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Ed Note: Today, we’re happy to welcome Dr. April Killikelly to the blog. More information about April can be found at the bottom of this post.
If a museum is a stage for knowledge and learning, what happens when you ask a scientist to perform?
Where does science happen? Some might say a laboratory, others an office, conference, or alone in a dark basement. They would all be right and, as a bench scientist for almost a decade, I have experienced all of the above. Although I have narrowed my field of vision progressively through my years of training, I am now exploring the role that museums play in placing science in the broader context of society and culture.
Let me start by painting the “before” picture of my life: I spent my days performing experiments at a kitchen-counter height bench tops, or seated with gloved hands inside cabinets that control the flow of air to prevent cross contamination of cultured cells (called tissue culture hoods), or extracting meaning from rows upon rows of numbers in Excel. Unlike the movies, I rarely hold liquids up to the light but if I do, I am mostly asking the question “how old is this buffer solution?” Scientific laboratories study many different systems by diverse methods but many of them share a few key points: they are usually over-crowded with stocked boxes of supplies. They are also crowded with people (postdocs, students, techs, staff scientists) who are all working frantically to get too much done with too little time, resources, and energy.
Given how I spent my days as a scientist, I was very surprised by how familiar the education and outreach office of the Smithsonian’s National Museum of Natural History (NMNH) felt, but also how differently the NMNH approached science communication. The offices and labs of NMNH are similarly crowded with scientists and supplies. However unlike scientific labs at other institutions, NMNH boasts world-class collections of everything from parasites to new species of mammals, from beetles to whales. It is this collection that places NMNH at the center of scientific research and at the top of tourist destinations. Therefore scientists at NMNH have the unique opportunity to present their research directly to the public.
By contrast, at other research institutions, a scientist’s main method communication with the public is often circuitous and unintended. A scientist (typically as part of a research team) publishes a paper in a scientific journal. This paper may then be picked up by media outlets. As the story gains momentum, more media outlets pick it up, and it reaches a broader audience. “Fantastic!” the scientist thinks, “My science is reaching so many people!” But, like a game of telephone, as the story moves from outlet to outlet, the details and nuance of the story get increasingly trimmed until the version of science that hits the mainstream media often has little resemblance to the original study.
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As a scientist, reading this type of scientific news is bitter sweet; I’m glad discussion of scientific material is taking place with a wider audience, but I’m saddened and frustrated by the often-distorted version of science that is presented. There is real danger in only presenting overstated conclusions out of context with none of the caveats or limitations of the original work. From the outside, the communications from the scientific community can appear haphazard and inconsistent. At worst, poor communication with the public can undermine their trust in the scientific method.
Direct communication between members of the public and scientists has its challenges too. You cannot assume neither your audience has a basic knowledge of science nor that they have the time, energy nor desire to listen to all of what you have to say. For example, if you want to communicate how genetically modified mosquitos can be used to stop the spread of infectious diseases, you need to start with the basics – What is a genome? A gene? How do mosquito genes control the spread of disease? How do you modify a mosquito gene? Is this better than other methods to control the spread of disease? Better for whom? Oh, and all this needs to be done for an 8-, 40- and 70-year old in the next five minutes before their IMAX movie starts. This is a clear challenge, especially if you are accustomed to communicating your science to your peers within your field of interest.
The diversity of the public itself can also present a challenge: what each individual wants from the museum will be different and as a scientist, you need to be able to adapt your communication strategy to fit their needs. Some just want to see the Hope Diamond and leave. Others want to meander for hours looking at artifacts and read every word written each wall of an exhibit. In informal science education, the depth of engagement can be much shallower than in other types of education and communication, so much so that it might be tempting to dismiss it as irrelevant to the progress of science. However, these informal science education experiences may offer advantages over more formalized settings.
- Numbers: Annually, 7 million visitors pass through the doors of NMNH. This far outstrips other types of science education and represents a huge opportunity to showcase areas of scientific thought to the public en masse.
- Diversity: Museums are meant to be spaces for everyone, where no membership[1] to a scientific community is required. NMNH is unique in that is free, highly engaging to children and centrally located in a highly visited area. This means that adult visitors that wouldn’t normally enter a scientific museum due to cost or disinterest may be inclined to enter NMNH.
- Personal engagement: Although museums offer the opportunity to passively look at science, natural history museums and science centers are now emphasizing a more active and personalized method of engagement, including encouraging visitors to solve problems, participate in activities and directly interact with scientists. Some think it is unnecessary to strive for personalized engagement, arguing that the public will be convinced of the reality of climate change and the safety of vaccination and GMO food if only they would look at the data; the data speaks for itself. My experience watching people interacting with charts, graphs and other types of scientific data at NMNH has convinced me that the data doesn’t even mutter to itself, it is entirely silent to even the most engaged visitors. That is not to say the public cannot or will not understand it, but the data needs to do a little work to meet the public where they are, not the other way around.
After spending months at NMNH, I began to understand something fundamental about the place of science in society; as culture changes to be more personalized, where everything from streaming-video services to clothing and food delivery is optimized for our preferences, a scientific community that stands apart and dictates to public, will appear antiquated and therefore irrelevant. It is easy to dismiss a concept that you don’t think applies to you. However if the public is brought into the conversation and shown that science not as a cartel of scientists who are all in on the same game but rather as a democratic process of ideas- a consensus becomes far more convincing. In an era of photoshopped, airbrushed and filtered images that stand in for reality everywhere we look, maybe the most novel and exciting way to engage the public is to show how raw, grueling and brave science can be.
[1] I mean this both figuratively (you don’t need to be a scientist) and literally. Although scientific journals publish data that results from public grant funding, journals often require a paid membership or subscription fee to access their content.
About April
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