Charity Insights

With less than 2.5 hours to go, the finale to my 20 days of intense interning at Sense About Science is rapidly approaching. It’s been a delight working with such a smart and passionate group of change-makers, and it’ll be a sad moment when the clock hits 16:00 and it’s time for me to leave.

Here’s a review of what I’ve spent my time at Sense About Science doing, and a bunch of cryptic images to go with them:

	Making sense of screening resource challenging me to explain the concept of screening, and its pro’s and con’s, with less than 200 words and a handful of whimsical diagrams. Looks easy, it’s really not, and working on it has provided incredibly valuable lessons on content presentation and proper communication of science ideas to the wider public. Also had the chance to email some of the UK’s top health experts to ask them to review the guide – goes to show what a big issue screening is in society and the need to be as perfect as humanly possible.
	Making sense of testing resource. Similar to Screening, except in some respects even more difficult given that the topic is broader and has to challenge people’s inherent assumptions about over-the-counter/internet schemes. First draft ready.
	What is radiation? My absolute favorite project during the 4 weeks, with the chance to mess around with a silly presentation of coconuts and silly graphics to make convey serious knowledge about radiation – a very misunderstood topic in today’s world.
	Screening for everyone? Inspired by one of my illustrations in Screening, this poster-sized infographic highlights the potential pitfalls of screening tests. Orange, bubbly, and people falling off the edge. First draft ready.
	Ask For Evidence. Want omega-3? Eat fish or buy ordinary fish oil capsules, not extra expensive fancy ones which have more than you need.
	Dissemination plan. My first project with Sense About Science during the early days of the internship, brainstorming a list of people who Sense About Science should contact to get their upcoming new resource far and wide and to the people who need them the most.
	Maddox prize. Don’t really want to disclose the details of what I’ve been doing here, in case I say something I shouldn’t. Random fact: renowned Imperial academic David Nutt was the Maddox Prize recipient in 2013!

The end to 20 days this may be, it’s certainly not goodbye. I’m not done with my work at Sense About Science; over the next week I’ll be doing a bit of remote volunteering for a poster-infographic on common plant breeding techniques, and possibly a second radiation poster titled Health and radiation which explores further the effects of mobile phone use and household electronics. A commitment has also been made in volunteering at Sense About Science’s upcoming events. If there’s one thing I ought to learn from my first year at Imperial, it’s “don’t do stuff next year!”. I already broke that promise once, so let’s keep breaking it.

Today, however, is more than just the end of 20 days at Sense About Science. It marks the end of 8 full months of constant study, exams and work, and an entire year dedicated to exploring the world of NGOs, science communication and the public engagement of science. I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t tired to the core, but I’d be even more of a liar if I claimed this past year wasn’t an absolute blast. From Imperial Hub on the mezzanine floor of the Union Building (with its strange shaking floors), to the grandeur of the Royal Albert Hall and now Sense About Science in trendy Farringdon, I’ve came to know so many wonderful people and witnessed how their efforts will help change the world in all sorts of ways. It’s been a real treat being able to contribute to their efforts, and I hope my work has or will be useful.

Tonight I’ll be on a plane heading home, equipped with 15 episodes of Radiolab and rich memories to accompany me on the hours long trip. Tomorrow I’ll be half-way around the globe, reclaiming my room chair from the territories of my fat tabby cat, as per tradition of traveling away and coming home. Sometime somewhere in the near or distant future, the things that I have learnt and skills that I have developed will become useful once more.

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Many thanks to all of the Sense About Science team – Victoria, Emily, Lauren, Prateek, Max, Julia, Chris, Sile, Ian, Grace and Tracey – for letting me participate over August, and to Charity Insights for the support.

I look forward to seeing what’s next.

 

Read Twentieth Day in full

Time flies, and this week has honestly been the most busy week at Sense About Science to-date. Lots of things wrapping up and being reviewed, and lots of things to start.

Due to a lack of time I haven’t had the time to draw up a full blog post, or get some items reviewed for posting. In the meantime, though, do check out my first Ask For Evidence effort where I enquired for evidence behind Calamari Gold squid oil capsules: http://www.senseaboutscience.org/pages/a4e_examples_of_evidence_hunting.html#

Read Fifteenth Day in full

For someone who hardly spends time in East London, it’s weird to look back and realize I’ve been spending 10 days doing just that. It’s quite a quaint little part of Camden that I’m tucked away by too! I don’t think I’ve seen so few ATMs and so many artisan bakeries during my time in London.

A recap of what’s happened since the first day:

• Dissemination plan – First draft completed! A nice little list of allergy-related charities, clinics and research centers both large and small. Once again let it be known that there’s probably a charity for every type of disorder there is out there (what might this mean in terms of sustainability of nonprofits? *hint hint*)
• Virtual packs – First draft of Making sense of screening completed! Rewriting/condensing a 15 page booklet into about 15 slides with max. 200 words is truly a challenge, but a fun one at that, with lots of quirky décor and infographics. Now it’s off for review around the office, then from there to Jane’s and John’s for evaluation of clarity, and finally some screening experts to make sure I didn’t write “screening makes you Godzilla” somewhere
• #AskForEvidence – Got an opportunity to call out a newspaper article from last week on omega-3. Fun journey since then, involving a nutritionist and a PR firm walking into a bar. Hope I can publish some details in good time
• News check – Responsible for me waking up at 7AM this past week (and doing my first 9-5’s – ever!). Given that I normally start at 10 and walking in to find everyone already all at work, it’s refreshing to know that all Sense About Science staffers actually wake up and commute like normal caffeinated people, and not teleporting AI’s. Fantastic insight as well into the core work of Sense About Science in addressing the latest science claims in the media, and trying to critically analyze press articles myself
• Maddox Prize – Top Secrets

Promise that pictures of some things I’m doing will come about eventually. In the meantime: why Shark Week sucks! (io9)

 

Read Tenth Day in full

A series of weekly blog entries inspired by my work at Sense About Science. This week: Infographics.

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As a graphics designer I have worked on a range of tasks, from simple ones like making buttons for websites to designing print media for distribution and display. But rarely have I had the chance to bridge my scientific interest with my design hobby. On the one hand, this may be because visual design tends to take a back-seat for scientific media – the focus for design in likes of reports and posters are that of functionality and practicality. But there’s a more raw side to it; as engaging as it is to be perfectionist and pixel-perfect, it’s a rather alien concept to pair the abstraction of design with the concrete nature that are data and facts from scientific discovery.

Those feelings, though, may be increasingly unfounded. While one shouldn’t expect brilliantly illustrated posters or artistically decorated journal articles anytime soon at conferences, initiatives in science communication have raced to take advantage of modern styles and conventions to better captivate their audiences. For instance, at the recent Royal Society’s Summer Exhibition, I was genuinely impressed by the lengths taken by some stalls to create brochures capable of bringing the science to life. Take a look at this excerpt from the material produced by the folks showcasing the Higgs Boson discovery:

I’ll admit it: aside from astronomy, physics haven’t captured my full interest since GCSE’s. Although I have harbored superficial intrigues as to fields such as particle physics – mainly due to their high research profile at Imperial – I do not understand them. Yet, coming out of reading the guide, I feel more confident about the basic elements. My knowledge has expanded – I know now how quarks fit in with the scales of our world, the foundations of matter/antimatter, and the basic principles of the Higgs Boson and Higgs field. The cartoonish graphics, brightened with a pastel palette, breaks down the highly complex topic into digestible chucks of appeal to a visual learner.

What the content of The Higgs Boson and Beyond illustrates is the increasing power of infographics. In a world increasingly reliant on social media and instant messaging, these hyper-visual ‘sight-bites’ can take advantage of our sharing culture, allowing skilled professionals like scientists to capture key information and data and disseminate it wide and far.

The argument can be made that such a method to communicate science may be ill-conceived. Breaking down science into tiny, digestible chunks may threaten the integrity of the information being communicated, as it wouldn’t present the full dimensions and nuances of scientific texts. Moreover, infographic production can be done by almost anyone, with or without science training. By combining a focus on visuals with a failure to present information appropriately, errorneous and/or exaggerated information can easily be fed to the public and gain great appeal.

Thankfully, such a phenomenon doesn’t seem to have developed (or at least, isn’t mainstream). It helps that so many science organizations and groups have jumped aboard the ‘infographics bandwagon’ in recent years. The high output of graphics, combined with a general appreciation of science from Internet communities, seem to have kept the flood of visual pseudo-science at bay. It also helps that proper infographics are not something that can be made easily in one’s average word processor, and follows strict guidelines. True infographics are ultimately about the accurate portrayal of data and evidence, not to act as decorations to a document. It stands to reason that accurate infographics require more care and attention, perhaps through commissioning professional designers, who would be more readily able to produce quality products. These, in turn, would sport better aesthetics and hence be more captivating and readily disseminated.

Returning to Sense About Science, one of the main challenges during my 4-week internship would be to try and create infographics based on the charity’s Making sense of… guides, for sharing on social media both to regularly inform followers and potentially be used as a promotional tool. Having never made an infographic before, this is proving to be a thrilling yet daunting challenge. The points discussed above would set a basic framework which I trust will inform my work in the weeks ahead. to set down a basic framework which I trust will inform my work in the weeks ahead.

(As of the time of posting, 2 infographics have been drafted for Sense About Science. Once these are approved, they will be posted as part of my Xth Day series)

Next: Tenth Day. Then: Dissecting Pt. 2

 

 

 

 

 

 

Read Dissecting Infographics in full

It seems like an eternity since I was first awarded the Charity Insights bursary. I have this vague memory that the good news was almost immediately overshadowed by some of the biggest and most important exams I have had to take to-date, then by my July internship with Imperial’s Comms office. But, hey, given all the exciting news from my fellow interns elsewhere, it’s better that I wasn’t too late to the party!

In a way, doing an internship at Imperial right before Sense About Science has left me feeling very prepared. While the former gave insight into how science news is generated, and how Imperial engages the public on its research, working with Sense About Science will hopefully show me the other side of the story: What happens to science news after it’s been published? How is science presented to the public? How can we make sure the information presented is digested and absorbed in a suitable manner?

The internship started off deceptively gently (minus an Underground delay snafu; thankfully I had left a bit earlier!). There was lots of orientating myself with the office, and quite a few new faces and names to learn! (I admit, I spent at least a few minutes after the intro’s looking up everyone’s profile on the website and making sure all the names were embedded in my mind…) But within an hour, things were already hands-on as I went straight into creating a dissemination plan for Sense About Science’s upcoming publication: Making sense of allergies.

A dissemination plan is essentially a database of all the people and organizations that Sense About Science is to contact, in order to ensure the published guide gets to the hands of as many people as possible. But it’s not just a case of searching ‘allergies’ and writing down every result on the first page – in order for a dissemination list to be effective, it needs to pinpoint the specific individuals within the organizations, logging down their names, phone numbers, email addresses, notes of interest etc. Some other important questions also come into mind:

• Is the organization worthwhile contacting? It’s surprising how many promising results lead to organizations that are defunct or have been inactive for eons. Maybe watch out for ‘bad science’ items as well? Some of the results I’ve came across is best described as ‘shady’
• Who best to contact? Most groups tend to show a generic email/number and make you dig for more specific contacts. On the other hand, some e.g. research centres only show the most senior members. Networking 101 made apparent today: always try to find the comms or press team! If the contact is too junior/generic, a response might never be had (and an argument could be made that it comes off as unprofessional). But, if the contact is too senior, a response might also never be had…
• Is a network/relationship already in place? It’s unbelievable how vast their science network is! Lots of cross-checking is to be had to make sure there isn’t already an established person in-place who would be the preferred point-of-contact

When it comes down to it, the task can get a bit dull especially when you’ve been working at it for hours -definitely should consider a bit of better time management over the next few weeks, maybe alternating tasks for added variety! That said, no dissemination plan = no outreach = lots of carefully written & designed booklets sitting in boxes = lots of resources wasted = nobody benefits. Plenty of motivation right there to do it well.

Looking at the week ahead, I expect to dedicate quite a bit of time on creating an exhaustive catalogue of the clinics and research groups relating to allergies. But I’ll also be starting work on summarizing Sense About Science’s publications into light-weight info-packs which can be easily distributed virtually, and helping out with social media by (at long last!) creating infographics! More on the horizon too; this is just the beginning.

Next time: Dissecting Infographics. Then: Tenth Day

 

Read First Day in full