There’s a look you see in people’s eyes when you say ‘science’ or ‘mathematics’ or ‘engineering’ or ‘technology’. It’s not happiness or excitement.

At some point in our schooling, the sciences, mathematics, technology, and engineering became the exclusive property of those who were deemed to be talented in those areas and the rest of us weren’t necessarily treated well by the teachers or ‘talented’ fellow students.  Some people are so wounded by the experience they lose any interest or curiosity they might once have had and refuse to engage at all.

The odd thing is that most of us have more experience with science, engineering, and mathematics than we commonly believe.

There are very few people today compared to thirty years ago who don’t more or less understand how a computer operates. Car mechanics typically have to repair very sophisticated mechanical and electronic systems featuring computers and wireless technology. Hairdressers need to know a lot about chemicals and how hair and skin might react to them.  And, on it goes.

A sense of superiority seems to be a feature of human nature as if somehow we need to be better than someone else. That sense of superiority is found in many areas, as well as, within the sciences and mathematics and engineering and technology communities. Chemists are superior to engineers who are superior to technologists and all of them are superior to social scientists who return the favour and look down on scientists who they view as having low moral character and having, undeservedly, lots of money (I was in a session at a 2007 conference where that was the gist of the presentation and comments).

In this somewhat balkanized atmosphere it’s good to see people trying to establish a discussion about science, technology, mathematics, and engineering that doesn’t require an advanced degree or discount the comments of an amateur.

There’s a delightful Aug. 5, 2015 posting by John Hinton for the Guardian science blogs that espouses the joy of a ‘scientist pretender’,

I adored science at school. But my coursework assignments bewildered my teachers. Details of experimentations were often accompanied by personal anecdotes and quotes from obscure song lyrics. Irrelevant clip-art was rife. So when I had to pick a path through the labyrinth of life, i.e. select my A-levels, science fell away in favour of subjects where personal anecdoture and obscure lyricalism are paramount.

Despite my enforced rebuttal of science as a professional pursuit, it always retained a very special place in both my brain and bookshelf. Deep down, I wanted to be a scientist. And if you pretend for long enough (it has been suggested by non-scientists), eventually you become the thing you’re pretending to be.

So six or seven years ago, I started pretending to be a scientist. Specifically, I started pretending to be Charles Darwin in my first science-theatre show, THE ORIGIN OF SPECIES … And people were fooled – they came from far and wide to hear me speak, invited me to Australia and Norway and Croatia and Hemel Hempstead. …

Hinton has also pretended to Einstein but I find his latest pretence the most interesting,

Now it’s not easy, we’re told by lots and lots of people, to recruit women into the sciences – and it’s rendered even harder by off-hand remarks made by Nobel laureates. So I started wondering whether I could pull off the ruse of the century and pretend to be a woman scientist, to see if that’d help matters at all.

The scientist I chose was Marie Curie. Like the other two I’d pretended to be, she is the linchpin to a whole branch of science (evolution, relativity and radioactivity respectively). Like the other two, her discoveries have been used both for good (conservation, GPS, radiotherapy) and bad (eugenics, nuclear bombs, radium quackery). And like the other two, I don’t look very much like her.

I’ve already pretended to be Marie Curie in Brighton, where the reception was very positive, and I shall shortly be pretending to be Marie Curie in Edinburgh. And in a few decades’ time, we’ll see whether my efforts have led to a redress of the gender bias (the scientific basis I’ll use to judge my eventual success shall be strictly cum hoc ergo propter hoc, if you know what I mean).

…

Hinton will be at the 2015 Edinburgh Fringe Festival, so if you should happen to be in the vicinity,

The Element in the Room: a radioactive muscial comedy about the death and life of Marie Curie runs at Edinburgh Fringe’s Pleasance Courtyard, 5-31 August 2015 at 3.30pm, alongside the full trilogy playing in rep.

More information here.

While this next bit concerns women and science, it still pertains to the main theme of this posting which is that anyone can participate in science/mathematics/technology/engineering, including comedians. David Bruggeman in an Aug. 4, 2015 posting on his Pasco Phronesis blog reveals information about a very interesting new video series (Note: Links have been removed),

Last fall [2014] Megan Amram released Science…For Her!, a science textbook written as though by a women’s magazine writer who knows little about science.

If you couldn’t be bothered to read the whole thing, but still want to dive in, Amram has a solution.  She has partnered with Amy Poehler’s Smart Girls on a web series, Experimenting with Megan Amram.  (Poehler’s website has a great deal of science, technology, engineering and mathematics – STEM – content worth exploring, not just this series.)

I find it inspiring that comedy writers want to talk about science. You can find Experimenting with Meg Amram here. I understand from David’s posting that this is comedy with some science and the first episode features an interview with Dr. Beverly McKeon, associate director of the Graduate Aerospace Laboratories at the California Institute of Technology (CalTech).

Meg Amram and her book were featured here in a May 25, 2014 posting about the then upcoming book. For anyone unfamiliar with Meg Amram and Amy Poehler you can check out the Internet Movie DataBase (imdb.com) for their various television and movie credits.