News for the ‘Workshops’ Category

I don’t want to be a politician, I just want to research!

These were my thoughts as I entered the media training workshop set up by The S factor, in partnership with WiSET.  I’d agreed to attend the workshop, held at The Manchester Conference Centre, after hearing the ominous and slightly scary phrasing of ‘public engagement’ being batted about the office.

It’s no secret that scientists have a certain stereotypical portrayal within the media.  The ‘average’ scientist is either an absentminded professor or a bespectacled, nasally congested geek with the charisma of a soggy crisp.  With this reputation it’s not difficult to see why public engagement for science is important.  Unfortunately it’s also not difficult to see why the actual ‘average’ scientist is wary of cavorting with the media.

The negative stereotyping isn’t the only barrier between Scientist and Journalist, either.   There is also the inherent belief among the research community that the media over-hypes and over promises on scientific deliverables, opportunities and threats.  This behaviour leads to public misunderstanding and can cause major damage to growing research fields (take the GM debate for instance).

The Workshop

The content of the media workshop was driven by Sheila McClennon.  The aim of the training was to make us, a body of heterogeneous research scientists, understand how important it was to be able to talk about our research with anyone, regardless of their knowledge of the field.  Unfortunately the start of this meant accepting things we perhaps hadn’t noticed before.

After hearing some playback from our entrance interviews we were shown how scientists can come across as boring. Mainly when we don’t explain things at a level for others to understand.   It was also clear that the nature of our work leads us to be extremely focused. Whilst this is good for research it can leave us  seeing only our own projects and worst off all we assume everyone should know as much about it as we do – but this is not the case.  As a group we were also very over cautious. We were all worried about promising too much from our work, even when that ‘thing’ was a likely downstream product from it.

They were all interesting points to note, and were also quite true.  Even as a collection of scientists it was difficult to fully understand each others work.  Not to mention the proverbial ‘blood from a stone’ endeavour Sheila had getting us to admit basic research could possibly have a use in helping us tackle some major health issues occurring currently (this is still a little difficult to admit because basic research pursues understanding more than output, but admittedly some of our biggest innovations have been discovered using this type of research, but it’s hard to know exactly where it will lead to).

After we’d had time to discuss and digest this we were then sent away to think about our projects, particularly which aspects which we could learn to explain more clearly.  This coupled to a mock interview with Sheila proved the most important part of the day for the majority of us.  Both led to the realisation that the more adept we are at helping people understand our work the less likely it is that the true nature of it will get lost in translation.

Overall the thesis put forward by the Sheila was, when engaging the media, it is our responsibility to be clear, passionate and honest about what we do.  The less we leave to interpretation and abstraction the more likely the true picture of our research will be delivered effectively.

This workshop was a far cry from turning us all into politicians.  Perhaps, though, it may improve our skills as a researchers.  After all, this is advice that can be put into practice in any situation.

references

1. “The Absent Minded Professor” image by Brandon Hambright

edited – Paragraph 5 has been edited.  Upon re-reading it became apparent that it’s interpretation would lead to a misrepresentation of The WiSET training day and Sheila’s work.  Some aspects read as quotes from Sheila but were my interpretations.  This has now been rectified.

Edited: March 8th, 2010