Here’s a bit of trivia: with the 4000 character limit on comments on the National Nanotechnology Initiative Draft Strategic Plan, you might as well ditch the official portal, and tweet your comments to the Office of Science and Technology Policy – 28 tweets would do it!

As you can probably guess, I’ve just been compiling my response to the request for comments on the current NNI strategic plan, and have been just a little frustrated by the 4000 character limit.  This includes spaces by the way.  And formatting characters – I had to delete any formatting (bold headings for instance) to get below the limit.

However, the comments – brief as they are – are completed and submitted.  If you’re interested, they are posted below – all 3929 characters.

The comment period on the strategic plan closes at 11:59 PM on November 30th – still time to get your voice heard, as long as you can do it in 4000 characters or less.

The draft strategic plan can be downloaded from here, and the comments portal can be accessed here.

____________________________________

My submission:

The draft National Nanotechnology Initiative (NNI) strategic plan, which was opened up to public comment on November 1 2010, provides an overview of the NNI, outlines agency involvement in the initiative, and sets out four goals that the member-agencies intend to address over the coming years as they work together to support the NNI vision of “a future in which the ability to understand and control matter at the nanoscale leads to a revolution in technology and industry that benefits society”.  This is a useful strategic plan in that it outlines a number of goals that will help member agencies take steps toward realizing this vision – individually, together, and working in partnership with non-government stakeholders.  However, the draft strategic plan is light on detail, and falls short of providing a plan as to how specific and accountable actions will lead to measurable and efficient progress towards stated goals.

Given the 4000 character limitation on comments, I would like to take this opportunity to highlight just eight specific aspects of the strategic plan:

Specificity: This is a very non-specific strategic plan.  In fact, it is hard to find clear evidence of a plan within the document at all, in terms of measurable and accountable actions (with a few exceptions).  In this respect, it provides non-binding and broad direction to government agencies, with no assurance that anything of substance will be achieved.  More specificity would be helpful.

Goals: Some of the stated goals (specifically goal 2 and its stated objectives) are clear and, to an extent, measurable.  However others are vague, mapping out areas of desired activity in ways that will make it extremely difficult to evaluate progress, and return on time and funding investment.

Signature initiatives: These would seem to be a positive step forward in stimulating targeted and innovative research and development – and are one of the few instances of specific actions within the document.  I look forward to seeing how they are developed, and the outcomes that arise from them.

Engagement: While the plan addresses engagement with stakeholders, there is very little detail as to how this will occur, and how the NNI will be held accountable to stakeholders through engagement processes.  There is remarkably little in the way of a strategy for citizen stakeholder engagement, where citizens are empowered to be part of the process of technology development and commercialization.  This is a critical area if sustainable and responsive technologies are to arise from investment in nanotechnology.

Environmental, health and safety impacts: The forthcoming nanotechnology EHS strategic plan is eagerly awaited.

Accountability: There is a profound lack of accountability within the strategic plan.  If goals are not met, investments do not lead to results, stakeholders are not adequately engaged, information is not disseminated effectively, or nanotechnology-relevant governance frameworks and mechanisms are not developed in a timely manner developed, who is accountable?

Building on the past 10 years: Reading the strategic plan, it is hard to imagine that this builds on ten years of work and over $12 billion worth of federal agency investment.  It would be helpful to see a clear roadmap for the coming years of the NNI that is developed with respect to what has already been achieved.  As just one example: on page 36 of the draft, the need for a web-based information and dissemination hub is mentioned – It would be helpful to know why, after ten years of the NNI this does not currently exist, what has been learned of needs and mechanisms for effective dissemination, and how the NNI specifically intends to address the need.

Agency actions: The strategic plan would be strengthened considerably if it contained more information on what precisely the member agencies will be doing to support the NNI’s goals and objectives.

]]> http://2020science.org/2010/11/27/reviewing-the-national-nanotechnology-initiative-strategic-plan-twitter-on-steroids/feed/ 4 http://2020science.org/2010/10/27/what-happens-when-you-cross-a-spider-with-a-goat-complete-the-story/ http://2020science.org/2010/10/27/what-happens-when-you-cross-a-spider-with-a-goat-complete-the-story/#comments Wed, 27 Oct 2010 14:43:26 +0000 Andrew Maynard http://2020science.org/?p=3740

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]

Now that I’ve had some time to get to grips with my new position as Director of the University of Michigan Risk Science Center, I thought it was high time I started letting people know something about where the Center will be heading over the next few years.  Cross-posted on the Risk Science Center’s home page, here’s a flavor of where we’re going:

Risk is often treated as a four-letter word, or an embarrassing relative – something distasteful that shouldn’t be mentioned in polite society. Yet the reality is that a clear understanding of risk and how to deal with it is essential to every aspect of our lives. The past hundred years have left us a horrifying legacy of what goes wrong when people ignore risks, or fail to identify, access and manage them appropriately, or aren’t equipped to make informed decisions as new potential issues arise. And the challenges are only going to get tougher in today’s increasingly technology-dependent, interconnected and resource-constrained world. Without a doubt, if we are to build a sustainable future in the 21st century, we need to rethink our approach to risk. We need integrative, cross-disciplinary approaches to understanding and managing risks that are inclusive of all stakeholders. We need to push the process of identifying and addressing potential risks up-stream in the innovation process. And we need to equip everyone from citizens to CEO’s and journalists to policy makers to make informed decisions in the face of increasing uncertainty and complexity.

When I accepted the directorship of the Risk Science Center earlier this year, it was this forward-looking challenge that was uppermost in my mind… We already have a strong tradition at the University of Michigan and elsewhere of assessing risks to human health through research in areas like toxicology, epidemiology and exposure, and using generated data to drive decisions on risk management and mitigation. But we struggle to deal with emergent risks presented by new technologies (or new ways of using old technologies) in a changing world. Everyone does – there is no manual (yet) for how to address human health risks from increasingly complex technologies, and how to do this in a society where stakeholder and citizen engagement is becoming increasingly important, where uncertainty dominates the decision-making process, and where ill-informed decisions on risks and benefits could be potentially catastrophic.

So my aim is for the Risk Science Center to spearhead the movement toward a new risk paradigm. By integrating cutting edge science, multi-stakeholder partnerships and effective communication, the Center will be working towards avoiding harm from existing and emerging technologies while ensuring their benefits are fully realized. It’s an approach that will significantly reduce the chances of future adverse health impacts – but it’s also one that makes sound business sense.

This is still very much a work in progress. Over the next year the governance structure of the Center will be established, it’s vision, mission, aims and activities will be further developed, and this website will undergo a major overhaul – creating a resource and community nexus for stakeholders, faculty and students engaged in thinking differently about risk.

In the meantime, please check out the Risk Science Center’s about page for further information on how the Center is developing. And keep an eye out for new initiatives coming out of the Center – including next year’s Bernstein Symposium on “Risk, Uncertainty and Sustainable Innovation: New Perspectives on Emerging Challenges”.

Risk may still be a four-letter word to some, but that’s going to have to change if we as a society are going to tackle the challenges and opportunities of the 21st century and come out on top. As the Risk Science Center develops, expect it to be front and center of this change.

For more information, check out the Risk Science Center’s website.

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!

______

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!

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/2010/06/23/im-a-scientist-a-brilliant-british-idea-that-needs-to-come-to-the-us/ http://2020science.org/2010/06/23/im-a-scientist-a-brilliant-british-idea-that-needs-to-come-to-the-us/#comments Wed, 23 Jun 2010 04:12:59 +0000 Andrew Maynard http://2020science.org/?p=3362

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/2010/06/19/welcome-to-real-science/ http://2020science.org/2010/06/19/welcome-to-real-science/#comments Sat, 19 Jun 2010 14:24:07 +0000 Andrew Maynard http://2020science.org/?p=3348

The way science is taught, the way it’s portrayed on TV and in the press, he way it’s promoted by science-advocates and science bloggers, often seems to adhere to a rather pompous and hubristic view of science as the ultimate bastion of truth and certainty.  So it’s been rather refreshing this week to see a group of real-world scientists shattering this image in the on-line event I’m A  Scientist, Get Me Out Of Here!

For those of you that haven’t been following this, I’m A Scientist is a two-week UK-based event where up to 8000 teenagers quiz 100 scientists on any and every subject under the sun, before they decide who is worthy of a £500 prize in support of science communication.  It’s an inspired event that puts students in charge of the conversation – and one that I am privileged to a part of this time round.

Half way in, the event has been intense – with over 100 live chats between scientists and classes of students, and literally thousands of questions and answers (scientists in the Cancer Zone – just one of twenty zones – have received over 700 questions from students so far!).

But what has struck me more than anything perhaps has been the honesty and humility of the scientists taking part.

Maybe it’s responding to kids that brings out the honesty (I know I have made a rule of answering questions as openly and as honestly as possible – because you don’t mess around with kids).  Maybe it’s that this is a bunch of real-world scientists, rather than the vocal minority that people are usually exposed to.  But the lack of science romanticism here has been eye-opening.

From subjects spanning global warming to evolution, and religion to animal testing, I’ve repeatedly seen participants lay out their honest opinions – even if they don’t match exactly with established opinion  The responses have not always clean and homogeneous and “politically correct” – sometimes even the science behind them isn’t as robust as some would like.

But this is how real scientists perceive their work, the world, and their place in it.

In other words, the answers to questions emerging on I’m A Scientist are probably a good reflection what the science community is actually like, rather than what we would sometimes like to think it is like.

I suspect the value of this honesty and humility is immense.  Clearly, it provides the students taking part in I’m A Scientist with a realistic view of what science is really like – and probably a more believable and attractive one than some idealized vision of the scientific endeavor.  I also think it is proving liberating to the scientists involved – providing them the opportunity to explore and express their honest perspective on things.

But just as importantly – the event is leading to a unique resource documenting what scientists really think – not just what they think they should think.

In the long run, this may be an incredibly important added-value within what is already an extremely high-value initiative.

Edit 6/19/10 – I meant to note above that many of these thoughts were sparked off by this blog from I’m A Scientist participant Tom Hartley earlier this week.

It’s a quarter to one in the morning Eastern Time, and I’ve just polished off the last question of the day on I’m A Scientist, Get Me Out Of Here!  I should be heading off to bed, but I wanted to capture some initial thoughts on this exercise first.

I’ve lost count of how many questions I’ve answered today – hundreds it seem (although it’s probably less).  I did see a note come round earlier that 1000 questions have already been answered by the team of scientists – and it’s just the first day.

Watching the reactions of my fellow contestants on Twitter, I think we’ve all had the same experience – gobsmacked by the volume and depth of the questions, followed by a rather rapid recalibration of how we go about answering them!

In fact this has had me intrigued – so far the event hasn’t so much been about scientists educating students, as students training scientists – training them to listen to what’s being asked, and to reply concisely and in terms that the questioner can understand.  It’s been a fascinating process to watch.  And judging by the speed with which peoples’ style of reply has evolved, it’s been a very successful process!

There’s also been a certain amount of humility in the scientists’ camp today, as we’ve all facing hard lessons in acknowledging what we don’t know!  The thing with teenagers – as we’re discovering first hand – is that they’re not scared to ask questions older people think they should know the answers to.  Which is why questions like “how does magnetism work” have thrown even seasoned physicists into disarray!

Just browsing through the questions I’ve had, they have covered everything from global warming ,to risks and safety, to what it’s like being a scientist, to animal testing.  I’ve even been asked rather personal questions about what I believe, and how much I earn (maybe inadvisedly, I’m adopting a policy of openness and transparency here – it’ll be interesting to see how long it lasts!).

Altogether a tough day, but a good one (and I haven’t even had a Live Chat yet, where the students bombard you with questions in real time!).

Let’s see what tomorrow brings!

And on a slightly different note, I wanted to highlight an article published today by I’m A Scientist producer Sophia Collins.  In it she makes an incredibly important point:

[A]sk me what I think the most important impact of this is and I’ll tell you this: the majority of today’s teenagers are not destined to become scientists, but they will all be people and citizens.

They’ll all have votes to cast, goods to buy, decisions to make. I want them to be doing that with some ability to think about the issues surrounding science. I don’t want them swayed by yuck factors or scaremongering that plays fast and loose with the facts. I also don’t want them making decisions in wilful ignorance, rejecting the evidence out of hand because they feel patronised and belittled by a science they perceive as elite or aloof. I want them to feel entitled to discuss the issues and equipped to do it, because only then will they come to a considered view.

Despite the hard work, this is exactly why I am so excited to be a part of this, and I suspect why a number of my colleagues are.

But more of that later.  For now, bed – before the next onslaught of questions begins!

You can see all of my answered questions here.

If you want to participate in the rather fab science event I’m A Scientist, Get me Out Of Here I’m afraid you are out of luck – unless you happen to be one of the 100 scientists and 8000 teenagers taking part.

But you can still get a thrill from watching the competition unfold on-line while experiencing science as a spectator sport as you’ve never seen it before! And believe me, this is an event you’re not going to want to miss – especially if you have any interest whatsoever in engaging teenagers in science.

So, if you want to watch the fun, where do you begin?

Here are three ways you might start:

1.  Random dipping

Simply open the home page of I’m A Scientist and dive in

You’ll notice the log-in panel to the right – just ignore this.

From this screen you have two options – pick a Zone to browse (there are twenty of them – ten themed zones, and ten general ones), or check out the latest questions (the panel to the right):

If you select a Zone, you can then explore the questions and discussions going on there (see below).  Each has five scientists, and around 400 teenagers pummeling them with questions.

2.  Zone-watching

Given the craziness of 8000 teenagers quizzing 100 scientists, you might prefer the relative sanity of concentrating on just one Zone.  There are twenty to choose from – ten focus on specific areas, while the remaining ones are science free-for-all’s.  You can either select your Zone of preference from the home page of I’m A Scientist, or from the drop-down menu at the top right of each page:

Once you enter a Zone, you can either view the most recent questions asked in that Zone from its home page, or you can check out what the Zone’s scientists have been up to by clicking on the “Scientists” tab .

This is what the Silicon Zone – my home on I’m A Scientist – looks like:

Check out the latest questions and comments under each scientist to see how they are doing.  Or click on an individual scientist to get the low-down on all their recent activity.

From the Zone Home page (accessed from the the top left tab), you can also explore all the questions students in this Zone have asked.  Simply go over to the “Recent Questions” box on the right of the screen, and select “View all answered questions”.  This brings up the full list of questions for this Zone:

3.  Scientist-rooting

Finally, you can opt to root for one of the 100 scientists taking part in I’m A Scientist.  To track their progress – and see whether they survive the week two “expulsions,” simply click on the scientist’s image from the Zone pages.  This is what my page looks like, but of course you have ninety-nine other worthy souls to root for as well

And finally, when you do click on a question, this is what you will get:

As scientists respond to the question and students comment on the responses, a conversation builds up, and the fun really begins!

There are plenty of other ways to enjoy I’m A Scientist – live chats between students and scientists are scheduled throughout the two weeks that you should be able to tap into for instance, and you can follow the I’m A Scientist back-stories on Twitter by using the hashtag #IAS2010.  There’s also a Twitter group of scientists involved in the event.

So log on, tune in, and immerse yourselves in one of the most innovative and exciting teen-science events in recent years.

But be warned – once you get hooked, there’s no going back!

Update 6/13/10 – I should have also mentioned that you can pull up a list of answered questions for each scientist from their profiles.  This is my list – similar lists are available for the other contestants.

]]> http://2020science.org/2010/06/13/a-spectators-guide-to-im-a-scientist-get-me-out-of-here/feed/ 1 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/2010/05/25/deja-vu-and-synthetic-biology-will-we-learn-the-lessons-of-nanotech-and-genetic-modification/ http://2020science.org/2010/05/25/deja-vu-and-synthetic-biology-will-we-learn-the-lessons-of-nanotech-and-genetic-modification/#comments Tue, 25 May 2010 11:20:42 +0000 Hilary Sutcliffe http://2020science.org/?p=3201

A guest blog by Hilary Sutcliffe, Director of MATTER, a UK think tank which explores how new technologies can work for us all.

The other day, I wrote a piece on the implications of synthetic biology where I  suggested that we “need to place discussions on a science basis, and not get over-distracted by ethical hand-wringing.”  It was a bit of a provocative statement – intentionally so – so I was pleased to see Hilary Sutcliffe pick up on it in the comments and push back against the implication that the ethics of synbio might not be as important as some think.  Given the relevance of her comments, I thought they deserved their own guest blog – so here they are – AM.

“Ethical hand-wringing”?  Hmm, I don’t think you were quite meaning this as I have interpreted it Andrew, but I have to disagree with your point in your Synthetic Biology Blog on the ethical hand-wringing, I think we should be distracting ourselves quite a lot with Ethical Hand-Wringing while the scientists are getting on with creating their new organisms, especially considering ‘what we understand is secondary to what we can do’, as you said.

I was at the Royal Society’s Synthetic Biology Stakeholder meeting which was shown by BBC Newsnight last week, (my Mum and I spotted me fleetingly in the corner!) and this and other recent synbio events gave me many a déjà vu moment – had I accidentally gone to a nano meeting?

There are many similarities between the development of genetic modification (GM) and nanotechnologies which can be learned in the development of synthetic biology.  Time is of the essence – GM and nano were pretty much already in the shops when we started to take action, but here perhaps we can get our act together a bit sooner.

Here are quick observations on my déjà vu moments and lessons from nano and GM that may apply.  This is not an exhaustive list, just my quick on-the-hoof thoughts in response to the limited information I have:

• This is just an evolution of….. what’s all the fuss about? – ‘But it’s just an extension of GM’, ‘it’s just an extension of systems biology’, ‘it’s not actually anything really different’, ‘it’s an evolution of what we have been doing for years’.  Hello?!  Whether that is true or not from a scientific point of view, much like nano when you are close to it, that is not the point.  As the The Economist points out in its editorial this week, ‘…whatever the rational pleadings of physics and chemistry, there exists a sense that biology is different, is more than just the sum of atoms moving about and reacting with one another, is somehow infused with a divine spark, a vital essence’.  That has always been the line from nano scientists too, perhaps with even more validity. But to the lay person, or the sceptic, it looks dismissive and rather suspicious.  So though it is perhaps reasonable from a scientific point of view, I would suggest that synthetic biologists kill that ‘line of defence’, it won’t work and it never worked for nano either. Instead of calming fears, in fact it often has the opposite effect of raising further concern in the non-expert.

• ‘But first we need a definition’: Aaaahhhhh, nnnnoooooo!  Guess what, there is no definition, and I had a big déjà vu moment here – the conversation was IDENTICAL to the many I have had about nano over the years!  Standards makers, regulators, synbiologists, whoever – get this sorted. This has been a very divisive issue for nano – some say deliberately engineered – so pleeeeese address this question as soon as possible.  I may be wrong, but there doesn’t seem to be a concerted international effort on this at the moment, there needs to be, now.  An idea – call up some of the nano people and find out how they did it (as slowly and tortuously as possible) and then do it differently!

• Governance – this does seem to be considered of real importance and there is work going on worldwide on this, though it appears in academia, rather than a concerted international effort – though I may be wrong. Five Academies – sister/brother orgs to the Royal Society – are meeting soon to discuss synbio, and this will be top of the list.  Obviously we need to do much better with this than we have on nano. The Venter Institute/MIT/CSIS prepared a interesting paper on Options for Governance; in the UK, Imperial/LSE/BIOS have a Center for Synthetic Biology and Innovation group which is doing some work sponsored by the Royal Society which looks interesting; and there are other experts in universities across the world doing their own work. But the BIG lesson for me from nano, which, with the potential for serious ‘bioerrors and bioterrors’, is even more important for synbio, is to get an international effort underway, ASAP, coordinated by a group such as the UN or OECD.  I have a vision of a UN/World Economic Forum/World Social Forum joint effort.  How unlikely is that, but perhaps worth a try?  Our Responsible Nano Code was the right document, but the wrong process.  Too British (despite the fact that all our businesses on the Working Group were multinational).  A very credible international process is very important here!

• ‘The current regulation is fit for purpose, we don’t need any more’.  This may actually be the case in this instance, but the time spent arguing about definitions with nano has slowed down the potential evaluation of the need for regulation and, some argue, given us some regulation which is not really fit for purpose. Again, an authoritative, multi-stakeholder process of regulatory evaluation needs to be underway now as part of the governance development process.

• Get business and science working together from the start.  In nano there were and still are parallel discussions going on with businesses and scientists in separate silos.  We really need to do things differently for synbio.  It is at the application end where the health, safety and environment impacts and social and ethical issues really hit, and business and science need both need to understand and participate in this.  If the governance area gets done by the Science Academies alone, this is unlikely to happen.  We need to find ways of making those connections with business early and making them stick.

• Ethical Hand-Wringing and public engagement. I have been encouraged by the calls on all sides for ethical debate, public engagement and what I think of as Ethical Hand-Wringing!  The ethical dilemmas in this are quite complicated, with vested interests on all sides and we need a serious commitment from governments, scientists and businesses to communicate clearly at all stages and engage all citizens in this discussion.  However, we do need more than the usual useful and interesting sets of focus groups reaching a few hundred people.  That is not really a debate on synthetic biology, it’s market research. Obviously synbioandme.org (yes I have bagged the domain) would be a start!  But I have come to the conclusion that we need to have mass communication and mass engagement if we are to allow citizens to understand and participate in this discussion.  This is tricky and we need to be much more innovative this time round.  And I don’t see much sign of that at the moment, though it is early days.  We made some inroads with nano, (fingers crossed for Nano&me being funded!) and the Dutch are doing a very interesting mass communication/engagement job on nano (check out the Nano Podium website).  Though of course as we are all broke, it won’t be happening anytime soon!

• But what do we want it for – where’s the overarching vision? A participant at the RS meeting made a very important point, which for me is the really big question.  We in the UK do these Big Important Inquiries (e.g. the recent Bioengineering report) where the government explores the potential for a technology with experts from the field in question and lo and behold, they say it is really important and should be given lots more funding! But where is the top level independent vision and strategy which explores the UK’s approach to its big issues – energy, health, poverty, the economy, for example – and looks at which technologies could be used to solve which problems?  Synbio, nano, GM, irradiation, IT, nano/bio/info/cogno may or may not be solutions to some of our most pressing problems, but unless applied research funding, economic incentives and commercial R&D is looked at in the context of other solutions, including non-technical ones, we can’t really be confident that we have got the right solutions to the right problems.   In addition, this is the very best time and place to anchor the Ethical Hand-Wringing, it would make public debate mean something, influential and galvanise everyone – from scientists to businesses, NGOs to governments – to engage better about the benefits of their work and debate real issues which will be relevant now and in the future.

Other countries do it – this must be an important priority for the new UK government. We have time with synthetic biology to get this right, we just need to get going now.

This piece also appears on the MATTER blog

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

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.

Does the US need more public participation in assessing technologies and their potential impact on society, and informing decisions on their development and use?  Richard Sclove – author of a new report on technology assessment – thinks yes; but only as part of a new paradigm for technology assessment.  The report, published today by the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars Science & Technology Innovation Program, announces plans for a new Expert and Citizen Assessment of Science and Technology Network (ECAST), which would compliment expert input with participatory technology assessment to help inform decisions on developing new and emerging technologies.

I’m currently reading Robert Winston’s new book “Bad Ideas? An arresting history of our inventions” (slowly, as regular followers of 2020 Science will realize!).  Starting from the earliest indications of innovation amongst humans – from tool-making and the development of language – and ending up at the present day, he takes a hard look at what innovation has cost us over the ages, as well as what we have gained from it.  Reading it, one can’t help ask the question (as I suspect the author intended) – are we slaves to innovation, or can we control the process?

Technology Assessment in all its guises is a rejection of the former, and an attempt to embrace the latter.  It is based on the assumption that, if only we can get some insight into where a particular technology innovation is going and what the broader social and economic consequences might be, we should be able to tweak the system to increase the benefits and decrease the downsides.

As an idea, it’s an attractive one.  Having the foresight to identify potential hurdles to progress ahead of time and make decisions that help overcome them at an early stage makes sound sense.  If businesses wants to develop products that are sustainable over long periods, governments want to craft policies that have long-reaching positive consequences and citizens want to support actions that will benefit them and  their children, any intelligence on the potential benefits and pitfalls associated with a new technology is invaluable to informed decision-making.

The trouble is, making sense of a complex future where technology, social issues, politics, economics and sheer human irrationality collide, is anything but straight forward.

Back in 1972, the US Congress established the Office of Technology Assessment (OTA) to handle exactly this type of challenge.  For 23 years , OTA took a relatively formal and meticulous approach to assessing emerging technologies for Congress, based on expert input and analysis.  When the Office was closed in 1995, many considered it a blow to informed policy on science and technology within the US.  Ironically, as the US (along with the rest of the world) now squares up to some of the most complex science and technology-based issues and opportunities ever to face humanity, the tools that might help inform forward-looking decisions on how to navigate this technology-driven future are rather conspicuously lacking.

Into this void comes today’s report from Dr. Richard Sclove – founder and senior Fellow of the Loka Institute.  Sclove argues that we need to take a proactive role in determining the trajectory of technology for the good of society, but that a changing world demands new approaches – the OTA of 1972 (he suggests) would look conspicuously out of place in today’s fast pace, interconnected world.  Specifically, he argues that citizens need a place at the table – not instead of experts, but as a valuable voice alongside those of others in evaluating how technology-driven futures might most appropriately evolve.

Richard makes a strong case for what he terms participatory Technology Assessment – or pTA.  He argues that in a democracy, citizens should have the right to help decide how technology is developed and used; that citizens bring a range of social values to the table which are critical to determining technology trajectories and can help select potentially more sustainable ways forward; that engaging a broad base of people expands the knowledge base on which decisions are made; that citizen involvement can improve the effectiveness of decisions that are made, and help avoid costly mis-steps; and that pTA can even lead to expedited conclusions (although I am still struggling to see how asking more people for their perspectives and input can lead to a faster process).

The challenge is, how to make this work – and work in a way where citizens are fully engaged in the process of decision making, rather than just being a token presence.

Sclove quickly dismisses the option of re-instating the OTA (or a similar institutionalized body) as being outdated, unlikely to embrace pTA (the OTA did not engage citizens in technology assessment generally), and too focused on serving institutions within government rather than society as a whole.   He also challenges the suggestion that sufficient technology assessment is already carried out by a range of government offices, including the Government Accountability Office (GAO) and the Congressional Research Service (CRS).

Instead, an alternative is offered – an independent network of institutions that work together to carry out a combination of expert and participatory technology assessment.

The result is ECAST – the Expert & Citizen Assessment of Science & Technology Network; a proposed independent network of organizations that can facilitate and conduct technology assessments that are not only responsive to 21st century challenges, but also make full use of 21st century opportunities.

As presented in the report, ECAST is in the initial stages of formation, supported by the Woodrow Wilson  International Center for Scholars, the Boston Museum of Science, the Consortium for Science, Policy and Outcomes at Arizona State University, Science CheerLeader, and The Loka Institute.  However, there are clearly plans to expand this network.

The model as it stands is based on working through science museums (as a direct link to citizens), universities (bringing innovative ideas and research and analysis capabilities to the table) and non-partisan policy research organizations (providing policy relevance, and interfacing with decision makers).  While at an early stage of development, it clearly draws on the ideas of independence, input from experts and laypersons, and strong connections to policymakers (the report stresses the need for a physical presence in Washington DC).

Does the idea have legs?  I’m not sure yet, although I would be the first to agree that movement along these lines is desperately needed if the US is to develop strategic and sustainable technology innovation policies.  Looking to the future, it’s hard to justify letting innovation run its course without any form of intervention – if the recent economic crisis has taught us anything, it’s that.  As advances in science and technology, global communications and coupling between humanity and the environment in which we live continue to converge together, there is a social and economic imperative to help ensure technology innovation leads to long-term progress.  And assuming that everything will fall out in the wash without proactive intervention is both naive and short sighted.  The only real question is how to go about controlling the future.

I would argue strongly that, as stakeholders in the future, citizens have a right and a responsibility to be a part the process.  Richard’s proposal is definitely a significant move in this direction.  It’s not perfect – I have questions over the legitimacy of the process, sources of funding, the ability of the proposed network to make a difference, and translating academic ideals into practical reality.  Nevertheless, it’s an exciting and innovative step forward, and one that I will be following with interest.

I don’t particularly like the thought that we are slaves to innovation – I may be overly optimistic, but I would like to believe that humanity has the ability to choose future courses that are more likely to improve people’s lives.  But as our “inventions” get increasingly more sophisticated, it’s going to take more than luck and good intentions to ensure that what looks good on paper doesn’t turn out to be yet another “bad idea.” Hopefully, innovations like ECAST will help empower people to work together towards a future in which technology innovation is more likely to solve problems, than create new ones.

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I feel I should add a disclaimer to this post, as Richard Sclove’s report was published by an organization I was a part of until recently – the Science & Technology Innovation Program at the Woodrow Wilson Center.  However, I was not in any way associated with the development and writing of the report, and indeed the first time I saw it was earlier today when it was publicly released.

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!

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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.

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.

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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.

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!

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.

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

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.

Brain-candy for the intellectually incapacitated.

To help the brain cells recuperate from over-exertion (and quite possibly over-indulgence) this Holiday season, here’s a short compendium of mindless games – the sort of things scientists and others indulge in when they think no-one’s looking!

The selection rules here were simple: Anything that didn’t hold my attention for more than 5 seconds, required a double-digit IQ, or was associated with “learning goals,” was ditched faster than a game of Klingon Scrabble.

Of course, you’re expected to pooh pooh the resulting collection to friends and colleagues as being nothing but mindless drivel – got to keep the side up after all!  But when you’re alone, check out the games.  Believe me, your over-exerted brain cells will thank you!

Happy Holidays

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Science Crossword

I thought I’d start with at least a pretense of intellectual stimulation with this science crossword.  Pretense is the keyword here – this isn’t quite Times Crossword territory.  Which is a relief, as completing it is straightforward, even if most of your brain is still off partying elsewhere.

If you enjoyed this, there are fifteen other science crosswords to keep you amused ScienceCrossword.com

Levers

Here’s a deceptively engaging bit of fun from VectorPark.  Just build a mobile from the pieces provided.  Each time you get the thing to balance, you get another piece to add – how far can you get?  Like all games from VectorPark, it’s up to you to discover the rules by trial and error.  Or you could just sit and watch your mobile twist and turn on the screen – my recommendation after a heavy Holiday meal!

Monkey Lander

You know the slogan “a minute to learn, a lifetime to master?”  At least half of it applies to Monkey Lander.  The mission is simple – steer Monkey’s ship to collect the fruit (then get Monkey safely to the landing pad).  The science-ish twist? – some of the more obvious laws of physics (and rocket-propelled monkeys) apply.

Science Fiction WordSearch

Another option for people who prefer words to spaceship-flying monkeys.  There are four scifi-themed word searches in all here.  None of them are too taxing – which is quite alright by me.

Spider

Some more fun from VectorPark.  I’m not entirely sure what is supposed to happen here, apart from a six-legged dog/bird hybrid eagerly following a spider around the screen – maybe I just haven’t played with it for long enough.  If you find out, let me know.

Neave Vote

I really struggled to decide what to include in this compendium from Paul Neave – there’s so much great stuff on his website (thanks to @Alessandro on Twitter for the recommendation).  But this tickled me – it’s the perfect antidote for anyone who takes on-line polls too seriously!

Windosill

Back to VectorPark for the next game.  This is another game of discovery – no rules; just a mouse, a screen, and a bizarrely elegant world.  Then it’s up to you.  The first couple of levels are free (if you can work out how to move on from the opening screen), but to play the full game, it’ll cost you $3!

A hint – follow the car.

Gravity Launch

Gravity Launch almost didn’t make it into the mindless game compendium – it teeters on the edge of being too educational.  But despite this obvious flaw, it’s still a lot of fun – and simple too.  Just adjust the rocket’s thrust and takeoff angle, and try to dock with an increasingly complex array of space stations.  Thanks to @science_4_all on Twitter for bringing this one to my attention.

The Eyeballing Game

I thought I’d throw this one in for engineers… and other obsessive-compulsives. How well can you complete each pattern, just by “eyeballing” it?  Harder than you think – especially if you’re a little worse for wear!

Feed the Head

Finally, I thought I would leave the most bizarre game to last – and no surprises that once again it’s from VectorPark.  Feed the Head is a Pythonesque piece of trippy weirdness that will either have you hooked, or doing physical damage to your computer in frustration.  If you think there’s a danger of this, best stick to flying monkeys. This is another game of discovery – follow the mouse, and see where it leads…

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End Note

Okay, so I have a confession to make.  Despite my aims of embracing the trivial and avoiding learning experiences at all costs, these games have a little more in common with science and technology than might be immediately apparent.  With a couple of exceptions, there’s a discovery and prediction theme going on here that reflects how science tends to work, not to mention some rather cool physically-realistic modeling.  But don’t let that distract you from enjoying the games for what they are – (relatively) mindless fun!

Part 9 of a series on rethinking science and technology for the 21^st century

Writing about completing the circle of science and technology policy at the start of the Copenhagen climate summit seems particularly fitting.  Although the climate change context was far from my mind when I started this series, it stands as a stark reminder of the consequences of unconstrained science and technology, the possibilities of using science and technology to create a better future, and the daunting complexities of crafting policies that get us as a society to where we want to be.

Whether it’s dealing with climate change or innumerable other issues, the way we develop and use science and technology needs to be responsive to the challenges we face as a society, and the social, political and economic environment within which we face them.  Simply funding scientists to do what takes their fancy isn’t likely to deliver the goods in a world increasingly dominated by the three C’s – Communication, Control and Coupling.  Yet heavy-handed control of the science agenda is clearly not the answer—autonomy and open-ended research are essential to scientific discovery and innovation.

So what’s the answer?  How do we ensure our investment in science and technology as a society achieves what we believe it should, without over-indulging a science elite, or stifling discovery and innovation?  At the end of the last blog in this series I suggested that we need increased feedback in the policy process to make it work better.

Feedback loops take some of the output of a process and feed it back into the input – they’re a way of regulating a process so that it remains responsive, and doesn’t get out of control.  Of course, the business of policy is full of feedback loops.  In fact the whole political process can be seen as one rather large feedback loop – unpopular leaders and decisions usually end up being overturned, although sometimes the “time constants” are rather long.  The next two weeks in Copenhagen is a prime example of feedback in policy-making – even if this is a feedback loop with a rather large time constant.

However just because feedback mechanisms exist doesn’t mean that they are as effective as they could be…

In part 8 of this series, I proposed two feedback loops in particular that will become increasingly important to developing more responsive science and technology policy: Review and Participation.

The Review loop should be reasonably clear: It deals with comparing the actual impact of policy decisions with the intended impact, and adjusting the inputs to realign the outcomes.  This might mean altering the original goals, increasing (or even decreasing) the resources made available for specific areas, or changing the mechanisms by which those resources are used (for example).  It seems obvious, but it isn’t often done that well in practice.  There’s a fine line between too little and too much feedback, or feedback that’s fast but ill-informed and feedback that’s comprehensive but interminable!  Yet if we don’t get this balance right, it will be near-impossible to craft policies that respond to the ever-accelerating opportunities and challenges presented by 21^st century science and technology.

The Participation loop on the other hand may not be quite so clear.  This arises in to a large degree from one of the three “C’s” – communication – but is also driven by the other two – control and coupling.

Old-style “command and control” approaches to policy haven’t a hope of working in tomorrow’s hyper-connected world.  Through rapid and radical advances in global communication, people have become an inextricable part of the decision-making process – as a society, we now have a louder voice than ever before.  Policy makers can either fight this, or embrace it.

Integrating the participation of individuals and groups with a stake in science and technology into the policy process is a pragmatic necessity.  These are the people who will be affected by the outcomes of decisions made by governments, and who will become increasingly vocal – and influential – if they don’t like those decisions.  They are also a potential force for positive change – by listening to the “consumers” of science and technology, it becomes possible to craft policies which address their actual wants and needs, rather than making assumptions on their behalf.

There is also an ethical dimension here – to what extent is it appropriate for an elite handful of decision-makers to decide what is good for the masses?  Certainly, where highly complex information needs to be understood, interpreted and acted on, expert input is needed.  But broader decisions on the relevance and implications of science and technology should arguably involve the people (and organizations) who stand to benefit or suffer as a result of them.

So what are the keys and consequences to developing (or further developing) these two feedback loops?

When I gave the original lecture on which these notes are based, I identified three action-areas that will both help establish the loops, and ensure their effectiveness: empowerment, engagement and evaluation.

Empowering stakeholders

Neither of these two feedback loops will work if people and organizations are not empowered to become effective stakeholders.  This goes for expert stakeholders as well as lay stakeholders (which in most cases is people like you and me).  However, the challenges to empowering each group are different.

Lay stakeholders need to be provided with the ability to deal with the complexities of modern science and technology – and not to be intimidated by them.  Critical thinking is essential here – people need to be enabled to make sense of information, and separate out what is more important from what is less significant.  Information also needs to be accessible – in its original form (predominantly as peer reviewed publications), in non-expert syntheses, and in appropriate media coverage (and I’m including blogs here).  And importantly, the consequences of science and technology-related decisions need to be conveyed to non-expert stakeholders.  Even though many people struggle to understand the principles behind modern science and technology, most can grasp what it means to them personally if it is explained well.

Expert stakeholders on the other hand need to learn to communicate effectively, if they are to play their part in these feedback loops.  And critically, they need to learn to listen – to understand what the questions are, before providing answers.

Engaging stakeholders

This is a huge subject, worthy of several blog sites on its own (many of which already exist), and there is no way I can do it justice in a few sentences.  Yet looking at stakeholder engagement from the perspective of the two feedback loops being discussed, four points are worth highlighting:

First is the need for public discourse.  Without this, how will people know what is going on in science and technology, how it will affect them, and how they can play a part in shaping their future?  This leads directly into participation in decision-making.  Public engagement is not about communication, education or persuasion – it is about making people an integral part of the policy process – providing them with a seat at the table, where they will be listened to and taken seriously.

Effective public discourse and engagement will only be possible though if science is more completely integrated into society.  Rather than being seen as someone else’s problem, science in the 21^st century needs to be seen as everyone’s “problem.”  This will need some cultural changes if progress is to be made, from addressing educators who can’t see the point of science, to tackling politicians and public figures that undermine it, to dealing with scientists who strive to maintain their self-allotted place at the top of the intellectual pyramid.  But without changing the culture that determines science’s place within society, it will remain the realm of the elite.  And in a world increasingly dependent on science and technology, this can only lead to a Technocracy – in spirit, if not in name.

One possible approach to increasing the level of science and technology engagement is to build science and technology constituencies – groups of people with a vested interest in seeing science and technology developed and used effectively in specific areas.  The idea comes from medical research, where highly vocal involvement from non-expert stakeholders can have a huge influence on research investment, direction and application.

This approach is fraught with difficulties – the possibilities for ill-informed decisions are rife when poorly informed groups lobby for narrow areas of research to take a specific course.  But putting that aside, it’s intriguing to ask what would happen if communities were energized to be a part of research initiatives into areas like clean energy, water access, transport, food production?  What if passive lay “stakeholders” were given the opportunity to be active stakeholders, who could see a direct return on their investment in supporting and being a part of research initiatives that meant something to them?

Science and technology constituencies are a potentially dangerous idea – they take power away from the established elite for a start.  But it’s an intriguing concept nevertheless, and one that should probably be explored further.

(Re)Evaluating drivers, mechanisms and policies.

Finally, what’s the relevance of these feedback loops to people in a position to review and influence policy decisions?

In my original lecture, I highlighted three areas that policy makers and research funders should be focusing on: challenge-informed science, new knowledge stimulation, and knowledge-coupling.

Challenge-informed science. This is a bit of a hot potato.  The question of how you strike a balance between so-called blue skies research and applied research has vexed the science community for years, and at times has become extremely heated.  But rather than argue for one or the other, I would reframe the question and ask “how can we best develop science and technology policies that are socially relevant?”

Science for its own sake is essential – as I explain below.  But policy makers are accountable for how they spend a limited pot of public money.  For instance, if a country or region is facing challenges that will impact severely on peoples’ lives and livelihoods, and that could be alleviated through strategic investment in science and technology, it is hard for policy makers to argue for the bulk of science funding to go towards research that is irrelevant, which may serendipitously lead to some solutions to some future challenges, or which will lead to relevant knowledge but too late to be of any use.

Of course, the counter-argument is that it is naïve to assume that science and technology can be coerced into providing rapid solutions to challenges.  I would agree with this.  Yet at the same time, it is entirely possible for science and technology to be framed and guided—informed—by challenges (and opportunities) that society is facing now, or is likely to face in the future.  This doesn’t preclude blue skies research – but it does increase the chances of science and technology leading to socially relevant solutions.

And it should never be forgotten that practicing science is not an inalienable right – scientists (and technologists and engineers) and ultimately accountable to their patrons – who in this day and age tend to be their fellow citizens.

New Knowledge stimulation. So where does that leave blue skies research?  I would argue that there is always a justification for supporting open ended, exploratory research for three reasons:  It enriches society through raising our awareness of who we are and the universe we live in; it leads to serendipitous discovery; and it lays a foundation on which more applied research and technology innovation can be built.  It is essential to the science enterprise.  The only question is where the balance between open ended and ends-justified research should be.

I would argue that blue skies research should not dominate science and technology, except where there is a strong and specific argument for it to do so (the mega-expensive Large Hadron Collider comes to mind, where progress can only be made with substantial investment and little promise of practical return).  I would also suggest that it should be led by the most able researchers—those most capable of pushing the boundaries of knowledge.  And it should still be held accountable – even if this means communicating the more metaphysical and philosophical impacts of the work.  Blue skies research should never be a free ticket for researchers to do what they want at someone else’s expense.

Knowledge coupling. “Interdisciplinary research” is a buzz phrase that has been around for decades – often as a means of winning grants, which are then used for anything but true interdisciplinary research.  Yet it’s hard to deny that some of the more significant advances in science and technology occur at the intersections between different areas of expertise.  And it’s not only when researchers work between different scientific disciplines that innovation occurs – collaborations between scientists and engineers, social scientists, experts in the humanities and others are proving to be equally profitable.

What we are seeing is the effect of “knowledge coupling” – ensuring knowledge can flow between different fields of expertise with ease, leading to new ideas, new avenues of research and, ultimately, new advances in science and technology.  This seems to be a more useful concept than “interdisciplinary research” as it captures the essence of how knowledge and information lead to discovery, innovation and progress.  The more we can remove barriers to this cross-disciplinary, cross-expertise and cross-sector flow of knowledge, the better we will be at both stimulating new science, and using it effectively.

Pulling it all together

Developing and using science and technology effectively in the 21^st century will not be easy.  Increasingly, we’re facing “wicked problems” – problems that many stakeholders are interested in, but which remain elusive and ill-defined.  Science and technology are leading to some of these problems, but they also hold the keys to solving them – but only if we learn to use them wisely and effectively.  Integral to this process is getting the policy framework right, so that informed and effective decisions can be made.  And this in turn will depend on how the outcomes of the science and technology enterprise are fed back into the inputs – leading to policies that are responsive and effective.

As scientists, leaders, decision-makers, lobbyists and others gather in Copenhagen over the next two weeks, it will be an interesting test of how effectively science and technology policy are serving society, and how far we still have to go if we are to rise to the emerging challenges of the 21^st century.  Will we see the “nasty brutish debate with science caught somewhere in the middle” predicted by Tim Harper, or will a more mature and enlightened approach emerge?

I suspect Tim is right on this one, but hopefully he isn’t – because more than ever before we need to get science and technology right if we are to deal with the opportunities and challenges that Coupling, Communication and Control are going to throw our way over the coming decades.

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.

Previously: Riding the wave: Rethinking science & technology policy

Next: Science and Technology Innovation – looking to the future

]]> http://2020science.org/2009/12/07/completing-the-circle-coupling-science-technology-outputs-to-inputs/feed/ 0 http://2020science.org/2009/11/29/researchers-are-real-people-too-thoughts-on-interviewing-scientists/ http://2020science.org/2009/11/29/researchers-are-real-people-too-thoughts-on-interviewing-scientists/#comments Sun, 29 Nov 2009 10:12:45 +0000 Andrew Maynard http://2020science.org/?p=2474

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.

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]

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!

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]

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.

My role in all of this – apart from making the odd encouraging noise – was to help out at a trial-run of the van back in June.

Part of the concept here was to use the van as a platform for experts to engage with real people on nanotechnology and geoengineering.  I’m told the idea was to get experts and members of the public talking to each other in an accessible, fun, non-threatening environment.  Fun and non-threatening for the public maybe – I’m not so sure the experts felt that way about it! But then maybe this was part of the process of breaking down barriers between people that know about emerging technologies like nanotech, and those that want to know more.

Actually, I had a blast with the van. Talking about the project, nanotechnology and geoengineering with Zoe’s friends and neighbors, I was fascinated by how easily the conversations flowed amidst demonstrations of the van’s cloud generators and roof-mounted industrial-strength water spray. With the van as a backdrop (and it really is an impressive piece of design-work), people started discussing emerging technologies – and what they might mean for them personally – without having to be forced into it.

Engagement is something that is talked about a lot in science and technology circles, but rarely done well.  Yet here were a couple of arts students effortlessly* bridging the gap between emerging technologies and members of the public, using their imagination, design skills and a bit of fun.

For the past week the van has been on display outside the Royal College of Art and has been attracting plenty of attention by all accounts.  Over the coming year it’s scheduled to make a number of appearances around the country – exactly where and when (and with whom) will be posted on the Cloud Project website (where you can also find out more about the project).

If you get the chance, I’d encourage you to visit it.  It’s a lot of fun.  But it also demonstrates the importance of using art and design together with other skills in bridging the gap between new technologies coming over the horizon, and people who they are potentially going to affect.

And geoengineering the planet with nanotech ice-cream?  I don’t think it’ll happen anytime soon.  But it’s certainly something to think about as you munch on your ’99 this summer.**

End Notes

For more information on the Cloud Project, check out the project website.

Read more about the Royal College of Art Design Interactions course here.

*Actually, as Zoe and Cat will tell you, this project was far from effortless when it came to refurbishing the Sherpa van.  This took a tremendous amount of effort over the past several months – but the results are impressive!

**For non-Brits, the ’99 is the peak of British gourmet ice-cream – a whirl of soft-whip with a length of flaky chocolate stuck in it.  Delicious

]]> http://2020science.org/2009/07/05/geoengineering-the-plane-with-nanotechnology-icecream/feed/ 4 http://2020science.org/2009/06/27/celebrity-scientists-%e2%80%93-it-takes-more-than-stardust/ http://2020science.org/2009/06/27/celebrity-scientists-%e2%80%93-it-takes-more-than-stardust/#comments Sat, 27 Jun 2009 20:38:29 +0000 Andrew Maynard http://2020science.org/?p=1834

It’s been a few weeks now since the men’s style magazine GQ launched the “Rock Stars of Science” campaign.  I’m a staunch advocate of raising science’s profile, but the whole campaign has had me on edge, and I haven’t quite been able to put my finger on why.  Was it the exclusive use of white middle-aged male scientists?  Was it the implied message that the science-guys were rock-star wannabes?  Or was it the assumption that medical science is the only science worth promoting?

Sheryl Crow, Anthony S. Fauci M.D. and Harold Varmus, M. D. (I'll leave you to work out which is which.) From the Rock Stars of Science Campaign

Then it struck me – what really got under my skin was the cultural cargo cult mentality being flaunted.

Cultural cargo cult?  It’s not a new metaphor, but not a commonly used one either.  If it had a Wikipedia entry, it might read something like this:

A cultural cargo cult is a practice that may appear in societies in the wake of interactions with separate, socially advanced cultures. The cults are focused on obtaining the popularity of the advanced culture through association and behavior-emulation, believing that the fame and fortune achieved by others should be theirs, because they are more worthy.

Following contact with people from more socially advanced societies through random encounters, the media and, more recently, Twitter, cultural cargo cults have been observed around the world.  They are particularly prevalent in the developed economies of the West.

Members, leaders, and advocates of cultural cargo cults maintain that the social kudos (“cargo”) of the advanced culture has been created by trivial means, such as through celebrity promotion.  They believe this kudos is rightfully theirs but that, unfairly, the celebs of the other culture have gained control of this social status through attracting  “cool” to themselves by malice or mistake.

Cultural cargo cults thus focus on efforts to overcome what they perceive as the undue influence of celebrities in attracting cool, by conducting rituals imitating behavior they have observed among the holders of the desired kudos and presuming that their fellow citizens will, at last, recognize their worth and send the “cargo” to them instead.

A characteristic feature of cultural cargo cults is the belief that punters will, at some future time, give much valuable kudos and desirable “cool” to the cult members, rather than worthless celebrities who should never, in their eyes, have got it in the first place!

(My apologies to the authors of the Wikipedia entry on cargo cults, which this has more than a passing resemblance to.)

I hate to be too critical of the Rock Stars of Science campaign.  The medical research it aims to support is laudable.  And truth be told, I’d have been there like a shot if the call came in to do a photo shoot with Sheryl Crow!  But in the context of science communication and awareness-building, this is a classic example of cultural cargo cult-ism.  In their haste to be seen with the cool gang, the scientists have forgotten to ask what makes its members cool in the first place!

This probably would have been fine if the only message emerging was that naïve scientists simply like to have fun.  Unfortunately, I don’t think this was the case.

As @mjrobbins writes on The Lay Scientist,

“Let’s just look at the statistics here. GQ assembled 11 scientists, and 5 rock stars. Of the rock stars, two are black, one is a woman. Of the scientists, 11 are middle-aged white males. For a campaign that wants to attract new young people into science in a country where around half of young people are women and probably nearly half are from ethnic minorities, that’s just moronic.

But, okay, you’ve got your middle-aged white guys in suits into the studio and you’re ready to take some photos that promote science. It doesn’t take a marketing genius to tell you that the scientists should be in the centre, and the rock stars should be fawning over them.”

Given the reach of GQ and the rock stars that participated in the photo shoot, the messaging here will have an impact.  And sadly, that message seems to be that successful scientists are white middle-aged males (with a dubious dress sense) who, when all’s said and done, wish they’d become celebrity musicians instead.

@drisis concludes her blog on the Rock Stars of Science campaign with:

“This campaign sends the message that scientists aspire towards other things.  Not that other people aspire to be scientists.  It seems to me that if you want to have an effective campaign then what you do is put Sheryl Crow in a lab coat and take pictures of those guys teaching her to pipet or culture some cells or use a microscope.  Don’t take pictures of talented, gifted scientists — scientists whose talents make them as unique and talented as the rockstars they are pictured with — trying to be musicians.  Take a picture of a musician aspiring to be a scientist.”

Getting people turned on to science is incredibly important.  And nurturing science-savvy cultural icons will certainly help achieve this.  Indeed, there are already plenty of icons-in-the-making around, if only they could be given a bit of a leg up.

But let’s not fall into the trap of thinking that dressing like and fraternizing with celebrities will lead to some of the stardust rubbing off.

Postscript

In the Twitter chatter around the Rock Stars of Science campaign earlier today, a number of people pointed out that Queen guitarist Brian May is quite literally a Rock Star of Science – having reveived his Ph.D. from Imperial College in London in 2007.  And his thesis?  “Radial Velocities in the Zodiacal Dust Cloud.”  Clearly a rock star of science who genuinely knows his stardust

Update 6/28/09 – Also check out Chris Mooney’s thoughts on the Rock S.O.S campaign, which provide a good contrast to mine.  And if you want a closer gander at the pictures from the photoshoot that launched the campaign, here’s the 4-page portfolio from GQ Magazine [PDF, 580 KB]

This afternoon, a riveting and possibly ground-breaking conversation evolved in real time on the social media platform Twitter.  Yesterday, writer and broadcaster Colin Stuart (@skyponderer on Twitter) raised concerns about the new dual-role of UK Science Minister Lord Drayson – Drayson has just been made Minister of Defense Procurement as part of Gordon Brown’s reshuffle, on top of his duties as Minister of Science.  His comment was picked up by PD Smith, an author and reviewer for the Guardian newspaper, and re-tweeted.  Things might have ended there.  But Lord Drayson himself jumped into the conversation earlier today.  And so began a fascinating exchange between Drayson – a regular presence on Twitter – and a number of other Twitter users.

Lord Drayson - UK Minister of Science, Minister of Defense Procurement, and founder of Drayton Racing. Image: Daily Mail

Both Sophia Collins at “I am a scientist. Get me out of here” and PD Smith have blogged on the exchange – read Smith for a concise account of the discussion, and Collins for a more complete rundown of the tweets. .. Looking through the succession of 140 character (or less) messages, this was clearly not a deep debate, nor one that led to marked changes in perspective.  But where it scored significantly was in the level of accessibility, transparency and engagement demonstrated by Lord Drayson.

Quoting PD Smith:

I have to admit I was surprised. Actually that’s a serious understatement. I sat in front of the screen for a few minutes wondering if I was seeing things. Don’t Her Majesty’s ministers of state have more urgent matters to attend to than dealing with comments on Twitter by authors? Perhaps it was a practical joke? A fake Lord perhaps?

Here was a senior minister engaging fully with members of the public on science policy.  And doing so without (as far as I could tell) being patronizing, unapproachable or stand off-ish.

The result was a clear demonstration of how emerging platforms like Twitter can help increase the level of engagement between decision-makers and the people impacted by their actions.

Of course, there are plenty of kinks still to be ironed out with how Twitter is best used to connect people in important ways.  Will we simply see increasingly sophisticated spin promoted under the banners of “engagement” and “transparency?”  How will PR folks manage the new accessibility?  Is engaging on Twitter less than inclusive?  Can you really have engagement in 140 character bites?  And what happens when everyone and their dog (or cat) realizes that important people are merely a tweet away?

But despite these questions, today’s conversation demonstrated that Twitter can provide a powerful platform for bringing publics and decision-makers together.  And I suspect that it goes further than this; whether we are talking engaging in policy or engaging in science, the platform enables interactions that it’s hard to imagine happening otherwise.

In this sense, Twitter is becoming the global equivalent of the local pub – where social hierarchies are less important than what you say, and how you say it.

Irrespective of the issues discussed, my sense is that Lord Drayson acquitted himself well today by being willing to converse with folk on Twitter.  And while no serious issues may have been put to bed, at least they had an airing and people were given a voice. What remains to be seen is whether others learn to use this and similar forums in a similar way and engage with others – whether on politics, science, or any other area that directly affects people.

I guess time and tweets will tell.

]]> http://2020science.org/2009/06/09/science-ministers-question-time/feed/ 6 http://2020science.org/2009/04/28/culture-clash-take-the-2-second-two-cultures-poll/ http://2020science.org/2009/04/28/culture-clash-take-the-2-second-two-cultures-poll/#comments Tue, 28 Apr 2009 14:13:44 +0000 Andrew Maynard http://2020science.org/?p=1331

A 2-second distraction in the run-up to the 50th anniversary of CP Snow’s Two Cultures lecture:  Take the two-cultures poll (below), and see how your answer aligns with those from others:

Take Our Poll

(If you can’t see the poll, click here)

Now you’ve pressed the button and seen the results, here’s the background:

On May 7th 1959, the scientist, politician and novelist CP Snow highlighted a destructive gulf between the literary intellectuals of the day and scientists – his “two cultures.”  Fifty years on, the cultures have changed, but possibly not as much as we would like to believe…

So where are we now?  Do most people respect and understand science?  Have the cultures of science and the humanities reconciled their differences?  Or are there new cultures and divides emerging that are just as divisive now as Snow’s two cultures were 50 years ago?

These are issues that are going to aired far and wide around next week’s 50th anniversary of Snow’s Two Cultures lecture.  As a precursor to these discussions though I wanted to start the ball rolling by posing a question that Snow famously asked of his literary friends.

But I wanted to pose the question with a twist.

Snow asked his colleagues to describe the Second Law of Thermodynamics as a way of revealing their disregard for scientific understanding. I’ve long felt the question was unfair, and Snow himself acknowledged its limitations in a follow-on to his 1959 lecture.

But a little bit of me has been dying to ask the question anyway – just to see what sort of responses I got.

Here’s the twist though: Rather than ask for a formal definition of a formal Law, the question above tests people’s grasp of the underlying science, and how they judge its importance.  The possibility (or not) of perpetual motion – pendulums and other devices that go for ever and continue to work without additional fuel or maintenance – is deeply embedded in the Second Law of Thermodynamics

I have a sneaky suspicion that the results will reveal a greater appreciation for science than Snow found amongst his literary colleagues 50 years ago.  But we’ll see – I’ll be blogging on what the poll does (and doesn’t) reveal next week.

And before I’m deluged with comments and criticisms, let me be clear – this isn’t a scientific poll.   It is however a great teaser to the he myriad commentaries and seminars that will undoubtedly be appearing on CP Snow and the Two Cultures over the next few weeks.  And it might just reveal something interesting – stay tuned.

And finally, please pass this link on – the more people take the 2-second poll, the more interesting the data will be

Thanks!

Update 4/28/09:  As a “humanities counterbalance,” PLEASE check Ruth Seeley’s alternative poll out – another short one, so go for it!

How many good nanotech videos have you come across?  Chances are, you’ll be struggling to name more than one of two.  But over the past few weeks there have been a few posted on the web that are worth watching.  These three in particular mesh together rather nicely to tell a story of nanotechnology’s potential, some of the hurdles that need to be overcome to make it work, and one or two of the myths that have messed around with people’s perceptions.

The first two feature footage of me in conversation with Jorge Ribas at the Discovery Channel, but don’t let that put you off – Jorge did a fantastic job of editing the conversation into something worth watching.  The third is a deliciously wicked cartoon from Ransom Riggs that has already done the Web circuit, but is well worth airing again.

THE GOOD STUFF

A glimpse into some of the cool stuff that could come about through engineering matter at a nanometer scale:

THE “BAD” STUFF

Actually, this isn’t bad at all, but video does give a glimpse into some of the challenges we face if nanotechnology is to reach it’s potential without causing unnecessary harm:

AND THE WEIRD STUFF

I thought this cartoon from Ransom Riggs was a great foil to the first two videos, as it lampoons one of the persistent myths of nanotechnology – the idea of a “gray goo” of self-replicating nanobots destroying the world.  Crazy as the idea sounds, it was Prince Charles’ concerns over gray goo that led to the UK Royal Society and Royal Academy of Engineering publishing what is still one of the most authoritative assessments of nanotechnology benefits and risks.

All in all, a great introduction to the promise, hurdles and outright myths of nanotechnology.

If you have other favorite nanotech videos, please let me know.

13 “Twits” Who Will Change Your Perspective on Reality

Back in the days when Twitter was a mere slip of a social media service—around four months ago by my reckoning—it was a byword for meaningless web-chatter and banal exchanges.  But the service is growing up rapidly —not only in the number of users (which is skyrocketing, especially amongst the middle-aged apparently), but also in the quality and relevance of “tweets” posted by users.

There are a growing number of people on Twitter who genuinely challenge and engage others—in science and technology, as much as in other areas.  These “tweeps” (or “twits” as my wife prefers—which I hope is no reflection on my own “twittering”) are helping mesh together a web people from all walks who are more interested in discussing the latest science and technology—and its implications—than what Britney Spears had for breakfast.

Over at mashable.com, I’ve just posted a list of “13 “Twits” Who Will Change Your Perspective on Reality.” If you are still trying to work out what on earth Twitter’s about, or are looking for some stimulating science and technology-related company in the “Twitterverse,” check these “twits” out.

It’s an eclectic list and includes somebody who’s been dead and buried a good few years, and someone else who doesn’t post on science and technology tweets, but whom I enjoy reading anyway!  The common thread though is that they all post stuff that makes you think—even the dead guy. (Especially the dead guy, actually).

Of course, the list is hopelessly incomplete.  So please feel free to add anyone that should have been there but isn’t—either in the comments here, or over on Mashable.

And happy tweeting!

EndNotes

Sadly, I became an avid “twit” after the rather naive Emerging science and technology at 700 characters per day experiment back in December.  I can now be found adding my banalities into the mix of relative profundities on Twitter as @2020science.  Or if you prefer, you can read them in the sidebar of this blog!

My thanks to Ruth Seeley for being such an honest and proficient editor on the Mashable blog, and to Lon S. Cohen who gave me the idea in the first place – although he probably didn’t realize it at the time!  They can both be found on Twitter as @ruthseeley and @obilon

Explaining nanotechnology to people is tough—as anyone working in the field will tell you.  Clever stuff that’s too small to see with the naked eye doesn’t slot easily into most people’s human-scale view of the world.  So it’s not surprising that many non-experts (and even some “experts”) end up with a rather mangled idea of what the technology is, and what it is not!

And this begs the question: if people are to be empowered to make informed decisions on nanotechnology, how do you un-mangle the misconceptions?

One approach is to tap into the latent creativity of researchers and science-enthusiasts, and get them to make educational video-shorts.  The American Chemical Society is doing just this in its “What is Nano?” video contest.  The challenge: submit an original creative video no more than 3 minutes long before March 12 2009 on “what is ‘nano’?” “how is ‘nano’ best visualized?” or “where is ‘nano’ headed?” And get the chance to win $500in cash!

You can browse the entries and vote for your favorite on the ACS NanoTube website—highly recommended for an entertaining diversion when the pressures of work get too much!

My favorite so far: “Small can be big – a French cheesy perspective” from Irene Suarez-Martinez and Chris Ewels.  Not sure how great the educational value is, but it made me laugh:

[Add your vote here]

The top contender at present though is “The Nano Song” from Patrick Bennett and fellow researchers at UC Berkeley… – seen at the top of this blog [you can vote for the video here].

I’m still not sure whether to cringe or grin at this one—but you have to admit, the production values are pretty high.  And the video does have the distinction of hitting the big time on the Wired Science blog.

I should also mention out of familial loyalty, my eleven year old son’s entry:

[Add your vote here - no pressure!]

This is a repackaging of some legomation shorts he made for me a couple of years back. It stretches the boundaries of the competition rather (to say it explains anything about nanotechnology is a bit of a stretch).  But I still think it’s a lot of fun—and it demonstrates a level of skill in stop frame animation that’s way beyond anything I could do!

To be honest, there are plenty of turkeys amongst the gems in the current offerings—including videos that will leave your head spinning, even if you thought you knew a thing about nanotechnology.  But as a start, the competition is a great way of getting people to think more imaginatively about the work they do, and how to make it accessible.

So do look through the competition entries, and PLEASE add your votes—the more attention the videos get, the higher the quality of submissions here and in subsequent contests is likely to be.

And if you feel inspired, there’s still time to get your 3-minute masterpiece out there for all to see.

Best of luck!

It’s barely a month since Obama promised to “restore science to its rightful place” and already there has been widespread discussion over what this rightful place might be—spurred on in no small part by science and technology provisions in the recently passed stimulus bill.  Not surprisingly, the role science should play in 21st century society has been an important part of this discussion.  And one of the more insightful pieces has come from Harvard professor Sheila Jasanoff, writing for Seed Magazine…

I last wrote about Jasanoff’s work in December last year, anticipating a sharp change in science policy direction with the incoming administration.  “A “manifesto” for socially-relevant science and technology” revisits her 2003 paper “Technologies of Humility: Citizen participation in governing Science,” published in the journal Minerva (and downloadable here).  In this seminal paper, Jasanoff explored new approaches to decision-making that “seek to integrate the ‘can-do’ orientation of science and engineering with the ‘should-do’ questions of ethical and political analysis.”  Her work led to the concept of technologies of humility—“social technologies” developed around a framework that poses “the questions we should ask of almost every human enterprise that intends to alter society: what is the purpose; who will be hurt; who benefits; and how can we know?”

While Jasanoff’s work on technologies of humility was highly influential amongst social scientists—more so in Europe than the US it must be said—it gained very limited traction in US policy making.  This was undoubtedly due in part to political ideologies in vogue at the time.  But it probably wasn’t helped by the scholarly tone of the work, which would have appealed to academics more than policy makers.

However, six years on, and things have changed—sound science and technology policy are back in fashion, Jasanoff’s ideas have had time to mature, and this time round she’s writing for a broader audience in a more accessible format.

“The Essential Parallel Between Science and Democracy,” published February 17 on the Seed Magazine website, presents a clear vision of the interplay between science and society, and the need to understand and manage the relationship between the two if real progress is to be made.  It’s a challenging piece, and will no doubt rub more than a few readers up the wrong way.  Indeed, Jasanoff acknowledges that the questions she raises “will raise hackles and temperatures because they are both hard and pervasive.”  But she makes it clear that, now more than ever, tough and even uncomfortable questions will need to be grappled with if an appropriate ad productive relationship between science and society is to be reached.

Jasanoff starts by recognizing the pervasive and essential presence of science and technology in society, and applauds Obama’s commitment to science.  But she cautions,

“many have interpreted [the new administration’s] moves as welcome signs of Washington’s renewed respect for science, and they are right to do so.  But if understanding stops there, then we’re in trouble.  For the restorative steps Obama has taken vis-à-vis science are praiseworthy not so much because they respect science as because they respect the grand institutions of democracy.”

A problem here, Jasanoff suggests, is that the tendencies of modern science do not always converge with the aims of democracy.  And as a result,

“simply throwing more money at science, or even listening to the best-qualified scientists for policy advice, may not ensure that research and development are conducted for the public good.”

This is strong stuff, but important nevertheless.  Interestingly, Jasanoff is particularly concerned with how closely science has become linked to special economic and political interests.  This is somewhat complex ground, as high-level science policies in the US have favored investigator-drive “basic research” for some time, on the (outmoded) assumption that knowledge generation will naturally trickle down to innovation.  Yet the reality is that scientific progress is directed by various drivers and motivators—economic return being amongst them—and in the absence of a clear research and development strategy, these can seriously undermine both the generation of knowledge for its own sake, and the generation and use of strategically relevant knowledge.  And in this context, the conclusion Jasanoff draws is spot on—that we need a carefully balanced portfolio of public science, which combines curiosity-driven research with mission-driven studies.

Moving through the need to revise current intellectual property laws and practices and open up the public debate on science and society, Jasanoff goes on to challenge the role of science as “speaking truth to power” in society.  Instead, she suggests that

“rather than claiming the rarely attainable high ground of truth, scientific advice should own up to uncertainty and ignorance, exercise ethical as well as epistemic judgment, and ensure as far as possible that society’s needs drive advances in knowledge instead of presuming to lead society.”

This is classic Jasanoff, and reflects much of her thinking on science, society and humility.  It’s a bold statement of how we should be thinking about the relationship between science and society.  But it is also a challenging one.  Jasanoff continues,

“Such humility requires experts to sometimes bow to others who are less technically informed, but subordinating expert preference to democratic priorities may be a tough act.  The roots of resistance run deep.  They are grounded partly in the innocent, wishful, antiquated notion that science would be apolitical if only it could be left alone.”

But of course the irony here is that, as Jasanoff points out, science neither wants to or can be left out of the political process.  If you want proof of this, just check out the science lobby in Washington DC!  And as she goes on to argue, simplistic dichotomies between science and technology, and how they are used, have little place in the 21st century.  Instead, a rather more clear understanding of what it means to scientific and technological development to democratic ends is needed.

The way forward, argues Jasanoff, is through a “Second Enlightenment”

“Finding the rightful place for science … demands a Second Enlightenment.  This time, we do not need to overthrow the false gods of superstition or the self-serving autocracies that thrive by creating their own reality.  This time, like the fox of Greek philosophy, we already know a great many things about how to examine life, harness energy, measure society, create incentives, and use statistical evidence to support rational public decisions. Nor should we hesitate to learn more.  But do we, like the hedgehog, also know the big things?  What makes for human happiness?  Which manipulations of nature are we too ignorant of to safely undertake?  When might attempts to enhance human capabilities bump against deeply held beliefs about the value of being human?”

The Second Enlightenment must be, according to Jasanoff, the enlightenment of modesty; based on the skeptical, questioning virtues of an experimental turn of mind, and accepting that truth is provisional, that questioning of experts should be encouraged, and that steps forward may need corrective steps back.

Here, she re-articulates the ideas behind the notion of technologies of humility, but in a manner that is much more accessible and compelling than in the 2003 paper.

Jasanoff’s Seed essay is an important contribution to the debate on how the relationship between science and society needs to be rethought and developed.  It is challenging.  It is controversial.  And I’m sure many readers will disagree with parts of it at least.  But it is insightful, and raises ideas that many will find attractive.

More importantly, it puts us on a route to integrating science into society in a way that will benefit all in the long turn.  Whether we end up with a Second Enlightenment or not, Jasanoff’s ideas should be listened to carefully and taken seriously.

(And just in case you are wondering what all this has to do with foxes and hedgehogs, you can reach intermediate enlightenment here ☺)

If you want to annoy a scientist, show them a movie that gets the little details wrong—like the fact that sound doesn’t travel in a vacuum, or biologists always have a box of Kim Wipes within arms-reach.

If you want to annoy anyone else, put them in the same room with the scientist!

Scientists love to pick apart the poor depiction of science in movies and TV programs—I know, I’ve been there.  It’s irritating, it suggests someone in authority who needs a crash course in scientific reality, and it raises very real fears that audiences will come away with warped ideas of what science is all about…

And as a result, scientists as a species tend to have a religious zeal for converting scriptwriters, producers and directors in Big Media to using literal depictions of science that would make a Creationist proud.

I bring this up because I decided to attend a session on science in the media at this year’s American Association for the Advancement of Science conference in Chicago.  The session—“You Ought To Be In Pictures: Science as Entertainment in Movies and Television”—attracted a large crowd.  But while many of attendees were clearly reveling in the camaraderie of scientists versus the rest of the world, I left with something of an uneasy feeling about the whole enterprise.

Let me try and explain.  I don’t mind a bit of harmless science snobbery when it comes to entertainment.  I’m excited that real scientists are consulting with scriptwriters and directors to make sure the depiction of science is at least plausible.  And, to be honest, if Hollywood called to ask me for advice, I would be off like a shot.

But what worries me is a push for realism that threatens to undermine people’s understanding of science through misplaced trust.

I suspect that few people seriously base their understanding of science and scientists on blockbuster movies—it’s generally accepted that these are works of fiction, that bend reality to tell a story.  What happens though when you begin to inject science-literalism into movies and TV shows, and let people know that what they are seeing is close to the truth?  You end up building trust within the audience—they begin believing that what they see is a literal rather than figurative representation of what science is about and how it works—which is great when the science is spot on.  But really bad when it deviates even slightly from reality.

This gets to the nub of my concern.  Once the audience trusts what they see, they will be fully justified in believing everything—because what this new science literalism does not teach is critical thinking.  And as a result, even the smallest inaccuracies—the speed with which science progresses, the complexity of the discovery process, the limits of information recovery from data—become a betrayal of that trust.

In effect, you get a CSI effect that extends to all of science—not just forensic science.

The answer—I suspect—is to think critically about the role of science in entertainment.  Unless someone can point me to clear evidence to the contrary, I don’t think it’s a good idea to use it as an educational tool.  On the other hand, I do believe everyone benefits where the thoughtful input of a science consultant adds to the plausibility and internal consistency of a movie or show.  And the idea of enthusing people about science and thinking more broadly and critically about their surroundings thrills me.

At the end of the day, entertainment is not science, and should not be seen as something to hijack for science education.  Using science to tell a story, convey a perspective or explore an issue is great—it should be encouraged.  And using entertainment to communicate science also has its place.

But science-evangelism?  Knock on someone else’s door—please!

Footnotes

I should add that while the AAAS session prompted these ruminations, a number of the speakers did seem to have their heads screwed on—and were clearly enjoying their work with shows like The Big Bang Theory and Numb3rs.  Jonathan Gitlin covers the session comprehensively here.

Both the National Science Foundation and the National Academies of Science have programs linking scientists with professionals in the entertainment industry.  Details on the National Academies Science and Entertainment Exchange can be found here.

And I should add that, while I really enjoy scientifically inaccurate and implausible movies—if the story and characters are strong—I’m longing for the day when someone makes a really good science movie!  I guess I’m still a science-snob at heart!

Science gone right, science gone wrong, science gone social, science gone political—it’s all here in five off-beat book recommendations to kick off 2009.  Ranging from Darwin’s Origin of Species to Sir Terry Pratchett’s Nation, the one thing I think I can guarantee is that you will struggle to find an odder bunch of literary bed-fellows!  Hope you enjoy them, and have a happy new year!

A new year, a new leaf—time for five more eclectic (some might say eccentric) book recommendations to see you through the hangover and into a brighter future.

As in the previous five good books blog, I’ve eschewed the conventional to provide as unusual a potpourri of literary delights as you will find anywhere.  And as before, I’ve tried to inject a little method into the madness—spot it if you can!

I should first apologize because this was supposed to be a quick blog, rushed off before the New Years festivities began in earnest.  But it turned into a veritable “slow blog!”

So for those of you impatient to read the recommendations and move on, here they are:

• On the Origin of Species, by Charles Darwin
• The Two Cultures, by C. P. Snow
• Trouble with Lichen, by John Wyndham
• Cider with Rosie, by Laurie Lee
• Nation, by Sir Terry Pratchett

But please do read on, and discover the why behind the what… Here then, is my retrospective-prospective reading list for a technologically-enlightened 2009—enjoy!

In the number one slot: On the Origin of Species, by Charles Darwin. How could it be anything else?  Perhaps one of the most influential books to have been written over the past couple of hundred years, the repercussions of Darwin’s seminal work are still being felt today.  2009 marks the 150th anniversary of the publication of On the Origin of Species (as if you didn’t know)—and what better excuse to go back to the source and read what the great man really wrote in what he refers to as “this abstract”—and some abstract at nearly 500 pages!

Unlike much of the debate and controversy it initiated, Origin is a carefully developed and reasoned thesis based on Darwin’s observations—evidence-based science at its best.  And rather impressively, the more we learn about life on this planet, the more Darwin’s Theory of Evolution makes sense.

This is essential reading for understanding how disruptive and empowering scientific knowledge can be within society.  As society comes to rely increasingly on science and technology, there are lessons here that are well worth learning. The Origin of Species sold out on the day it was published in 1859.  It’s hard to imagine a science text selling so fast nowadays.  Which makes you think—in all the talk about how essential technology and innovation are in today’s knowledge economy, have we lost sight of the underlying science?  I wonder…

Next up, another anniversary and another highly influential book.  On May 7 1959, Charles Percy Snow—better know as C. P. Snow—delivered the annual Rede Lecture at the University of Cambridge.  His title:  The Two Cultures. The lecture—and its subsequent appearance in print—caught the spirit of the moment as two cultures; one dominated by literary intellectuals, the other by scientists; grew increasingly detached from each other and threatened to rob society of it’s ability to progress.

Snow’s thoughts have moulded thinking about science and society over the intervening 50 years.  But just as few who uphold or decry Darwinian evolution have read the original text, I suspect that not many who talk “knowledgeably” about the two cultures are that familiar with what the man actually said.

Having recently revisited the lecture, I would strongly recommend anyone interested in the interface between science and society to read it.  The lecture is clearly of its time—society has changed since 1959.  Yet scrape away at the surface, and many of the themes in the lecture are as relevant now as they were fifty years ago—negligible communication between the world of science and “traditional culture,” disrespect for science literacy (as distinct from technology familiarity), and the importance of ensuring the scientific revolution breaks down socially indefensible barriers—especially between the rich and the poor.

Today the cultures are different, and the boundaries between them blurred.  But the bottom line is that we are more dependent than ever on science in society, yet more ignorant than ever on how science works, and how to use it wisely.

If Darwin demonstrated how disruptive science can be, Snow illuminated how essential it is to harness and use its disruptive power for good within society—or suffer the consequences.

As an aside, even more significant (in my opinion) than the original Rede lecture is Snow’s 1963 assessment of the lecture’s impact.  In The Two Cultures: A Second Look, C.P. Snow finds the freedom to explain more clearly what he was really getting at in the lecture.  Here he explains the use of the “two cultures” as a vehicle to explore far more profound aspects of the science-society relationship—many just as important yet overlooked today as they were then.  Quoting from the beginning of the essay:

“In our society (that is, advanced western society) we have lost even the pretense of a common culture.  Persons educated with the greatest intensity we know can no longer communicate with each other on the plane of their intellectual concern.  This is serious for our creative, intellectual and, above all, our normal life.  It is leading us to interpret the past wrongly, to misjudge the present, and to deny our hopes of the future.  It is making it difficult or impossible for us to take good action.”

Read these essays—they are important!

Third in the list comes something a little lighter:  Trouble with Lichen, by John Wyndham. Published in 1960—right on the coat-tails of C.P. Snow’s Two Cultures—it is a fictitious tale of a scientific discovery leading to longer lives for a select few, and the social and moral challenges this raises.

Admittedly, the book is dated—it was written nearly fifty years ago after all.  But it’s still a great read.  And more importantly, it raises questions about the development and use of disruptive scientific knowledge that are highly relevant to today.

The story revolves around the discovery of a lichen-based compound that can extend a person’s lifespan by a factor of three.  But the compound cannot be synthesized, and the source is limited.  The moral questions raised are complex—longer life expectancy could lead to a more reflective society, more time to find solutions to pressing problems, greater quality of life.  But it could also lead to social injustice—widening the gap between the haves and the have-nots, and initiate social unrest.

The context may be very 1960’s, but the general issues resonate strongly with challenges facing society today as science and technology become increasingly complex.  And just as society was ill-equipped to handle disruptive science back in the 1960’s, it must be asked whether we are any better off now.

The fourth book in this list of five is something of an outsider—Cider with Rosie, by Laurie Lee. 2009 marks the fiftieth anniversary of this account of village life in rural England in the early twentieth century—anniversaries emerging as something of a theme here.  Most of the book has nothing to do with science and technology.  But it is worth reading for two reasons:

First, it is a beautifully crafted account of pre-industrial revolution English village life—I guarantee it will fill you for nostalgia, even if you have never seen an English village!

But more to the point, Lee begins to chart the enormous changes wrought on this thousand year old way of life by the industrial revolution—what Snow referred to as the beginnings of the scientific revolution we are still in.  If you get the chance, read the final chapter of the book.  While Lee is ambivalent on whether the changes he witnessed over the course of his youth were for good or ill, you cannot help but reflect on where the scientific revolution is leading us as you absorb his prose.

To whet your appetite, this is from the beginning of the final chapter:

“The last days of my childhood were also the last days of the village.  I belonged to that generation which saw, by chance, the end of a thousand years’ life.  The change came late on our Costwold valley, didn’t really show itself till the late 1920’s; I was twelve by then, but during that handful of years I witnessed the whole thing happen.

“Myself, my family, my generation, were born in a world of silence; a world of hard work and necessary patience, of backs bent to the ground, hands massaging the crops, of waiting on weather and growth; of villages like ships in the empty landscapes and the long walking distances between them; of white narrow roads, rutted by hooves and cart-wheels, innocent of oil or petrol, down which people passed rarely, and almost never for pleasure, and the horse was the fastest thing moving.  Man and horse were all the power we had—abetted by levers and pulleys.  But the horse was king, and almost everything grew around him: fodder, smithies, stables, paddocks, distances, and the rhythms of our days.  His eight miles an hour was the limit of our movements, as it had been since the days of the Romans.  That eight miles an hour was life and death, the size of our world, our prison.”

Then came cars and machines and science and technology…

Lee’s eloquent prose demonstrates just how disruptive science and technology innovation is.  The innovation can lead to both good and bad—both Lee and Snow clearly acknowledge this.  The trick it would seem—the moral imperative even—is to act to ensure the good outweighs the bad.

Last but most definitely not least comes another novel, and a real gem of a book: Nation, by Sir Terry Pratchett.

(yes, Terry has just received a well-deserved “K”.)

A word of warning up front: This is a grown-up book masquerading as a child’s story. So you might at first dismiss it.  But you do so at your peril, for Pratchett weaves an enlightening and challenging tale about science, society and religion that succeeds where many academic tomes have failed.

The story revolves around a young boy living on a Pacific island who looses his whole community to a tsunami, but ends up building a new one from the flotsam and jetsam of society that wash up on the shores.  This seemingly simple setting allows Pratchett to explore the barriers between races, cultures, philosophies, religion and science, and what can be achieved when these are broken down.

The tale is set in a parallel world, which rather delightfully enables Pratchett to bend the history of science somewhat, and the activities of some of its leading lights.  There is a beautiful homage to the likes of Charles Darwin, Richard Dawkins, Albert Einstein, Richard Feynman, Carl Sagan, and even Patrick Moore in the closing pages!

But the power of this book—and it is powerful—comes from Pratchett’s knack of shining a searing spotlight on the human condition in the most gentle and humorous of ways.

Nation covers may themes, one of which is the foolishness of blind belief.  Of course, this includes religious beliefs in the book.  But it also extends to scientific “beliefs.”  And there is a clear message here for societies facing a science and technology-dominated future: Learn from the past, respect evidence, and communicate across barriers.

To wrap up, while this is an odd set of recommended reading by anyone’s reckoning, hopefully the thread holding the list together is clear—addressing the challenges and opportunities of science and technology within society.  Writing on the brink of 2009, science and technology innovation seem more important than ever.  Yet we seem further than ever in understanding how to ensure everyone benefits from advances that are made.

Hopefully revisiting (or visiting for the first time) these books will provide a new perspective on making wise choices over the coming year.

Happy reading, and happy 2009!

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Footnotes, added 1/1/09

On the Origin of Species, by Charles Darwin, is currently available in many imprints – check out Amazon.com for further details.

The Two Cultures, by C. P. Snow, is currently published by Cambridge University Press (in the Canto series).  This edition includes both the 1959 lecture, the 1963 essay, and an excellent introduction by Stefan Collini.

Trouble with Lichen, by John Wyndham was recently re-released by Penguin Books UK.  US readers will need to explore that archaic institution the Library… or pay for international shipping!

Cider with Rosie, by Laurie Lee, is currently published in the US by David R. Godine. In the UK, the publisher is Random House.

Nation, by Sir Terry Pratchett, is published by Random House in the UK, and HarpurCollins in the US.

For more on the “slow blog,” check out Todd Sieling’s Slow Blog Manifesto!

The pains and pleasures of tweeting science and technology innovation, 140 characters at a time.

Five days, 539 words and 3,447 characters later, the Twitter experiment is over. Did I succeed in communicating on emerging science and technology in 700 characters a day?  I’m not sure.  The whole exercise was harder than I expected.  Trying to come up with something interesting and relevant five times a day was a challenge.  Thursday was a particularly tough day—and the entries show it!

But at the end of the exercise, I must admit it was fun.  And even though tweeting will never supplant full-on blogging for communicating stuff in depth, it clearly has a place.

I’m not sure I would do a five-day stint like this again, but the medium is clearly open to innovative use.  And with some thought, could be used to convey more complex information than trivial thoughts and web links.  Personally, I think my writing-style took a dive with the constraints imposed by the character-limit and serial-posts.  But I was surprised at how much could be crammed into 140 characters, with some thought.  And while the experiment had many flaws, I think there is scope to use Twitter and similar formats in ways that lead to engagement on issues with some depth.

As a result of the “experiment,” I will be playing around more with my “tweets” over the coming weeks.  You may have noticed the new “microblog” on the sidebar to 2020science, that will allow my progress to be monitored closely!

At the end of the day though, the real test is whether you, the readers, are convinced that science and technology can be conveyed in bite-sized chunks.

If you missed all the excitement, you can re-live it at the end of this email—all 25 tweets neatly laid out and ready to be mercilessly dissected!  Did I embarrass myself?  Did I miss the point of tweeting entirely, Was this an exercise destined to failure.  Or was there a hint that Twitter—and other microblogs—can be used in innovative ways to convey information?  Comments please!

In the meantime, some reflections of my own:

What I liked:

• The discipline and challenge of conveying useful information in a few brief characters.
• Watching my thoughts and ideas develop on the fly.
• The immediacy of the medium.
• The possibility of plugging into and engaging with people in a wide social network.

What I didn’t like:

• Not being able to add links to posts (this was a self-imposed restriction, that I broke once, but links just suck up too many of the precious 140 characters—even small ones).
• Not being able to scrub the whole chain of tweets and start again.
• Running out of characters when I couldn’t quite fit an idea into the space.
• Having to continue feeding the beast when all hell was breaking loose elsewhere… (another self-imposed rule).
• Having to decide between maintaining a flow of ideas over several tweets, and replying to other tweeters—which would have disrupted the flow.

The tweets in full:

Monday:

Why invest in science and technology? “Innovation” you are supposed to reply. But is scitech innovation all it’s cracked up to be?

Scitech innovation is clearly crucial to tackling issues that conventional tech falls short on – climate, energy, healthcare, clean water

And I’m pretty sure scitech innovation is a critical economic driver – new knowledge and know-how can add tremendous value to raw materials

OK so scitech innovation is important – just thought I would get that out of the way up-front. Next question – how do you get it right?

Answer: Keep the scitech pipeline flowing, enable tech transfer, and ensure “safe” use – sounds like something for the new stimulus package!

Tuesday:

And the important scitec? Making stuff at the nanoscale (bio and non-bio), info gen/flow/use, and mashing it all up together (convergence)

Nanotech: making stuff that does stuff at the nanoscale; is already extending the reach of conventional tech. And you aint seen nothing yet

Small changes at the nanoscale can have profound impacts – think computers, data storage, super-strong lightweight materials, targeted drugs

Question is, how do we ensure we get the biggest bang for the buck from nanotechnology – without creating more problems than we solve?

Three steps which I suspect are key to realizing nanotech’s potential: relevant research, effective tech transfer, and responsive oversight.

Wednesday:

Hot off the press: according to the National Academies the feds are still struggling with getting safe nano right: http://tinyurl.com/5mnxk9

But that’s an aside, because today I wanted to focus on playing with biology at the nanoscale, and specifically on synthetic biology.

Drew Endy: “Biology is nanotechnology that works.” If we can engineer bio like we do non-bio, is this a shortcut to some advanced nanotech?

Imagine being able to program living things through their DNA to do specific things – generate energy, synthesize fuels, construct materials

That’s where we are heading with synbio – a powerful mix of engineering and biology. Transformative stuff, but ethically complex I suspect!

Thursday:

Strip away the soft squidgy stuff and synbio is all about manipulating, transmitting and utilizing information; information tech writ small

Information provides meaning to things. Which means that innovation in info generation, interpretation, use etc commands a high premium.

Information storage – could you live without your computer, TiVo, iPod, iPhone, digital camera, on-line repository of digital bric-a-brac?

Information use – humans and machines are becoming nodes in a rapidly evolving and growing global “digital brain” – and innovation is rife!

Information technology is an incredible powerhouse of innovation that is evolving at breakneck speed; adding value, while challenging norms.

Friday:

Separately, info nano and biotech have tremendous potential. But when they interact and overlap, innovation explodes. This is convergence.

Innovation most readily flourishes at the interface between disciplines/technologies/ideas – you know that. This is where the sparks fly.

But innovation at scitech interfaces isn’t easy. The sparks of new ideas are delicate, and easily doused by old ways of thinking and working

On the other hand, when convergent innovation gets going, it can burn like wildfire (internet, ICE?). Then the name of the game is control.

So back to the original Q’s: why invest in scitech, and what is needed for success? In 32 characters: Necessity, imagination & wisdom. OK?

I’m sitting here putting the finishing touches to 2020science.org—a new science blog—and having the latest in a long stream of panic attacks: What on earth am I doing? Who wants to read yet another tedious list of personal musings, what makes me think I have anything interesting to say, and where did I get the delusion that I can actually write anyway?

As I type this, the answers are crystal clear: Everyone’s surely too busy to read yet another blog (especially one biased towards responsible science and technology); in the cold light of reality I most likely have the wit of a 5 watt light bulb; and I should have listened to my freshman college tutor, who was definitely under no illusion about whether I could write!

Yet under the remote possibility that my perception is temporarily impaired, it’s worth examining exactly why I am putting myself through this ordeal.

Last September, I was asked to contribute on an occasional basis to the SAFENANO blog—a U.K.-based initiative dedicated to underpinning the safe development and use of nanotechnologies.  Rather foolishly, I set myself the task of contributing to the blog an average of once a week.  The rationale was simple: it forced me to keep abreast of the latest progress in developing safe nanotechnologies; the format allowed me to explore some as-yet half baked but nevertheless interesting ideas; and there was the hope that trying to produce something original and readable on a weekly basis might just teach me a thing or two.  And as an added bonus, there was always the possibility of someone actually reading the stuff I posted!

That was a year ago, and by on large I have kept to the self-imposed writing task.  And in doing so, I have discovered that I actually quite like the discipline of blogging.  I have also discovered in the process that there is more I want to write about than the folks at SAFENANO would probably be comfortable with (although I must confess, a few fringe-blogs did slip through the net this last year).  And so was born the idea of a new blog; one that would give me the freedom to go beyond the bound of what a respectable nanotechnology safety blog could accommodate.

Having reached this point, two challenges arose almost immediately:  A relatively easy one—what to write about; and a much tougher one—what to call the new blog!

The first challenge led me back to what interests me, and what I want to achieve through writing about it.  The interest can be summed up fairly simply: How can science and technology be used most effectively in the service of society? But this deceptively simple question hides many complex issues, including:

• Does the current way that we “do science” give us a good return on the investment?
• How is cool science best translated into constructive technologies?
• How are the potential downsides of emerging technologies best dealt with?
• What role should citizens, industry, government and (of course) academics play in determining the future course of science and technology?
• How do you engage everyday people in science?
• And just as importantly: How do you engage scientists in society?

These and similar questions provide a rich landscape to explore. But more critically, they are important questions that need clear answers if we are to ensure the most responsible use of science and technology in a shrinking world with a growing population.  Safe nanotechnology is a part of this landscape.  But the issues extend beyond the science and technology of the small, to areas as diverse as research strategies, public engagement, ethics, and even religion.

So much for the content, but what should such a wide-ranging blog be called?  Tricky one!  Smartscience.org was at the top of the list, but someone smarter than me got there first.  Thecivicscientist.org got some serious attention, but was vetoed for veering towards being over-earnest, and being something of a turn-off to anyone who has suffered through tedious “civics” lessons.  Things got so desperate that even options like sciencepunk.org weren’t dismissed entirely out of hand (in the end, my wife drew the line at this one!).

2020science.org was something of a compromise—embodying the idea of looking forward with clarity, while being easy to type.  Not the best perhaps, but fit for purpose I think.

Which brings me back to my original question: is this really a good idea?

I’m still not entirely sure it is.  But having thought through why I started out on this venture, I think it is worth a shot.  Developing a healthy relationship between science, technology and society is important—increasingly so as the challenge of ensuring an acceptable quality of life for all in the 21st century is going to depend increasingly on emerging technologies.  I may not be the brightest bulb in the drawer, and I still have a trick or two to learn about communicating effectively.  But exploring how as a society we can use science and technology wisely is my job—it’s what I do as Chief Science Advisor at the Project on Emerging Nanotechnologies, and what I spend most of my time engaged in.

And if most people are too busy for yet another blog?  Well, I can always fall back on the defence that it’s the discipline of writing that matters, not the readership.  That is, until I suffer the next panic attack!

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Postscript

While 2020science.org is now my blogging home, I will continue to write the occasional guest blog for SAFENANO—still one of the foremost sources of nano health and safety info. on the web!

Even though writing under the banner of “thecivicscientist.org” was dropped, it’s only fair to say Neal Lane’s concept of the Civic Scientist will have a pronounced influence on this weblog.  More of this in later posts…  (I should also come clean and admit that there is already a “civic scientist” blogger out there).

At the time of writing, wordpress.com—the host site for this blog—was hosting 4,175,409 blogs, and reporting 127,651 new postings; containing 31,979,307 words.  This post represents an additional 900 words—a stunningly small 0.003% of the day’s output.  No wonder I’m having panic attacks!  Time to reach for the brown bag again I think…

Here’s a small diversion for a slow Sunday afternoon:  Take sixty jellybeans and ninety cocktail sticks, and try to construct a model of a buckyball—a carbon-60 molecule.  It’s tricky, but not impossible.

Constructing a candy buckminster fullerene is one of ten nano “experiments” in a new nanotechnology education kit from nanobits. Designed to enthuse and inform kids in school and at home about nanotechnology, the nanobits kit grew out of Nanovic (Nanotechnology Victoria Ltd.)—an Australian initiative to translate nanotechnology research into commercial applications.

Having seen the kit a couple of times while visiting Australia, I was keen to get my hands on one and take it for a test run (or at least, co-opt my kids into yet another “socio-nano experiment”).  And thanks to the generosity of Nanovic, and Mathew Dipnall at nanobits, a few weeks ago my wish came true.

On the outside, the nanobits kit looks like an upmarket children’s science kit.  The container is modelled on a carbon nanotube—a short cylinder truncated by fullerene-like ends. Open it up, and all the elements of an introduction to nanotechnology spill out—an instruction book complete with interesting facts, explanations and web links; memory-metal wire; a wad of nano-treated fabrics; a piece of glass with a hydrophobic coating; and a few other bits and pieces.  The true nanotech content of the kit’s components might be limited, but the listed experiments also use common household items to demonstrate different aspects of nanotechnology.

True to form, I lost no time setting my two children to work on the kit.  You can see the results of their first foray on YouTube, in the debut of “Nanobusters:”

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=no4xwlDSBQg]

In homage to the “nano-tie” video they put together back in 2006, the two of them carried out a short version of the “try to stain nano-treated fabrics” experiment; dipping various supplied fabrics in soy sauce, then washing them in clean water.  While I think there is still room for improvement in the experiment as described in the kit, the exercise was fun for the two children, it got them thinking about what nanotech can do, and there’s a possibility they even learned something.

Overall, this is an engaging kit.  Perhaps more geared toward classes of school kids and older children, it nevertheless has enough appeal to interest home experimenters.  It could be improved with the inclusion of more hands-on nano stuff, but I was impressed by the use of everyday objects to demonstrate nanotechnology in the handbook.  For instance, gelatine is used to demonstrate sol-gels; crushed ice-cubes containing bicarbonate of soda are used to show how smaller particles can be more reactive; and egg-yolk and oil help to explore self-assembling membranes.

The handbook also delves into broader issues—biomedical nanotechnology, bio-mimicry and even nano-ethics.

With the most recent poll supported by the Project on Emerging Nanotechnologies indicating 70% percent of people in the U.S. know little or nothing of nanotechnology (the percentage is similar elsewhere), new approaches to getting the word out are clearly needed—especially if the public and policy makers alike are to make informed decisions on emerging nanotech applications.  While the nanobits kit is focused on children—and probably those with some interest in science to start with—it is a step in the right direction, and a great resource for introducing the next generation to nanotechnology in a fun and accessible way.

Perhaps my biggest concern is the price—at AU$94.30, it will be beyond the reach of many potential users.  But bring the price down to around $30, and you have a kit that would compete favourably with the best of the science kits for kids currently available.

And the jellybean buckyball?  I’m pleased to say that in the first round of the “Great Candy Buckyball Challenge” in our household, I won hands down.  But I suspect the victory will not be long lived.  Now if only I could find a superior jellybean, with a better stiffness-to-weight ratio…

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This post first appeared on the SAFENANO blog in April 2008

Some nanotechnology events should come with a health warning, perhaps along the lines of: “This meeting could seriously alter your perspective”.  Because nanotechnology crosses such diverse areas of interest and expertise, there is a danger of being exposed to ideas that are radically different from your own.  And where exposure occurs, “infection” becomes an issue.

I think I missed the “interdisciplinary inoculation” while I was a kid—there must be one, because I have colleagues who participate in interdisciplinary meetings, and come away unaffected.  But I seem to be particularly susceptible to “interdisciplinary infection”.

Take this last week.  I was enticed over to San Francisco to meet with a group of “informal science educators” (first sign of infection—an expanding jargon vocabulary)—a group of “radical” enthusiasts dedicated to engaging people in science in every imaginable way. This was the annual meeting of the Nanotechnology Informal Science Education (NISE) network in the US—a National Science Foundation-funded network of science museums and researchers, working to increase nanotechnology awareness, knowledge and engagement through all sectors of society.

Leaving the meeting (which in the interests of full disclosure, I should note was the most enjoyable nano-meeting I have been to in a long time), I found a new phrase had crept into my psyche that I just couldn’t shake off—“technologies of humility”.  Resigned to the consequences of mixing with such a diverse crowd, I started digging around to find out more about this idea.

The concept of “technologies of humility” has its origins in the work of Sheila Jasanoff [1, 2].  Jasanoff argues that

“governments should reconsider existing relations among decision-makers, experts, and citizens in the management of technology. Policy-makers need a set of ‘technologies of humility’ for systematically assessing the unknown and the uncertain.” [2]

In contrast, she describes the refinement of conventional (i.e. current) science and technology policy as “technologies of hubris”—policies crafted to reassure the public, and keep the wheels of science and industry turning.

Jasanoff’s arguments and use of language will be unfamiliar to many involved in the generation and use of scientific knowledge—her use of the word “technologies” for instance refers to the social and policy-based mechanisms of how science is done.  Yet her conclusions are clear—in today’s evolving society, we cannot continue to force new sciences and technologies into old ways of thinking.  The simplistic separation of research into basic and applied studies has dominated science policy for over half a century.  Yet according to Jasanoff, this model no longer works.  Instead, we need new approaches that acknowledge the partiality of modern science; that recognize the context within which research is conducted; and that respond to new ways of generating scientific knowledge.

Reading Jasanoff’s work, it strikes me that current nanotechnology development is underpinned—at least in part—by the technologies of hubris: Decision-influencing is dominated by an informed few; context-insensitive science policies are being pursued; and interactions with “the public” are frequently limited to a one-way “dialogue” of promotion.  In contrast, Jasanoff describes technologies of humility as

“methods, or better yet institutionalized habits of thought, that try to come to grips with the ragged fringes of human understanding – the unknown, the uncertain, the ambiguous, and the uncontrollable.” [2]

Given the limitations of science to foresee, predict and control the future, she argues for different forms of engagement between experts, decision-makers and the public to tackle complex issues—to use another jargon phrase, the social contract with science needs to be re-negotiated.  Intriguingly, as well as these technologies of humility covering formal ways in which all stakeholders can participate in the development and use of new developments like nanotechnology, Jasanoff also states the need for

“an intellectual environment in which citizens are encouraged to bring their knowledge and skills to bear on the resolution of common problems.” [2]

This surely highlights the importance of raising science awareness and engagement throughout society.  But it also suggests that everyone potentially touched in some way by nanotechnology has something of value to contribute to its development.

Whatever the future of nanotechnology, maybe we should be approaching it with humility rather than hubris as we strive to develop quality of life-improving technology innovations.  To twist an elegant concept rather tortuously, perhaps we need to think in terms of “nanotechnologies of humility”—being up front about uncertainties and mistakes, listening to and learning from the people that nanotechnologies touch, and ensuring someone is accountable for decisions that are being made.

Or maybe I just need to get that interdisciplinary inoculation jab.  After all, those science and policy leaders at the top know what they are doing… don’t they?

Postscript.

This is a very shallow discussion of how our understanding of the interplay between science and society is changing, and I would encourage you to explore Sheila Jasanoff’s work further.  I should also note that the person principally responsible for “infecting” me in this instance was Rick Borchelt, Director of Communications at the Genetics and Public Policy Center.  And finally, do check out the NISE Network website—they are doing some pretty cool stuff.

References

1.    Jasanoff, S. Nature 2007, 450, 33.
2.    Jasanoff, S. Minerva 2003, 41, 223-244.

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This post first appeared on the SAFENANO blog in November 2007