuses in the audience who don’t recognize you.
2. Do keep the question short and to the point. Remember, every minute you are talking is a minute less for someone else to talk.
3. Do provide additional information if it is relevant to the talk, and to the audience. But do keep it short – anything over 60 seconds and you become a bore!
4. Do ask clarifying questions. But only if you genuinely want to hear the answer.
5. Do ask relevant questions. Questions about the mating habits of lesser-spotted dogfish are great – just a little out of place at an astronomy meeting!
6. Do give others the chance to ask questions. Especially if time is tight.
7. Do think about whether your question is better asked in private than in public. If 90% of the audience do not need to hear the answer, maybe you shouldn’t be at the mike.
8. Don’t use the microphone as a soap-box. It’s tedious, embarrassing, and demeaning.
9. Don’t give a lecture.  It’s the height of bad manners, and a really fast way to loose friends and influence.
10. Don’t ramble. If you can’t say what you want in 60 seconds, don’t say it.
11. Don’t hijack the microphone. If time’s running out and there’s a long line of people waiting behind you—get out of the way!
12. Don’t be arrogant. Okay so you may be smarter than the speaker, but this is neither the time nor place to show off.
13. Don’t ridicule the speaker. There may be rare exceptions to this rule, but attempts at public humiliation are just really, really bad form – and usually backfire.
14. And finally, don’t hesitate to ask tough questions. Because at scientific meetings at least, this is an essential part of testing and building on people’s research.

I must confess, I’m guilty of all of the “don’t” above (apart from the last one maybe), and often struggle with the “do’s.”  But the more meetings I attend and the lower my tolerance gets for inappropriate and inept questions from the audience, the more I feel it’s worth making the effort to improve things – starting with myself.

I still believe there is no such thing as a stupid question.  But there are some pretty dumb ways of asking them.  I remain a staunch advocate for responding to sincere questions with humility and honesty – especially in private.

But at public meetings, the smarter we get at asking questions, the better!

Following up on my last post – Geoengineering the planet with nanotechnology ice-cream? – here’s a short video Zoe Papadopoulou and colleagues put together on The Cloud Project from my visit in June:

Although this was filmed before the finishing touches had been applied to the ice cream van, it give a flavor for how the project is bring artists, scientists and members of the public together to talk about emerging technologies like nanotech and geoengineering.

Many thanks to Zoe for permission to post the clip here.

Photo courtesy Zoe Papadopoulou

Scientists and engineers have their moments. But it they are hard pressed to beat art students when it comes to sheer audacious creativity.

Earlier this year I received an email so intriguing I couldn’t help but follow up on it. The email was from Zoe Papadopoulou, an MA student at the Royal College of Art in London.  It was a request for help with a rather unusual design project she and fellow student Cat Kramer were hatching. Skimming through the message, phrases like “geoengineering,” “ice cream van,” “nanotechnology,” “clouds that taste of ice-cream” peaked my interest.

But then I saw the words “liquid nitrogen,” and I was hooked!

The concept was deceptively simple – use art and design to engage people on nanotechnology and geoengineering in a simple, enjoyable and appealing way. The realization was a little more complex…

The whole idea was sparked off by Professor Richard Jones – author of the Soft Machines blog and former Senior Strategic Advisor for nanotechnology for the UK’s Engineering and Physical Science Research Council (EPSRC). In a talk to students on the Royal College of Art’s Design Interactions course, he introduced them to the emerging field of nanotechnology. Intrigued by the possibilities and potential hurdles here – and especially the need for public engagement – Zoe and Cat set out to use design, art and science to, in their words,

“frame a debate, and create interactions between people and their possible futures.”

The result?  An ambitious plan to retro-fit a 1980 Sherpa ice cream van to create ice-cream flavored clouds, while acting as a focus for stimulating discussions on nanotechnology and geoengineering.

The idea went something like this:

Making ice-cream using liquid nitrogen is a fun and accessible introduction to nanotechnology – the rapid freezing leads to the ice-cream having a nanoscale structure and a super-smooth texture.  Nanometer scale particles also play a role in cloud formation, and in principle it’s possible to induce clouds to come together by injecting engineered nanoparticles into the atmosphere.  So why not combine the two to get ice-cream flavored clouds?  Why not inject a stream of liquid nitrogen and ice-cream mix into the atmosphere as a fine spray, leading to flavored condensation nuclei that will seed ice-cream clouds? And why not build it all into an old ice-cream van – a mobile fun-flavored cloud machine?

As you might imagine, the gap between technology concept and realization was rather large in this case.  It’ll be a while before you’ll see (taste?) strawberry-clouds over the English countryside – although the van is fully equipped to demonstrate how the cloud machine could work.

But this wasn’t the point of the exercise.  What Zoe and Cat were trying to achieve was using art and design to draw people into conversations about emerging technologies.

And in this they succeeded brilliantly.