When I was 16, two teachers at my school told me I was ‘too smart to teach’. My feelings of how absurd this statement seemed were echoed by my much-preferred teacher Mr S. He told me about two previous students he had, both of which went on to gain PhDs in Physics and began post-doc research. At a dinner party, they each tried to explain exactly what it was that their research was about to him, a senior school English teacher: while one of them found himself stuck, using the same words and analogies in a desperate attempt to convey the complex details; the other could eloquently and easily managed to discuss the basics of her project and build up the complexity as Mr S understood more and more.
I think it perfectly speaks to the idea that a lot of people who aren’t actively involved in the scientific community immediately assume that all science is just far too complex for them to understand. And I agree to some extent, I took had 4 lectures on quantum mechanics at the beginning of my first year that I still don’t understand; but the truth is I know if I took the time to sit down and talk to a chemist who specialised in the concept, I’d be able to at least basically understand what quantum mechanics tries to explain and why it is important.
Scientists are fundamentally people who are just so interested in the concepts or organisms or pathways they study that they can’t wait to find out more. Yes, I find myself wanting to know more and more about the parasite Giardia on which my literature review is based, but more than that I want to talk about how cool and interesting they are: them having two nuclei is a relatively boring part of the literature review!
Something that Duncan Yellowlees, a speaker who talks a lot about storytelling and its role in science communication, said in a seminar he ran at the BIG event 2021 really connected to me: it’s the personal side of scientists, which we’re actively taught to hide throughout our education, which allows people to connect with the science we spend our careers working on.
I feel like there’s almost a wizard from ‘Oz’ type view of science out there, like it is some deeply complex and impossible to understand concept, while in reality it is just a bunch of (slightly) nerdy people who are pretty obsessed with rocks, or worms, or forces, or atoms. We just have to figure out how scientists can stop pretending to be all high brow and expose our true, nerdy and excitable selves by breaking down these complex concepts into interesting and understandable chunks.
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