WEBVTT
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Good afternoon everyone. And thank you so much for coming to this session,
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braving the cold and the wind this afternoon to come along and listen
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to the session about a passion for science. First of all,
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I'll start by telling you who I am because I'm not on the program.
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My name's Susanna Elliot,
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and I'm the director of the Australian science media center in Adelaide.
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And some of you might know this center as the baby of
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Baroness professor Susan Greenfield,
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the neuroscientist who was out here as an Adelaide thinker in residence a couple
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of years ago. And this is one of her offspring. So this,
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this topic today,
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a passion for science is one that's actually particularly close to my heart
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because in a former life,
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I was a research scientist and I worked for seven years on an adorable little
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creature called a slime,
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no going into any details about slime molds.
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But if anyone who wants to know how something that sounds like it's escaped from
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your bathroom or has been coughed up by your cat after eating something horrible
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is actually a very beautiful thing. You can meet me outside after the session.
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I'll tell you all about it, but science, isn't just interesting.
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It's essential. It's essential to our well-being. And to our future,
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we have been continuously monitoring the coverage of science in the center over
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the last 18 months.
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And one of the things that we found really interesting is that just over the
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last 18 months,
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there's been close to a 300% increase in the coverage of science and scientists
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in the media. So it shows that there is interest out there.
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And yet ironically enrollments in sciences in many of the different fields of
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science are actually going down and apart from a few notable exceptions,
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including China and India, this seems to be a global phenomenon.
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So what's going on?
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Have we lost the passion for science or are we just not communicating well?
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So to explore this issue with us today, we have four really fantastic speakers.
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They're each going to talk for 10 minutes and I'm going to introduce each of
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them before they talk. And then we're going to have some discussion.
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Our first speaker today is Dr. John Campbell.
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Who's a physicist and a communicator extraordinary from New Zealand.
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And not to be confused from by with Dr. John, sorry, not Dr. John Campbell,
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who does Campbell live?
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The sort of tabloid current affairs program in New Zealand.
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John Campbell has spent the past 40 years exploring this issue of
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science and the communication of science and overcoming disinterest in it.
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He's the kind of lecturer that I wished that I'd had when I was studying
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physics. I might've done a lot better in the subject.
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You might also have heard that he's a fire Walker,
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which is not actually a little side industry that he does in order to make
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money. It is in fact,
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one of his antics in teaching physics.
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And I think it's an extremely interesting way to do that.
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He's also known for a biography that he's written of the famous physicist,
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Ernest Ruthford and he's produced a DVD that helps high school teachers
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entertain their way into the hearts of students.
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He's also created a program for science teachers called ask a
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scientist. So take it away. John.
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[Inaudible].
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A lot of sciences rather advanced,
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and it's very difficult to communicate with the public,
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but so much of it can be communicated in should be an isn't.
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How many people here could measure the size of a human cell with
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really nothing maybe want to do that.
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Next time you've got a blind background, a blue sky is just perfect.
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And you're just looking at that with relaxed eyes.
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What you'll see the floaters. Now,
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these are the dead cells in the liquid, in the eye.
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And some of these things are smaller and quite sharp,
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and other things are bigger and quite diffused.
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These are just shadow graphs on the eyeball,
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on the retina and the sharp ones are the ones that are close up
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to the retina.
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So all you need to do is look at the sky
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and get a feel for roughly the size of one of these little
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floaters. And then look at something,
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say that painting over there and compare the size of the floater
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with some feature on there.
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So now all we have to do is measure that distance and that distance there,
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our eyeball is about 25 millimeters deep.
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And so those sharp ones are the size of the floater back at the eyeball.
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And so we just have this long ratio from here to here,
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25 millimeters invert there and multiply by the distance on the
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painting.
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And you've got the size of a human cell about 50 micrometres.
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So there's a lot of simple things that can be done and we should be doing them.
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The ask a scientist program I've been running since 1993,
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and it's really for primary and country teachers and lower secondary
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school teachers.
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Where if a kid asks a great question and it's beyond the teacher's knowledge,
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they pass it to me.
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And I get a practicing scientist to write a litter
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head letter to the child in the classroom.
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And that's the first stage of magnification.
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The whole class sees it and the teacher has it for the rest of their teaching.
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The second stage of magnification is a newspaper column where it has the child's
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name, the school and the question, and then the scientist's name,
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their profession, and their organization they work for.
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And then about 300 words with not an equation that has to be all done in words.
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And the great questions come from these children under age
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12, maybe 14, but from five and six year olds.
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And they are really profound questions that I suddenly rocked back on my shoes
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sometimes, and think, holy care, I've never thought of that.
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And they're entirely uninhibited. Why do we have pubic here?
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All sorts of funny, funny things that one has never actually ever thought about.
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And there's some anthropologists that can give a reasonable explanation.
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So it's initial program. The,
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I had a primary school teacher who's been involved with this,
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how they roar Saturday fellowship for awhile.
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And her job is to go back into the classroom and find out what the children got
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from these responses. And the final question was,
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if the scientist was here now, what would you say to them?
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And this one kid's response was fantastic.
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It was how come someone who's as intelligent as you use such big words on
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us, little kids
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and the medics were bad at that because they would always use a long word to
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cover themselves near colleagues.
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I rather than talk about a belly button with it.
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Although the top question that the kids liked or rather the
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response was about asthma. And it was a medical doctor who responded in verse.
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[inaudible]
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One of the ways of getting unusual science across to people outside lectures.
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This is university of Canterbury outside the main first year
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physics lecture room. And there's a display unit for bays.
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Each of them changed weekly.
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So students know there's going to be something differently and it can be
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anything from the start of a James Bond film.
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So they can get a little physics from that to all sorts of oddities.
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[Inaudible] We need to use the world around us and rainbows are great things and
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cartoonists always get rainbows wrong.
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If it's not that it's a pot of gold there,
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or some robbers come in to get the pot of gold, but a real rainbow
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is like that.
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And the real important thing about a rainbow is that the light coming
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back to us, the raindrops in this case,
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a waterfall are all coming from below that bow
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and above it. There isn't light being returned to us from those raindrops.
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The fact that we have color is just that
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blue light travels, a little slower than red light and water.
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And so we get this change in angle rainbows and
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not cut perfect colors, the only good color.
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And there is the red, the risks are just where various colors can reach.
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So inside there we've got green, but the red is also there.
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[inaudible] The human eye is a great one to use.
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And if anyone knows a little about optics,
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this is a fat lens and a fat lens,
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different colors come to different focal links,
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focal positions because of this change in speed between red and
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blue light, you can see in the back of the eye,
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there is the lens. That's only a fine adjuster.
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Most of the change in direction, the focusing takes place on that front surface,
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which is why people have laser surgery to alter the shape of that.
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So they don't have to wear glasses,
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but if that's a fake lens, why do we see colors?
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Images quite okay. They all seem to be at the right distance.
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Well, try this one. Now I'll just do this quickly.
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Cause it takes a little while, but have a go home.
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You want some really bright red dots and some really bright blue dots.
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And somehow that rate is almost come brown. So this is going to be great.
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Now what I'm going to do is I'm going to steer it there,
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but I want to use the imaging of my eyes only using
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half of each eye. So I'm going to close my now,
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if you have a gap doing this, close your left eye, take your right index finger,
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bring it up to the outside of your right eye until it
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runs along the edge. The right-hand edge of that picture right.
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Now, hold it there. Close that I do the same with the lift.
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Bring it in from the outside.
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[Inaudible] And can anyone see any difference here?
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I'm afraid I haven't got a good read on here.
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I should've made a new one instead of copying a slide,
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which uses different dyes to the scanning size.
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If you,
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what you'll see is that the blue image stands forward and the red image.
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And if you cover up the inside half of the front part of each eye,
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you'll get the opposite. And so it's a great example of,
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we do have a fat lens. We do have terrible chromatic aberration.
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The eye brain system over evolution has taken this out
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by having the images on each half of the eye treated differently than putting
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them back together.
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How many people are going to be flying home after this? All right,
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just get a pit bottle. Okay. A soft drink bottle.
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Actually the Australian airlines user, the we square one, and that would do,
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but it's not as spectacular.
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Preferably one was smooth size just before the door closes the aircraft.
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When you've got on just open the top of the empty bottle
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and then nip it up again. Now when you're the highest altitude
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and that's about maybe two thirds of the way into the flight because of the
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plane, usually climbs is they use up fuel,
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just put the spot a year and crack it and you'll hear air come out.
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The other giveaway of course, is that when you feel it,
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it feels tighter than it was while the pressure air pressure inside
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there is higher than the Kevin pressure, right?
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They reduced the cabin pressure
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as we go up to for two reasons
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when you're at the highest altitude,
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Just nip the thing up again and bring it down.
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And you'll find when you get back to ground, it'll have collapsed.
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So what was the pressure inside that cabin? Well,
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there are various ways you can do it. The easiest way is just get some water,
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put this underneath, open this up. And the water will rise inside here.
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And they are just lower than this.
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So the water levels are the same inside and out.
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And that means the air pressure inside will never be the same as the air
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pressure app Raleigh has to do is weigh that on your BA on your
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kitchen scales, then fill the whole thing, weigh it again.
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And that's close enough. That'll give you the fraction of the water.
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What you're after is da you'll find it's about two thirds.
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The atmospheric pressure on the ground.
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I once had a doctor say, no, no, no, there's no pressure change. It's fine.
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While we all know there's a pressure change.
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That's why they hand out the boiled lollies on the air, New Zealand.
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So when you sack sack them, you're opening up your station tubes.
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And I will make just one plug for, I think,
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a very remarkable little gym you have here in Adelaide that just
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shifted to port Adelaide. I had a look at it the other day.
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It's a lady who was breeding sea horses for them,
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the aquarium trade to say all the sea horses taken
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out of the environment.
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And so there's an amazing Ray of sea horses that are breeding and have on
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display. So I recommend that to people. So let's just,
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anyone can have a passion for science. I mean,
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garden has already hit it because they grow in things and they know all the
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little tricks of the trade and are always learning bits about biology and so on.
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So it's great fun. Get around the world.
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You get to all sorts of interesting places and even get to stay at the Hilton.
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Thank you.
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I think we'll hold off on questions until all of the speakers have spoken.
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So I'm now going to introduce our second speaker today who has many Noakes
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she's an expert on diet and a senior researcher at CSRO human nutrition,
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but many of you will know many as the co-author of the bestselling book with CSI
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row wellbeing diet,
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which is also known as the book that managed to bump Harry Potter and the
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DaVinci code off the bestseller list with possibly only the only
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science book in this country, at least that's managed to do that.
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So it was quite a feat as you'll see from her biography
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Manny also wears many other hats,
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including senior lecturer at Flinders university school of medicine and
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affiliate associate professor of medicine at the university of Adelaide.
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Thank you very much Manny.
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Thank you. I must say, I think I'm a black sheep amongst the group here tonight.
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Sometimes you pinch yourself wondering how you got to the place that you're at
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and talking to a group of people who I'm sure
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highly intelligent.
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Clearly you must be since you're here at this time of night to listen to these
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presentations and talking to you about a passion for science is something that
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I certainly hadn't anticipated doing my education
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was from an all girls school. And I must say that I have to thank
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one of the nuns at the school that I went to many, many years ago, who,
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when I particularly had an interest in going into a commercial class, said, no,
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your grades are way too good.
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You need to go into the general class where physics, chemistry, maths,
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and so on were the do rigor.
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And it was really as a consequence of that, that I'm really here today. The,
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the school was Mary MacKillop college and of course, Mary MacKillop I think,
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is now a Saint. And I think she must be since I'm I'm here today.
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And I suspect that she may have had something to do with it.
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But if I had to say that I was passionate for science,
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I'd actually be misleading you because I'm not really passionate about science,
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I'm passionate about what science can do.
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And so really I think that when it comes to science,
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I'm always somewhat intrigued by the fact that
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at times science is referred to in,
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in some ways rather like a demigod that that one should bow before.
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Whereas I,
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I tend to think of science as a really useful tool to work out
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how to understand things and how to make things better.
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And from my particular perspective,
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my passion really was related to food and
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understanding food from a whole lot of different ways understanding food from
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its cultural perspective,
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understanding what food does from biological perspective and
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understanding the implications of that on human health has really led me to
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where I am now. And I guess nutrition is one of those areas.
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That's not considered necessarily to be a hard science, but in fact,
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we still use the tools of observation and assessment
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and testing to see whether our null
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hypothesis is correct.
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And the scientific area that I was eventually drawn into was the
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area of weight management and trying to understand to what extent we
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can change dietary patterns to a point where it can
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improve human health.
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And clearly in that particular area one requires not only an understanding of
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biology, but an understanding of psychology and human behavior. And in,
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in lots of ways, I think I know a little bit about a lot of things,
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but certainly a master of none.
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And sometimes that's the way things work best because if
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if I were in fact absolutely in
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entrenched in understanding the details of nutritional
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science,
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without having a broader understanding of the context in which those details are
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applied, the context in which people eat again,
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I don't think I would be here.
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I don't think I would have been involved in a publication that became quite so
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successful.
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And so in some ways science is, is great,
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but we need to also be aware of when or
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the, so what element of science and where we take it from there.
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So for example, in the obesity area,
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I can't tell you how many documents there are how many
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reports, how many, a summit reports, how many inquiries.
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And I suspect that probably the number of reports has increased over time.
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And I don't know that any of those have really enlightened us as far as a
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community, when it comes to how we, we tackle the problem.
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And I think the reason is that all,
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although those reports and I contribute to too many of them,
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although all those reports contain good science what is really good about
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science is, is where we take it and how we can apply it.
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And perhaps my real passion is for the application of science or the science of
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application rather than the science itself from the
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mid nineties,
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when we embarked on some of the clinical studies that led to the
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development of what then became the CSRO total wellbeing diet.
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We certainly didn't have that vision in mind,
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but there were some things that I think back now made a big difference
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to the ultimate outcome.
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And that what really made a big difference was the fact that we had that
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contact with the general public,
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that insight into what it was that was being asked,
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what were the questions that people were wanting to know that we could try and
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resolve through scientific investigation and those questions
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related to the kinds of things that were,
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and still are a point of popular discussion now in relation to
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popular diets, different approaches to weight management,
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different approaches to losing weight. And although we could have just said,
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look, you know, you just eat less and move more.
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And really a high protein diet is dangerous and you shouldn't do that.
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When we actually looked at the scientific literature thoroughly,
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we could not really see that there was enough there to be able to answer the
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questions in a way that we would feel comfortable.
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We w that we had the background in. And so we,
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we did decide to do some research in that activity.
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It was probably something that our peers would have perhaps not been
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entirely comfortable with.
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But certainly from our perspective,
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we were answering questions that people wanted to know,
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and it did provide some useful scientific background and
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certainly led to a number of scientific publications,
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but what took it further than that was the communication of that science.
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And it was the communication of that science that then drew us
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through a a kind of
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vortex, I suppose, through a series of events that
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translated and manifested itself into a commercial publication.
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And those series of events was the interaction with the media the
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need to really distill the work that we had done into
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meaningful pieces of,
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or meaningful messages that people could relate to and then to take it even
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further into elaborating on that.
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So the very first exposure we had to this was a
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number of interviews with with the media about the research that we done
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that had demonstrated that high protein diets or high protein foods
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improve appetite regulation and certainly high protein diets in certain
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individuals can be more effective in fat loss than the more conventional high
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carbohydrate diets.
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And we saw a difference in people in how they responded so that some people
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responded well to a high protein diet and other people responded better to a
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high carbohydrate diet based on their metabolic profile,
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not necessarily their taste preference.
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And so that was a new piece of information.
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But when we tried to communicate that it, it became well.
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What, what is the essence of healthy eating?
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What do you mean by high protein diet?
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Can you describe what that means in terms of breakfast, lunch, and dinner,
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which we did and then following that the request was we need
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more information. You've given us one day. What about two days?
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What about one week? What about two weeks, three weeks, four weeks and more.
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And before we knew it,
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we had a constant dialogue with newspapers around Australia,
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whereby we were providing information on the practical application of that
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science,
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which was then taken up by or spotted by a publisher.
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And again,
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we were on that runaway train that seemed not to be able to stop.
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And, and certainly we often questioned whether we should be there at all,
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and whether we should jump off before we,
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we got ourselves into a lot of trouble we certainly got ourselves into a lot of
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trouble. And,
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and much of that was in how you translate
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science to the general public in a way that makes sense,
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but it also does not,
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does not take away from what that science actually said. And that is a massive,
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massive challenge because the detail often has to be lost
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in, in, in the in the communication.
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And so we need to ensure that we don't lose the important detail and just
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communicate the main messages. I think there's a real art to that.
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It's certainly an area that I still can't say that I feel completely comfortable
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in. But we, we were very,
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very fortunate to have an interaction with publishers
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who were able to assist us to translate some of that science into
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words that we felt comfortable with.
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And they also felt were written in a way that, that people could understand.
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So there's much to be said about good science and, and doing it.
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There's much to be said about things being tech technically perfect,
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but sometimes things can be technically,
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technically perfect and practically useless.
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And I think that that's very true when it comes to communicating issues around
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diet and health.
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And what I see at the moment is a real evolution in
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the translation of science in the health arena,
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and trying to capitalize on that wealth of knowledge that we have in a variety
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of different areas. And that's not just nutrition,
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but in other areas and putting it into practice such that
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we can, we can make a real difference. For example,
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issues like a four kilo weight loss in
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people who've got a family history or predisposition of diabetes,
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if that's maintained over four years, can prevent type two diabetes.
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Now that's been known for some time,
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how do we translate that into operations
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into our medical system, into programs and policies in the community.
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And we really haven't done a lot of that at this point in time.
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And much of it has to do with working our way through the healthcare
407
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system and the fact that still there is a lot of emphasis on
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new technologies,
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new pharmaceuticals things that are very high tech that clearly can be
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very, very important and very very
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useful in terms of maintaining health and wellbeing,
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but also the cost to us as a community can be incredibly
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high. And so as we move towards a population that's aging,
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as we move to a population that is going to have a need more healthcare
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resources we need to look at how we can apply some of that good science that we
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already have and translate that into very,
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very meaningful programs that relate to relatively low tech
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areas like diet and nutrition and communicate that in a way that people can
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understand and accept the fact that sometimes we have to forget about the
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detail in order to really make a difference.
421
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So passion for science. I think I, I have a passion for science,
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but as I said to you, my passion is in the communication of that science,
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the translation of that science and I hope that that leads to
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some some benefits for the future. Thank you.
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[Inaudible].
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Thank you, Manny. Our third speaker today is Tim Radford.
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I first met Tim at a very technical conference in the
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Netherlands. It was a very large conference,
429
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lots and lots of scientists talking about very technical things.
430
00:29:08.150 --> 00:29:12.620
And he came along to try and persuade the scientists that
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communicating science is really about telling a story.
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And I think he made that point very well.
433
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I'm not sure that many of the scientists succeeded at it,
434
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but he certainly made that point extremely well.
435
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Tim was born in New Zealand but then he moved to the UK
436
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in the early sixties and spent the last 45 years or so
437
00:29:35.120 --> 00:29:39.800
working for various publications, most notably the guardian in London,
438
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he taken on many different roles, including litters editor, arts editor,
439
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literary editor, and science editor.
440
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And I think in a way that's one of the things that that makes Tim's perspective,
441
00:29:51.520 --> 00:29:54.940
particularly interesting because he's, he's coming from the other side.
442
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If you like,
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and he's looking at science from the outside and having worked in so many
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different areas,
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it means that he knows better than most how science compares to other subjects
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and why it perhaps doesn't do so well in the media and how scientists can
447
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actually do better. So thank you very much, Tim.
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I'm glad we've made this point clear.
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The reason I liked science is because it gives you a chance to tell a story that
450
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no one else has ever said before. No,
451
00:30:30.961 --> 00:30:35.130
no thriller writer can ever write something that has never been written before.
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Certainly no romantic novelist, no economics, correspondent,
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no polit sort of correspondent,
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a science writer can say something that has never been said before every
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day. That's a fantastic privilege.
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It doesn't mean we do it, but it, it, it is a challenge.
457
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I think that I will cut to the chase and simply describe a perfect day for me as
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a reporter.
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But I'll just to a tiny detour science
460
00:31:11.100 --> 00:31:15.030
scientists are actually quite difficult people that is they,
461
00:31:15.240 --> 00:31:19.230
they themselves are the problem, not the, not the solution, but the problem.
462
00:31:20.070 --> 00:31:24.030
Many of them feel that they feel uncomfortable actually trying to try to
463
00:31:24.031 --> 00:31:27.240
interpret science for the public. And
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they sometimes need a bit of help when I was on the arts page.
465
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If I rang up a poet and said, give us a glib quote, please, for this afternoon,
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something about Fetcher. I got one straight away. Absolutely no problem.
467
00:31:40.680 --> 00:31:42.660
If I rang up a scientists and said, will you please,
468
00:31:42.690 --> 00:31:45.840
will you please say something slick and facile in one sentence?
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He would almost certainly say, well, I'm hardly the right person of that.
470
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Or boy,
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I think you should actually wait for so-and-so to get back from the field in
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about three weeks. And then
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this of course has no help to a daily newspaper man.
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That that is the end of the aside. I will now tell you about one day,
475
00:32:03.030 --> 00:32:05.130
one very happy day in a reporter's life.
476
00:32:07.320 --> 00:32:11.550
I went to the natural history museum to do a little story about
477
00:32:11.790 --> 00:32:13.050
Neanderthal man.
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The end of toll man is of course the hour,
479
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our co-tenant of the European continent for something like 30 or 40,000
480
00:32:21.661 --> 00:32:25.530
years. He, I say he, but you know, that I've been,
481
00:32:25.560 --> 00:32:30.120
they disappeared in about 30,000 years ago.
482
00:32:30.121 --> 00:32:34.590
And it may be that they perished in competition with the homosapiens.
483
00:32:34.591 --> 00:32:36.990
It may be that homosapiens and they actually fought.
484
00:32:36.991 --> 00:32:41.900
We don't know what do know that hope that Neanderthal man was
485
00:32:41.901 --> 00:32:45.530
large, had huge nostrils was adapted for cold.
486
00:32:45.740 --> 00:32:49.580
And it wasn't as technologically clever as homo-sapiens
487
00:32:50.480 --> 00:32:52.040
nor was he as graessle.
488
00:32:53.060 --> 00:32:57.470
And there was a kind of presumption that homosapiens was the
489
00:32:57.471 --> 00:33:01.130
slender soccer playing David Beckham type. Well
490
00:33:02.750 --> 00:33:06.590
Neanderthal men might've played rugby league for holdings and rovers,
491
00:33:06.860 --> 00:33:11.300
and generally acted in a brutish way. The paradigm,
492
00:33:11.301 --> 00:33:12.920
however had subtly changed.
493
00:33:12.920 --> 00:33:15.170
And that was the point of going to the natural history museum.
494
00:33:15.171 --> 00:33:16.820
They were actually doing a,
495
00:33:17.020 --> 00:33:20.660
a new look at Neanderthal man with a new exhibition.
496
00:33:21.260 --> 00:33:25.790
And you might say that they were presenting him as a much more refined person,
497
00:33:25.820 --> 00:33:30.740
possibly even a metro-sexual that is that there had been a number of
498
00:33:30.741 --> 00:33:31.431
discoveries,
499
00:33:31.431 --> 00:33:35.690
which suggested that that Neanderthal man was much more interesting than anyone
500
00:33:35.900 --> 00:33:36.501
that hid the two,
501
00:33:36.501 --> 00:33:41.420
given him credit for being there was the discovery of a skeleton which
502
00:33:41.421 --> 00:33:46.280
had horrendous injuries. All of which had recovered. You can conclude from that,
503
00:33:46.281 --> 00:33:49.070
that somebody looked after the man while he was in, he could,
504
00:33:49.071 --> 00:33:53.690
he couldn't possibly have fit himself or hunted in that state. So you can infer.
505
00:33:53.900 --> 00:33:57.020
And the end of town health service, then there was the clincher,
506
00:33:57.021 --> 00:34:01.730
the discovery of a grave of a two year old Neanderthal child who was
507
00:34:01.731 --> 00:34:05.000
found lying on his back with his arms crossed.
508
00:34:05.210 --> 00:34:08.420
And underneath the right hand was a toy X.
509
00:34:08.990 --> 00:34:12.650
I don't need to reconstruct the story for you. You can do it for yourselves.
510
00:34:13.760 --> 00:34:16.070
These were people like us,
511
00:34:16.340 --> 00:34:20.080
and they felt like us and their responses were ours. So
512
00:34:22.660 --> 00:34:25.570
I could have had all this just by ringing up Chris stringer, who was the,
513
00:34:25.600 --> 00:34:30.490
who was the scientist in charge of human origins at the natural history museum
514
00:34:30.491 --> 00:34:32.890
and using the picture that the press release had sent.
515
00:34:32.891 --> 00:34:35.080
But actually I just wanted to get out of the office.
516
00:34:35.290 --> 00:34:39.400
And it's always a good idea for a reporter to leave the office, to refuse,
517
00:34:39.401 --> 00:34:41.740
to look at the internet, to go and talk to a person.
518
00:34:41.741 --> 00:34:44.380
You never know what you're going to find out of those circumstances.
519
00:34:44.620 --> 00:34:48.010
And on that day, I struck gold. The story of the Neanderthals by the way,
520
00:34:48.030 --> 00:34:50.980
was a formula one. It's the sort of thing that you can predict.
521
00:34:51.070 --> 00:34:53.380
It will be a story. You can predict how it's going to,
522
00:34:53.500 --> 00:34:54.520
how it's going to work out.
523
00:34:54.910 --> 00:34:57.040
You can even think of the headline before you go there.
524
00:34:58.960 --> 00:35:01.570
While I was at the natural history museum,
525
00:35:01.810 --> 00:35:06.670
I caught a radio news flesh that said that 24 sperm
526
00:35:06.671 --> 00:35:10.480
whales had been washed ashore on a beach and stored away in the north of
527
00:35:10.481 --> 00:35:15.460
Scotland and an interviewer on the radio simply said,
528
00:35:15.490 --> 00:35:17.710
perhaps scientists could hold a post-mortem on,
529
00:35:17.800 --> 00:35:22.210
on them and find out why they beached themselves or in practical terms,
530
00:35:22.211 --> 00:35:26.980
you wouldn't ever discover why a spoon weld beached itself by conducting an
531
00:35:26.981 --> 00:35:27.814
autopsy.
532
00:35:28.570 --> 00:35:32.410
But I did wonder how you would go about conducting a post-mortem on a sperm
533
00:35:32.411 --> 00:35:33.850
whale. Yeah.
534
00:35:34.120 --> 00:35:37.200
Now I asked this question perhaps a little too loud because the door burst open
535
00:35:37.201 --> 00:35:40.380
and out came a Nick theologist from the natural history museum, who said,
536
00:35:40.470 --> 00:35:43.980
in fact, of course, he must have been a zoologist who said Tim,
537
00:35:43.981 --> 00:35:46.920
to conduct a post-mortem on a spoon. Well, first of all,
538
00:35:46.921 --> 00:35:49.560
you need a very long rope for repelling down a cliff.
539
00:35:50.790 --> 00:35:54.420
Then you need a chainsaw that you can sling over your shoulder because you have
540
00:35:54.421 --> 00:35:59.130
to cut the bloody thing open. You also need, he said a very large pit prop,
541
00:35:59.520 --> 00:36:02.520
a stake to keep the thing open while you climb inside,
542
00:36:02.820 --> 00:36:06.990
you need very good waterproofs because it's disgusting in there.
543
00:36:07.170 --> 00:36:09.570
You need a plastic bucket effect,
544
00:36:09.571 --> 00:36:13.710
several plastic Packers to collect the samples because you will never know what
545
00:36:13.711 --> 00:36:15.330
you'll find. I once found,
546
00:36:15.331 --> 00:36:19.440
he said an eight meter nematode worm or tapeworm.
547
00:36:20.820 --> 00:36:23.160
And he said, and most of all,
548
00:36:23.310 --> 00:36:27.330
you need a dead up-to-date accurate set of tide tables to know when to get out.
549
00:36:30.530 --> 00:36:34.330
He then proceeded to tell me these dazzling stories of adventures with, with,
550
00:36:34.390 --> 00:36:37.340
with decay, dead and decaying,
551
00:36:37.341 --> 00:36:42.140
sperm whales on the beaches of Europe and the problems that were
552
00:36:42.141 --> 00:36:44.840
disposing of the carcasses and the way they kept coming back.
553
00:36:44.841 --> 00:36:47.540
And all I'd had to do was to sit down and listen.
554
00:36:47.720 --> 00:36:50.060
And then I went back to the office and I wrote 2000 words,
555
00:36:50.061 --> 00:36:52.370
which became the cover story for our science supplement.
556
00:36:52.700 --> 00:36:55.550
Headed those of you who are old enough to remember these things.
557
00:36:55.551 --> 00:36:59.720
It was headed strangers on the shore itself attribute to a jazz band of the
558
00:36:59.750 --> 00:37:00.583
sixties.
559
00:37:02.450 --> 00:37:06.980
But that wasn't the end of the story I had. I'd gone. Yeah. I got the story.
560
00:37:06.981 --> 00:37:10.580
The news desk expected. I'd got the, the bonus of a, of a, of the,
561
00:37:10.610 --> 00:37:13.070
of the lead story for our science supplement the next day
562
00:37:15.710 --> 00:37:18.860
and leaving the building. I was detained yet again,
563
00:37:19.100 --> 00:37:21.320
this time by Dr. Monica Grady,
564
00:37:21.321 --> 00:37:26.270
who is a pretty considerable expert in meteorites and herself,
565
00:37:26.271 --> 00:37:28.190
a very good communicator with the press.
566
00:37:29.000 --> 00:37:32.390
She was bubbling over with excitement because she had discovered something
567
00:37:32.391 --> 00:37:33.650
completely unexpected.
568
00:37:34.970 --> 00:37:39.470
She had been studying the skin of a European recoverable spacecraft.
569
00:37:39.710 --> 00:37:43.970
Now what had happened was that the European space agency had put the spacecraft
570
00:37:43.971 --> 00:37:47.030
into high orbit, left it there for three years,
571
00:37:47.031 --> 00:37:50.840
then asked NASA to go up there with a pair of kid gloves and an open bay in the
572
00:37:50.841 --> 00:37:55.130
shuttle, catch it, bring it back to us. They could cut the skin up.
573
00:37:55.190 --> 00:37:57.560
They could show the skin, the, send the skin to a hundred.
574
00:37:57.561 --> 00:38:02.030
And I think 20 different universities and each university scientist with his
575
00:38:02.031 --> 00:38:05.720
electron micrograph would start counting the pitting, the damage,
576
00:38:05.750 --> 00:38:10.580
the abrasions on the skin of the spacecraft, because space is not empty.
577
00:38:11.330 --> 00:38:13.340
Something like 40,000 tons of
578
00:38:15.290 --> 00:38:19.490
Rockies material comes crashing in from comets and asteroids every year.
579
00:38:19.610 --> 00:38:22.760
And the stuff is flying in at 20 kilometers a second.
580
00:38:23.240 --> 00:38:24.980
You don't want to be in the way.
581
00:38:25.220 --> 00:38:29.030
And if you do want to be in the way you want to be hit only by something ever so
582
00:38:29.031 --> 00:38:30.800
small, because anything,
583
00:38:31.100 --> 00:38:33.860
anything was size of a grain of rice would go straight through you.
584
00:38:34.900 --> 00:38:39.820
So this was a service to the satellite industry.
585
00:38:39.850 --> 00:38:42.580
That's why it was put up there, but that's where it was taken down.
586
00:38:42.581 --> 00:38:43.690
That's where they were studying it,
587
00:38:45.340 --> 00:38:49.360
but it wasn't the pitting on the skin of the spacecraft.
588
00:38:49.480 --> 00:38:53.860
It intrigued her. It was the discovery of a little suite of chemicals,
589
00:38:53.861 --> 00:38:58.570
which however you looked at them could only be dried
590
00:38:58.571 --> 00:39:03.400
human urine. Now you might say, okay,
591
00:39:03.401 --> 00:39:08.200
so there was clearly some amazing competition at a boys school to who compete
592
00:39:08.201 --> 00:39:12.250
the highest, or you could say it was up there anyway.
593
00:39:13.080 --> 00:39:16.180
And that of course is the obvious conclusion it was up there anyway.
594
00:39:16.181 --> 00:39:20.230
And it wasn't very hard to reconstruct how it got up there,
595
00:39:20.231 --> 00:39:24.100
because as many of you will remember the Apollo,
596
00:39:24.130 --> 00:39:28.120
the Gemini astronauts went up there wearing diapers, nappies, or Pampers.
597
00:39:28.330 --> 00:39:33.160
So they, if you were sitting on a spacecraft for eight hours before it launches,
598
00:39:33.370 --> 00:39:35.980
you start crossing your legs quite soon.
599
00:39:36.070 --> 00:39:39.970
And of course the shock of being lifted into space itself would probably be
600
00:39:39.971 --> 00:39:43.780
quite bladder emptying. The, the,
601
00:39:43.781 --> 00:39:47.710
the NAZA astronauts actually found the idea of having to, having to,
602
00:39:47.740 --> 00:39:49.420
having to orbit the earth for several,
603
00:39:49.750 --> 00:39:54.010
for several hours in nappies, pretty disgusting.
604
00:39:54.011 --> 00:39:54.940
And they actually came up,
605
00:39:55.000 --> 00:39:58.990
they pleaded with NASA to come up with another solution and NASA with its
606
00:39:58.991 --> 00:40:00.310
technological might did.
607
00:40:00.311 --> 00:40:04.960
So it produced a thing called a post nutritive substance disposal
608
00:40:04.961 --> 00:40:09.790
bag. Now only, only NASA would come up with a thing like that. It was of course,
609
00:40:09.791 --> 00:40:13.600
a plastic bag into which you it,
610
00:40:13.660 --> 00:40:16.000
which you evacuated whenever waste you head,
611
00:40:16.300 --> 00:40:19.330
and then you seal the nozzle and then you put it down.
612
00:40:19.720 --> 00:40:23.260
But of course there's no down in a spacecraft at all.
613
00:40:23.530 --> 00:40:25.720
It floats around the stuff.
614
00:40:26.530 --> 00:40:31.030
And so there was a tremendous pressure to get rid of it.
615
00:40:31.540 --> 00:40:35.350
And whenever there was an extra vehicular,
616
00:40:35.650 --> 00:40:37.600
extra vehicular activity,
617
00:40:38.620 --> 00:40:43.210
people would open the space bay doors and Chuck out the trash, leaving
618
00:40:44.890 --> 00:40:49.000
the staff, of course, in space. They came down that stayed up there.
619
00:40:49.150 --> 00:40:53.320
It went round the earth every 90 minutes at
620
00:40:54.370 --> 00:40:57.370
17,500 miles an hour
621
00:40:58.930 --> 00:41:03.220
freezing on the dark side of the earth because the temperature falls to bind us
622
00:41:03.221 --> 00:41:08.020
200 expanding madly on the sunny side, every 45 minutes,
623
00:41:08.290 --> 00:41:10.660
a frightful accident waiting to happen.
624
00:41:13.390 --> 00:41:18.100
The headline was astronauts caught spending pennies from heaven, which is so...
625
00:41:18.280 --> 00:41:21.730
I'll stop there. Thank you very much.
626
00:41:29.040 --> 00:41:29.790
[inaudible].
627
00:41:29.790 --> 00:41:31.890
Thank you, Tim. And he's certainly confirmed that.
628
00:41:31.891 --> 00:41:36.740
Telling a story is a good to communicate science last,
629
00:41:36.741 --> 00:41:40.010
but certainly not least. Our final speaker today is Norman Swan.
630
00:41:40.340 --> 00:41:44.480
The man known as the person that the broadcast of the sexy voice.
631
00:41:44.780 --> 00:41:47.720
So even if you don't know his face, as soon as he opens his mouth,
632
00:41:47.750 --> 00:41:52.370
you'll know that he's the recognized him as the host of the radio
633
00:41:52.970 --> 00:41:56.060
nationals health report, which goes to air every Monday morning.
634
00:41:57.530 --> 00:41:59.810
Norman is not only an award winning broadcaster.
635
00:41:59.840 --> 00:42:01.850
He's also trained as a medical doctor,
636
00:42:02.510 --> 00:42:05.780
and I'm not going to list all of his awards cause we'll be here all night.
637
00:42:06.380 --> 00:42:08.720
He's well known for helping scientists,
638
00:42:08.780 --> 00:42:13.640
Phil Vardy expose the major scientific for fraud perpetrated by William McBride,
639
00:42:13.641 --> 00:42:16.580
which some of you might remember a few years ago.
640
00:42:17.300 --> 00:42:19.130
So over to you
641
00:42:26.320 --> 00:42:27.100
[inaudible].
642
00:42:27.100 --> 00:42:28.810
I probably won't get this quote quite right.
643
00:42:29.440 --> 00:42:34.240
HR Minkin the famous American wit and writers said that for every
644
00:42:34.510 --> 00:42:39.070
complicated problem, there's a simple answer, which is almost always wrong.
645
00:42:41.350 --> 00:42:46.270
And one of the things that I quite
646
00:42:46.271 --> 00:42:51.160
like about science is that it's often counter-intuitive and things that you
647
00:42:51.161 --> 00:42:53.980
think should be so often aren't. So
648
00:42:56.170 --> 00:43:00.610
and I'm often surprised at the people who don't believe in science
649
00:43:02.140 --> 00:43:03.220
like Tim,
650
00:43:03.250 --> 00:43:06.100
one of the pleasures of them being a science broadcast or science journalist is
651
00:43:06.101 --> 00:43:10.240
telling stories. And we all have our kind of shocking stories.
652
00:43:10.390 --> 00:43:12.400
I'm always shocked by the statistics,
653
00:43:12.520 --> 00:43:14.350
but I don't think I've changed through the years,
654
00:43:14.770 --> 00:43:19.120
which is roughly 30 or 40% of any medical student class don't believe in
655
00:43:19.121 --> 00:43:19.954
evolution.
656
00:43:23.500 --> 00:43:27.250
They're doing medicine out to be a religious belief and religious commitment,
657
00:43:27.670 --> 00:43:32.620
truly scary stuff it's been done in more than one medical school in more
658
00:43:32.621 --> 00:43:34.870
than one country, consistent finding.
659
00:43:36.580 --> 00:43:40.600
There was a famous story, which to more remember of a few years ago,
660
00:43:40.720 --> 00:43:43.240
quite a few years ago. Now it must've been about 1984.
661
00:43:44.200 --> 00:43:47.710
It's not long after I started being assigned a dropped brought broadcaster.
662
00:43:50.080 --> 00:43:54.910
There's a seventh day Adventist hospital in California at Loma Linda
663
00:43:56.020 --> 00:43:58.270
and their cardiac surgeon.
664
00:44:00.250 --> 00:44:05.050
Pediatric cardiac surgeon had transplanted a baboon's heart
665
00:44:05.590 --> 00:44:09.050
into a young baby, and he'd done this.
666
00:44:09.310 --> 00:44:13.960
The baby had a what's called hypoplastic left heart syndrome where they're born
667
00:44:13.961 --> 00:44:15.940
without the left side of their heart.
668
00:44:16.240 --> 00:44:19.330
And it's a universally fatal problem unless you can transplant the heart,
669
00:44:19.331 --> 00:44:23.650
which is really only a recent thing. Or in this case, they,
670
00:44:23.651 --> 00:44:27.910
he transplanted this baboon heart and it was enormously
671
00:44:27.911 --> 00:44:28.870
controversial.
672
00:44:28.870 --> 00:44:33.030
There were he wouldn't give interviews.
673
00:44:33.330 --> 00:44:38.130
The baby was dubbed baby Fe and they were international headlines and
674
00:44:38.400 --> 00:44:43.200
Betty fever regrettably died a few days later and this was
675
00:44:43.201 --> 00:44:47.100
just medical experimentation.
676
00:44:47.880 --> 00:44:51.930
Probably without ethics committee approval done writ large.
677
00:44:52.530 --> 00:44:56.910
The parents are probably agreed to it but not necessarily knowing the full the
678
00:44:56.911 --> 00:44:59.450
full story. But anyway,
679
00:44:59.480 --> 00:45:03.650
I managed to get an interview with the surgeon and he hadn't given the
680
00:45:03.651 --> 00:45:04.030
interviews.
681
00:45:04.030 --> 00:45:07.550
And the reason I knew I could get into it was there was an Australian based at
682
00:45:07.551 --> 00:45:10.460
this place. And he managed to get me this interview. Anyway,
683
00:45:10.490 --> 00:45:15.440
one reason I discovered why he'd never given an interview was that he was
684
00:45:15.441 --> 00:45:16.970
the world's worst talent.
685
00:45:17.870 --> 00:45:21.680
So he didn't open his mouth when he topped this wouldn't matter to Tim from the
686
00:45:22.160 --> 00:45:23.690
guardian. He cause he writes it all down, but you know,
687
00:45:23.691 --> 00:45:28.000
I actually need somebody to talk and he,
688
00:45:28.001 --> 00:45:32.240
he was just boring and gave the most boring answers to my
689
00:45:32.241 --> 00:45:36.830
questions. So I'm gonna, I was really struggling for something to get going.
690
00:45:36.831 --> 00:45:37.664
So I said to him,
691
00:45:37.970 --> 00:45:42.740
could you just explain to me the evolutionary gap
692
00:45:42.890 --> 00:45:47.450
between humans and baboons that would, you know,
693
00:45:47.451 --> 00:45:50.600
made you think that there wouldn't be any rejection in the process.
694
00:45:51.440 --> 00:45:54.800
And he came back and it was a long pause and even longer than it had normally
695
00:45:54.801 --> 00:45:56.690
been this extremely boring interview. And he said, well,
696
00:45:56.691 --> 00:45:59.420
that's kind of difficult for me to say,
697
00:46:01.400 --> 00:46:03.230
because I don't believe in it. Evolution
698
00:46:06.410 --> 00:46:10.070
point really failed me to come up with a follow-up interview,
699
00:46:11.420 --> 00:46:12.253
follow up.
700
00:46:14.750 --> 00:46:19.280
It suits people when to believe in science and suits people when not to believe
701
00:46:19.281 --> 00:46:23.660
in science and sometimes for actually very good
702
00:46:23.661 --> 00:46:27.350
reasons because Tim quite right. Yeah.
703
00:46:27.470 --> 00:46:29.450
They say there's a science journalist.
704
00:46:29.451 --> 00:46:33.110
You can say something entirely new based on what somebody has come up with.
705
00:46:33.300 --> 00:46:37.010
Isn't it fairly new, but of course, six months later it could be entirely.
706
00:46:38.720 --> 00:46:42.350
And not through any fault of the time,
707
00:46:42.890 --> 00:46:43.940
that's what science is.
708
00:46:43.941 --> 00:46:48.200
It's a zigzag process where you think something's right and then it's wrong when
709
00:46:48.201 --> 00:46:49.034
you move back.
710
00:46:49.220 --> 00:46:53.720
But of course the public kind of realizes that and you kind of realize that,
711
00:46:54.140 --> 00:46:57.080
well, sugar is bad for you one day, but it'll be fine. The next day,
712
00:46:57.320 --> 00:47:00.260
something causes cancer one day and it's wonderful for you the next.
713
00:47:00.440 --> 00:47:03.980
And we zigzag this way through life so we can blindly ignore it
714
00:47:05.150 --> 00:47:08.270
until it suits until it suits us.
715
00:47:10.130 --> 00:47:13.940
The I just don't the counter-intuitive stuff. And John was trying to describe,
716
00:47:13.970 --> 00:47:17.420
you know, how you get the size of a cell. W when I was in first year medicine,
717
00:47:17.690 --> 00:47:21.360
one of the questions I got in biology was if that's the, the,
718
00:47:21.540 --> 00:47:26.240
the what's called the [inaudible] and the kidney where would be
719
00:47:26.241 --> 00:47:29.980
the, you know, the rest of the tubule w where would be, you know, and I,
720
00:47:30.370 --> 00:47:32.410
I was just going on the diagrams and the textbook,
721
00:47:32.411 --> 00:47:35.980
and I'd start with sitting down here rather than running the corner and across
722
00:47:35.981 --> 00:47:38.890
the street, the sizes just don't match.
723
00:47:39.070 --> 00:47:42.820
But so things are counter-intuitive and we don't actually
724
00:47:43.540 --> 00:47:45.340
really come to terms with that.
725
00:47:45.370 --> 00:47:49.660
And we're science is not very good as interacting with the emotional world of
726
00:47:49.661 --> 00:47:54.520
perception and where we don't like to believe things.
727
00:47:55.390 --> 00:47:59.020
I think I w as some of you were talking yesterday about
728
00:48:00.130 --> 00:48:02.350
the germ theory of disease,
729
00:48:03.460 --> 00:48:06.550
when pastor came up with the germ theory of disease,
730
00:48:06.700 --> 00:48:10.000
which is the notion that bacteria caused diseases,
731
00:48:10.670 --> 00:48:12.940
he wasn't the only one to cope with it, but he was a key one.
732
00:48:14.380 --> 00:48:17.860
It was resistant by the medical profession for 30 or 40 years.
733
00:48:17.861 --> 00:48:22.330
It took a long time for the germ theory of disease to be accepted.
734
00:48:23.520 --> 00:48:26.100
And yeah,
735
00:48:26.150 --> 00:48:30.390
yet when the idea of vitamins were, when vitamins were discovered,
736
00:48:30.720 --> 00:48:32.580
they were accepted almost overnight,
737
00:48:34.200 --> 00:48:37.880
and there are various explanations for why the, the, the,
738
00:48:37.910 --> 00:48:41.730
the idea of vitamins were. So it was a rapidly accepted,
739
00:48:41.760 --> 00:48:44.100
and the notion of germs was sort of [inaudible].
740
00:48:45.630 --> 00:48:47.460
And one,
741
00:48:47.700 --> 00:48:52.500
one theory is sympathomimetic magic is that we
742
00:48:52.501 --> 00:48:55.890
have there going back in evolutionary time,
743
00:48:55.891 --> 00:49:00.450
there was a notion which goes through which crosses cultures,
744
00:49:01.320 --> 00:49:05.940
which is that we can acquire strength from other things.
745
00:49:06.600 --> 00:49:08.550
So native American tribes,
746
00:49:08.551 --> 00:49:13.080
when they look at wood railway started to penetrate the American Midwest
747
00:49:13.590 --> 00:49:17.910
would go and get the grease of the axle of the locomotive and eat it.
748
00:49:20.040 --> 00:49:24.450
You know, our ancestors would eat the hearts of their enemies
749
00:49:25.620 --> 00:49:27.870
to acquire the strength of their enemies.
750
00:49:28.380 --> 00:49:32.010
So the notion that you could actually take something that would somehow give you
751
00:49:32.011 --> 00:49:36.330
strength was very important. And of course, we love it today.
752
00:49:36.540 --> 00:49:40.620
We love taking things, cause we, th we think is gonna make us better.
753
00:49:41.370 --> 00:49:45.600
And and we love the idea of things being natural and green.
754
00:49:45.630 --> 00:49:49.410
When even though they might be really unnatural and greens,
755
00:49:49.411 --> 00:49:53.040
just a synthetic color added to make it look good.
756
00:49:54.810 --> 00:49:55.291
And of course,
757
00:49:55.291 --> 00:49:59.640
the reason why the germ theory of disease took one reason why the germ theory of
758
00:49:59.641 --> 00:50:01.620
disease took a long time. Well, first of all,
759
00:50:01.980 --> 00:50:04.830
doctors are very resistant to evidence.
760
00:50:06.000 --> 00:50:09.390
It's been said that it took till 1913 for it to be safer,
761
00:50:09.391 --> 00:50:12.540
to go and see a doctor than to stay at home and hope for the best.
762
00:50:14.400 --> 00:50:18.720
And almost every person in this hall would know a doctor who's still stuck in
763
00:50:18.721 --> 00:50:19.710
1912.
764
00:50:22.260 --> 00:50:26.280
So doctors don't have a sort of stellar you know,
765
00:50:26.340 --> 00:50:29.510
track record when it comes to evidence. But also they actually,
766
00:50:29.511 --> 00:50:34.210
there were people in the in the 19th century who reckon that wasn't so simple
767
00:50:34.810 --> 00:50:37.450
when it comes back to you that intuition one can get about science,
768
00:50:37.451 --> 00:50:40.240
that you may not want to believe it 100%.
769
00:50:41.080 --> 00:50:45.970
And one of the great opponents of the germ theory of disease was Rudolph virtue.
770
00:50:46.960 --> 00:50:49.240
Great pathologist of his day,
771
00:50:50.620 --> 00:50:54.880
modern pathology would be nowhere without virtue in the same way.
772
00:50:55.090 --> 00:50:59.820
The pastor discovered that Jeremy's caused disease, virtue discover,
773
00:50:59.860 --> 00:51:04.390
or I made the observation that you could track the origins of
774
00:51:04.391 --> 00:51:06.550
disease by the cellular origin,
775
00:51:06.590 --> 00:51:10.270
the cells that you could find in the disease themselves and others by tracking
776
00:51:10.271 --> 00:51:13.150
the evolution of sales, you could actually see the development of disease,
777
00:51:13.360 --> 00:51:17.530
cell cellular origin of disease. So what a pathology is based on this,
778
00:51:17.531 --> 00:51:19.840
he was a great 19th century scientist,
779
00:51:20.260 --> 00:51:22.630
and he led this great 19th century.
780
00:51:23.140 --> 00:51:26.380
Scientist led the charge against the germ theory of disease
781
00:51:28.090 --> 00:51:30.100
what's going on there. Well,
782
00:51:30.880 --> 00:51:34.180
virtue was a lefty and he was a social radical.
783
00:51:34.960 --> 00:51:38.650
He'd seen the riots personally and upper [inaudible] of the famine rights,
784
00:51:38.830 --> 00:51:43.540
not presale easier in the early mid sort of mid to early to mid 19th century.
785
00:51:45.430 --> 00:51:50.170
And he was firmly of the view that disease had social
786
00:51:50.171 --> 00:51:51.070
origins.
787
00:51:51.910 --> 00:51:56.200
He could not believe that Jeremy's had such that such a simple answer as a
788
00:51:56.560 --> 00:51:58.870
Jeremy causing disease. And of course,
789
00:51:58.900 --> 00:52:02.230
both pastor and virtue were right.
790
00:52:03.400 --> 00:52:06.610
Pastor was right. The germs did indeed cause disease.
791
00:52:07.390 --> 00:52:09.040
But if you just take tuberculosis,
792
00:52:09.041 --> 00:52:13.930
when Robert discovered the tubercle bacillus in Germany in
793
00:52:13.931 --> 00:52:15.430
the late 19th century,
794
00:52:16.540 --> 00:52:19.690
he was right that the tubercle bacillus caused TB.
795
00:52:19.990 --> 00:52:23.680
But what didn't know was that most of the people walking through the streets of
796
00:52:23.681 --> 00:52:25.960
Berlin would have been carrying the tubercle facilities,
797
00:52:26.500 --> 00:52:28.090
but only some of them got it.
798
00:52:28.870 --> 00:52:33.820
And many of the reasons they got it were actually social and genetic rather
799
00:52:33.821 --> 00:52:36.250
than by firmly biological.
800
00:52:37.240 --> 00:52:42.100
So what I love about science is that interaction with the
801
00:52:42.101 --> 00:52:45.220
world around us and the, the, the,
802
00:52:45.280 --> 00:52:48.850
the chance one gets to be naughty and counter-intuitive,
803
00:52:48.851 --> 00:52:53.200
and to dig in under, under people's beliefs, including my own,
804
00:52:54.400 --> 00:52:55.233
we won,
805
00:52:55.360 --> 00:53:00.340
which I still get emails about it is because people just love this notion.
806
00:53:01.720 --> 00:53:06.550
We love the idea that emotions and our psyche
807
00:53:06.580 --> 00:53:08.620
can affect the diseases we get. And indeed,
808
00:53:08.621 --> 00:53:12.430
there is some truth to them that chronic stress and I spoke about this yesterday
809
00:53:12.670 --> 00:53:17.320
can co you know, there's good, solid line between chronic stress and it'll help,
810
00:53:18.220 --> 00:53:21.100
but people also believe that when you got cancer,
811
00:53:21.820 --> 00:53:26.400
your attitude matters. You gotta have a positive attitude.
812
00:53:27.810 --> 00:53:30.090
I can't tell you the harm that does,
813
00:53:31.530 --> 00:53:35.460
because if people get a recurrence of their cancer, well, first of all,
814
00:53:35.461 --> 00:53:38.910
if they've got cancer and they're feeling pretty bad about it,
815
00:53:40.320 --> 00:53:41.131
they feel guilty,
816
00:53:41.131 --> 00:53:43.890
but feeling bad about it because they feel they've got to feel positive about
817
00:53:43.891 --> 00:53:47.460
it. And when their cancer comes back,
818
00:53:48.120 --> 00:53:52.200
they think it's their fault because they weren't positive enough,
819
00:53:52.740 --> 00:53:55.740
or they didn't go off to some ashram for some meditation.
820
00:53:57.330 --> 00:54:01.560
And thankfully somebody has researched this in Western Australia and in Victoria
821
00:54:02.400 --> 00:54:03.570
and track people through.
822
00:54:04.800 --> 00:54:09.300
And there is no correlation between a positive frame of mind
823
00:54:09.810 --> 00:54:11.970
and how well or badly you do with cancer,
824
00:54:13.050 --> 00:54:17.370
no correlation at all, which is both good and bad news.
825
00:54:17.400 --> 00:54:21.690
But my view is mostly good news because in fact, you can't,
826
00:54:21.860 --> 00:54:26.430
it takes that heat off people. Who've got the problem from blaming themselves.
827
00:54:26.640 --> 00:54:31.140
It's bad news is that it would be nice if by manipulating somehow your frame of
828
00:54:31.141 --> 00:54:35.670
mind, you could actually cure your cancer, but unfortunately you can't,
829
00:54:36.240 --> 00:54:37.950
but science is like that. Thank you.
830
00:54:43.520 --> 00:54:47.750
To kick off the discussion by asking why is it that many
831
00:54:47.751 --> 00:54:50.900
scientists don't actually communicate with passion?
832
00:54:52.220 --> 00:54:56.990
I just have a little story to tell about this because we're dealing with
833
00:54:57.320 --> 00:54:59.780
journalists all the time in the science media center,
834
00:54:59.781 --> 00:55:02.030
and we get a lot of very strange calls.
835
00:55:03.500 --> 00:55:06.050
There was one particular case where
836
00:55:07.580 --> 00:55:12.290
a politician had made a statement that recycled water was going to
837
00:55:12.530 --> 00:55:15.470
feminize the population. And he was very worried about this.
838
00:55:15.471 --> 00:55:19.160
The male population was going to be feminized by drinking recycled water.
839
00:55:19.880 --> 00:55:22.820
So of course we started getting calls from journalists. Is this true?
840
00:55:22.821 --> 00:55:26.540
Could it possibly happen that that recycled water is going to feminize the male
841
00:55:26.541 --> 00:55:31.460
population? So I rang a scientist happened to be a woman in Queensland.
842
00:55:31.610 --> 00:55:33.350
The statement had been made in Queensland.
843
00:55:33.710 --> 00:55:35.600
And the first thing she said to me was, well,
844
00:55:35.601 --> 00:55:38.510
you know what I think that the male population in Queensland could do with a bit
845
00:55:38.511 --> 00:55:42.590
of feminizing, but of course,
846
00:55:42.830 --> 00:55:46.760
when she came across on radio, it was rather a rather dry interview.
847
00:55:46.761 --> 00:55:49.190
And of course it wasn't ethically correct for her to say that.
848
00:55:49.191 --> 00:55:50.060
So she didn't say it,
849
00:55:50.390 --> 00:55:55.190
but you do wonder sometimes if perhaps the constraints on
850
00:55:55.191 --> 00:55:59.030
scientists to not be humorous and to not use colorful language,
851
00:55:59.300 --> 00:56:01.130
sometimes turns what it turns.
852
00:56:01.131 --> 00:56:05.360
People who can be actually very humorous into fairly dry people when it comes to
853
00:56:05.361 --> 00:56:10.010
being in the public eye or on the meat in the media. Any comments on that?
854
00:56:11.660 --> 00:56:13.430
The nature of science is to be dispassionate,
855
00:56:13.520 --> 00:56:17.240
is to look at the data objectively and to weigh, you know,
856
00:56:17.300 --> 00:56:18.500
what it is that you're seeing.
857
00:56:18.501 --> 00:56:22.400
So if you look at how June was written you know,
858
00:56:22.401 --> 00:56:23.770
in the passive voice,
859
00:56:23.860 --> 00:56:28.240
it is clearly the nature of how so-called Orthodox science is
860
00:56:28.241 --> 00:56:29.074
expressed.
861
00:56:29.680 --> 00:56:34.180
And so there probably does need to be another kind of
862
00:56:34.181 --> 00:56:37.270
individual that is that person that does that translation.
863
00:56:37.360 --> 00:56:39.150
Right. Just better special is a con I mean,
864
00:56:39.151 --> 00:56:43.170
just look at the arguments you have with your colleagues in Sydney about the
865
00:56:43.171 --> 00:56:45.930
glycemic index versus the high protein diet. I mean,
866
00:56:46.020 --> 00:56:49.590
it's like murder at 20 paces. You know, it's not dispassionate.
867
00:56:53.130 --> 00:56:55.520
That's unfortunate because in,
868
00:56:55.521 --> 00:56:59.400
in some ways when it gets to that level
869
00:57:00.510 --> 00:57:03.060
the, the facts start to go out the window.
870
00:57:03.420 --> 00:57:07.680
And I think that it's one thing to talk to the public
871
00:57:07.710 --> 00:57:12.120
about how something might be important and, and, you know,
872
00:57:12.490 --> 00:57:14.250
it's fantastic news,
873
00:57:14.251 --> 00:57:18.390
but when you're discussing your work with scientists,
874
00:57:18.391 --> 00:57:23.130
you really or not to get too emotionally
875
00:57:23.131 --> 00:57:27.750
involved and look at the data and try and talk along those
876
00:57:27.751 --> 00:57:31.380
lines. So as scientist to scientist, it's dispassionate,
877
00:57:31.680 --> 00:57:35.700
obviously you have to deprogram yourself when it comes to talking to the public.
878
00:57:37.290 --> 00:57:40.380
There are there, there are several problems with this. One.
879
00:57:40.620 --> 00:57:45.120
One is one is that science itself is it likes to
880
00:57:45.330 --> 00:57:49.140
likes to persuade people that it's really dealing with probabilities and not
881
00:57:49.740 --> 00:57:52.830
certainties, but what the public wants, what anyone wants is certainty. I don't,
882
00:57:53.100 --> 00:57:58.080
I don't go to a a geochemist to,
883
00:57:58.380 --> 00:58:02.580
to, to hear him say, well, there's a 90% chartered slate,
884
00:58:02.610 --> 00:58:05.020
but actually there is, you know, there is there was I,
885
00:58:05.030 --> 00:58:08.100
I reserved the right to a PIP to be wrong, which is,
886
00:58:08.310 --> 00:58:12.120
which is how a scientific papers are written. This gets confusing.
887
00:58:12.121 --> 00:58:17.010
And of course it's led the United States science community
888
00:58:17.220 --> 00:58:19.380
after Gumtree. Because by, by,
889
00:58:19.800 --> 00:58:22.560
by introducing the notion of uncertainty,
890
00:58:22.561 --> 00:58:27.090
they left the they left the white house administration with the feeling
891
00:58:27.390 --> 00:58:31.370
that maybe the science is not solid, but in fact, the scientists are there just,
892
00:58:31.380 --> 00:58:35.910
just as ferociously bad habits scientist have of trying to cover their
893
00:58:35.911 --> 00:58:40.830
tracks. That's one problem. Second problem, which is real enough. I mean,
894
00:58:41.010 --> 00:58:44.310
it's you know, there is the aspect, I don't know, all around us.
895
00:58:44.670 --> 00:58:48.330
Here are some words Gaussian distribution
896
00:58:49.110 --> 00:58:53.010
mitochondria. Why is ASTA C L BBDO?
897
00:58:54.990 --> 00:58:58.290
I'll stop there. Oh, it fell. Oh yeah. Why'd my favorite phenotype.
898
00:58:58.710 --> 00:59:03.360
Now you will never ever hear those words in a pub
899
00:59:03.540 --> 00:59:07.320
or on a football ground. You just, won't, they're real words.
900
00:59:07.321 --> 00:59:11.360
They have no other, they ha they, they, they describe something which,
901
00:59:11.520 --> 00:59:14.430
which is important and which is not negotiable. You can't,
902
00:59:14.610 --> 00:59:18.090
there are no similes for these words, so you could write your way around them.
903
00:59:18.930 --> 00:59:22.640
And then there's this other problem that problem with which of course you all
904
00:59:22.641 --> 00:59:27.140
know and hate. We have Frankenstein foods.
905
00:59:27.170 --> 00:59:30.650
We have Pandora's box. We have Felsted bargains.
906
00:59:30.651 --> 00:59:33.950
We have thinnings of the wedge. We have playing God,
907
00:59:34.010 --> 00:59:36.650
all these frightful cliches, which
908
00:59:39.770 --> 00:59:41.180
sometimes called journalists,
909
00:59:41.720 --> 00:59:46.070
these which actually get in the way of understanding. They don't mean anything.
910
00:59:46.160 --> 00:59:50.810
A Pandora's box is often produced as a sort of an image of
911
00:59:50.811 --> 00:59:52.850
science as if somehow,
912
00:59:53.060 --> 00:59:57.110
so I just we're opening Pandora's box and all these evil things were coming out.
913
00:59:57.470 --> 01:00:02.090
In fact, Pandora, as she tried to put the lid back on the box,
914
01:00:02.091 --> 01:00:04.550
heard this little voice saying help, please let me out.
915
01:00:04.551 --> 01:00:06.800
And she opened it again and out flew hope.
916
01:00:06.890 --> 01:00:11.420
And now that's a lovely metaphor for science Frankenstein's monster.
917
01:00:11.421 --> 01:00:14.840
You will remember if you've read the book, actually tried to help people.
918
01:00:15.350 --> 01:00:17.840
And they ran away screaming when they saw who was helping them.
919
01:00:17.990 --> 01:00:21.590
And that is actually quite an interesting metaphor for science as well. So,
920
01:00:24.140 --> 01:00:24.973
so
921
01:00:26.300 --> 01:00:29.240
journalists are part of the problem as well as part of the solution,
922
01:00:29.241 --> 01:00:33.110
but I have it Norman and I have spent most of our lives trying to be part of the
923
01:00:33.111 --> 01:00:36.500
solution without however, trying to be boring.
924
01:00:39.380 --> 01:00:41.720
John, you you've worked with, with scientists a lot,
925
01:00:41.721 --> 01:00:43.160
and you're a scientist yourself.
926
01:00:44.660 --> 01:00:47.270
How do you feel about the way scientists communicate?
927
01:00:50.090 --> 01:00:51.620
Well, there a standard mix of society,
928
01:00:51.680 --> 01:00:56.450
and there are some that shouldn't be let out on chain to a
929
01:00:56.510 --> 01:00:58.490
pig or a quite good ever a drink with.
930
01:01:01.730 --> 01:01:06.200
There was a fellow director who got the Nobel prize and he was a dry Englishman
931
01:01:06.890 --> 01:01:10.160
and it was highly involved, mathematic physics.
932
01:01:10.730 --> 01:01:13.310
And he was at dinner with someone and they adjust,
933
01:01:13.820 --> 01:01:17.450
I think it was predicted that positive electronic to exist.
934
01:01:18.380 --> 01:01:22.760
And he asked direct to explain what he's doing. And this do a fellow just said,
935
01:01:23.210 --> 01:01:25.910
what do you know about fourth rank tensors
936
01:01:27.770 --> 01:01:30.590
and Blake said nothing. He said, you know, I can't talk to you.
937
01:01:33.080 --> 01:01:33.801
On the other hand,
938
01:01:33.801 --> 01:01:38.630
I have a friend who is one of the top condensed matter
939
01:01:38.631 --> 01:01:42.800
physicists around she's in the Midwest university.
940
01:01:43.160 --> 01:01:48.050
She could do a superb cabaret act writing songs involving
941
01:01:48.051 --> 01:01:51.950
science. So it's a, it's a great mix.
942
01:01:52.040 --> 01:01:55.370
It's a great shame, more can't talk clearly. They
943
01:01:57.261 --> 01:02:00.740
don't talk to the general public because if they do,
944
01:02:00.741 --> 01:02:05.270
they'll get pulled up all the time and then have to talk more clearly to
945
01:02:05.420 --> 01:02:06.253
people.
946
01:02:08.870 --> 01:02:10.610
But it's really just a mix the,
947
01:02:10.670 --> 01:02:14.990
the one time where it's absolutely positive and made clear,
948
01:02:14.991 --> 01:02:19.350
and anyone can understand it because when they're applying for grants to do the
949
01:02:19.351 --> 01:02:22.710
next one, and if they are smart,
950
01:02:22.830 --> 01:02:24.750
they're describing the last bit of work lab done.
951
01:02:25.440 --> 01:02:28.140
And that way they'll get a reputation for being extremely good.
952
01:02:29.880 --> 01:02:31.500
So scientists get promoted,
953
01:02:32.250 --> 01:02:35.520
not by how often they appear in the guardian or on radio national.
954
01:02:35.880 --> 01:02:40.170
They get promoted on how many peer reviewed papers they have in journals,
955
01:02:40.650 --> 01:02:42.630
and therefore that's what they're judged on.
956
01:02:43.590 --> 01:02:47.670
And and they, they might prepare for a,
957
01:02:48.120 --> 01:02:52.140
to talk in front of 30 of their colleagues for months on end and agonize over
958
01:02:52.141 --> 01:02:53.790
and Polish this talk.
959
01:02:54.390 --> 01:02:59.340
And yet when Tim interviews in the hundreds of thousands of people
960
01:02:59.341 --> 01:03:04.080
will actually read that person's words and they'll give no thought
961
01:03:04.590 --> 01:03:06.270
or very little thought to that at all.
962
01:03:06.780 --> 01:03:11.640
And so the audiences are just vast for this message.
963
01:03:11.641 --> 01:03:16.110
And it's an important message which gives public support
964
01:03:16.710 --> 01:03:18.450
to the research endeavor.
965
01:03:18.690 --> 01:03:21.930
And we don't spend enough in this country on research endeavor.
966
01:03:21.990 --> 01:03:23.130
We do get a bit better than we used to,
967
01:03:23.670 --> 01:03:26.040
but we're still not matching Britain for example,
968
01:03:26.041 --> 01:03:27.750
and certainly a long way behind the UK.
969
01:03:27.900 --> 01:03:32.040
And you can not expect the public to support science unless you,
970
01:03:32.370 --> 01:03:33.930
unless you talk about it and communicate it.
971
01:03:34.800 --> 01:03:39.660
John Duran from Oxford did a study many years ago now published in nature which
972
01:03:39.661 --> 01:03:43.980
showed that the public's attitude to science was directly correlated to how much
973
01:03:44.010 --> 01:03:44.843
they knew about it.
974
01:03:45.270 --> 01:03:48.840
And if people were ignorant of science were more negative towards science and
975
01:03:48.841 --> 01:03:52.950
then taking this state, and that's a problem for society if that happens.
976
01:03:53.190 --> 01:03:57.330
So it is absolutely a responsibility of scientists to communicate.
977
01:03:57.780 --> 01:04:01.110
And when they communicate via people in the media,
978
01:04:01.111 --> 01:04:05.790
they are getting to vastly more greater numbers of people than the
979
01:04:05.850 --> 01:04:09.990
otherwise would have. And it's as important for the scientific endeavor and the,
980
01:04:09.991 --> 01:04:14.640
or the source of work that many and Peter have been doing in publicizing,
981
01:04:14.641 --> 01:04:17.580
an evidence-based diet has,
982
01:04:18.030 --> 01:04:22.560
has had enormous impact and translating what was originally a
983
01:04:22.561 --> 01:04:25.560
randomized trial in a high protein diet,
984
01:04:25.561 --> 01:04:27.990
into something that's practical for people's lives.
985
01:04:28.440 --> 01:04:33.000
That's actually going to do the much more good than the 99% of
986
01:04:33.300 --> 01:04:37.710
rubbish that's out there as far as diet is concerned is what we hope that
987
01:04:37.711 --> 01:04:38.550
science is about.
988
01:04:39.770 --> 01:04:42.680
Sometimes Norman. I mean, you know, when you,
989
01:04:42.740 --> 01:04:46.760
when you look at some of the water that's gone under the bridge,
990
01:04:46.790 --> 01:04:50.900
one of the real criticisms that came about was the term
991
01:04:51.200 --> 01:04:54.680
scientifically proven, which of course in science one can never do.
992
01:04:55.130 --> 01:04:58.640
But when our publishers said, look, you know,
993
01:04:59.660 --> 01:05:00.530
put this on the front,
994
01:05:00.710 --> 01:05:03.470
because that gives a sense of the credibility of the organization.
995
01:05:03.890 --> 01:05:07.010
We thought it through, we thought, yeah, we've shown that, you know,
996
01:05:07.011 --> 01:05:10.670
you lose weight on high protein and you'll lose more abdominal fat mass and so
997
01:05:10.671 --> 01:05:13.340
on and so forth. Yeah, that sounds fine. You know,
998
01:05:13.400 --> 01:05:18.400
sort of taking things perhaps a tad further than a technical journal
999
01:05:18.401 --> 01:05:20.290
might, but this isn't a technical journal.
1000
01:05:20.680 --> 01:05:25.540
The next thing we knew nature had a scathing article about that very
1001
01:05:25.541 --> 01:05:27.220
term, scientifically proven.
1002
01:05:27.221 --> 01:05:31.930
So your peers are actually your worst critics when it comes to
1003
01:05:31.931 --> 01:05:35.170
talking to the media on the other side of the coin,
1004
01:05:35.320 --> 01:05:39.850
now our organization is starting to look at what is the
1005
01:05:39.851 --> 01:05:43.990
impact of science. And so scientists are now being rewarded,
1006
01:05:44.020 --> 01:05:47.710
not just for publications in peer review journals,
1007
01:05:47.890 --> 01:05:51.040
but also what is the consequence of that science?
1008
01:05:51.041 --> 01:05:55.600
So I think we're starting to see a move towards the impact of science rather
1009
01:05:55.601 --> 01:05:59.050
than the academic side of science, per se.
1010
01:05:59.650 --> 01:06:04.180
Do you think this should be built into the to the funding set up so that
1011
01:06:04.360 --> 01:06:08.050
scientists all over are actually judged on the basis of,
1012
01:06:08.220 --> 01:06:10.840
of their communication skills or their ability to,
1013
01:06:11.080 --> 01:06:13.150
or the number of talks they've given in the media? Or.
1014
01:06:13.840 --> 01:06:18.400
I think that some sorts of science is more amenable to being media worthy than
1015
01:06:18.401 --> 01:06:18.910
others,
1016
01:06:18.910 --> 01:06:22.660
and that doesn't make that science better or worse than any other science.
1017
01:06:22.661 --> 01:06:24.070
I think you need a whole spectrum.
1018
01:06:24.310 --> 01:06:29.020
And some kinds of science are obviously closer to having an impact
1019
01:06:29.340 --> 01:06:31.420
on, on the public than other kinds of science.
1020
01:06:31.421 --> 01:06:35.620
So we need to respect both of those types of scientific endeavor.
1021
01:06:36.750 --> 01:06:39.210
The British government actually builds spills,
1022
01:06:39.211 --> 01:06:43.740
a certain amount of money into all the research grants to encourage
1023
01:06:44.910 --> 01:06:47.730
public outreach. I think the hideous term is,
1024
01:06:48.510 --> 01:06:52.710
and there has been a consistent effort in Britain in the last 20 years triggered
1025
01:06:52.711 --> 01:06:54.300
by John Durant's research.
1026
01:06:55.920 --> 01:06:57.960
For those of you who don't know the full story,
1027
01:06:58.650 --> 01:07:02.880
he simply selected a thousand people and said, are you interested in science?
1028
01:07:03.060 --> 01:07:06.150
They said, oh yes. Hell yes, cautious. And he said,
1029
01:07:06.151 --> 01:07:09.660
would you like to see more and better sides in the room and on radio and
1030
01:07:09.661 --> 01:07:13.980
television and newspapers? And everyone said my word, yes. And then he said,
1031
01:07:14.160 --> 01:07:17.430
does the earth go around the sun? Or does the sun go around the earth?
1032
01:07:18.030 --> 01:07:21.450
One in three, he got it wrong. He then said,
1033
01:07:21.690 --> 01:07:25.560
how long does it take two out of three?
1034
01:07:25.620 --> 01:07:26.910
He could not answer the question.
1035
01:07:27.720 --> 01:07:31.290
And it became clear that we were dealing with the w w we were dealing with a
1036
01:07:31.291 --> 01:07:34.260
public, which had still not caught up with Copernicus,
1037
01:07:35.400 --> 01:07:39.270
let alone Crick and Watson. So, so there is, there is, there is some,
1038
01:07:39.780 --> 01:07:44.070
there is some huge, huge efforts that need to be made on both sides.
1039
01:07:44.190 --> 01:07:46.620
I've said before the media are a part of the problem,
1040
01:07:46.621 --> 01:07:51.480
but some of the media are also trying to be part of the solution. We do however,
1041
01:07:51.840 --> 01:07:56.760
urgently need scientists themselves to see that there's nothing
1042
01:07:56.820 --> 01:07:59.580
shameful about talking to human beings,
1043
01:08:01.830 --> 01:08:03.030
especially taxpayers.
1044
01:08:04.710 --> 01:08:05.940
John, you had a comment.
1045
01:08:06.990 --> 01:08:07.470
Yes.
1046
01:08:07.470 --> 01:08:12.390
There's been a tendency to have amongst the funding.
1047
01:08:12.630 --> 01:08:14.490
You have to show you have an outreach program.
1048
01:08:14.960 --> 01:08:18.380
So these places do now their heart and soul, not in it,
1049
01:08:18.410 --> 01:08:19.910
they're doing it to get their money.
1050
01:08:20.630 --> 01:08:23.420
And that I think is a shame where it's forced that way.
1051
01:08:24.050 --> 01:08:27.380
I know with my ask a scientist program,
1052
01:08:29.240 --> 01:08:30.073
NSF funding,
1053
01:08:31.460 --> 01:08:34.880
the condensed matter labs hit to have an outreach program,
1054
01:08:34.881 --> 01:08:39.770
or they wouldn't get the funding. One university materials seemed,
1055
01:08:39.771 --> 01:08:44.540
it copied the ASCA scientist program and they got the funding and a
1056
01:08:44.541 --> 01:08:47.060
very famous one didn't and they didn't get their funding.
1057
01:08:47.660 --> 01:08:49.550
So then they got an outreach program,
1058
01:08:49.850 --> 01:08:53.060
but not because they believe in communicating with the public,
1059
01:08:53.450 --> 01:08:56.180
but because they have to, and once you do that,
1060
01:08:56.720 --> 01:09:01.490
you don't really get the passion. They love variably employee,
1061
01:09:01.491 --> 01:09:05.030
someone to do it. And often it'll be spin doctors,
1062
01:09:05.360 --> 01:09:08.600
mayor to put the best face on it.
1063
01:09:09.350 --> 01:09:11.990
The other thing I think we are, there has been a change.
1064
01:09:12.470 --> 01:09:14.780
I can speak about New Zealand and agriculture,
1065
01:09:15.260 --> 01:09:19.670
where we once used to have a department of scientific industrial research.
1066
01:09:20.030 --> 01:09:21.500
These were government scientists,
1067
01:09:21.740 --> 01:09:26.390
and they did all the background work and farming source on improving
1068
01:09:26.780 --> 01:09:28.610
cattle, sheep, all sorts of things,
1069
01:09:29.810 --> 01:09:34.100
and dumb governments break this up. They have to make their own money.
1070
01:09:34.910 --> 01:09:37.670
Now, while you've got these unemployment and scientists around,
1071
01:09:37.880 --> 01:09:39.920
they will form little companies and they'll do this,
1072
01:09:40.220 --> 01:09:44.060
but who's training up the next generation and to make the money
1073
01:09:45.470 --> 01:09:46.400
they will go to,
1074
01:09:47.360 --> 01:09:52.070
they will take on jobs for Australia farmers and that word
1075
01:09:52.280 --> 01:09:56.690
they cannot talk about because they've been paid for it.
1076
01:09:57.110 --> 01:10:00.710
And it's what governments want put value on and
1077
01:10:01.460 --> 01:10:05.510
intelligence. And they could tell you about it,
1078
01:10:05.511 --> 01:10:06.470
but then they'd have to kill you.
1079
01:10:07.640 --> 01:10:11.540
And so I think that's been a great detriment to that.
1080
01:10:11.990 --> 01:10:15.500
And one other area, there is a university academic.
1081
01:10:16.610 --> 01:10:19.130
If I were starting up a course or measurement techniques,
1082
01:10:19.310 --> 01:10:23.540
I'd go up to the government scientists who worked in this field and just sit
1083
01:10:23.541 --> 01:10:26.300
down with them for half a day and get all the great stories I could tell
1084
01:10:26.301 --> 01:10:31.010
students there, they have to account for every 10 minutes of their time.
1085
01:10:31.340 --> 01:10:35.030
They do not have time to sit down with me and tell us this.
1086
01:10:37.250 --> 01:10:39.260
I think they now have maybe half an hour,
1087
01:10:39.261 --> 01:10:41.120
a day where they might be allowed to do this,
1088
01:10:41.121 --> 01:10:43.550
and it gets ticked off on some box.
1089
01:10:43.990 --> 01:10:47.800
I think we might, at this point, take some questions from the floor,
1090
01:10:47.860 --> 01:10:49.030
questions or comments.
1091
01:10:49.630 --> 01:10:53.260
If you'd like to come up to the microphone that you'll find in the middle of the
1092
01:10:53.261 --> 01:10:53.830
room,
1093
01:10:53.830 --> 01:10:57.910
please try and keep your questions or comments short so that we can fit in as
1094
01:10:57.911 --> 01:10:58.840
many as we can.
1095
01:11:00.190 --> 01:11:03.430
Norman, you mentioned the dictum Mencken,
1096
01:11:03.431 --> 01:11:06.010
that complex questions don't have simple answers.
1097
01:11:06.580 --> 01:11:10.270
Is there an issue in science that a competent and honest scientist will
1098
01:11:10.271 --> 01:11:14.220
recognize that complexity and will tend to give a qualified answer?
1099
01:11:14.490 --> 01:11:18.450
Whereas one who is either less competent or less honest can give a totally
1100
01:11:18.451 --> 01:11:22.260
assured a very positive unequivocal answer.
1101
01:11:22.440 --> 01:11:25.260
And so in a court of law or a parliamentary inquiry,
1102
01:11:25.261 --> 01:11:27.120
or indeed in the sort of doco,
1103
01:11:27.121 --> 01:11:30.120
which the ABC is proposing to show next Thursday night,
1104
01:11:30.690 --> 01:11:34.650
junk science can seem more convincing than an honest attempt to wrestle with
1105
01:11:34.651 --> 01:11:35.484
complexity.
1106
01:11:36.080 --> 01:11:39.590
So let me just introduce one of our more successful science communicators
1107
01:11:39.591 --> 01:11:41.570
professor Ian Lowe from Griffith university.
1108
01:11:44.540 --> 01:11:47.810
The look, the answer is yes, of course,
1109
01:11:47.960 --> 01:11:50.990
is that complexity is a difficult thing to communicate.
1110
01:11:51.410 --> 01:11:55.850
And one of the risks in going too much overboard in incentivizing people to
1111
01:11:56.870 --> 01:11:59.300
communicate more with the public is you,
1112
01:11:59.320 --> 01:12:03.770
you get to a situation where we were at in Australia and Britain was at,
1113
01:12:03.860 --> 01:12:06.380
in in the late sixties, early seventies,
1114
01:12:06.381 --> 01:12:09.290
where you had shore ponies who didn't publish,
1115
01:12:09.320 --> 01:12:12.710
but published in the daily Telegraph or you know,
1116
01:12:12.711 --> 01:12:16.700
the Herald sun rather than in learner journals.
1117
01:12:17.090 --> 01:12:19.790
And it, it created a bit of a crisis.
1118
01:12:19.791 --> 01:12:23.210
And it's through the creation of sort of reasonably trained science journalists
1119
01:12:23.211 --> 01:12:24.560
that you'd be able to, you know,
1120
01:12:24.710 --> 01:12:29.240
that you would only trip tend to broadcast stories that actually had
1121
01:12:29.241 --> 01:12:32.540
published first and therefore been through peer review,
1122
01:12:32.870 --> 01:12:35.150
but that complexity does make it difficult.
1123
01:12:35.150 --> 01:12:37.610
And it's what Tim was alluding to earlier, which is the,
1124
01:12:38.180 --> 01:12:40.380
the uncertainty that is always around that.
1125
01:12:40.450 --> 01:12:43.820
And you just have to look at even the last climate change report,
1126
01:12:44.240 --> 01:12:48.890
which even now it doesn't say we are, that we are sure.
1127
01:12:48.980 --> 01:12:51.530
It's just that our degree of certainty is getting so large,
1128
01:12:51.650 --> 01:12:56.150
is that we're almost sure. And which is incredibly frustrating,
1129
01:12:56.270 --> 01:12:59.660
but I think there is a way for people to confidently say the balance of
1130
01:12:59.661 --> 01:13:04.070
information is here. And that's where, you know,
1131
01:13:04.580 --> 01:13:08.360
people like you in have actually said that and communicated honestly,
1132
01:13:08.810 --> 01:13:13.160
and equivocating just doesn't get anybody anywhere you've got to sort of take.
1133
01:13:13.940 --> 01:13:17.510
And Manny was referring to that earlier earlier that you,
1134
01:13:17.511 --> 01:13:20.600
you roughly know where the balance of evidence lies and that's what you got to
1135
01:13:20.601 --> 01:13:25.580
go with because you're not doing the public service by the zigs
1136
01:13:25.581 --> 01:13:29.240
and zags of research. You're, you know,
1137
01:13:29.241 --> 01:13:32.780
the area and you can synthesize it. And of course in medicine,
1138
01:13:32.781 --> 01:13:35.420
what they've tried to do is they created this Cochrane collaboration,
1139
01:13:35.421 --> 01:13:39.650
which tries to bring together the available evidence and even out the zigs and
1140
01:13:39.651 --> 01:13:42.020
zags, but it is one of the barriers. Absolutely. Right.
1141
01:13:42.660 --> 01:13:46.700
The media in some ways has, has begun to grow up a bit.
1142
01:13:46.970 --> 01:13:51.410
When I started reporting on science there were cures for cancer discovered every
1143
01:13:51.411 --> 01:13:52.161
week. Now,
1144
01:13:52.161 --> 01:13:56.900
no journalists that I know of believes that any would believe any scientist said
1145
01:13:56.960 --> 01:14:00.890
I've found the magic bullet. On the other hand,
1146
01:14:02.120 --> 01:14:06.950
we're telling our stories at links of around 350 to 700
1147
01:14:06.951 --> 01:14:09.530
words, 700 words is a lot in the newspaper.
1148
01:14:10.190 --> 01:14:14.470
And there is not much room for caveats,
1149
01:14:14.500 --> 01:14:19.300
probably perhaps almost certainly quite useful terms
1150
01:14:19.420 --> 01:14:22.170
that indicate that the, that the, that the,
1151
01:14:22.450 --> 01:14:24.430
the question is not entirely sewn up.
1152
01:14:24.790 --> 01:14:29.470
We get into real problems where we discover that
1153
01:14:29.471 --> 01:14:30.790
you are dead. Sure.
1154
01:14:30.910 --> 01:14:35.260
But you're not going to say so in on in in a scientific paper
1155
01:14:36.610 --> 01:14:38.950
for reasons which are perfectly understandable,
1156
01:14:39.670 --> 01:14:43.300
but when I ring up a scientist and start talking about
1157
01:14:44.490 --> 01:14:48.760
a caveat strewn probability riddled paper,
1158
01:14:49.330 --> 01:14:50.140
I do,
1159
01:14:50.140 --> 01:14:54.790
I do expect him to tell me whether his research is on or not.
1160
01:14:55.240 --> 01:14:56.230
And if it's on,
1161
01:14:56.650 --> 01:15:01.390
I feel free to actually say something to make up his mind for him and let
1162
01:15:01.391 --> 01:15:06.160
him have the, have a paragraph of uncertainty somewhere further down.
1163
01:15:06.880 --> 01:15:10.690
Otherwise I didn't have a story at all. So you, you can't,
1164
01:15:11.560 --> 01:15:13.450
you can't build a story out of
1165
01:15:16.930 --> 01:15:20.860
let me newspapers or competitive environment.
1166
01:15:21.220 --> 01:15:23.320
If I go up to my news desk and say,
1167
01:15:23.590 --> 01:15:28.570
I have a very interesting story here about a potential advance in
1168
01:15:28.571 --> 01:15:33.430
our understanding of the development of set of of the
1169
01:15:33.460 --> 01:15:37.210
molecular biology of small cell cancer in laboratory mice,
1170
01:15:37.211 --> 01:15:41.920
mind you not in people. And my colleague comes up and says,
1171
01:15:42.070 --> 01:15:44.890
well, I've got this story about David Beckham,
1172
01:15:45.010 --> 01:15:49.180
three trollops and four lines of white powder. Which one are you,
1173
01:15:49.270 --> 01:15:54.250
which one do you think you're going to read? I mean, that's, that's,
1174
01:15:54.610 --> 01:15:56.590
that's, that's how bad it is.
1175
01:15:56.800 --> 01:16:01.360
So all our science stories actually end up saying something
1176
01:16:01.361 --> 01:16:06.070
fairly firm, even if it may be turned out subsequently to be wrong.
1177
01:16:07.570 --> 01:16:11.350
That wouldn't be the first time an expert had been wrong and in public, I mean,
1178
01:16:11.351 --> 01:16:13.840
politicians and economists to roll all the time,
1179
01:16:14.560 --> 01:16:16.240
football commentators are wrong, often,
1180
01:16:17.020 --> 01:16:18.940
what's wrong with the scientists being wrong sometimes.
1181
01:16:19.650 --> 01:16:23.280
But even if what you have put in your article is, is reasonable.
1182
01:16:23.760 --> 01:16:26.640
That doesn't mean that what is read and understood,
1183
01:16:26.880 --> 01:16:31.080
which will be a fraction of it is necessarily what you intend and much would
1184
01:16:31.081 --> 01:16:35.100
depend on the headline and probably the last sentence or a few things like that.
1185
01:16:35.460 --> 01:16:38.310
So it depends whether the science communication is,
1186
01:16:38.640 --> 01:16:41.970
is for the purpose of providing information or whether that science
1187
01:16:41.971 --> 01:16:45.270
communication is for the purpose of changing an attitude or a behavior.
1188
01:16:45.720 --> 01:16:46.830
And they're quite different things.
1189
01:16:46.830 --> 01:16:49.950
I think I couldn't confidently with my hand on my heart,
1190
01:16:49.951 --> 01:16:53.490
tell you that the purpose of providing information for me is to be read.
1191
01:16:53.640 --> 01:16:56.280
I would like to be right, but boy, do I want to be red?
1192
01:16:57.540 --> 01:17:01.530
And this is the serious thing we're caught in the Shaharazad trap.
1193
01:17:02.100 --> 01:17:06.330
Shahirah is hard. Was the queen in 1,001 nights who, who, who, who,
1194
01:17:06.360 --> 01:17:10.370
whose turn it was to be consumed and, oh, sorry, consummated. And then,
1195
01:17:10.460 --> 01:17:14.780
and then decapitated the sushi, as you know, the Kalief was a bit of a swine.
1196
01:17:15.980 --> 01:17:20.630
And she decided that instead of making love, she'd start telling stories,
1197
01:17:20.990 --> 01:17:24.680
newspapers. Now newspapers have always been caught in this, in this,
1198
01:17:24.770 --> 01:17:27.940
in this dilemma. It's our job to, to,
1199
01:17:28.120 --> 01:17:31.550
to make people want to buy us tomorrow as well.
1200
01:17:32.060 --> 01:17:35.990
And so we're, we're very careful about the stories we tell we want them to be,
1201
01:17:35.991 --> 01:17:39.790
right. Boy, we want to be varied. And I think the same is true.
1202
01:17:39.880 --> 01:17:43.600
The radio to jet, we wouldn't mind turning on occasionally. Nice. Yeah.
1203
01:17:45.070 --> 01:17:47.140
Do you have any really good tricks for,
1204
01:17:47.141 --> 01:17:51.250
for getting scientists to be passionate so that you can ensure that people buy
1205
01:17:51.251 --> 01:17:54.880
the papers or read the report next week or listen to them?
1206
01:17:55.270 --> 01:17:58.090
Well, I, I tell you that there's a certain selection.
1207
01:17:58.091 --> 01:17:59.650
When you have a big pool of scientists,
1208
01:17:59.651 --> 01:18:02.620
there's a selection process that goes on almost unconsciously.
1209
01:18:02.980 --> 01:18:04.240
If you look at the British press,
1210
01:18:04.330 --> 01:18:07.690
you will find that the same 20 or 30 scientists pop up over and over again,
1211
01:18:07.870 --> 01:18:11.260
because they are the ones who understand the press and understand that,
1212
01:18:11.560 --> 01:18:15.400
that answers it to be delivered in a sentence or two.
1213
01:18:16.930 --> 01:18:19.650
And there are others who are keen to learn. And then,
1214
01:18:19.651 --> 01:18:23.440
then there are those who actually end up writing for the press.
1215
01:18:23.860 --> 01:18:25.600
Digital editing is a wonderful thing.
1216
01:18:29.260 --> 01:18:30.093
Okay.
1217
01:18:30.650 --> 01:18:35.590
Chairperson at the start raised the question of of problem of why there
1218
01:18:35.591 --> 01:18:40.030
is so much more science communication, but so fewer people,
1219
01:18:40.150 --> 01:18:43.360
so many less people going into science. Now,
1220
01:18:43.361 --> 01:18:47.380
I would suggest that the reason for this is because scientists these days,
1221
01:18:47.710 --> 01:18:51.580
they're part of the economic system. They have to scrounge for funds.
1222
01:18:52.180 --> 01:18:55.000
And it's very important that they scrounge for funds.
1223
01:18:55.210 --> 01:18:59.050
And often it means that they have, they spend a lot of time doing this and open.
1224
01:18:59.051 --> 01:19:03.400
It means that they actually probably go too far or in terms of promising what
1225
01:19:03.401 --> 01:19:06.610
they might be able to do. And I think as a result, also, there are,
1226
01:19:06.620 --> 01:19:08.410
there are quite a lot of consequences.
1227
01:19:08.411 --> 01:19:11.020
It means there's far too many people managing science.
1228
01:19:11.230 --> 01:19:13.960
A lot of the money for sciences is not going into science.
1229
01:19:14.260 --> 01:19:18.610
And a lot of exciting science is not being done because people can't afford to
1230
01:19:18.611 --> 01:19:21.190
fail. I'd like to hear people's comments on that.
1231
01:19:23.650 --> 01:19:27.550
What goes against that is that my understanding is, and Tim can correct me,
1232
01:19:27.970 --> 01:19:31.000
is that in the United States kids, aren't going into science either.
1233
01:19:31.480 --> 01:19:33.220
And there's a lot more money in science.
1234
01:19:33.450 --> 01:19:34.750
There there's plenty of money in science.
1235
01:19:34.751 --> 01:19:37.750
There's no shortage really of money in science, in the United States.
1236
01:19:38.260 --> 01:19:42.310
And so whilst it's, there's a sense of that in Australia,
1237
01:19:42.340 --> 01:19:43.960
particularly in nonmedical research,
1238
01:19:43.961 --> 01:19:46.690
medical research is much better funded than it used to be. Is that,
1239
01:19:47.780 --> 01:19:51.010
that you're scrambling for money. I think it's more,
1240
01:19:51.011 --> 01:19:54.670
the sense that kids have is that they actually want to earn a comfortable
1241
01:19:54.671 --> 01:19:58.390
salary. You don't go into science, you go into law or finance.
1242
01:19:58.391 --> 01:20:00.460
I think that's probably the stronger driver.
1243
01:20:01.090 --> 01:20:05.890
The the chemistry departments and in particular physics departments in Britain
1244
01:20:05.891 --> 01:20:10.140
are closing down at a rate so sickening that there won't be any in 10 years or
1245
01:20:10.141 --> 01:20:13.710
so. And there will be no geophysicists in 15 years.
1246
01:20:13.711 --> 01:20:17.220
This is an alarming report by by, by,
1247
01:20:17.280 --> 01:20:19.320
by the current generation of professors,
1248
01:20:19.321 --> 01:20:21.930
they look around and they don't have any students.
1249
01:20:22.650 --> 01:20:26.300
So there are problems everywhere. I mean, I think the it's,
1250
01:20:26.301 --> 01:20:28.170
it's quite clear that science is hard work.
1251
01:20:28.230 --> 01:20:31.500
It's quite clear that there's not a secure profession. You can't, you can't say,
1252
01:20:31.501 --> 01:20:33.750
well, I'll be a cited. It's just not up to you. You know,
1253
01:20:33.751 --> 01:20:36.340
it's a research council that decide that and the, and the,
1254
01:20:36.390 --> 01:20:39.750
and the budgetary constraints and the,
1255
01:20:40.130 --> 01:20:43.950
the commercial companies that you might end up working for. So you can,
1256
01:20:44.310 --> 01:20:44.521
you know,
1257
01:20:44.521 --> 01:20:48.540
you can have a science degree and be beat the better and richer in every sense
1258
01:20:48.541 --> 01:20:50.790
for it, except in monetary terms.
1259
01:20:53.600 --> 01:20:58.100
So that being more visible can actually be an advantage rather than a
1260
01:20:58.101 --> 01:21:00.100
disadvantage. I mean,
1261
01:21:00.500 --> 01:21:05.150
just thinking of my own scenario being
1262
01:21:05.151 --> 01:21:06.170
visible to the,
1263
01:21:06.230 --> 01:21:10.790
to the community means you're actually more visible to your peers as well and
1264
01:21:10.791 --> 01:21:14.510
provided that your name is not complete mud.
1265
01:21:15.410 --> 01:21:19.880
You can actually that has some positive spin-offs. I mean,
1266
01:21:19.881 --> 01:21:21.650
for example, in the last budget,
1267
01:21:21.920 --> 01:21:26.570
we were provided with $2 million to develop some work in the
1268
01:21:26.571 --> 01:21:30.020
children's area. Not because we'd already been working in the area,
1269
01:21:30.050 --> 01:21:34.220
but because we had a high visibility and clearly we had some success with
1270
01:21:34.370 --> 01:21:38.750
science communication. So it is possible to,
1271
01:21:38.780 --> 01:21:43.640
to to use some of that
1272
01:21:43.641 --> 01:21:47.330
communication to your advantage and particularly not,
1273
01:21:47.390 --> 01:21:50.180
not necessarily to the more Orthodox funding bodies,
1274
01:21:50.181 --> 01:21:53.930
such as the national health and medical research council but other industry
1275
01:21:53.931 --> 01:21:58.460
groups and other groups in general who might seek to collaborate with you just
1276
01:21:58.461 --> 01:21:59.630
because they know who you are.
1277
01:22:00.830 --> 01:22:04.880
And I told the one science course where there's no shortage of applicants is
1278
01:22:04.881 --> 01:22:08.750
forensic science. So yeah, we've got CSR.
1279
01:22:08.780 --> 01:22:11.330
I'm surprised we don't have CSI nor longer,
1280
01:22:14.210 --> 01:22:15.950
but that's probably the only part in the globe.
1281
01:22:15.980 --> 01:22:17.840
It doesn't have its own CSI program, but I mean,
1282
01:22:17.870 --> 01:22:22.370
so it goes with what many things that role models and you see kids have
1283
01:22:22.371 --> 01:22:25.970
attractive role models. You've got plenty of your legal programs,
1284
01:22:25.971 --> 01:22:30.170
but you don't have many, you know, love over the test tube. You know.
1285
01:22:32.060 --> 01:22:35.570
That's true with in nutrition. Not because of anything I've done,
1286
01:22:35.840 --> 01:22:39.670
but in general, because people understand to some extent what,
1287
01:22:39.671 --> 01:22:42.710
what it's about so they can connect with it. And in fact,
1288
01:22:42.711 --> 01:22:45.530
to get into nutrition and dietetics at Flinders university,
1289
01:22:45.531 --> 01:22:49.970
you have to have a have a score that is that surpasses what you would get to get
1290
01:22:49.971 --> 01:22:53.000
into medicine just because not because you need it,
1291
01:22:53.001 --> 01:22:57.080
but because it is so popular. So it, it can happen, I think,
1292
01:22:57.081 --> 01:22:59.620
with other disciplines. And it's a matter of exposure and,
1293
01:22:59.621 --> 01:23:02.240
and people seeing the relevance and having role models.
1294
01:23:02.870 --> 01:23:07.540
That science had a science had a very bad press, the BSE crisis in Britain.
1295
01:23:08.230 --> 01:23:12.370
It had an extremely bad press during the genetically modified food post
1296
01:23:12.760 --> 01:23:17.590
crisis. However, when embryo stem cell therapy came,
1297
01:23:17.620 --> 01:23:21.790
became a possibility some various Stute scientists
1298
01:23:21.820 --> 01:23:22.720
actually,
1299
01:23:24.880 --> 01:23:27.610
you might say flattered the press by enlisting their help.
1300
01:23:27.940 --> 01:23:30.970
We were happy to help because here was a good story.
1301
01:23:31.360 --> 01:23:33.730
You know Christopher Reeve might walk again,
1302
01:23:34.390 --> 01:23:36.790
Muhammad Ali might actually get back into whatnot, get back on the rig,
1303
01:23:36.820 --> 01:23:40.330
but at least recover from Parkinson's disease.
1304
01:23:40.540 --> 01:23:44.980
We had a new therapy and with these
1305
01:23:45.010 --> 01:23:49.690
tempting for us, a suggestion that it would never work at all,
1306
01:23:49.691 --> 01:23:54.610
unless, unless we provided some kind of enthusiastic support for it.
1307
01:23:55.420 --> 01:23:59.680
And well nobody's been cured of anything yet.
1308
01:24:00.040 --> 01:24:02.980
And it may never be, but we did that. We, we,
1309
01:24:02.981 --> 01:24:07.330
we were used as it were by by the scientific community to push through
1310
01:24:07.360 --> 01:24:08.290
legislation,
1311
01:24:08.320 --> 01:24:12.040
which would permit them to actually begin this quite difficult and ethically
1312
01:24:12.041 --> 01:24:14.500
interesting research.
1313
01:24:16.390 --> 01:24:18.760
So there's, there's, there's a lot, there's some,
1314
01:24:18.790 --> 01:24:22.660
there's something in it for scientists as well. Politicians respond,
1315
01:24:22.840 --> 01:24:27.130
politicians respond to public pressure, not the pressure from experts, you know,
1316
01:24:27.200 --> 01:24:30.730
economists and lawyers and scientists could talk to them all.
1317
01:24:31.000 --> 01:24:34.750
They're like actually politicians really, really they'll.
1318
01:24:34.780 --> 01:24:38.770
They will buy what the public is interested in. So we can be used.
1319
01:24:39.791 --> 01:24:43.120
One quick question, a comment from John, and then we'll,
1320
01:24:43.121 --> 01:24:46.030
we'll have time just for, for one or two very quick questions.
1321
01:24:48.270 --> 01:24:48.511
Yes.
1322
01:24:48.511 --> 01:24:53.370
I used to try and impress on my colleagues about all the students who are
1323
01:24:53.371 --> 01:24:55.560
going in for accountancy and economics.
1324
01:24:56.130 --> 01:25:00.090
And they're not doing that because they are excited about totting up figures and
1325
01:25:00.660 --> 01:25:04.380
eligible, but they see a push and a lifestyle,
1326
01:25:04.920 --> 01:25:09.300
and it's something science doesn't communicate. What do we have?
1327
01:25:09.301 --> 01:25:12.090
We have traveled. We have all sorts of exciting places.
1328
01:25:12.091 --> 01:25:13.800
Feel people get in their tactic,
1329
01:25:15.180 --> 01:25:19.800
going back to the public perception of children. Rumor,
1330
01:25:20.340 --> 01:25:25.050
when we were kids, every boy wanted to be a train driver or a policeman,
1331
01:25:25.140 --> 01:25:26.580
and the girls wanted to be nurses.
1332
01:25:26.790 --> 01:25:31.410
They all had role models about a sort of 20 years ago.
1333
01:25:31.411 --> 01:25:33.720
There was a major change probably through television.
1334
01:25:34.380 --> 01:25:37.350
They just want to be famous. Doesn't matter. What, and
1335
01:25:39.360 --> 01:25:44.040
when the crime scene programs came out, kids were saying, oh,
1336
01:25:44.041 --> 01:25:47.220
I want to be a crime scene investigator. Oh, fantastic.
1337
01:25:47.221 --> 01:25:49.590
Now you go to university and do a BRC,
1338
01:25:49.591 --> 01:25:52.620
and then you do another five years in recent history. Oh, bloody hell.
1339
01:25:52.621 --> 01:25:56.580
I'm not fat around that long. Just want to be famous again.
1340
01:25:57.420 --> 01:26:00.470
And I understand there are quite a few innovations tap into the,
1341
01:26:02.390 --> 01:26:07.130
these things that briefly flared into interest. I mean,
1342
01:26:07.131 --> 01:26:11.690
it's about as close to crime scene analysis as a real crime scene,
1343
01:26:11.691 --> 01:26:13.310
no one gets in for a couple of days,
1344
01:26:13.311 --> 01:26:18.290
as they please quietly work their way in the DNA characteristics
1345
01:26:19.280 --> 01:26:22.130
clogged up for weeks. What do you see on television?
1346
01:26:22.550 --> 01:26:25.250
They take this better thing back to the lab, drop it in this machine.
1347
01:26:25.251 --> 01:26:27.830
And 10 seconds later, they know who they related to.
1348
01:26:29.000 --> 01:26:33.230
So it's a right load of cobblers. And a lot of universities have got onto this.
1349
01:26:33.440 --> 01:26:37.400
Well, people got excited about it and we'll have degrees in this.
1350
01:26:37.910 --> 01:26:41.330
And I was told recently that the crime,
1351
01:26:42.080 --> 01:26:46.010
the professional crime labs won't take those people.
1352
01:26:46.011 --> 01:26:50.180
They want someone with a general train in science and chemistry. And so on.
1353
01:26:52.180 --> 01:26:54.940
Looks like we've got two more people would like to say something.
1354
01:26:55.030 --> 01:26:59.530
And what I might do is get you both to ask your questions one after the other.
1355
01:26:59.531 --> 01:27:04.480
And then we can answer both of them just for time. My name's Hillary.
1356
01:27:04.480 --> 01:27:07.060
And I'm a PhD student doing chemistry here, Adelaide.
1357
01:27:07.090 --> 01:27:10.810
And I just wondered if you could give us your thoughts on the fact that here
1358
01:27:10.830 --> 01:27:12.580
Adelaide university and many others.
1359
01:27:12.581 --> 01:27:17.320
I imagine engineering students are required to do compulsory communications
1360
01:27:17.321 --> 01:27:20.440
courses as part of their degrees or as science students.
1361
01:27:20.470 --> 01:27:22.780
Aren't required to do these. And even if you are a science student,
1362
01:27:22.781 --> 01:27:24.910
who'd like to do one of these, they're not available to you.
1363
01:27:25.210 --> 01:27:28.840
And so I wondered if you thought we could and should be doing more things too at
1364
01:27:28.841 --> 01:27:32.290
a university level to better prepare our future scientists for communicating
1365
01:27:32.320 --> 01:27:33.153
with the media.
1366
01:27:34.720 --> 01:27:35.710
Okay. Second question.
1367
01:27:36.400 --> 01:27:39.640
Hi. my name's Corey and I work in the lab with Hilary.
1368
01:27:39.641 --> 01:27:43.600
I'm also doing a PhD in chemistry and we often have a long coffees and
1369
01:27:43.601 --> 01:27:46.330
discussions over these kinds of topics.
1370
01:27:46.540 --> 01:27:50.500
But my was more of a comment rather than a question.
1371
01:27:50.800 --> 01:27:54.670
I just thought everyone here is probably got an interest in science,
1372
01:27:54.671 --> 01:27:57.400
but not everyone here is probably a science specialist.
1373
01:27:57.790 --> 01:28:02.320
And for those people and the science specialists, there's an,
1374
01:28:02.410 --> 01:28:07.180
a column in the Adelaide advertiser on Saturdays in the review
1375
01:28:07.181 --> 01:28:11.740
section called, can you believe it? And a lot of people probably have read this,
1376
01:28:11.741 --> 01:28:14.920
but my father is a panel beater.
1377
01:28:14.950 --> 01:28:19.840
And he loves reading all the little comments about my supervisor who writes
1378
01:28:19.841 --> 01:28:22.390
in there quite often. And I think John,
1379
01:28:22.420 --> 01:28:26.590
you have an article on my correct this week today.
1380
01:28:26.591 --> 01:28:30.280
So I just thought I'd make the note that there is some good science
1381
01:28:30.281 --> 01:28:34.840
communication and apparently this column has been so popular.
1382
01:28:35.530 --> 01:28:39.610
So it's just good to see that it is happening and peop the public do want it.
1383
01:28:39.670 --> 01:28:44.440
And if a mainstream media would be only more willing to publish more of
1384
01:28:44.441 --> 01:28:44.741
this,
1385
01:28:44.741 --> 01:28:49.000
maybe people would find out a lot more about science and we'd overcome some of
1386
01:28:49.001 --> 01:28:53.350
these I guess, misconceptions about science being boring.
1387
01:28:54.670 --> 01:28:59.080
I'm going to overcome my own rule and allow one last burning question,
1388
01:28:59.260 --> 01:29:01.950
because he's putting his hand up for what, sorry about that.
1389
01:29:02.160 --> 01:29:05.250
It's a question we live and die by technology.
1390
01:29:05.730 --> 01:29:09.540
We grow by science to the science communicators.
1391
01:29:09.541 --> 01:29:14.070
Really understand the difference between between science and
1392
01:29:14.071 --> 01:29:18.480
technology, the public, the public, certainly doesn't but do the communicators.
1393
01:29:22.200 --> 01:29:25.840
Yes. [inaudible]. I think if you have a lot of TV programs in
1394
01:29:25.840 --> 01:29:25.840
the last 20 years, they all have science in
1395
01:29:25.840 --> 01:29:25.840
the title, but they're all about technology. They just want a whizzbang
1396
01:29:25.840 --> 01:29:26.673
thing and they very seldom address a science question.
1397
01:29:43.420 --> 01:29:48.400
That's partly because making television science is really hard to do for
1398
01:29:48.401 --> 01:29:51.730
pictures. And so things that go bump in the night or,
1399
01:29:51.880 --> 01:29:55.360
you know flashlights are much easier to film.
1400
01:29:55.480 --> 01:30:00.010
And and I think if you watched the evolution of capitalists on ABC television,
1401
01:30:00.280 --> 01:30:02.980
they're really trying to take on that challenge of not making it a tomorrow's
1402
01:30:02.981 --> 01:30:06.580
world or beyond 2000, which is just about dismal.
1403
01:30:06.670 --> 01:30:08.920
And so it is an issue. There's no question about that.
1404
01:30:09.070 --> 01:30:13.290
Coming back to that question about engineers getting concise communication and
1405
01:30:13.420 --> 01:30:16.120
scientists, not engineers needed.
1406
01:30:24.280 --> 01:30:24.750
[inaudible].
1407
01:30:24.750 --> 01:30:27.030
Very interesting that some scientists get a better,
1408
01:30:27.200 --> 01:30:31.290
but some science says get a better press and better attention than others.
1409
01:30:31.680 --> 01:30:35.550
It's true that it's much easier to write about and imagine, and,
1410
01:30:35.640 --> 01:30:40.110
and enjoy stories about dinosaurs than it is say about molecular biology.
1411
01:30:41.430 --> 01:30:45.660
Molecular biology is nearly always discussed in terms of the diseases that might
1412
01:30:45.661 --> 01:30:49.770
be cured rather than the process of, of, of itself,
1413
01:30:49.800 --> 01:30:53.220
because it's, as I say, hard to imagine
1414
01:30:56.820 --> 01:31:01.470
Cory actually had a go at us yesterday about chemistry and the
1415
01:31:01.471 --> 01:31:03.180
coverage of the British press and chemistry.
1416
01:31:03.181 --> 01:31:05.220
And it is true that that's extremely bad.
1417
01:31:05.520 --> 01:31:10.380
We can search the British press for the word polymer and you won't find it very
1418
01:31:10.381 --> 01:31:15.360
often. And if you do, it'll usually be an a in an improper context.
1419
01:31:15.361 --> 01:31:17.610
In fact, blood is a polymer, so his skin,
1420
01:31:17.640 --> 01:31:22.260
so his bone we should be more, more at ease with these things,
1421
01:31:22.770 --> 01:31:24.630
but things can be done.
1422
01:31:25.140 --> 01:31:29.820
One of the greatest writers of the last 50 years was a chemist.
1423
01:31:30.240 --> 01:31:33.630
His name was Primo levy, and he wrote a book called the periodic table.
1424
01:31:33.710 --> 01:31:33.961
And in fact,
1425
01:31:33.961 --> 01:31:38.220
he wrote seven or eight books of which I would have thought the periodic table
1426
01:31:38.310 --> 01:31:42.180
and his two Auschwitz memoirs will be with us for another hundred and 50 years
1427
01:31:42.181 --> 01:31:46.500
or possibly 250 years. And they in particular,
1428
01:31:46.501 --> 01:31:50.790
the periodic table has this remarkable quality of opinionating
1429
01:31:51.330 --> 01:31:54.180
this, these hideous,
1430
01:31:55.080 --> 01:31:59.950
uncertain concepts called words to a reality in a way that I've never actually
1431
01:31:59.951 --> 01:32:03.730
seen before and still making it compelling and beautiful.
1432
01:32:04.390 --> 01:32:07.480
So it can be done. It's, it's a challenge. In fact,
1433
01:32:07.481 --> 01:32:10.240
it's a challenge I have always rather enjoyed.
1434
01:32:11.470 --> 01:32:14.380
It's much more fun making stories that are difficult material,
1435
01:32:14.980 --> 01:32:19.480
and it's not so much fun actually knocking with dinosaur tales is really seeing
1436
01:32:19.481 --> 01:32:20.800
one dinosaur, seeing them all.
1437
01:32:21.810 --> 01:32:25.710
One final comment from John Campbell. Before we wrap up.
1438
01:32:26.670 --> 01:32:30.660
The question about whether they should do a science communication course,
1439
01:32:31.840 --> 01:32:32.880
sort of yes,
1440
01:32:34.020 --> 01:32:37.890
but I have this loyalty to universities are because I think they are the cause
1441
01:32:37.891 --> 01:32:42.480
of too much of the problems they have got to put out the school teachers who go
1442
01:32:42.481 --> 01:32:46.320
out and enthused like missionary, zeal, love that, recommend that to anyone.
1443
01:32:47.220 --> 01:32:49.470
And in my own subject physics,
1444
01:32:50.130 --> 01:32:54.930
if you look at a physics exam answer
1445
01:32:55.590 --> 01:32:56.423
sheet,
1446
01:32:57.250 --> 01:33:01.140
you will see their page after page where there's never two words strung
1447
01:33:01.141 --> 01:33:06.090
together. And unless we asked for this and the exams, like I used it,
1448
01:33:06.750 --> 01:33:09.060
you show that it's not, you're not serious about this,
1449
01:33:09.061 --> 01:33:13.890
and you don't need to communicate. In words, they ask a scientist one,
1450
01:33:13.891 --> 01:33:17.220
they've got to respond to some question and 300 words,
1451
01:33:17.520 --> 01:33:21.450
no formula or anything. And that's great training for scientists.
1452
01:33:22.710 --> 01:33:25.980
And we should put that in their exams. I'd also.
1453
01:33:25.980 --> 01:33:30.870
Like to say that I think the notion of expanding the science curriculum at
1454
01:33:30.871 --> 01:33:31.710
university level,
1455
01:33:31.711 --> 01:33:36.540
that encompasses communication and a few other broader activities that would be
1456
01:33:36.630 --> 01:33:41.580
of benefit to the student would possibly make science courses
1457
01:33:41.610 --> 01:33:42.443
more attractive.
1458
01:33:42.450 --> 01:33:46.290
And I think that that would be something to consider seriously as we struggle
1459
01:33:46.291 --> 01:33:50.520
with a lack of people taking an interest in science.
1460
01:33:51.450 --> 01:33:55.110
Okay. And I'd like you all to join me in thanking our panelists.