{"id":2557,"date":"2014-05-04T19:57:15","date_gmt":"2014-05-04T18:57:15","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/occamstypewriter.org\/scurry\/?p=2557"},"modified":"2017-02-16T14:15:48","modified_gmt":"2017-02-16T13:15:48","slug":"get-out-of-the-laboratory","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/occamstypewriter.org\/scurry\/2014\/05\/04\/get-out-of-the-laboratory\/","title":{"rendered":"Get out of the laboratory"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>The Society for General Microbiology (SGM) kindly awarded me this year\u2019s <a href=\"http:\/\/www.sgm.ac.uk\/en\/grants-prizes\/prize-lectures.cfm\/peter-wildy-prize-lecture\">Peter Wildy Prize Lecture<\/a>, which I delivered at their Spring meeting in Liverpool just a few weeks ago.<\/p>\n<p>The prize is given for \u201can outstanding contribution to microbiology education and\/or communication in order to stimulate interest and understanding in the subject\u201d. It\u00a0sounds rather grand, but please don\u2019t be put off. As I tried to explain in my lecture, I didn\u2019t feel entirely worthy. All I had done was to start writing a science blog and then react to some of the things that happened to me because I was writing a science blog.<\/p>\n<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" title=\"Professor Stephen Curry: &#039;Science communication: a communicable disease?&#039;\" width=\"640\" height=\"360\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/PFTXeCITuO4?feature=oembed\" frameborder=\"0\" allow=\"accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share\" referrerpolicy=\"strict-origin-when-cross-origin\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p>Nevertheless I am grateful to the SGM for the honour and very glad that they have given some recognition to science blogging, and to science communication in general (the Peter Wildy Prize Lecture has been going <a href=\"http:\/\/www.sgm.ac.uk\/en\/grants-prizes\/prize-lectures.cfm\/peter-wildy-prize-lecture\">since 2001<\/a>). I was particularly pleased to have the opportunity to give a lecture on the topic to an audience of several hundred scientists. If you have forty-five minutes to spare, please have a look \u2014 it seemed to go all right on the night.<\/p>\n<p>I took as my title \u201cScience communication: a communicable disease?\u201d My main message was simply to encourage more of my colleagues, young and old, to look beyond\u00a0the laboratory every now and then. Plenty already do, of course, but public engagement is still too often viewed as problematic within academia, as Jonathan Eisen <a href=\"http:\/\/blog.peerj.com\/post\/84300442958\/blog-about-science-kiss-your-grant-proposal-goodbye\">recently revealed<\/a>. Even among those who take up the challenge, it can sometimes be for box-ticking, self-serving reasons. As Valeria Souza observed, this is known as \u2018<a href=\"http:\/\/valeriamsouza.wordpress.com\/2014\/02\/22\/public-engagement-youre-doing-it-wrong\/\">doing it wrong<\/a>\u2019 and it&#8217;s a point I touched on in my talk (that bit starts at 4:50). I think you have to find the intrinsic values \u2014 plural \u2014 in talking with the public about science and, as I tried to argue, these aren&#8217;t so hard to locate.<\/p>\n<p>Despite some\u00a0residual resistance, I look to the future with optimism. After my lecture I talked with several young scientists, at least two of whom, <a href=\"http:\/\/veterinaryvirology.com\">Sarah Caddy<\/a> and <a href=\"http:\/\/fromphdtopostdoc.wordpress.com\/2014\/04\/22\/the-first-post-why-am-i-doing-this\/\">Lauren Parker<\/a>, have been\u00a0encouraged to get into blogging since the meeting (though in Sarah\u2019s case it was more a matter of \u2019<a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/Theinfectedvet\/status\/456916886295699456\">taking it to the next level<\/a>\u2019). Why not have a peek at what they\u2019re up to? If you like what you see, maybe you could say so in their comment threads.<\/p>\n<p>And my erstwhile colleague, Dan Davis (now at a parish in <a href=\"http:\/\/www.davislab.ls.manchester.ac.uk\">Manchester<\/a>), has also been using the pages of <a href=\"http:\/\/www.nature.com\/nri\/journal\/vaop\/ncurrent\/abs\/nri3681.html\"><em>Nature Immunology Reviews<\/em><\/a>\u00a0to exhort\u00a0<em>his<\/em>\u00a0fellow immunologists to take science communication more seriously. That\u2019s the way to do it with scientists: catch \u2018em unawares; put a bit of stick about. Shoo them out of the laboratory.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The Society for General Microbiology (SGM) kindly awarded me this year\u2019s Peter Wildy Prize Lecture, which I delivered at their Spring meeting in Liverpool just a few weeks ago. The prize is given for \u201can outstanding contribution to microbiology education &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/occamstypewriter.org\/scurry\/2014\/05\/04\/get-out-of-the-laboratory\/\">Continue reading <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":7,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[38,107],"tags":[82,301,302,303],"class_list":["post-2557","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-communication","category-scientific-life","tag-science-communication","tag-sgm","tag-society-for-general-microbiology","tag-youtube"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/occamstypewriter.org\/scurry\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2557","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/occamstypewriter.org\/scurry\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/occamstypewriter.org\/scurry\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/occamstypewriter.org\/scurry\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/7"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/occamstypewriter.org\/scurry\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2557"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/occamstypewriter.org\/scurry\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2557\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/occamstypewriter.org\/scurry\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2557"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/occamstypewriter.org\/scurry\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2557"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/occamstypewriter.org\/scurry\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2557"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}