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As I write this I’m in Montreal just wrapping up my coverage of the Association of Science – Technology Centers (ASTC) annual conference.
That means I get to rub shoulders and learn with the best science communicators in the world. I also get to see the best public science demos going and the latest tech gear the centres use to convey the principles, wonder and realities of the natural world to a public often overwhelmed by the jargon, pace and detail of science and engineering.
Here’s what I learned. The biggest contrast between the scientists and educators at science centres and other research institutes is this: these science communicators actually love the public, and care that they understand and love the same science, math and engineering the folks I’m hanging with embrace with a nerdish passion.
I have had gigs where I’ve been in a communication function with researchers who treat journalists, the general public and well, anyone they deem dumber than them, with a merely politically veiled distain. They are quite happy to retreat into their narrow caves of theoretical research. They find actually explaining it to the unwashed masses a tiresome distraction. When granting bodies like the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council (NSERC) require public outreach and communication, these researchers would just as soon toss up a tedious text poster about their research in a waiting room and check off that box. I’m generalizing, but only from harsh experience.
The lovable geeks around here will blow shark skin barbs up to the size of dog teeth, dress as steampunk balloonists or explode 2,500 ping-pong balls with liquid nitrogen if that’s what it takes to explain illusions, nanoscale hydrodynamics or the relative volumes of liquid and gas states. They will use magic, robots, chalk dust and sequins.
They’re not doing it because they think the public is dumb, or distracted or depressingly innumerate. They do it because they know if people care more about science, the climate and way the world works, they will be better people for it.
They are, refreshingly, anti-pseudoscience, which they view as dangerous nonsense. Many don’t take a shine to religion but have a more rational humanist morality. They have, best of all, a sense of humour that delivers a gut punch to cynicism.
And they make me realize that sometimes I love technology more than people and that the very best communicators, the ones I’ve learned from this week, never make that mistake.
Wayne MacPhail has been a print and online journalist for 25 years, and is a long-time writer for rabble.ca on technology and the Internet.
Photo: Canada Science and Technology Museum/flickr
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