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I remember reading an essay - I think it was by Paul Feyerabend - that argued against holding science in a higher esteem that other methods of reasoning. I was angry with the article at the time. To me, a recent science graduate, it was as if he was kicking the world I knew from under my feet. He seemed to argue that science isn't important. It's taken me a couple of years to get, but I think I understand a bit what he was on about. I vaguely remember the phrase scientism  being bandied about in the article. As I remember, scientism is essentially the belief that science holds all of the answers. Thinking about it now, Mr Feyerabend was not arguing against science but against scientism. And this is something I think I understand now. Cryptic research notes A project at work There's an ongoing project at work with the goal of making our website easier for the people who use it to find the information they are looking for. Technically this is a really easy projec...

With everybody doing end of year lists, I wanted to write a summary of 2013 myself. It's been quite a year, difficult and enjoyable. So here's my (mostly not narcissistic) summary of January to June. January A couple of months into a Science Communication degree, I made a little podcast for I, Science  magazine. I got to meet the amazing Suze Kundu (or @FunSizeSuze ), who chatted about communicating science to kids, splitting water molecules and the science of cocktails. You can listen to the podcast here .  The rest of the month was pretty uneventful, although I did see a steam train go through Earl's Court Tube Station !  February February was a pretty busy month! I started by pondering death at the Wellcome Collection - recording and producing a podcast about their Death: A Self Portrait  exhibition . I learnt two things recording this podcast: 1. Death is a fascinating and sometimes beautiful inevitability 2. Never ask exhibition goers for v...

A galaxy was discovered today. It sent its message and drifted further away. Shifting from blue to red, Lonely photons travelled across the cosmos to be read. Electronic eyes scoured the blackness and we deciphered the story, Of an object so distant in time, we had a birthing memory. A hazy image of things for which there were no words, But which we now know as suns, moons and worlds. * http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v502/n7472/full/nature12657.html

Yesterday we (the "SciComm Class of 2013") had our careers talk. I can hardly believe it has nearly been a year since handing my notice in at work. I did this so I could take a step towards becoming a science communicator. I was an Editorial Assistant with experience in proofreading and copy-editing journal papers, congress submissions and educational materials for the pharmaceutical industry. I knew nothing of Narrative Theory , or the PUS vs. PEST debate, or even of building sculptures . Importantly, I knew nothing about editing audio and video, or about writing news stories. But what next? I need to find someone who will hire me – to take that risk on me. How do they know my skills will meet their requirements? Well, the CV will help, as will providing examples of radio podcasts or writing. But Alok Jha and Chris Riley , freelance documentary film maker ( In The Shadow Of The Moon , The Fantastic Mr Feynman ) seem to think something else is more important. "The wi...

Revision is over and I can write this in my light and airy room at home, rather than in that dark, airless box in which I’ve spent a large proportion of the last two weeks. Exam revision is great for linking ideas which initially appear to be separate and discrete. One link which occurred to me was between narrative theory and Thomas Kuhn’s ‘ Structure of Scientific Revolutions ’. Narrative scholars, such as Vladimir Propp and Tzvetan Todorov have tried to determine what the general structure of a narrative is. While Propp’s structure is really weighty, and a bit vague (it seems his ‘ spheres of action ’ can apply to anything), Todorov argued that all narratives fit within a basic, five-step frame – much more sensible. All narratives start with an initial equilibrium. Early on, there is a disruption from this equilibrium, the characters notice this disruption. There is then an attempt to put the disruption right, before a final equilibrium is reached.  It st...

My opinion of science communication has changed over the 6 months that I’ve been studying it. Before starting, I was one of those who insisted that the public understanding of science could be improved via mass splurging of scientific facts. I was also critical of the media’s representation of science. At best, I viewed it as inaccurate and at worst I viewed it as deliberately misleading in order to drive a journalist’s own personal prejudices. There have been many studies into the proportion of science news stories within newspapers. One conducted in 1995 sampled 6000 articles from popular newspapers between 1945 and 1990 (a preliminary report can be found here ). The authors reported an increase in the proportion of science stories since 1945 (however, there was a peak in the sixties and there has been a decline since). “It’s all well and good to have a large number of science stories,” you might say. “But what about the accuracy of these stories?” A really good accuracy s...

It has been a busy week here in Science Communication. While the Sci Comm’ers have completed and presented our Group Projects, the Science Media Production team have completed their Documentaries and Radio Packages. All of the projects had to communicate an aspect of the courses covered last term (‘Philosophy of Science’ and ‘The Media Representation of Science’) and could do so either through a film or audio product, or through a more artistic product. And they were all brilliant. I was a bit worried when we started these projects, especially since some of the previous years’ projects were shown to us were so cleverly executed (see, The Scientist , Maps of Knowledge  and Ros the Rat and the Paratime Shifts ). Many of the groups this year produced art works and I think this made a refreshing change from the animations and videos from last year (perhaps this a cyclical pattern?). It was great to see the different takes on the ideas presented in class. My group decided to...

I read the God Delusion about five years ago. And I remember thinking that the ideas were really inspiring. It felt, to my late-teenage, hormonal self, that there was a great religious conspiracy which threatened to topple reason and science and society as we know it. Dawkins provided people like me, mostly agnostic/atheists with a voice and with the confidence to question religions. We were actively encouraged not to give two-hoots about respecting religious beliefs since they were ‘stupid’ and ‘irrational’. I went around like this for a while, genuinely believing that religion couldn’t answer anything and yet had a lot to answer to. For some reason, perhaps because it is the best description we have for describing how we arrived in this existence, evolution got pulled into the religion versus no religion debate. Horror, this was now a religion versus science debate. Both sides of the argument ran to opposite ends of the debating chamber, ready to charge at each other. There wer...

There's a lot out there. What do we not know we don't know? Why should we bother with science that has no practical application? Since science is funded by a public which is becoming more engaged, why should they fund certain research projects? The debate over blue-skies research is a popular dinner table discussion for scientists and non-scientists alike. I know scientists who think blue-skies research is superfluous and “offers the researchers money to pursue their hobby”, but equally I know non-scientists who see blue-skies, or curiosity-led research as absolutely essential to our progress as a species. NASA is usually mentioned in any half-decent discussion about the importance of blue-skies research because, actually, what was the point of flying to a lump of rock sitting a few hundred-thousand kilometres away from our (mostly comfortable) planet? “Well,” say Defenders of the Blue Sky. “Teflon and Velcro are NASA spinoffs, invented during The Space Race”. Not s...