I had an instructor once who had a term he liked to use - self-licking ice cream cone. Essentially, this referred to a person or system which created a need, filled that need and then commended themselves on accomplishing the task. They were the pat-your-own-back sorts who rarely actually did anything. He even had a nice little graphic depicting an ice cream cone licking itself. It had a big smile. It was pretty clever.
We have a problem right now in our society. I'm not referring to the distribution of wealth, a gridlocked congress or the Occupy Movement as a response to the other two. I refer to our loss of focus on science. We are losing our science students to less challenging fields and our education is turning its focus away from critical thinking and analytical disciplines. It's being discussed to such an extent that one who is interested in science might find it confounding that it isn't changing more widely or rapidly.
Well, here is my own theory. First, people interested in science remain interested and those not interested stay uninterested. Second, there is a misinterpretation of science. How do we change these trends?
I think it must be a one-two punch. A multiple action plan in a single endeavor. Christie Wilcox and Jeanne Garbarino both have written extensively about reaching out. This is really the initial step to the process of getting the information out. Sheril Kirchenbaum makes a call to responsible and literate journalistic presentation. Andrea Kuszewski speaks frequently about open sourcing information.
Television shows have proven to be a prime source of inspiration, though often they give a false representation for the sake of drama. Shows like ER, CSI and even the Big Bang Theory have had positive effects on the promotion of interests in science. (Dr. Bondar pointed out that as good as Big Bang Theory is, do they really need to be such geeks with a dumb blond neighbor?) But we also have a slew of "reality" shows that have caused an opposing trend of notoriety for nothing - think Jersey Shore, and a clear leaning to the world of Gary Shetyngart's satire Super Sad True Love Story. We need a longer standing influence.
We need a cultural shift.
Something I continue to be amazed by is the general lack of awareness of the scientific
community. I know this seems absurd to those on the inside but it's an unfortunate reality. After graduating with my science degree, I "discovered" Scientific American. I had heard of National Geographic and Discover and various other periodicals but never noticed SA. SA is now my preferred choice. Their recently-launched blogging network is a wonderful addition to the establishment with many great voices covering a wide variety of subjects. So why would someone like myself not have been exposed? I read avidly and I'm interested, but I missed it because, well, because I simply hadn't bumped into it yet. Imagine a person who did not have a starting interest. Additionally, the scientific community is constantly fighting an uphill battle against uninformed reporters from both the televised and printed realms who jump on stories without having the complete background or information. Scientists find themselves fighting misrepresentation around every corner. This is a waste of time and effort.
We need to rub elbows with more people. We need additional outlets and conduits to the rest of the population.
Social media is definitely the current means to get out the gospel. However, all the blogging sites devoted to science are followed primarily by those interested in science and even then miss a large portion of people who are simply unaware of the individual site's existence. Google+ is particularly useful since one can create circles but even there one finds the same web of people interacting with one another that one finds on twitter. Obviously there is only so much that the people of science can do. Despite the impression that Bora Zivkovic never sleeps, he can only reach out to so many people. And though he does get the word out concerning the work being done, does his impact extend far from the community at large? Social media is limited.
Here's where the ice cream starts licking itself.
The Theatre ZOO was created to mix interests and we hope to generate an intersection for ideas; scientific and otherwise. TZ currently allows the user to link to their other sites, but my intent is to grow the site even more in time so that it integrates with greater alacrity. I don't mean this as simply self-promotion. The Theatre ZOO's aim is to become part of the solution.
Science and art are the most obvious choices in regards to collaboration. The two intrinsically share a common thread; they're both about the investigation of our world. There are myriad instances of the two working together since science provides great sources of inspiration and art is often able to translate it to the public in a way that your average scientist can't.
In addition to generating the Art-Science joint, I want to make science reach out to the mainstream through fashion, storytelling and discussion. I already have a handful of simple shirt designs and hope for more (and better) designs in the near future. I am currently setting up Storyboards for people to talk about their science, religion and politics despite the old adage. Let's collaborate. These three have always been intertwined, so let's not separate them but rather use it to get the gospel of science out.
Let's continue using social media for interactions and clarification.
The journalism community is failing. Let's take it out of their hands and create our own information hub, a new paradigm. It's hard to argue that since printed news is diminishing, the time is right.
I just finished reading Coniff's book, The Species Seekers and I marveled at how much the citizen scientist role was played out by self-made naturalists. Let's put science back where it belongs, everyone's living room. There are organizations such as Project Noah which allow people to take part in information gathering, so let's get them involved in the dialogue as well.
Will any of this help? I don't have the answer for that, but I will try my best to bridge the gap between the science communities and that of the layperson. Be a part of it and join me at the Theatre ZOO. Link up. Link over. Discuss and disseminate your knowledge and interact with those who don't know what you know.
In the meantime, I encourage you to peruse the links for the individuals mentioned above. I attempted to link only to the pertinent pages but found that each has such wide array of pertinent information that I chose instead to create generic links.
Enjoy the Show!
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