The article beneath it was an interview with Prof Brian Cox, discussing the contribution that recent TV series on science may have made, alongside other factors, to an increased interest in studying science.

My initial reaction was “hooray!”. In addition to the science on TV, in recent years scientists around the country have been doing more to engage young people about science. Some have created their own bespoke engagement activities; many are using social media to engage wider audiences; and there are excellent organised programmes such as “I’m A Scientist”. And there are all the efforts of teachers too, creating opportunities to involve scientists in their teaching.

Is it all starting to make a difference? Can we collectively point to an upsurge in students taking science subjects at all levels as an “impact” of our efforts? That would be great news… but sadly we’re not there yet.

The evidence mentioned in the Observer article for an increased interest in science was: “a 36.1% increase in the number of students doing GCSE science exams, compared with the previous year”. Reading around further, I came across a BBC news article from last August, which interpreted a 3% increase in  A-level entries for science and maths as evidence that “science has become cool again”.

Unfortunately there are some problems with all those figures as evidence for an increased interest in studying science. Firstly, as a commentator noted below the Observer article, the impressive “36.1% increase” refers to raw numbers taking single science at GCSE. Science in some form is compulsory at GCSE, so that figure actually represents an increase in numbers taking the “least science” option at GCSE. In any case, the GCSE waters were muddied for 2012 because a change allowed some schools to put classes through single science at age 15, creating a one-off spike in numbers.

But if “science has become cool again” as the BBC article suggests, then the proportion of A-level entries in science should have increased. Otherwise, any increase in raw numbers could just be because “A-levels have become cool again” (for whatever reason, perhaps partly demographic), rather than science subjects specifically.

What we need to know, then, is what proportion of A-level entries were in science subjects, and how that has changed. And the same is true for “triple science” GCSE entries, and UCAS applications for science degrees.

So I did some sums, using data available for GCSE entries, A-level entries, and UCAS applications. And the picture is not quite so rosy when we look at the proportions choosing to study sciences:

 
Q: how has the proportion of GCSE entries (as a percentage of all GCSE entries) changed overall for the “triple science” subjects from 2011 to 2012?

A: the proportion of GCSE entries in biology, chemistry and physics increased from ~8.3% in 2011 to ~9.2% in 2012; so that’s an increase of ~0.9%

[Here's the working, from these Joint Council for Qualifications (JCQ) data:

biology entries 2012: 166 168; chemistry entries 2012: 159 126; physics entries 2012: 157 377. Total "triple science" subject entries in 2012: 482 671. Total number of GCSE entries in 2012: 5 225 288; triple science total as a proportion of that: ~9.2%]

 
Q: how has the proportion of A-level entries (as a percentage of all A-level entries) changed for science subjects from 2011 to 2012?

A: the proportion of A-level entries in biology, chemistry and physics increased from ~16.5% in 2011 to ~17.0% in 2012; so that’s an increase of ~0.5%

[Here's the working, from these JCQ data:

biology entries 2012: 63 047; chemistry entries 2012: 49 234; physics entries 2012: 34 509. Total for all three science subjects 2012: 146 790. Total number of A-level entries 2012: 861 819; all three sciences total as a proportion of that: ~17.0%]

 
Q: how has the proportion of UCAS applications (as a percentage of all UCAS applications) changed for science degrees from 2011 to 2012?

A: the proportion of UCAS applications for courses categorised as “biological sciences” and “physical sciences” increased from ~12.0% in 2011 to ~12.5% in 2012; so that’s an increase of ~0.5%

[Here's the working, from these UCAS data:

"biological sciences" applications 2012: 201 653; "physical sciences" applications 2012: 93 587. Total for both science categories 2012: 295 240. Total UCAS applications 2012: 2 368 565; both science categories total as a proportion of that: ~12.5%]

 
Overall then, between 2011 and 2012 there were small increases in the proportions choosing to study science in more depth, whether by taking triple science at GCSE, science A-levels, or applying for science degrees. A welcome change in the right direction, but hardly the upsurge for science that the headlines suggest.

Given those more modest gains, I’m also left wondering what would have happened without all the increased efforts to engage young people about science, from the work of scientists and teachers, to the science on TV. And now that we’re heading in the right direction, what can we do to build up the momentum?

Jon Copley

HOW CAN female scientists reach the top in their careers? The answer should be simple: just do brilliant science. Unfortunately, reality presents a rather more complicated and depressing picture. Despite growing numbers of women completing PhDs, they remain woefully under-represented in the higher echelons of academia and industry.

In the UK, only about a fifth of senior lecturers in science are women, and just under 10 per cent of science professors are female. Even in fields such as biology, where roughly equal numbers of men and women do PhDs, the proportion of women reaching senior levels is shockingly low.

SciConnect has teamed up with colleagues at Imperial College London, the University of Warwick and Quercus Training to create a course that aims to help female scientists tackle some of the factors that hold them back. Though the medium of science radio and TV production and science writing training, we help participants develop their communication and presentation skills, as well as deconstructing the media portrayal of science and female researchers.

So what is the problem? Although overt sex discrimination is rare, female scientists are battling engrained bias, both at the institutional and personal levels. One recent study, for example, revealed that when shown identical CVs for an academic post application, both male and female faculty members rated the applicant as being less competent if the name on the CV was female.

On a personal level, female scientists are still lumbered with doing twice as much housework as their male counterparts, and are more likely to put their career in second place to that of their male partners, by moving to suit his job or working fewer hours.

These biases and inequalities need to be tackled by enlightened national policies and institutional good practice. But there are also some things that individual female scientists can do to boost their chances of success in a male-dominated work environment. These include developing their ability to communicate and present their science with clarity, confidence and authority.

Another important factor is the low profile of female scientists in the media and the lack of awareness of women’s scientific achievements. This contributes to a social environment that subtly discourages girls and women from pursuing scientific careers. A recent Wikipedia “edit-a-thon”, tied in to Ada Lovelace day last month helped to redress the balance. But there is always more that any scientist can do to proactively communicate their research to wider audiences, be it via traditional mass media or via new media conduits such as blogging and Twitter.

Our new course uses science media to help early career scientists (meaning final year PhD students, postdocs and new PIs)  improve their ability to communicate with different audiences, from other researchers and grant reviewers to journalists and members of the public. It focuses on the barriers facing female scientists in their careers and how developing effective presentation skills and personal impact can help.

The course analyses the media portrayal of female scientists, how it can be challenged, and what female scientists can do to raise their profiles. It also covers the importance of effective networking and mentoring, and participants will be encouraged to network over the duration of the course.

The course involves hands-on science radio and TV production, culminating in a recording session at BBC Broadcasting House. Both women and men are welcome to attend. Please visit the course webpage to find out more, and if you have any questions or thoughts, please add your comments below.

We also have a course flyer available to download (1.8MB) here.

Claire Ainsworth

(This post is based on a presentation at the European Science Open Forum session on “Can outreach make you a better scientist?”, which took place in Dublin on 12th July 2012)

The title of this post (and the ESOF session) is a deliberately provocative question, and I won’t attempt to offer a definitive answer; instead, I’d like to share a personal perspective as a researcher who shares their work with wider audiences.  In short: why do I bother?  And the short answer is: it’s not out of a sense of “duty”, but because my research benefits from it.

Let’s start with definitions of “outreach” and “better scientist”.  For “outreach”, I’m specifically going to consider sharing your own research with wider public audiences.  That’s deliberately distinct from communicating a broader general area of science.  The latter is of course important, involves similar skills, and can overlap to some extent.  But you don’t need to be a research-active scientist to be an excellent science communicator (for example: Adam Rutherford, Ed Yong).  Nor does a researcher need to pursue a separate career in general science communication (like Brian Cox or Jim Al-Khalili) to do worthwhile outreach about their own work.

As for a definition of “better scientist”, I think there are pragmatic and philosophical elements.  Pragmatically, there are the metrics by which we are judged in our research careers: grants won, projects and collaborations established, papers produced, and the “impact” generated by our work (defined as wider benefits to society beyond academia).  I’m not here to defend those metrics, but they must be acknowledged.  Then there’s also a “philosophical” element, in the form of our perspectives of research problems, and our motivation in our work.

Armed with those definitions, how has my research benefited from being shared with wider audiences?  The goal of my research as a marine ecologist is to understand how species disperse and evolve in our planet’s largest realm, the deep ocean.  To tackle this, my group studies the patterns of life in the island-like system of deep-sea volcanic vents on the ocean floor.

I’ve tried to put public engagement at the heart of what we do, because I think that everyone is a “stakeholder” (with apologies for using that awful word!) in the deep ocean.  Consequently, when we’re exploring and investigating deep-sea vents, I want people literally to watch over our shoulders and talk to us about what we’re finding.  And I want to share the insights that we gain so that we can make informed choices where our behaviour as consumers or constituents affects the ocean depths.

To achieve those goals, there are three strands to our outreach activities.  Firstly, we engage with the “traditional” media to share our findings with people worldwide, for example by press-releasing the publication of our key papers.  This can reach very large audiences: since December 2011 our work has been covered by at least 440 online media outlets, and one recent BBC News Online article had more than 734000 readers in one day.

We also work with documentary makers who are interested in featuring our work in their stories.  Some of our work will appear in a National Geographic series broadcast to 170 countries this autumn.  My PhD students also enjoyed recording audio material at sea for a Costing The Earth programme on BBC Radio 4, which had an audience of ~1.3 million.

Although “traditional” media allow us to reach huge audiences, we also want people to interact with us directly about our work.  So as a second strand, I created thesearethevoyages.net as a core engagement website for our fieldwork.  When we’re aboard ship on expeditions, we post daily updates of our research including photos and videos, with chat and comment facilities for people to ask questions and discuss our work.  Since April 2010, the site has received more than 200000 visitors from at least 90 countries.  The website also part of a network of social media “portals” that include Twitter and YouTube, so that people can reach us from lots of different places.

Our third strand is a programme of face-to-face talks, events, exhibitions, cafes scientifiques.  For these activities, we’ve specifically targeted four “communities of place” or “communities of interest”.  Firstly, we’ve engaged local communities in the southern UK, because that’s where we are located.  School pupils are another traditional target, but we’ve also contributed to events for teachers, offering our work as fresh examples to illustrate the curriculum.

We’ve targeted “users of the marine environment” as well, through events such as the Southampton Boat Show that are less traditional venues for science outreach.  And last but not least, one constituency that I’ve particularly enjoyed engaging are “retirees / lifelong learners”, through networks such as Probus and University of the Third Age.   Our total audiences so far for these “face-to-face” engagement activities are more than 15000 people.

So have all or any of these efforts made me a “better” researcher?  There are four outcomes that I think fit the bill:

(1) Raising our profile has led to new research opportunities and resources.  For example: some of the funding for my lab currently comes from National Geographic; working with other documentary makers has led to new fieldwork opportunities; and potential new collaborators from different fields have contacted me following media coverage of our work. So together that means cold hard cash, new collaborations and proposals, and more papers, i.e. things that my bosses measure.

(2) Generating “impact” from our research.  Inspiring and informing people about science is recognised as a “wider societal benefit”, if you have the evidence to demonstrate that outcome.  That’s the tricky part, but we’ve collected evidence that shows this impact (in terms of “reach” and “significance”).  Consequently, in research proposals, our “pathways to impact” involving carefully crafted public engagement have been well-received by reviewers (and RCUK are highlighting some of our work as a forthcoming case study).

(3) Gaining broader perspectives of research problems or issues. This has come particularly from engaging “retirees / lifelong learners”, who I think are an important but perhaps underappreciated audience.  Questions that I’ve had from these groups have made me look at research problems in new ways, and helped to broaden my thinking.  It’s pretty arrogant to assume that only a fellow specialist in your field can offer any insights for your work, and I’m excited by the potential wider experience that we can “crowdsource” in this way.

(4) Reaffirming motivation in our research / boosting our morale.  I switched on the “interactive” elements of our engagement website with some trepidation, half expecting a deluge of spam and vitriol.  But instead the comments we received were overwhelmingly positive: people really appreciated the chance to share in our work, and talk to us about it.  That kind of feedback and demonstration of public support has been a huge boost, renewing our determination in struggles we face within our science agencies for our area of research.

There is, of course, a cost involved in the outreach that we do.  That cost is not financial (we’ve had no direct funding for our engagement activities), but in terms of time and effort.  Consequently, there must be a balance.  My group could doubtless do more outreach, but we also need to produce our traditional research outputs.  We could also do less outreach, or none, but I think the benefits above outweigh the costs at our current level of activity.

One factor that makes a big difference in that calculation, however, is that it is a shared effort.  In particular, my research students are eager to contribute, and do so exceptionally skilfully, while keeping the targets of their PhD theses and papers in sight.  Most of all, I find that encouraging for the future: to them, there is no dichotomy.  Sharing our research with wider audiences is simply part of how we do our science.

When communicating with non-specialists, scientists are usually aware of the need to avoid jargon in the form of specialist, scientific words. But although most jargon words are easy to spot, some can creep up on you unawares because they are everyday words that also happen to have a scientific meaning. We call these words “false friends”, because you use them thinking that everyone knows what you mean. Result? Confusion and misunderstanding. A classic example is “model”:

A model, to a biomedical scientist, could be an animal model used to study disease…

On the other hand, to a geophysicist, it could mean a computer model of a geological phenomenon…

While to the man or woman on the street, THIS is a model…

Imagine the confusion you could cause if you gave a public lecture on using models in cancer research or climate science! So what “false friend” words have you come across in your field of research, or in your dealings with other scientists?

To take part in our competition, tweet your “false friend” jargon word, together with all its potentially confusing definitions before 18:00 BST on Friday 13th July. You must add the #sciconnect hashtag to your tweet so that we can find it. For example, if you were submitting “model” as an entry, you could tweet: “Model”: animal disease model (to me, a biologist), computer model (geologist), supermodel (my Mum) #sciconnect

Our judges (Claire Ainsworth, Jon Copley and Helen Goulding, all speakers in today’s workshop) will pick a winning entry, which, in their opinion, is the most original, surprising or amusing example of an everyday word that has a potentially confusing scientific meaning. We will announce the winner on Twitter (follow @SciConnect to see it) and on our blog on Sunday 15th July. By entering the competition, you agree to the competition rules detailed below. Good luck!

Competition rules

1. The competition is free to enter.
2. You must have a genuine personal or institutional Twitter account to enter.
3. The competition opens at 16:00 on Thursday 12 July and closes at 18:00 on Friday 13 July.
4. You may submit as many unique entries as you wish.
5. The judges (Dr Claire Ainsworth  of SciConnect Ltd, Dr Jon Copley  of The University of Southampton and Dr Helen Goulding of Quercus Training) will select the entry that they feel is the most original, surprising or amusing example of a scientific word with an everyday meaning that has the potential to confuse different audiences.
6. The winner will be announced  on Sunday 15th July via the SciConnect blog and Twitter. We (SciConnect) may reproduce any of the tweets entered into the competition on our blog or social media accounts.
7. No cash prize will be substituted and the Judges’ decision is final.

The Prize 
The prize will be awarded to one entrant only. The winner may choose between:

A free one-hour coaching session via Skype (Claire Ainsworth on science communication or Helen Goulding on careers and skills) OR a 10% discount on a SciConnect training course for their organisation.

Driven by his passion for sharing science with the public, Michael Faraday (pictured left) set up an annual series of Christmas Lectures at the Royal Institution in London back in 1825. Faraday was a nineteenth century proponent of what we now call “outreach”: sharing his research with people outside his field of expertise. More than 180 years later, the lectures are still going.

But although most funding agencies and research institutions recognise the value of engaging the public about scientific research, performing outreach is often regarded as an add-on to a scientist’s day job, rather than an integral part of it. Worse, scientists who communicate their work to the media or the public sometimes encounter the view that these activities somehow make them second-class researchers, or that they are wasting valuable research time.

Does it have to be this way? Should more scientists be doing outreach, not just because it perfoms a valuable public service, but also because it could benefit them as scientists? Or do scientists simply have too much to do already? Should they simply focus on doing good science, and nothing else? We’ll be exploring these questions at a workshop that SciConnect is hosting at the Euroscience Open Forum 2012 (ESOF 2012) in Dublin this week. The workshop will explore whether engaging wider audiences should be part and parcel of doing science, and whether scientists who do so not only improve their career prospects, but can also enrich their research, increase its impact, and boost their ability to collaborate and innovate.

SciConnect directors Claire Ainsworth and Jon Copley will be speaking: Claire will be offering some tips on how to share research effectively with non-specialists, while Jon will talk about his experiences engaging wider audiences with his research as a full-time academic. They will be joined by Lena Raditsch, Head of Communications at the European Molecular Biology Laboratory (EMBL) who will give an institutional perspective, while Helen Goulding, director of Quercus Training, will talk about the transferable skills researchers can develop through outreach and how this can help them in their research careers.

If you’re at ESOF 2012, please come and join us! If not, and you’d like to know more, we’ll be tweeting from our workshop, so please follow us (@SciConnect) on Twitter. We’ll also post some updates on our blog about the workshop’s content, so watch this space.

Our ESOF 2012 workshop takes place on Thursday 12th July at 16:00; please see here for more details - http://bit.ly/PIfeGo

Too many science journalists are credulous acolytes, merely translating the pronouncements of researchers for the lay reader instead of holding scientists to account. This charge, levelled at journalists during the final session of the UK Conference of Science Journalists (UKCSJ) in London last week, might come as a surprise to many researchers. After all, isn’t it the media’s job to educate the public about science? Well, no, it isn’t. At least, not in the way many scientists think it is.

When I tell scientists this, their faces often drop, as if I’ve just confirmed their worst fears about journalists being feckless science-manglers and hype-mongers. Hang on, though. Of course science journalists want their readers to learn something from the articles they write. But there are two main reasons why they don’t see themselves as science educators, and understanding these reasons can help researchers avoid some of the tension that often exists between scientists and journalists.

The first reason is one of approach. Science journalists have busy, distracted readers/listeners/viewers whose attention they have to earn and hold. Our job is to inform our audiences about science stories that are of interest to them, not educate them about things that are of interest to the scientist whose work we are reporting.

The second reason is that journalists should not be mere mouthpieces for scientists: we are not PR agents. A journalist’s job is to evaluate information objectively and put it into context for their audience. So as well as talking to a scientist about his or her new research paper, a journalist will usually also consult experts in that field of science, to get their opinions on the paper, its impact on that area of research and what it all means for the journalist’s audience.

Some journalists go further: they seek to uncover scientific misconduct and fraud. Thanks to their efforts, several  high-profile cases of falsified data or unethical behaviour have been exposed. This is investigative science journalism, and it aims to hold researchers, companies and institutions to account.

The debate at the UKCSJ centred on the fact that there seems to be far more “explanatory” science journalism in the media than investigative work. Is this because many science journalists are former scientists and hence too close to the subject? Or are newspapers, magazines and broadcasters unwilling to invest the considerable amounts of time and money needed? Is the UK’s restrictive libel law partly to blame?

This matters, because investigative science journalism defends the public interest when science’s own quality-control mechanisms–peer review and replication–fall short. If scientists feel uncomfortable about journalists doing this kind of work, it’s worth remembering that it also serves the interests of science, by acting as another, independent check on researchers’ activities and raising important questions about how science is done.

Claire Ainsworth

In our workshop at the European Molecular Biology Organisation meeting in Vienna earlier this month, we asked participants to list the attributes of good and bad science presentations, both to non-specialists and to specialist colleagues at scientific conferences. You can see the results on our Facebook page here. No doubt you will recognise some of the points, especially those pertaining to bad presentations. So how can you avoid falling into the “bad” category?

Take a look at the “good” list, and you will notice that it is dominated by references to the audience: “Engaging audience”, “Understandable/Accessible”, “Audience awareness”, “Adjusts to audience”.  You can distill this down to one word that embodies the key attribute of a great science presenter: empathy.

This doesn’t mean you should come over all  emotional and touchy-feely, simply that any good communicator knows their audience and tries to step into their shoes. Try to see the world from your audience’s perspective. What knowledge do they have of your topic? What sorts of things might interest them and so help you pique their curiosity? This will help you pitch your talk at the right level–even when addressing academic colleagues–and to grab and hold their attention.

This may all sound very obvious, but you would be surprised at how many speakers fail to undertake this elementary exercise before preparing their talk. Worse, some compound their sin by recycling PowerPoint slides from talks for different audiences–for example, using slides of results from a specialist conference for a public lecture. 3D graphs or microarray data seem to be particular favourites in that last category, sending polite audience members quietly to sleep and the less deferential ones heading pointedly for the exit.

Deciding what level of knowledge to assume involves treading a fine line between taking too much as given and patronising your listeners. A good rule of thumb is to try and work out when you last shared an education with them. This will depend very much on where you and your audience went to school: here in the UK, for example, students tend to narrow their range of studies at an earlier age than those in other countries.

If a marine ecologist, for example, were presenting to a group of biochemists here in the UK, assuming a first year undergraduate level of ecological knowledge would probably be about right. The same ecologist presenting to some engineers might have to wind back the clock to the last year or two of secondary/ high school (age 17-18). If he or she were giving a public lecture to a general adult audience at, say, a science festival, a good starting point might be assuming the scientific knowledge of someone in their mid-teens (say 14-15 years old).

It is easy to forget just how much specialist knowledge you have. Think back: how much did you know about your subject when you were 16? Probably not a great deal. But you weren’t stupid either, and neither is your audience. They don’t want you to talk down to them or over-simplify your science. They just need you to start at the right level.

Claire Ainsworth is a co-founder and director of SciConnect. She also works as a freelance science journalist.

“Dear Dr Copley,” the letter began. “We are in Year 4 at school and we are learning about seashores. We have questions for you.” The letter, from a class of 8-year-olds, came completely out of the blue and was painstakingly pencilled in a child’s best handwriting. The questions were straightforward enough, but one in particular made me smile:

“Why are there fish?”

That’s an excellent question. Why ARE there fish? To answer it, you need to think about what was around before fish, the advantages of a fishy body, and how natural selection works.  The question made me look at something familiar in a new and fresh way. In formulating an answer, I revisited long-neglected ideas gathering dust at the back of my mind, which prompted new insights in my own research, the patterns of life at deep-sea volcanic vents. And it helped to remind me why I love what I do–not that I ever forget, but it’s easy for the daily grind of paper and grant writing and research admin to get on top of you.

It’s experiences like this that fuel my conviction that public engagement and research productivity are synergistic, rather than antagonistic. But although most funding agencies and research institutions now recognise the value of public engagement in their strategic goals, it’s only natural for time-poor researchers to ask “why?” and “what’s in it for me?”

In the past, I’ve occasionally encountered a snobbish view that those who spend time on public engagement are somehow second-class researchers.  It may be true that those who are juggling several successfully-funded projects have less time, but it doesn’t follow that those spending time on public engagement are therefore poorer researchers.  I’d argue that good researchers are often great communicators, because they see their science most clearly.

The skills and experience involved in sharing your work with wider audiences are highly transferable in a research career.  When I’m writing the non-technical summary for a grant proposal, I draw more on my experience as a science journalist than as an academic author.  Justifying your work in a few hundred words for the busy non-specialists of a grant committee is not the same as writing a technical report.  It involves seeing and conveying the “big picture” effectively, which is also at the heart of sharing your work with wider audiences.  So if you can explain your project clearly to a child, a grant committee becomes less daunting.

Similarly, we’re all non-specialists when we step a short distance outside our own disciplines.  ”Non-specialist audiences” therefore include colleagues in other fields, and being able to talk and listen to them can lead to new collaborations and avenues for research.  ”Crowdsourcing” data collection or data analysis through public engagement has also allowed some researchers to tackle questions beyond the scope of traditional projects.  Here I’m thinking of climate-modelling and signal-processing screensavers, or projects that have worked with gardeners to record changes in the seasonal blooming of plants and the arrivals of migratory birds.

Sharing your work with wider audiences also taps into a much larger pool of experience and perspectives than your own.  I recently gave a talk about my research to a local group of retired people.  One of their questions about my work was metaphorical, asking “is this like…?”.  The answer was “no”, but pondering exactly why during the drive home gave me a new perspective on a research problem.  And that will be going in my next grant proposal.

I’ve not touched on the benefits to society that arise from sharing your work with wider audiences, which have been well-covered elsewhere.  It is promising, however, that those benefits are now identified as “research impact” in the Research Excellence Framework that governs central funding to UK universities.  And “public engagement” is a two-way street: our research can benefit from it, as well as society.  It would be pretty arrogant to assume that no-one outside your research group or field can offer any useful insights and perspectives on your research problems.  But if you never share your work with wider audiences, you’ll never find them.

As for the original question, “Why are there fish?”, I’m afraid I can’t tell you how I replied. It’s such a great question that I now occasionally set it as a tutorial essay for my undergraduates.