As scientists, communicating what we do and why we do it is important. We communicate with other scientists—what we’ve done, in papers; what we’re doing, in poster sessions and seminars; and what we’re about to do, in dark alleys at night with a baseball bat. We also talk to lay people, possibly in slightly simpler (and sexier) terms.
Part of this is to encourage children to become scientists—or at least convince them that science is important—other times it’s to secure our funding, or explain why there’s no link between the measles vaccine and autism, or why GM crops are better for us and the environment. Other times it’s because we want to persuade people with treatable diseases to take this drug and live, rather than go to a homeopath and die.
Another part of this is to persuade normal people that scientists are just like them, really (we eat, breathe, love, read, watch TV, have children, lose arguments, get depressed), but that our years in training help us to understand the natural world and give us some insight into how it is that everything seems to so nicely fit together.
Sometimes our Department encourages us to do this, sometimes we’re lucky enough to have a Faculty office with trained communicators. I’ve even been sent on a course run by the Medical Research Council.
Still, most scientific papers are written in reasonably formal, stiff, walking-as-if-there’s-a-carrot-up-his-arse passive voice and third person something-that’s-not-quite-English.
Here’s an example:
[Butterflies] were subjected while being held by hand to hindwing removal. (The hindwing was severed with scissors along a line just distal to the point of articulation of the hindwings with the thorax, so that only a small triangular flap of each hind wing remained)
Here’s the same sentence, rewritten so that my daughters can understand it:
We cut the back wings off butterflies.
Apparently this was to prove that Hindwings are unnecessary for flight but essential for execution of normal evasive flight in Lepidoptera.
In other words,
If you cut the back wings off butterflies, they can still fly, but can’t duck, dive and weave.
Is anyone else here thinking you utter, utter bastards?
B. Jantzen, T. Eisner (2008). Hindwings are unnecessary for flight but essential for execution of normal evasive flight in Lepidoptera Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 105 (43), 16636-16640 DOI: 10.1073/pnas.0807223105
No, I was thinking of Jimi Hendrix.
Perhaps that’s what he meant. What did he do to the zebras?
If you use layman’s terms all the time where is the sport in that. Honestly, why should I have spent years trying to decipher signaling cascade nomenclature if we are just going to talk like “regular folks”. Doesn’t that (using plain language) take a little shine off the Ivory Tower? Why would we want to do that?
Well maybe that works if you’re trying to blind your customers with science…
You need to have a chat with dave.
Quoth Isaac Asimov:
(This quote is what has kept me going for the past weeks.)
And I picture the authors of this article as little boys, pulling the wings off insects for a school project.
Thirty years later they smirked when they remembered the classroom of shrieking girls and the horrified look on their third grade teacher’s face, as they applied for funding to do it all again – fooling the ethics committee with confusingly written paragraphs about lepidoptera flight patterns.
Indeed. Makes doing cell culture naked seem much more reasonable.
We use highly technical language because we want our work to be repeatable. You might be able to cut of half a butterfly wing, and it’ll still do a passable Mohammed Ali impression, but at least we know under what conditions these researchers found their results.
Richard, if you’re looking for a change of scenery, apparently the Danish system funds scientists to moan about this stuff as well:
How to write consistently boring scientific literature
Kaj Sand-Jensen (2007) Oikos: 116, 723-727
It wasn’t so much bemoaning the writing, as pointing out that these guys are being schoolkids in the playground while doing research… and attempting to pretend otherwise.
Ahhhh, now I see. The irony doesn’t come across so easily in writing, or before I’ve had my morning cuppa.
Well, I basically get to play with crayons on my computer (write some code, make some pretty pictures, say Ooooh!) so I can’t really complain. At least I don’t intentionally abuse other life forms.
A load of balls, published[1]
1 Fowler, M.S. (2005) Ann Zool Fennici 42:533-543
bq. Well, I basically get to play with crayons on my computer
When I set to solving my first NMR structure I took home about ten sheets of A3, a roll of Scotch tape and a pack of colored pencils. Unfortunately, things have moved on since then, and it’s just not the same anymore.
@ Eva – yes, that Asimov kept me going, too!
Did you read the whole paper, Richard? Was there a reason given for why the research was important? Perhaps they thought it was solving some question that could be applicable to development or evolution or some larger question? (That’s another problem papers tend to have – they might be important but the authors don’t communicate its significance effectively).
Perhaps not – I’m just curious if they tried to justify it, and if so how.
I reckon they’re researching a way to mitigate all these tropical storms, and avoid another New Orleans. Famously, a butterfly flapping its wings over Hong Kong can cause a hurricane on the other side of the world. The scientists were trying to see if this effect is diminished by cutting down on the wing surface area.
Bollocks. I was writing a learned response to Jenny, and then Safari ate my homework (because I wanted to see what Matt was saying).
There’s some kind of hand-waving evolutionary story, but nothing more than the superficial.
I’ll admit it. I’m an old softy. If they’re good enough for Jimi Hendrix and Robert Heinlein, they’re good enough for me:
Wow, you’re starting to sound like a certain other commenter who frequents other blogs there Richard!
Lets just say we can be selective about which bits of science we communicate to the public…
heh heh.
Indeed. On both points.
bq. Lets just say we can be selective about which bits of science we communicate to the public…
Actually, I don’t think we can. One of the arguments against OA is that we might want to (i.e. keep things secret), but frankly I think that is specious. Information has a way of getting out, and it’s best to be open (not the same as OA) and transparent in the first place.
Wow, you’re starting to sound like a certain other commenter who frequents other blogs there Richard!
Who is that? I am always so curious when I read these “in comments” – who can you mean?
Doesn’t she just mean that anyone who mentions Hendrix or Heinlein begins to sounds like they have a touch of the Henry’s?
Austin, around here I think we’ve all got a touch of the Henrys. It’s inevitable, really.
No, I was thinking of Jimi Hendrix.
I prefer Stevie Ray Vaughn…
Worse things have been done in the name of science. And not always for better reasons.
Oh. That’s all right then.
Death to the butterflies, eh?
Not particularly! But if we are to protect the butterflies then we will also need to stop any unnecessary cruelty to Drosophila, a fellow insect. Many suffered and perished for no particular reason in my undergrad lab classes. And probably in yours too!
Equal rights for ugly insects!
Most drosophiliacs seem to be doing unnecessary experiments…
And yet I’ve never seen anyone post about how cruel that is…
Equal rights for ugly insects!
Conservation has similar issues, it is much easier to get people to care about (and donate to) saving the pandas than the endangered frogs or whatever that share their habitat.
Yeah, what is it with bloody pandas? I say, if they’re not smart enough to evolve to be able to eat something else, good riddance.
“Why doesn’t anyone around here like us?”
Since when was Paddington a ruddy panda?
Dr. Steve was just wearing that Paddington coat to try to fit in with the natives on his visit to London. We should have put him in a little black cape when he sat on the luggage carriage halfway through to platform 9 and 3/4; maybe he would have made it through the wall.
That’s a great photo, Bob.
Maybe you could derive a little comfort from the fact that the gypsy moths, in any case, are some serious pests –
although the fact that they are common or annoying should not justify cruelty. And cabbage whites are rather sweet.
I saw the most incredible movies of behavioral studies of Drosophila the other day at a talk by Gerry Rubin, I think. I’m a little loath to criticize the usefulness or uselessness of a particular study, although my first reaction was somewhat similar to yours, Richard. As Cath said, I don’t know how much more cruel it was than to force subordinate crayfish to resume their aggressivity (and probably get trounced into the bargain) by serotonin injections – and yet the knowledge obtained about the conserved action of serotonin across the Bilateria is quite useful. The knowledge that the second pair of wings can help in agility might be useful in some similar way someday? (Although, Ultrabithorax -mutated Drosophila don’t have any particular selective advantage, but then again, they’re preyed on by smaller things than bats and birds).
Hmm. Having more fun answering you here than writing a post myself. It’s a pleasure having at least work internet access back!
You weren’t so dismissive of Prof. Steve Steve when you actually met him.
Anyway, I suspect he likes the coat because it is strong enough to resist dinosaur teeth.
I only handed him back because you buggers wouldn’t pay a ransom.
Excuse me, madam, but does this bus go to the station?
You tell me
Most drosophiliacs seem to be doing unnecessary experiments…
That’s a tad unfair…I know a lot of moody science being done all sorts of model organisms, a lot of which pales in to comparison with worthy evolgen, molgen and devgen Drosophila work…
Equal rights for ugly insects
hm, considering we use those cute little white (and black, brown and striped) mice all along I am not really sure I want to save [whatever they look like] insects. Did I mention that I destest [super scared] insects? Have you ever looked at a butterfly in a microscope and really studied those mouths? Or the “hair”? Really?
What I wanted to say, before this breif interruption, was
“I guess this is the difference between the ‘future serial killer who ripped wings off flies in their youth’ and the ‘scientists who do it in an orderly fashion when they are adult after 10+ years of studing at university’? The latter ones can publish in an excellent journal and get credit. The other ones are put under supervision.”
A few weeks ago, I came across a study of prey selectivity in crabs. The authors wanted to know whether the attachment strength of the bivalve influenced selectivity, and whether the bivalves responded to that with increased byssus thread production (to attach themselves more firmly to the substrate). So… they cut off the bivalves’ pedal muscle, superglued them to the rock, and then ripped them back off to measure the strength required for the ripping.. and then went ahead and set up their experiment (glueing more footless bivalves to the rock and letting the crabs get them).
Quite put me off.
Yuck, Steffi!! Indeed.
Yeah, I mean, it’d be all right if they served them with lemon juice and Chardonnay, mm?
Don’t know whether the crabs would go for that – that would be another study…
I think tartare sauce is better with crab.
Richard – I knew your blog was influential, but not that is was That influential. You didn’t let on that Sarah Palin is one of your readers. She’s just come out against ‘fruit fly research’.
Quote from PZMyers:
…she [S.P.] wanted more support for children with disabilities, more tools to test for disorders, and while also decrying the expense of scientific research.
Quote from S.P’s speech (in Myers post): Where does a lot of that earmark money end up anyway? […] You’ve heard about some of these pet projects they really don’t make a whole lot of sense and sometimes these dollars go to projects that have little or nothing to do with the public good. Things like fruit fly research in Paris, France. I kid you not.
(Video of speech at link.)
Better not tell her about the butterflies, then.