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Brewing-enthusiast Dr Chris Ridout had little idea when he applied for a BBSRC public engagement grant in 2001 that it might lead him to resurrect a Victorian beer.
Structural biologist Stephen Curry reveals how plugging himself into the public domain has added new perspectives to his research and teaching.
"We find that, contrary to what is often suggested, scientists active in dissemination are also more active academically. However, their dissemination activities have almost no impact (positive or negative) on their career."
"...There are, of course, notable exceptions to learn from in our quest to meaningfully improve our public engagement. One such example is the California Gold Rush shipwreck Frolic, lost along the rugged northern California coast in 1849..."
This paper covers a lot of ground including the benefits (and constraints) of public engagement, e.g.: "I have personally found that a lot of times, that good questions that you get from people outside your own field can really make you examine some of your assumptions…it’s regions that you wouldn’t have explored intellectually because of your sort of academic history." Thanks Emily Dawson for highlighting this
"Stirling University's Professor David Goulson was the winner of Social Innovator of the Year award. His innovation was increasing the impact of his academic work by founding of the Bumblebee Conservation Trust. Goulson says that the Bumblebee Conservation Trust came out of frustration that scientific research, even when published in the best journals, is very often only read by other scientists, not by people who might put this knowledge into practice. "You can publish experiments in high quality journals again and again but they are only read by a few dozen scientists who work in your field. It achieves little or nothing in the real world" "I do think there's a general problem in the UK, and perhaps elsewhere, that there is no obvious mechanism for scientists to translate applied research to get it to policy makers and the general public and so on," he says, citing three extinctions from Britain's 25 bumblebee species as a reason for immediate action. "For bumblebees, we now understand enough about them to have a pretty good idea how to conserve them, but we need to get that knowledge put into practise." That is where the Bumblebee Conservation Trust comes in. The formal aims of the trust are to conserve bumblebee populations, prevent species extinctions, and promote conservation of bees and wider biodiversity to the public. "Bumblebees pollinate crops which we need to eat. It's really easy to explain the importance of bumblebees to people with no interest in biodiversity or polar bears or pandas," says Goulson. "Without bees food would be more expensive, and there would be less of it and less variety. For economic reasons alone it's worth doing without all the other reasons."" Thanks to Wendy Barnaby for highlighting this
This page has some short audio from Professor Nancy Rothwell and Dr Erinma Ochu reflecting on the Manchester Beacon for Public Engagement and touching on some of the benefits of public engagement - skills, new knowledge, the potnetial to be promoted for doing public engagement. Thanks to @erinmaochu for this
Augusta M Villanueva, PhD: "In 2009, my concern for young people, especially the vulnerable and at risk, led me to initiate conversations with local executive directors and program staff of agencies serving lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, questioning and intersex (LGBTQI) youth. Over the course of approximately nine months, I attained a wealth of knowledge from these leaders and their staff relative to the plight of youth who seek their services, and who often are segmented from family and unable to take care of themselves. Our commitment to at-risk youth fostered the development of a consortium that collaboratively developed and submitted an R21 grant proposal" From http://depts.washington.edu/ccph/pdf_files/Villanueva%20AM%20Personal%20Statement.pdf%202010.pdf and more of the same here: http://depts.washington.edu/ccph/toolkit-portexamples.html#CareerStatement ; Thanks to @CCPH2010 for this
The challenges for 21st century science - A review of the evidence base surrounding the value of public engagement by scientists
The first phase of this project involved research with scientists at various stages in their careers (and other science communicators) and identified the patterns of motivation and perceived benefits of involvement in public engagement activities. The results of this research are published in an Oxford University Press book: Holliman, R. and Jensen, E. (2009). (In)authentic science and (im)partial publics: (re)constructing the science outreach and public engagement agenda, in Holliman, R., Whitelegg, E., Scanlon, E., Smidt, S. and Thomas, J. (eds.) Investigating science communication in the information age: Implications for public engagement and popular media. Oxford University Press, Oxford. The results are also summarised in the freely available published final report on the project: http://isotope.open.ac.uk/?q=node/565 Thanks to Eric Jensen for highlighting this
John Ward: "Having to describe both my research and that of others in words that the general public can understand is a challenge. It’s easy to slip into jargon that even other scientists don’t understand, so thinking carefully to describe Synthetic Biology in clear and straightforward terms was difficult at first. The participants latched on to the ideas in Synthetic Biology very quickly and it was good to hear what they thought was the most important challenges that we should be focussing on."
Synthetic biology dialogue - Follow up evaluation report
A couple quotes from 'expert participants' who took part in the Synthetic Biology Dialgoue: "…it was challenging me to think about presenting my work and presenting the science in a completely different way. Obviously we’re trained to present to colleagues and (committee) members but to then have to stop think about, oh now, this is a completely different set of people, how do I package it for them? That was a very eye opening process for me." "...I think there should be an encouragement of people like me to do what I am doing, to go out and actually engage with the public to do science festivals, go to high schools, all that sort of stuff." Full evaluation report here: http://www.bbsrc.ac.uk/web/FILES/Reviews/synbio-dialogue-evaluation-final.pdf
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This 'lens' highlights the skills and competencies that researchers need and/or can develop by doing public engagement.
Evaluation of Sciencewise-ERC
"Impacts on scientists, experts and other stakeholders involved in the dialogue projects included having enabled them to develop new skills, experience and confidence in communicating with the public, provided opportunities to learn about public views, fears and questions first hand, increased their respect for the quality of the potential public contribution to science and technology, and enabled them to gain a higher personal profile and build new relationships and networks."
This example comes out of a poet-in-residence scheme as part of a campus-wide engagement programme exploring the issues around the personal genome and society. The programme aimed to involve everyone working at the Wellcome Trust Genome Campus so included Wellcome Trust Sanger Institute staff and also staff from the European Bioinformatics Institute.
The poet in residence was Fiona Sampson and she visited campus several times and was commissioned to write eleven poems. Anyway, one of the Sanger Institute researchers and also the engagement project committee's chair, Dr Jeff Barrett, said the following about his encounters with Fiona: "The idea of inviting a poet to campus had raised many eyebrows, and I also wondered what inspiration an artist wielding abstract words would find in our concrete world. Almost as soon as we started talking, however, I found myself off my familiar script of explaining what research I do, and instead talking about why I do it. That one conversation changed how I view my own science." Neither Jeff or Fiona were the intended audience; the project was meant to engage campus staff and they were really just the people facilitating this engagement through their involvement in the poet-in-residence part of the wider project. Also, the result wasn't a change in research perspective, it was a change of script as Jeff says - a new way of thinking about how he presents what he does. “ Thanks to Louisa Wood for this example
A few extracts: "Done well, public dialogue opens up and informs political debate about alternatives. It points to the many possible ways in which we might proceed and make lock-ins and other forms of closure less likely. Dialogue is one of many ways (others include collaborative research and interdisciplinarity) of broadening research agendas and increasing diversity." "The challenge is to make scientists conscious that science is embedded in society, and that dialogue with the wider public is a prerequisite for scientific responsibility. In fact, it is the role of the public to make scientists responsible. Scientists have to learn this... Responsible Research and Innovation must become an integral part of the scientific process... The benefit
is more responsible science and less regulation, including fewer control mechanisms"
Ben talks about what he's learnt through public engagement, and what has surprised him about the public perception of science. Courtesy of @erinmaochu (again!)
By Andy Stirling "Despite the many different forms, roles, and perspectives around public engagement, then, it is clear that (in bioscience governance, as elsewhere), the real value of more inclusive participation lies in opening up—rather than closing down—a healthy, mature, accountable democratic politics of technology choice. So, the challenge lies not so much in procedural design, as in the creation of a dynamic new political arena—in which reasoned scepticism is as valued in public debates about technology as it is in science itself. In this way, we may hope to renew and recombine two strangely sundered aspects of the Enlightenment: science and democracy. Far from presenting obstacles (as often implied), it is the emergence of a diverse vibrant new “fifth estate” of practices and institutions around public engagement that best embodies a true Enlightenment vision of progress. Indeed, in bioscience as elsewhere, this exercise of greater social agency over the directions for knowledge and innovation moves beyond enlightenment over the mere possibility of social advance, towards real enablement of a greater diversity of directions for human progress."
"...Science communicator respondents gave numerous such responses: 'questions about science that you don't usually think of!'..." and "After the event, responses ... reflected high levels of perceived personal value (e.g., ‘a very worthwhile pass time; important to make science inclusive to non-scientists; lots of effort and energy from the science community’)." Thanks to Eric Jensen for highlighting this
Wynn Abbott on why public engagement benefits are hard to capture
A problem which crops up over and over in science-art collaboration interviews (and I think this is relevant to any PE projects) is the existence of the more prevalent(?) but less tangible benefits of doing public engagement projects i.e. if a scientist is collaborating with people outside their specialism they don’t necessary have the vocabulary to communicate the benefit of the collaboration. And frequently, especially with art collaboration, this lack of vocabulary results in the collaborators denying the benefits of the engagement to their research. Others have stated in the past that a public engagement collaboration is like going to see a great film – you don’t always understand how a film has affected your outlook till some time afterwards. This is why I think a poll like yours is interesting but may not – if the examples are few - represent an accurate picture of the benefits of public engagement to research. @wynnabbott
Interim Evaluation of the Synthetic Biology Dialgoue
Expert participants were generally positive about their involvement in the process. They were impressed with the level of energy and engagement in the groups and the scientists were pleasantly surprised with the strength of support for their research among many participants. For some, participation in the workshops developed or reinforced a sense of the value of public engagement and dialogue. Interestingly the social scientists found it particularly valuable from a professional perspective to be participants in a process they would usually critique.
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