Life of a Lab Rat

Dear Reader, this entry is a bit of a rant. I started writing about one thing, and finished up on a different road. But I think the final destination is the same. There are more things I want to say than I've said below, but I shall save them for another time. love, Black Knight

Something the more socially-aware scientists (ouch! Industrialists can look away now) sometimes think about is our responsibility to the society that pays our salaries and funds our research. When I used to work at the Council for Biomedical Research (names have been changed to protect the guilty) I got involved with one of these 'Communicating with the Public' initiatives. They had a guy with an office and training days and stuff and people started taking it seriously, which was good.

My take is that yes, we do need to take an active role in educating the Public about Science, critical thinking and the scientific method. Because, let's face it, the schools are broke and forced into getting children to pass exams rather than trying to give them an education, the newspapers are all about syndicated columnists with no regard for the truth shouting ever louder in their attempt to make money and the only television that deals with science either glamorizes or demonizes it to the point that it's impossible to distinguish between a documentary and a science fiction film - or CSI.

And the heart-breaking thing is that our publically-educated children believe what their well-meaning but mis-informed parents tell them and what they read in the papers and what they see on the television. Which makes getting real science and depictions of real scientists into the public awareness all the more critical and all the more difficult.

So when Georg sent me a link earlier today (read the follow-up, too) I had a quiet giggle, and then, after reading the knee-jerk responses from the photographers who obviously felt that their precious livelihoods were being attacked, began to get good and thoughtful. Which is like being angry but without the urge to thump someone.

Yes, the photograph in question was for an in-house brochure, but that kind of tarting up is exactly what happens in the media - in the papers and on the TV. It's dishonest and irresponsible. Much of the science I do involves transfering very small amounts of colourless liquids from one small, white-ish tube to another one containing a slightly larger amount of a colourless liquid and mixing them together. It doesn't look glamorous, and it certainly doesn't feel glamorous. But sometimes, just sometimes, it can be dead exciting - not because of how it looks but because a small piece of a huge jigsaw has just fallen into place.

If I remember, I'll take my camera into work tomorrow and show you what the place really looks like.

Don't get me wrong; the science I do can be pretty, and the pictures linked from here are real data (well, mostly). Sometimes I take my cell cultures down to the fluorescence microscope and if I'm not careful I can spend hours down there, just looking at them, because they're drop-dead gorgeous. I ran an agarose gel a couple of weeks ago, similar to this one, and although the pattern was quite pleasing to the eye, I stuck a picture of it above my desk because of what it told me.

The public, I believe, doesn't want to see tarted-up science. Scientific research is not a whore that needs a ton of make-up to attract customers. Unlike Derek Lowe I do depend on grant money, which ultimately comes from the taxpayer (whether via the Government or charities). The public does not want to know that I spend my life surrounded by pretty lights and pretty women (or handsome men - whatever floats your boat) making an earth-shattering discovery every hour; they want to know that I am being careful and meticulous and thorough, and responsible with their money. A sexed-up and ultimately fraudulent image does neither party any favours. If I take your money, I have a responsibility, a duty to my funding agency, to my boss, and ultimately to you and myself to do the best science I can, and most of the time that looks very, very boring. Real science doesn't make very good television.

But discovering new things and taking apart the mechanisms of life itself and finding out what makes us tick - that's one of the most exciting things a human being can do. How on earth do we communicate that?