Here I am at the end of my 4th week at Sense About Science.
Last day: time for a group photo. Left to right: me, Victoria, Max, Chris, Ian, Julia and Emily.
What can I add to what I have already said? This internship has been an incredibly positive experience, both from a personal and a professional point of view. I cannot say I am sorry it’s over because I don’t think of it as something that’s over for me. I have been rethinking much of my research work in light of what they do here. I believe it helped me deciding what I want to do next, where I want my science to bring me.
We all love evidence-based claims, don’t we?
So, here are my 2cents for any postgraduate student wondering whether the Charity Insights project is worth trying or not.
I know we all are very busy with our research, we focus on that. Have you ever stayed longer in the lab just to start a last batch of analyses to run overnight, so that you could get the results in the morning and “spare” some time? Pressing the “pause” botton on your thesis sounds like a foolish thing to do. We are always running out of time, we always need more results, we are always under pressure from our supervisors and (in my case, at least) from ourselves to finish on time since, to put it bluntly, scholarships tend to end and we need to live on something. I know my industrial supervisors were quite skeptical about me leaving for 4 weeks, for example.
My advice is to think about it as part of what makes you a good researcher. The literature reviews, the planning, the reactions, the analyses, the graphs, the presentations, the reports are all important but I don’t think they are the whole picture. Sometimes a step back puts things in a new perspective and can give us new energies. As a general rule I believe doing something different from our project is a good way to remind us how big the world is out there, and how many interesting things we can do as scientists, both in and out university. Then you can go back to your experiments knowing they are not just a solitary exercise of navel contemplation, but something really meaningful.
After last Friday afternoon, I closed the door behind me with a lot of thoughts in my head and a big smile on my face.
At the end of the third week of this pleasantly sunny and warm September, while helping with packing some books for an upcoming event, I found myself mentally going through my to-do list, thinking what I have done and what still needs to be finished.
At the end of October Sense about Science will be awarding the Maddox prize I already mentioned, a recognition to people who are committed to clear communication of science despite adversity. The nominations for this prize were 55 this year and needed to be read through, their information checked and summarized. I had gone through the candidatures carefully, looked for the material on line, put together a summary of each profile, trying to be at the same time accurate and complete, but synthetic. Now that all the candidates have been scrutinized I am really looking forward to the future steps and what the judging panel will decide.
There have been plenty of other things going on in the office, including a revision on my Statistics presentation, and on an analogue past publication about Uncertainty, which needed a fresh eye to spot small slips and typos. And then organizing a workshop on Science Communication at the beginning of October, aimed at young scientists and researchers. I was putting together some reading material for the participants, it is going to be an exciting opportunity to have a look into science as it is reported in the media and what the contribution of researchers to the scientific debate can be.
This coming last week is going to be a collection of mixed feelings: fulfilment, satisfaction for the work done, curiosity for where it will lead in the future and of course a pinch of melancholy at the idea that I am (not so) slowly seeing the end of this experience.
The second week at Sense About Science has been packed with old and new things. I feel I am learning a lot and getting more involved in the office actvitities, which is a great feeling.
The day starts always with the news: the entire office team gathers and skims the newspapers looking for articles reporting science-related stories. The purpose is to check if these accounts are reliable, if the science is reported in an accurate way, if the claims made are actually evidence-supported or not.
News reading and evidence checking
If they sound unclear or dubious the team discusses about the opportunity of asking the newspaper or the person who made a statement for some science-based evidence.
There was an ad reported some days ago about a pair of gloves containing golden nanoparticles which are supposed to help your skin look younger. I looked at the company website, in particular at their “the Science” page, but the information (and the graphs) I found there were quite confusing and not really explanatory, so we decided to write an email to the company asking for clarifications. Nothing happened for one week. The following Monday on the Sense About Science twitter account (@senseaboutsci) we mentioned the ad and the fact that I had been asking for evidence and… half an hour later I received an email! I was quite impressed, I admit. The pressure of social media does work! Companies must feel accountable for what they claim, and this seems to be a good way to achieve that.
The Ask for Evidence campaign
Besides the Ask for Evidence campaign, I have been collaborating on a couple of other projects Sense About Science is working on. One of them is the Maddox Prize, a recognition to scientists who are committed to bring evidence-supported science into the public debate, despite hostility. This year Sense About Science received more than 50 nominations: a tough job for the evaluating commitee!
I have also been working on a power point presentation about Statistics. This is part of a series of short guides called, “Making Sense of” which summarize useful tips we should keep in mind when reading news about science. One of the guides already published, for example, is called “Making Sense of Chemical Stories” and helps the reader understand why and when we should (or not) be concerned about chemicals. My work was to distill some basic guidelines to navigate in the complex world of statistics. I didn’t realise how often statistics was used in the news, I developed a very selective eye in spotting weird claims now.
The key word if you are working for an organization like a (relatively) small charity is Multitasking. One thing is granted: you will not get bored. There are many activities going on at the same time, and a lot to do to keep them going. Good planning skills are definitely needed!
Lots to do in the office!
I am now half-way through my internship. I find myself looking forward to the next week and all the work ahead. Let see what the press is cooking up for us tomorrow…
Just a few minutes before the bell tower of St James’ Church opposite our office strikes 5, I suddenly realize one week has already gone by and it is time for a blog post.
The lovely St James tower seen from the office
I entered this office Monday, not even one week ago, but I already feel I have found my space here. When I knocked on the black door of 14 Clerkenwell Green I was carrying a backpack and dragging a 18kg suitcase with all my stuff for the coming 4 weeks.
The moment I got off the last bus and walked towards the office of Sense about Science, the charity where I will do my internship, all the thoughts and expectations I had about this new experience suddenly came back to me and evaporated in a few seconds, replaced by an excited feeling of curiosity.
Sense about Science – the office and its shiny black door
How did I end up here?
Some months ago I bumped across a blog post from one of the previous participants of the Charity Insights program at Imperial College and was intrigued by the idea of doing something outside academia but still somehow linked to my scientific background. Being a PhD student working in an external research institution (i.e.: not among the familiar walls of Imperial College) can be pretty hard at times. The feeling of loneliness we all experience at some point of our research is somehow emphasized by the simple fact that… you are alone! No other PhD fellow to vent with about the inconsistency of your results, the puzzling outcome of your reactions, the sometimes unpredictable behaviour of the machines you are using. Sometimes a chat with someone going through the same difficulties can help put things back in perspective. For this reason I tried to take advantage, while in London, of the activities offered by the Career Office, and participate to courses and workshops. Oh, just a little detail: I am not even based in the UK, the research institute where I work is in Belgium. Which happens to be a lovely country, but just adds to the list of difficulties one must think about when participating in activities organized by the College!
Why the Charity Insights program?
I simply thought it was a great idea. Testing your skills on a different environment, using the kind of approach developed in these years of study and research to do something else.
When I read about Sense about Science my interest just grew more and more: they seemed to be the concrete active form of vague idea I have been having in my mind for some time now. This charity wants science to be made accessible to a broad audience, and the public to be involved in the scientific debate. I found their approach really interesting because they encourage people to get involved, being active in asking and looking for information more than patronizing or lecturing them. The underlying idea is that there are specialists in the field (the scientists) who have the competence and the experience to evaluate scientific facts to a deeper level, but this does not imply that those who do not have this background have to step back and wait for the science to speak. They can themselves be proactive and actually need to be so. After all, we cannot be specialists in… everything. If anything, what doing research is teaching me is that the more we know about something the more we see how much there is still to investigate. This recognition of our limited knowledge doesn’t prevent us from being critical and inquisitive in what we read about science.
The second reason why I was interested in working with an organization involved on Science Communication is more personal. Countless times it happened to me to be asked weird questions about anything that sounded science-related from “why do I lose so much hair?” to “is [compound x] carcinogenic?” Sometimes it can be very difficult to disentangle true findings messed up with vague hypotheses and extravagant claims. I thought that seeing how this kind of discussions are tackled in a more “professional” way could give me some good hints for the heated discussions with my friends.
Furthermore, I firmly believe that as citizens we have the right and somehow the duty to get informed and speak up to let our voice heard. To make this voice meaningful, though, we need to know what we are talking about and to have a critical approach to things. I never thought of scientists as detached individuals closed in their laboratories, but rather as curious and creative people who want to understand how things work to make them work better. I think science needs to have a place in society, but making place for science is (also) up to scientists. Sense about Science seemed to me a good place to get an idea about how this can be done for real.
The first contact between me and SaS was via e-mail, followed by a skype call (with my connection being very unstable!) and e-mails between me and Victoria, my supervisor at Sense about Science and Amy, at the Career Office.
After a 40-minute delayed flight from Brussels, here I am, once again, in London, looking for an accommodation for these 4 weeks, pulling out of my purse my remaining pounds and my Oyster card. The first days have been quite tiring, settling in my minuscule room, learning once again my way to work, getting used once again to London and its charm. Surviving 5 days with no internet connection!
At the same time they have been great, I started working in a very friendly and stimulating environment, and I feel like I have already learned a lot. On my 50 minutes trip to work (thanks London!) I am every morning gathering ideas and thoughts, making a mental plan of what needs to be done at work, enjoying being where I am doing what I do.
As for what I exactly do, that is for the next post!
