Snippets

I think I've got a case of 'Fresher's Flu' – their enthusiasm and energy has somehow infected me with a will to 'do things'. There's so much to talk about I'm going to break this down into bite-sized chunks, so you don't get stuffed on science!

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I had a fascinating day yesterday.

It began with interviewing a cancer research scientist for a piece for the student newspaper. His work was interesting, but even more I liked the guy himself. At the end of the interview I asked the standard 'Do you have anything you want to add?' and he surprised me by saying he wanted to make a couple of points about science that the public aren't usually aware of. I perked up; this is my kind of thing. He wanted to make it clear that this study came about by 'accident', when the original phenomenon they were trying to study failed to show any significant results under experimentation. Instead, the control in the experiment turned up a result that was much more unexpected and intriguing. In science, he stressed, you have to be prepared to be wrong, accept that you are wrong, and move on to study the results that were 'real'. He also wanted to point out how collaborative the study was, with contributions from six labs across the world over three years. Beavering away in you lab on your own is a real stereotype of science, but that's not how it's done.

The piece should be published tomorrow, let's see how much of that stuff I got past my editor!

After the interview, he shared with me how much he loved doing his job – coming up with hypotheses, designing experiments, puzzling over the results, adapting the method... To him, that's what science was all about. By this time I had told him of my science journalist aspirations, and admitted to him that those things he described, those were the things I wasn't good at. But I still loved science, and was glad to hear all the fascinating things researchers get up to.

Next up, I went to an information session for a program called Let's Talk Science, for university students to communicate their knowledge and enthusiasm to school kids. I signed up to attend a training session, but I'm not sure exactly which of their specific programs I want to help out with yet. I'm not the most confident person for teaching a class by myself!

Lastly, I interviewed another researcher, this time for a piece about the psychology of exercise motivation. I love to hear about these kinds of things sometimes, less of the physics-lab-experiment type science, more relatable, more inspirational. The woman who conducted the research was pleasant, encouraging, and above all, a darn sight easier to interview than most scientists I've come across! While most of them have been open to interview, and personable, they have also had the tendency to ramble, a lot of the time off the point. It's partly my own lack of skills as an interviewer, not being able to control the conversation, as I often notice afterwards when I trawl through the transcript looking for some useful information! It's even more difficult over the phone, but this woman was a dream, answered each question with just the right amount of information, so that I could see the story clearly forming before me.

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In other news, I signed up for a study testing a new regime for treating a type of knee pain. I've had this pain on and off for about 10 years, which is a shockingly long time not to do something about it (shocking even to the researcher who screened me for eligibility earlier), but I suppose I just got used to it. Well, this seemed like the perfect solution: I get to help a fellow student out with their research and potentially ease my pain (which sometimes prevents me from sleeping, like everything else just now!). The therapy consists of six weeks of quite intense deep squats, so even if it doesn't cure my knees it'll give me great leg muscles! More about this as it goes along.

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Back to the student newspaper briefly, the last piece I had published is probably my favourite so far, I got a couple of compliments, but also it was just my kind of thing. The researcher I interviewed was the most rambling of them all so far, but luckily it was a subject I knew and understood, so it was easy for me to make a story out of it. Anyway, you can read it here.

Even better, I got an email today from someone at the University's alumni office, saying they read the piece with interest, and would I be interested in doing some freelance writing for their 'Researcher Spotlight' section of their monthly e-newsletter? Absolutely! I will meet with her tomorrow and hopefully pick up some more professional writing, and meet some more lovely scientists.

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Next, I'm excited to have got a place on a non-fiction writing course at the university that runs every Wednesday evening for the whole year. This will be great for developing my skills. So far with the student newspaper I've been too cautious to experiment with anything but news (also because the opinions and features sections are very student-orientated), but this will hopefully help me to not just be a science journalist, but a science writer.

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Finally (I know you're breathing a sigh of relief), an interesting news article came to my attention yesterday. The former UK science minister is calling for scientists to have a better dialogue with the public. At first I read the article with a furrowed brow, until I got to this bit:

"A study done a number of years ago of the then 15 European Union countries found that those nations scoring lowest on scientific understanding were in general the most unequivocally enthusiastic.

'We should not be surprised by this finding. A good education in science should lead people to ask questions about the impact of science,' according to Lord Sainsbury."

Then it started to make sense. It seems to me that science has thus done a pretty good job of making the public aware of ongoing science, but perhaps not about what that science actually means. Lord Salisbury talks about the public weighing up the risks and benefits of a science they see as impacting their lives, and insists they understand the risks but see no benefits to a lot of controversial topics. I'm not convinced this is the case. Risks in science are often based on a lot of 'ifs'; if one possible outcome comes into being, then it could cause many others, but it often depends on a lot of pathways that can't be accurately predicted. What I'm trying to get at is that any scientific finding or recommendation is always accompanied by caveats and uncertainties, and that's the thing the public don't always understand. In my opinion J

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I just remembered one last small thing! I went to a seminar about plagiarism today and the guy told an interesting story. A graduate student was caught falsifying data, and was severely punished, with two years' suspension. The student decided this was all wrong, and appealed on the grounds that falsifying data was 'not that serious'. The appeal board decided to increase the reprimand to a full expulsion from the university. Based on her behaviour and attitude, they couldn't be sure she wouldn't do it again; and falsifying data is just about the most serious crime there is in research.