{"id":351,"date":"2008-11-12T07:11:55","date_gmt":"2008-11-12T07:11:55","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/occamstypewriter.org\/scurry\/2008\/11\/12\/public_engagement_ring\/"},"modified":"2010-12-26T22:14:44","modified_gmt":"2010-12-26T22:14:44","slug":"public_engagement_ring","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/occamstypewriter.org\/scurry\/2008\/11\/12\/public_engagement_ring\/","title":{"rendered":"Public Engagement Ring"},"content":{"rendered":"

Cath Ennis wrote back in June about the reluctance of some of her colleagues to write lay summaries<\/a> of their work when applying for grants. Clearly for some scientists the effort of casting their work into a form that is accessible to the general public is just too much like hard work.<\/p>\n

But, as has often been stated on NN, making our science intelligible<\/em> to the public is a valuable activity. Indeed many would say it is necessary<\/em>. And while I can certainly understand that some of us might prefer not<\/em> to spend time on this at the end of the laborious process of assembling a grant application, that’s not much of an excuse.<\/p>\n

So I wondered if there might be a way to make the process and the result more engaging<\/em> and for my last grant application \u2013 an investigation of the peptide cleavage specificity of an important viral protease \u2013 I wrote the lay summary as a short story. In fact it was an extremely short story since there was a limit of 200 words. You can peruse the result<\/a> at LabLit.<\/p>\n

One of the main difficulties is finding ways of avoiding jargon but still getting the essence of the science across \u2013 all while staying within the word limit. I suspect I haven\u2019t been wholly successful in this instance but practice makes perfect (!) and at least the composition was much more enjoyable than usual.<\/p>\n

I humbly propose this as a new (and exciting?) way of writing lay summaries to really catch the public\u2019s attention. Care to join the ring? For my next grant application, I am considering a more poetic form\u2026<\/p>\n

Shall I compare thee to a summers day?
\nNo! A nonsensical hypothesis!
\nYour DNA sequence will show the way
\nAnd give a much truer diagnosis…<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Then again, maybe not.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Cath Ennis wrote back in June about the reluctance of some of her colleagues to write lay summaries of their work when applying for grants. Clearly for some scientists the effort of casting their work into a form that is … Continue reading →<\/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":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-351","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/occamstypewriter.org\/scurry\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/351","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=351"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/occamstypewriter.org\/scurry\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/351\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/occamstypewriter.org\/scurry\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=351"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/occamstypewriter.org\/scurry\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=351"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/occamstypewriter.org\/scurry\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=351"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}