Tag Archives: science communication

Nano magazine; quantum tamers; insight into Intel; science publicity hounds

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I found a new magazine, nano: The Magazine for Small Science,  this morning (thanks to Andy Miah). There’s an eclectic range of material some of which you can access  for free here.  I’m particularly interested in the ‘Nano’ versus nano article by Andrew Carruthers as it’s all about marketing and branding and how nanotechnology branding should not be left to marketing communications departments in various businesses. He uses Apple’s iPod Nano and Tata’s Nano Car as two examples of businesses that used the word nano to brand their products. I understand that neither product is considered truly nano-based which makes the examples rather telling since they are branding exercises that could be described as purely ‘fantasy’.

Carruthers does mention ‘Silver Nano’ products (which are nano-based) marketed by Samsung but there is no comparison of the marketing strategies or even a discussion of the difference between ‘fantasy’ and genuine nano products. That said, I have no idea what his constraints were with regard to word count.

Carruthers states the main issue this way,

Like so many areas of research, nanotechnology can be discussed quite easily with people who understand it, but can effortlessly mutate into a perfect nightmare when explaining it to people who do not. At some time or another, many of us will have been placed in a position where it was necessary to explain our professions and areas of research to people who may not understand them. On many occasions, such people seem keen yet are completely dumbfounded by colourful explanations. There is a sense of dismay [emphasis mine] as they and others ‘misinterpret’ descriptions, ask seemingly unrelated questions, and generally find endeavours at explanation incomprehensible and bewildering. In the main, people are quite genuinely either oblivious to nanotechnology, or have a decidedly skewed notion of ‘what it does’. This chasm within public understanding can be quite easily filled by other means, and the real difficulty is when that chasm becomes filled by marketing communications, rather than fact.

I don’t agree with him about having a “… sense of dismay …”  when people misunderstand or misinterpret information as I think those interactions provide useful data for the person who’s doing the explaining. Sometimes a ‘wrong’ question points you in a completely direction because it wasn’t the question that was wrong, it was you.

In my opinion,  marketing communication and pop culture are for most people the top purveyors of science information, like it or not. The challenge is finding a way to get your own messages out there and heard by using some of the same strategies or even incorporating some of the ‘noxious’ marketing communication messages. I’m not sure whether Carruthers would agree with me or not but, given the tone of his article, I think not. You can read the article for yourself here.

Quantum Tamers; Revealing our weird and wired future is a documentary being presented October 17, 2009 at the Quantum to Cosmos (Q2C) festival in Waterloo, Canada. From the Azonano news item,

The documentary brings together a stellar line-up of quantum experts to explore promising future technologies involving super quantum computers, ultra secure quantum codes to safeguard our communications, and even teleportation.

Although quantum principles are not fully understood, quantum technologies are already responsible for many advances in technology we already use including lasers and their many applications, magnetic resonance imaging (MRIs), modern micro circuitry, plus CDs and DVDs.

For more about the festival including details about when and where the documentary will be shown, go here.

Since the January 2009 announcement, by Paul Otellini, Intel CEO, that Intel would be investing $7B US to retool three  plants for the manufacture if 32 nanometre chips, I’ve been interested in Intel’s progress. This morning I found an article by Ellen McGirt on Fast Company which details Intel’s latest reinvention. I was intrigued to note that the $7B US investment was mentioned without a single hint that it’s a nanotechnology initiative.  From page 5 of the article,

When he [Otellini] made the unusual decision to travel to Washington, D.C., early this year to announce his $7 billion bet on U.S. manufacturing, “no one knew where the bottom was [in the economy], and there was a lot of uncertainty,” he recalls. The business case for U.S.-based facilities may not have been clear to others, but to Otellini, it’s right out of the Intel playbook: If the company controls manufacturing, it can control quality. “Now, we’re going to be a generation ahead.” He had another motive, too: “I wanted to get the attention of the government and to send a message to other companies that Intel was investing in the United States at a time of great uncertainty, and that we should reinvest together in the infrastructure of the country.” If this was a considered effort to improve Intel’s standing for future infrastructure projects, it’s not one other companies have picked up on. The response from other business leaders, he says, has been mute. “On the other hand, the President called and said that it was the only piece of good economic news since he’d been inaugurated,” Otellini says.

It’s an interesting article not least for how the writer portrays the various personalities.

I had a little wake-up call this morning on reading one of Andrew Maynard’s recent posts (here) where he is excoriating the publicity practices of some peer-reviewed journals. He mentions two articles that I have posted about here (the China deaths and the Canadian nano safety article from yesterday, October 15, 2009) and notes that the articles are being held back from public scrutiny for rather long periods while they are being made available to journalists and science writers with the effect that they are not receiving the scrutiny that they should. I had vaguely noticed that the first article was not available when I went looking and that the access information for the article I mentioned yesterday was vague but I didn’t make much of it. So, thanks Andrew for making me stop and think about it.

Global TV (national edition) and nanotechnology; EPA develops a ‘kinder to animals’ nanomaterials research strategy

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Wouldn’t you know it? Just as soon as I finish my ‘science communication in Canada’ series, Global TV’s national news starts broadcasting a series on nanotechnology. Interestingly, the focus in part 1 is on medicine only. There was no mention of any other kind of application or the fact that we already have many nanotechnology-based products available in consumer markets. Maybe they’ll mention these other sectors in subsequent parts of the series.

They too (it was one of the problems I mentioned at my recent conference talk at ISEA 2009) were stuck for ways of communicating nanotechnology and so reverted to the human hair example (i.e. a nanometer = 1/100,000 of a human hair). I f you want to see part 1 of the series, it’s here.  Oh, they have beautiful graphics.

The US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) recently announced a nanomaterials research strategy which I mentioned here in my Oct. 1, 2009 posting and they’ve already revised it. This time it’s all about the animals. According to the news item on Azonano,

Importantly, the research strategy articulates the goal of identifying non-animal methods that may ultimately be able to preclude the perceived need for any in vivo testing. The EPA appears to have taken to heart the principles outlined in the National Academy of Sciences’ report ‘Toxicity Testing in the 21st Century: A Vision and a Strategy,’ which calls for increased use of current non-animal technologies and biological understanding that is more precise, relevant, and that will improve hazard assessment.

There’s more at Azonano. I’m glad to see that the effort to move away from animal testing is being embraced.

Science communication in Canada (part 4b); NanoArt 2009; future nanoelectronics

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Most science public relations (pr) and marketing efforts (including public engagement) in Canada are made by government agencies.  There is a communications officer (actually, it’s usually a team of communications officers) in every government-funded science-oriented agency (e.g. National Research Council, the National of Institute of Nanotechnology, Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council, Canadian Institutes of Health Research, etc.)

In part 3 of this series (Sept. 21, 2009), I mentioned the impact a gag order placed on Environment Canada scientists in January 2008 has had on Canadian science journalism. It’s fair to assume that the gag order also has had an impact on people whose government agency job is science pr.

My guess is that an already cautious science pr and marketing community has become more controlling and more worried.  Take for example the nanomaterials inventory (mentioned in earlier postings) that was announced not by Environment Canada but, in February 2009, by the Project on Emerging Nanotechnologies based in Washington, DC. It’s somewhat disconcerting to have a Canadian government initiative announced in the US first. It’s possible that there’s no connection to the gag order but I cannot recall any Canadian government initiative being announced in another country first.

I have another example of a science pr oddity but it’s based on memory because I didn’t think to save the article and I can’t find it online. As memory serves, months after the 2008 federal election there was an article in a paper that I read stating that an important Canadian science advance done in conjunction with (US) NASA had been suppressed during the election campaign. The information was announced later in the US (again). The article noted this was the first time that information about an advance attributable to Canadian scientists was suppressed during an election campaign, apparently, due to concerns that the announcement would be prejudicial.

In what universe does someone read about a scientific advance and immediately praise or condemn (depending on how you view the advance) a political party? I cannot recall the last time a local candidate got a boost or fell  in the polls when the government announced a scientific advance. Even a biotechnology advance (with biotech being one of the most contentious science sectors in terms of public perception) would not be likely to have that kind of impact. Note that I said unlikely not impossible and that is where the problem lies. There are risks associated with science pr and marketing.

Whether it’s a government, a business, or a non-for-profit agency, there’s always the risk of embarrassment (your data is incorrect), the risk that popular opinion will rise against you, and/or the risk that someone more persuasive will slant your data to prove the case against you. These risks don’t pertain to science alone but there is a specific problem associated with science. Most of us are intimidated by it and, if you’re not, it’s hard to get information that is slanted for an adult who doesn’t have a science background. (Tomorrow’s installment will feature some current science pr initiatives and it will  be last of this series.)

Now for a couple of quick announcements. Chris Orfescu’s NanoArt 2009 competition  is calling for submissions (from the Azonano news item),

The artists can participate with up to 5 images (artworks). All submitted works will be exhibited on the nanoart21.org site until March 31, 2010, together with artist’s name, a short description of the artistic process, and artist’s web site and e-mail. The top 10 artists will be exhibited on nanoart21.org site for one full year and will be invited to exhibit at the 3rd edition of The International Festival of NanoArt. The previous editions of the festival were held in Finland and Germany.

There are more details on the Azonano website.

Michael Berger (Nanowerk Spotlight) has an article on future nanoelectronics which contradicts much that you may have learned about electricity and electronics in high school. From the article on Nanowerk,

Nanotechnology-enabled electronics of the future will be invisible, i.e. transparent (see “Invisible electronics made with carbon nanotubes”), or flexible, or both. One of the areas [John Rogers’ group at the University of Illlinois] focus on is creating materials and processes that will allow high-performance electronics that are flexible and stretchable (see our previous Spotlight “Gutenberg + nanotechnology = printable electronics”)

That’s it.

Science communication in Canada (part 4a); Italian nano

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For this fourth part, I’m going to focus on science public relations (pr) and marketing and  public engagement in Canada. In my view, these activities are part of the science communication spectrum but they are not synonymous with it as others suggest (see part 2 of this series).

This should have been pretty short as there is very little science pr or marketing in Canada but I will be contrasting the situation here with  elsewhere. As for public engagement in Canada, that  has tended to be focused on biotechnology, which is not currently a hot topic, consequently, there is little activity at the moment.

To get the best sense of what I mean by science pr and marketing let’s contrast the efforts here with the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) in the US.

The organization’s name suggests two meanings (a) scientists discuss and critique their work thereby advancing research and (b) advancing science in the public eye. The AAAS holds a very large annual meeting which anyone can attend if they can pay the registration fee. From the AAAS 2010 conference website,

AAAS President and Nobel Laureate Peter C. Agre invites you to join a diverse array of leading scientists, engineers, educators, and policy-makers at the association’s 176th meeting. It will attract attendees from all U.S. states and territories as well as more than 50 countries

This is well attended by journalists and you will notice, if you pay attention to the presentation titles and abstracts, that after a meeting, stories about these presentations start appearing. The first stories usually directly reference the meeting but you can also see stories up to one or two  or even more years later. For example, the first discussion of the ‘CSI effect’ on forensic science and public expectations was held at a AAAS  annual meeting (I think it was the 2005 meeting). There have been many media stories since about the CSI effect.

From a pr/marketing perspective, this is an excellent effort. Last year, the AAAS even added a little flare to their efforts by holding a ‘Dancing with the Scientists’ video contest. You can read more about the contest here at the TierneyLab blog on the NY Times website.

The American Chemical Society (ACS), in addition to its usual meetings,  has also gotten into the act and has held two video contests that focus on describing and explaining nanotechnology. (You can find more about these contests in my July 21, 2009 and Feb. 23, 2009 postings.)

There are no comparable organizations of scientists in Canada. There is the Canadian Science Writers Association which has this on its website,

We stand for “excellence in science communication in Canada”, representing nearly 500 journalists, students, scientists, communications officers, and policy makers
in Canada and abroad.

Weirdly, you cannot access their events page unless you are a member. This seems like an odd policy since most organizations market to new members through their events and it stands as an example of the tentative kind of science communication that is practiced in Canada. (more on Monday)

Two quick items, (a) Andrew Maynard has found a fabulous Italian nano wine commercial from the 1970’s. There was no nanotechnology associated with either the production of the wine or the packaging; I guess someone just liked the word nano. Do watch the video, it’s very ’70s. (b) Rob Annan on Don’t leave Canada behind has posted more comments on the basic vs applied science debate which is taking place in the US (and in Canada too). He excerpts and cites some provocative material about the ‘false’ dichotomy.

Happy weekend.

Science communication in Canada (part 2)

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Today I’m going to discuss science journalism. There’s not a lot of science journalism as the Science Day report notes,

In communicating science issues, the media fall far short. Science-focused stories rarely make the news in Canada, and when they do, often fail to adequately explain either the science or its significance. It seems that Canadian news editors and producers assume that the public considers science uninteresting or complicated. The European media, in contrast, appreciating that science can hold readers’ and viewers’ attention, routinely cover science news. Scientists, for their part, too often do not engage the world beyond their labs and institutes. When they do venture out, they sometimes fail to succinctly convey the gist or broader relevance of their research to the public, industry and government.

Contrary to the media’s assumptions, a surprisingly large number of Canadians share a keen interest in science. When conveyed properly, science news can capture the public’s imagination. And scientists are perfectly capable of conveying science to a wide audience.

I also found out recently that science journalism is not science communication; that field was described to me (by a member of the School of Journalism at the University of British Columbia) as public relations and marketing. Interesting, non? I view science communication more broadly but I can understand why it’s viewed that way. First, communication departments are often charged with public relations, media relations, and/or marketing communication initiatives. (Note: I don’t know if it’s still true but 15 years ago people in communication departments viewed their roles as distinct from public relations and/or marketing communication. Personally, I always found the lines to be blurry.) Second, there is a longstanding snobbery about public relations, communication, etc. in the journalism community.

Getting back to science journalism, I think pretty anyone will agree that there’s not much coverage of the science scene in Canada. You’re not going find many science stories in your local papers or on the radio and tv unless you make a special effort. In terms of general science magazines that are not being issued by a government agency, only two spring to mind. SEED and Yes Mag for Children and unfortunately I’ve never seen either magazine on the news stands. As for broadcast programmes,  there’s SPARK and Quirks and Quarks on CBC (Canadian Broadcasting Corporation) Radio and Daily Planet on the Discovery Channel (a Canadian offshoot station of a US television channel). SPACE: the imagination station (another offshoot of a US television channel [Syfy] which focuses on science fiction and fantasy) does cover the odd science story but they insert the news bits between programming and I’ve never been able to discern a schedule. Please let me know if  I’ve missed anything.

I’d like to note is that the term science story also includes medical stories, health stories, and environment stories which members of the news media believe are of much interest to the general public (and even they don’t get great coverage). The consequence is that other sciences tend to get short shrift in the competition for news coverage when there are so few outlets.

I will have more next week on this. In the meantime, the Project on Emerging Nanotechnologies (PEN) has a new event coming up on Tuesday, Sept. 29, 2009 at 12:30 pm EST in Washington, DC. The event is titled, Nanotechnology, Synthetic Biology, and Biofuels: What does the public think? If you’re in Washington, DC and want to attend, you can RSVP here or there will be both a live webcast and a posted webcast after the event, no RSVP required.

Finally, Rob Annan (Don’t leave Canada behind) is digging deeper into the issue of entrepreneurship in Canada and how we can nurture it here. He also provides some resources that you may want to check out or you may want to let him know of your network.

Science Day aftermath and a Field of Dreams

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I had no idea that the organizers of the Science Day event (May 27, 2009 in Toronto, Canada) were going to generate a report.  Thanks to Rob Annan for digging it up (you can see his comments about the document here and you can find the document itself, here). Two items that got my attention were:

  1. Attracting and nurturing talented researchers and entrepreneurs
  2. Communicating science is essential

As Rob notes. the report is a little fuzzy about operationalizing these  fine ideas (and others mentioned in the report).  Notice this from the report,

Our education system must train people – scientists included – to be entrepreneurs, not employees, imbuing an ethos of creativity and risk-taking amongst all citizens.

There is already some sort of granting programme (CREATE) whereby graduate students are supposed to be developing their entrepreneurial spirits. I mentioned it here and the problem from my perspective is this: how does a graduate student learn to be entrepreneurial from a senior researcher who’s a tenured professor in an academic environment? Where did the senior researcher get their experience?

As for an “… ethos of creativity and risk-taking …” we do have that, sort of. Generally speaking it gets knocked out of you by the time you’re 40 or, in too many cases, before graduating from grade school. The report does note the lack of substantive support for this grand new ethos but there is scant (no) attention paid to how it will be achieved. Perhaps they imagine a Field of Dreams situation whereby, if you think it, it will happen.

The second item that caught my attention, Communicating science is essential, is a concept I am in sympathy with when taken in its broadest sense. However, my experience, admittedly not vast, of talking to scientists about communication suggests that scientists tend to believe science communication is unidirectional (“I will tell you about my fabulous work and you will listen devotedly and then you will support it”). In fact, the examples used in the report illustrate my point,

Consider just two examples. Public lectures about theoretical physics, held monthly at the Perimeter Institute in Waterloo, Ontario, draw standing-room only crowds. A recent ad campaign on Toronto public transit, featuring photos and factoids about the cosmos, generated so much interest that the Astronomy department at UofT [University of Toronto], which developed the campaign, plans to run a similar promotion in Montreal. In a society dominated by rapidly advancing technology, science stories – told well – naturally resonate with the public.

I like this model and, in some situations, it works very well. The problem is that it’s incomplete. Communication is multi-layered and multi-leveled and the science literacy model that’s being touted in this report is limited as it fails to take into account complexity.

I’m glad to see a science policy discussion brewing even if my comments are critical.

Science’s exquisite corpse and other interesting science communication developments

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The ‘exquisite corpse’ is a game that surrealists started playing in the earlyish part of the 20th century, according to the wikipedia essay here. I first came across the game in a poetry context. I was part of an online poetry organization and someone suggested (as I recall) that we start an exquisite corpse project on our website. Nothing much of came of it but I’ve always found the phrase quite intriguing. The idea is that a group of people play with words or images individually then put the pieces together to construct a final work.

Andrew Maynard’s 2020 Science blog has been featuring an art/science exquisite corpse project by Tim Jones. Billed as an experiment in science engagement, Jones and his colleagues (at the Imperial College) have created videos of two  members of the public, a science communicator, and a scientist talking about a drawing they’ve each created that expresses what they each think is important abou science.  What you’ll see are the interviews, the pictures that the people drew, and an exquisite corpse of science, if you go here.

Tim Jones has now invited more people to participate for the biggest art/science project in history (maybe) to create a bigger exquisite corpse of science. If you’re interested go here to Tim Jones’s site or you can read about it here at 2020 Science.

I came across a way for scientists to publish workflows and experiment plans  at myExperiment.

BBC4 has been conducting an experiment of their own, visualising radio. In this case, it’s a science show that’s cast over the internet. They’ve blogged about the project here.

All of this makes me think back to the interview that Kay O’Halloran (July 3, 6, and 7, 2009 postings) gave me on multimodal discourse analysis and Andrew Maynard’s bubble charts (June 24 and 29, 2009). It’s exciting to explore these new and rediscovered techniques and to think about how we perceive the information being conveyed to us.

One last bit, there’s been an announcement from Lord Drayson, UK’s Science and Innovation Minister and Chair of Ministerial Group on Nanotechnologies that the government is seeking advice for a national nanotechnology strategy. From the announcement on Nanowerks News,

Industry, academia and consumer groups were invited to use a new website to help develop the strategy, building on and consolidating the existing research and consultations that have already taken place. The website will gather views on core issues including research, regulation, innovation and commercialisation, measurement and standards and information as well as on the anticipated impact of nanotechnologies on a wide range of sectors. The aim of the strategy is to describe the actions necessary to ensure that the UK obtains maximum economic, environmental and societal benefit from nanotechnologies while keeping the risks properly managed.

The rest of the announcement is  here and the project website is here.  (NOTE: Consumer groups will have their own website although members of the public are welcome the new website is really intended for academia, industry, and NGOs.)

Happy weekend!

Science and multimodal media approaches

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There’s an interesting article on an experiment being conducted at Fortune magazine. For anyone who’s not aware, the publishing industry is in a serious quandary and many publishers are struggling for survival. This explains why Fortune magazine has a multimodal media version of its print cover story available on the web. From the article by Andrew Vanacore on the Physorg.com site here,

Dispensing advice on finding a job during a recession, the piece had a soundtrack, a troupe of improv actors from Chicago and about 4,000 fewer words than your average magazine feature. Instead of scrolling through a column of text, readers (if the term can be applied) flipped through nine pages that told the story with a mix of text, photo-illustrations, interactive graphics and video clips.

I like that bit about “readers (if the term can be applied)” because I’ve been coming to the conclusion that with less and less text (think Twitter) that we may be returning to a more oral society as opposed to our still literate-dominant society. I’ve been thinking about this since some time in the early 1990’s when a communications professor (Paul Heyer) at Simon Fraser University first made the suggestion to us in class.

Following on this idea that we will be less and less text oriented, the work that Kay O’Halloran is doing at her Mulimodal Lab (situated at the National University of Singapore) casts an interesting light on where this all may be going with regard to science communication.  An associate professor in the Dept. of English Language and Literature, O’Halloran is speaking tomorrow (in Ottawa, Canada) at the 2009 Congress of Humanities and Social Science about reading, mathematics, and digital media. I hope there will be a webcast of her talk available afterwards (I suggested it to the folks from the Canadian Association for the Study of Discourse and Writing (CASDW) who are sponsoring her talk. If there is a webcast, I’ll post a link.

Meanwhile, for those of us not lucky enough to be there, from the programme,

To understand digital texts we need theories that study more than words alone. This talk will show how images, mathematical and scientific symbols, gestures, actions, music, and sound can all be studied along with words using examples from the classroom, digital media, and mathematics.

I believe that more and more of our communication, science and otherwise, is moving in a multimodal direction. It seems so obvious to me that it surprises me that it’s not commonly accepted wisdom.

Later this week, I will have more about science funding and I have notice of another sythetic biology event coming up at the Project on Emerging Nanotechnologie.