As a fresh-faced 21 yr old, I did a one-year placement at a pharmaceutical company as a synthetic chemist – a position that involves a lot of what is remarkably like cooking but with ‘reagents’ (fancy word for chemicals) instead of ingredients, making potential drugs instead of cakes. I loved the placement, I loved the work and I loved the people so I set about on the pathway to getting back in to the industry. It’s eight years on, I have the qualifications to do the role, I’m applying for jobs and I’m starting to wonder ‘Is this what I want to do? and 'Can I use all the skills I've learnt elsewhere?’

This blog is going to cover my research into what scientists like me are qualified to do that’s not in the laboratory. I’ll do my best to reference websites and people that actually do these jobs and hopefully I can help some people out by sharing what I’m learning. It’ll probably be interspersed with anecdotes and rants from the lab so you can see why I'm leaving this ‘unique’ environment! If you read this, think it’s useful/funny/worth reading, pass on the link – I’d love to know if I’m any good at this writing lark.

Wednesday 18 December 2013

But Carrie Mathison, Beyonce and Kate Middleton make it look so easy!


I wrote a post last week and put it off due to some confidentiality ‘grey areas’, then I spent a week working on a competition entry in an attempt to get some of this done and didn’t post anything. In the meanwhile the same topic seems to keep cropping up, so I thought I’d ask for some thoughts…

It might be the ‘familial’ time of the year or just a time in my life when I’m noticing these things but, at the moment, there seems to be a lot of discussion in the science press and in blogs about having kids as a researcher. 

First there's the talk of time-juggling, the hard-work and the atrophy of women from science as they get older. Then there’s the fact that it is possible, that institutions are waking up to the need to change and the pay off of having a happy family life and fantastic professional career.

Ace. Well done if this is you. However, I’ve been wondering if this is a life I want. 

There was a really great post recently from a scientist who said that she simple chose not to have kids. That she couldn’t see how she, personally, could do both. I really appreciated her honesty  as it’s something I’m thinking about a lot at the moment. 

I grew up with ‘Girl Power’ and the overwhelming message that we, as women, could ‘have it all’. It’s great on paper and if you can make it work then ‘Brava’, I’m impressed. But there’s also an inherent pressure that if you don’t manage to ‘do both’, then you’ve failed somewhere, somehow. For example, the women who choose their jobs over children are ‘heartless’ simply because they’ve made a conscious choice for their future that doesn’t involve giving birth, whilst the women who step back from their careers to have children get ‘what a shame’ or ‘you know we DO have a Gold Athena Swan award – it’s much easier than it used to be…’. I’m sure it is. I know a few successful scientists who also happen to be female and have children. Mostly, they are older having children and tell us almost-thirty-somethings ‘don’t wait’, ‘don’t put it off’, ‘you can’t plan these things’ and the standard ‘there’s never a good time…’

But what I want to know, genuinely, what I’d really like to hear about, is the pregnancy stage of having a baby. You can Athena-Swan-flexible-hours-crèche-facility all you like about having children but someone has to have the baby in their body for (hopefully) nine months. What do lab-scientists do then? From what I can gather, different countries have different laws and different companies have varying levels of ‘extra’ precautions when it comes to pregnant women. 

I’m a research chemist. I’m perfectly confident that on a daily basis I don’t get exposed to chemicals that are (too) toxic, but it’s honestly unrealistic, even with all the safety codes of conduct that we have, to say that I don’t get exposed to anything. If the ventilation fails in the lab (which happens occasionally), my skin gets irritated from the solvents, many of which are carcinogenic. When I express (make) a protein, I use toxic bacteria that could easily give me a nasty case of ‘food’ poisoning. Using certain liquids in the lab makes me retch and, during my PhD, I knew if I'd made a particular precursor because my nose would start to itch. These are all things that don’t usually bother me as I know that I work safely in the lab and the risk to me is tiny. However, would I be so blasé if I was pregnant? I don’t think so. 

I raised the issue of pregnancy, lab-work and my (possible) reluctance to combine them at a meeting recently. I regretted it instantly. Pretty quickly the conversation moved into anecdotes about women who refused to work near WiFi and proud stories of pregnant wives who had to look side-ways down a microscope at 40 weeks pregnant as her bump was just too big to look past. So is that what it’s reduced to? You’re either seen as over-sensitive and afraid of everything (a joke) or willing to work in the lab literally until you give birth (a ‘real’ scientist).

In the same meeting I heard ‘Well I expect pregnant women to work’ and ‘you know, miscarriages are extremely common’, as if by simply mentioning that you have misgivings about lab-work and childbearing you’re a slacker and that losing your baby is so common that it’s laughable to be concerned about the lab having an influence on it. Some people avoid prosciutto and tiramisu during pregnancy. They quit smoking, stop drinking and often pay far more attention to their health than they normally would, I’m just wondering what people do who are involved in jobs that are a little ‘riskier’ tend to do. 

This, of course, isn’t limited to lab-work, on any London street you can often see a police officer in a stab vest – do they still feel comfortable walking the beat when they are pregnant? Do doctors and nurses still do horrendous shifts with a baby on the way? What about athletes? I’m not suggesting that women be confined to bed-rest and Jane Austen novels during pregnancy, I’m actually not suggesting anything, I’d just genuinely like to hear from women and partners of women who have slightly ‘risky’ jobs to find out about what they did and how they felt when they were pregnant. And before people start to quote me examples of women who fought wars, bare-knuckled whilst carrying triplets, I know that women CAN do amazing things whilst pregnant, not least carry the bloody baby, I’d just like to be allowed to talk about the fact that I might not want to continue in the lab IF I got pregnant without being labelled a quitter/slacker/hypochondriac.

And, another thing, if someone does bring this up in your lab/office/building site don’t role your eyes, comment on her ‘biological clock’ ticking or nudge the person next to you because so-and-so is BOUND to be pregnant soon and it’s going to be sooo inconvenient for you. Most women don’t want to be the office pariah but it seems that just by mentioning that we might, at some point, deliberately get pregnant, and then, be concerned for the pregnancy rather than your cell counts/IC50s/target compounds, then we’re not dedicated enough. 

I just wondered, I know there are risk assessments and codes of conduct but a lot of it comes down to what a pregnant woman is 'comfortable' doing. If your simply not happy to do your pre-pregnancy job if you do get pregnant, then what do you do? Do you not take jobs/promotions just in case?

Or do you take what comes along and risk having to tell your new boss that you're pregnant and, by the way, you don't really want to do the job they hired you for and, oh yeah, the law says they have to find you something else?

Answers on a postcard. Or, if you prefer, there's a comment box below.

Monday 2 December 2013

'To do' list of a fledging scientific communicator...

As you may be aware from some of my earlier posts, I'm really interested in different ways of scientific communication - From museum events to blogging and twitter. After speaking to lots of different people I thought the only way I could see if I was even capable of writing on a regular basis was to try some writing, so I started this blog.

I've only been doing it a few months and ended up on a panel about blogging (much to the chagrin/confusion of true blog aficionados) so whilst I'm not exactly a 'big deal' (Ron Burgundy quote #1 of this blog, I hope not the last) I am trying to learn as much as possible. In order to see just how far I can push this idea in a short period of time I thought I'd turn my hand to a few other things to see just how I can best communicate my science, the science of others and the science of well, science. After discussing this amongst my colleagues, the general consensus was 'Hey, can we have that list too?' So, here it is:

1. Keep writing the blog...
Sometimes this is easier said than done, although I do enjoy it - I'd recommend starting one if it's something you think you might enjoy, you can write about anything you like - people read all sorts of rubbish when they're avoiding their tax returns, their kids and their actual jobs!

2. Practice communicating science to a 'lay' audience. 
Urgh, is there a more patronising word than 'lay'? Anyway, you know what I mean, talking about science to those who aren't scientists or don't work in that area of science. This could encompass journalism, blogging, teaching, museum work, comedy and all sorts, as I've recently learnt.

 

Competitions
I'm going to enter a couple of science writing competitions, one on 'translating' hard-core papers into 800 words of accessible text, and another more vague competition (also 800 words) that requires the writer to discuss the topic of Openness in Science - I'm not even sure I like the word 'opennes' but I'll give it a try.



Plain English Summaries
I want to add a few entries to Science Gist, a site where you can add simplified summaries of any papers you may have read. An additional bonus behind this is that a lot of people make summaries already in their own note-taking, so why not share it and see if what you write makes sense? 


Not-so-plain English Summaries
If you want to take plain English summaries a step further you can give UpGoer Five a try - this is a project where you describe anything you like (your job, your pet, Schrodinger's uncertainty principle) using just the top one thousand (or ten hundred to be 'in the rules') words. It's an extreme look at the use of jargon but it is surprisingly difficult and suprisingly entertaining to try and describe spaghetti bolognese without 'meat', 'beef' or 'cow'. It gets it name from the original project where a rocket scientist described his rocket (or UpGoer) using these rules in a popular comic (xkcd).


3. Get Political
Ok, not exactly, but I want to enter the poster competition that will be exhibited in the House of Commons. I think this will be a little different to the standard poster sessions scientists get involved in as it will involve communicating your work to a non-expert audience, not something you get chance to do often, is it? Or maybe you go to the House of Commons all the time. I doubt it, But maybe...

4. Get marks for attendance 
I'd like to get more of an idea of how science is communicated to the general public that's not via the written word so I've been taking advantage of living in central London and going to as many science events/seminars as I can fit in. Apart from Science ShowOff (science-based comedy, performance and juggling), I attended Science Uncovered at the Natural History Museum (and blogged about it here), Science Museum Lates at the Science Museum, attended a seminar on Science Gallery (and it's planned expansion to London) and also watched a heat for FameLab. I'm thinking of sending in a video entry. I may very well bottle it. 

At the Science Museum Lates, I bumped into a friend of a friend of a... you get the idea,  and we got to talking about the speed dating event that was happening at the museum. He commented 'Well, at least you know that the person you are going to meet will be of above-average intelligence.' I thought that was a bit sad (and not necessarily true) - I hope the (free) museums and their events in London are for everyone and not just those that deem themselves 'better than the rest'. To be honest, given the location of many of the museums in London, the only possible stereotype you could throw about is that the attendess might be richer than most. Or more likely to be called 'Cosmo' or 'Jacinta'. Both good names, by the way, but you get what I mean, I hope. (Funnily enough, I am planning to write a post on the people that actually go to the museums, but that's not for here and now).

5. Media Fellowships.
This is something I think I may have 'missed the boat' with, but I'd have loved to have heard about them during my PhD. There are lots of different media training opportunities available (listed on the BSA site here - British Science Association, not Bovine Serum Albumen, anyway...) but I've heard really good things from people who went on the Media Fellowship available from the BSA. you need to be still IN research, and contracted until the end of Dec 2014 to even apply for the 2014 places, something that's not an option for me, but I'd definitely give it a try if I could. It involves 3-6 weeks away from your research so your boss has to consent AND submit a letter of recommendation (i.e. you can't do it if they don't agree, it seems). For more information on working with/in/for the media, check out this page, again from the BSA.

5. Applying, applying
Basically I've upgraded from not getting well-paid positions that I'm not sure I want, to not getting lower-paid internships that I definitely want. I'd say to anyone else considering a similar move to mine (i.e. out of something where you've proven your experience, into something new) you're probably going to have to take a pay cut. This may seem like a pain to begin with, especially if, also like me, you're thinking of trying to buy your first house. In London. However, you are giving yourself a chance to try something new, internships are rarely very long and, if you can prove yourself, companies will usually keep people who've shown they are pro-active and keen enough to do an internship in the first place - so chin up, it's a bit of a cliche but I'd rather be doing something I actually liked!

I've recently found a new jobs board on the British Science Association (BSA), as well as a lot of pointers from Twitter and the PSCI-COM JISCMail. Actually, the BSA (again) has information on everything from  public engagement to graphic design on their Science in Society section - worth checking out. 

In other news
This week I applied for 3 jobs, 2 internships and turned down a well-paid, great opportunity job that I won't actually like doing (more on that later). 

Don't tell, will you?

Monday 25 November 2013

It's not just scientists who use 'jargon'

How often do you hear...

I'm in e-commerce...
I'm a web professional...
I work in emerging markets...
I'm in tax...
I'm in IT (urgh)

How are any of the above statements any more explanatory than:

'I'm a microbiologist' or 'I'm a solid-state chemist?'

As I've been looking at new careers, I've started to ask anyone (and everyone) what they do. They inevitably patter out three or four sentences that mean nothing unless you're already in their field. Then I ask them 'Ok, thanks, but what do you actually DO?' They ummm and aah, come out with a version of 'Well, it's difficult to explain...' or 'It's a really diverse role...' and then think I'm being a bit weird for asking again 'Sorry, I don't understand, what is it you DO?'

What I'd really like to hear is what people actually do with their day. Scientists are often told that we need to explain what we do and I do always try. For example, when people ask what I do, after telling them that I'm a research chemist (and then telling them that it's not the same as a pharmacist), I almost always tell them that what I do is very similar to cooking but instead of mixing food and producing a cake/lasagne/burnt useless blob, I mix 'chemicals' to produce bigger chemicals/a drug/the occasional burnt useless blob. However, I think most people are guilty of slipping into jargon rather than really explaining something, particularly (and frustratingly, for me) when it comes to their job.

I've just got back from a(nother) careers fair and left early. It was heavily populated with super keen undergraduates (so young!!!), edgy Novartis employees (for now) and me. Oh, yeah and that guy who won the Apprentice, you know, the other 'Ricky Martin'. He genuinely had a copy of Alan Sugar's novel as a prize if you submitted your details to his recruitment agency - you can see why he won with such high-end incentive schemes. Although to be fair, you could hand out barb-wire toothbrushes at these fairs and people would love it. You can see a selection of my swag below - yes, that is a stress ball shaped like an aeroplane. Natch. 


Whilst everyone there was very enthusiastic and very friendly, I'm not sure what I got out of it. I approached several stands to ask about what positions they had for more people-facing scientists, i.e. a job where I could talk to people. The exhibitors went on to describe jobs that they know aren't in the lab like 'Regulatory affairs', 'Supply chain manager' and 'Qualification technologist' (No clue). So when I asked, 'That's great' what do those people DO all day', I just got an awkward response and a 'Oh, that's not something I deal with, have you seen the website?' 

I completely appreciate that it's not their responsibility to coach me through this early mid-life crisis, but apart from titles, it would be really useful if people could start talking to job-seekers about their jobs in terms the 'uninitiated' could understand and not assume that the listener has prior knowledge - much like scientists are constantly encouraged to do. 

For example it took me four versions of the same question to get:

         'I decide what forms of media (radio/tv/print) are best to promote particular UK businesses', 

and pushed on to get:

         'I do this on the phone, by email, go and meet lots of different directors and then I tell my team what/how to broadcast/publish something in-line with what I've decided.' 

The first three attempts to get this information yielded "I work in promotion', ' I deal with UK businesses' and 'Well, it's hard to explain...'

What I'm saying is, next time someone asks you what you do, try actually telling them, who knows, they might actually be interested! There's a whole new lingo to understand when looking for a job, particularly if, like me, you might be considering an alternative career. I'm aware that job adverts aren't designed to cater for all and have their own agendas, but, when discussing what we do, could we all try to stop speaking in job-advert-ese, please?

I still don't really understand what my brothers do all day (one regulary sends me funny pictures by text), my friends are in tax, project management and e-commerce. I have no idea what most of these things mean and I'm going to start trying to find out. By force if necessary.

In the meanwhile, I'm off to apply for 'Evaluations Manager', 'Downstream Process Development Team Leader and 'Transdermal Manager

What do you mean 'What are they?' - Don't you know?




Sunday 17 November 2013

Forget alternative careers- a career in science can be fun, well paid and very rewarding.

Apparently. 
So yeah, I can see why you're reading this post- the title sound jazzy, kind of positive and well-informed. That's exactly why I got sucked into going to a presentation 30 minutes away from work at 5.30 pm on a cold Thursday night with this exact title recently. I'm now a bit (probably disproportionately) pissed off.

I should start by saying that the two professors that spoke at this seminar for postgraduates were really good speakers, they were engaging and positive and they were giving up their time after work to speak to mis-guided post docs who might (horror of horrors) be thinking about leaving research. Or as they called it 'science'. 

That was my first bug-bear really. The fact that for them 'science' is (exclusively) synonymous with 'academic research'. They didn't even mention industry, never mind all the people who work in science but around the periphery of research. When it was brought up by an audience member that perhaps not all scientists want to do research, the first speaker just assumed that the question was about technician jobs and said that there were less and less about as things are now mostly automated.

'Automated' - kind of how I felt during the presentations, actually - although it was no fault of the speakers who did their very best to paint a rosy picture of life in academic research. Maybe I'm being unfair and I'm definitely quite tired (read 'jaded') but, as a PostDoc who's being looking for a job for nearly two years, outside of academia, it's really frustrating to here 'there are jobs out there if you're willing to go after them'. I thought and hoped that the presentation was going to be about careers in science and not 'here's how I became an academic'. For most people in academia, there is not a scarcity of people to talk to about this - our bosses, colleagues and their bosses and colleagues, I was hoping for something different.

To be fair, this blog is supposed to be about careers for scientists outside of the lab and most academics are rarely seen in a lab, unless they are looking for someone they couldn't find in the office or they've forgotten to tell you about the immiment arrival of a new student (or six). So I suppose I have a duty to sum-up this career choice too. 

How do you start?
Once you've completed your PhD or Post-Doc, there may be an area of research that you'd like to investigate further - Something your boss isn't interested in researching or they don't have the funding to research. This is when you say to yourself 'Maybe I could research it?' 

From here you can go down the heady road of applying for (very competitive) academic positions at universities where you tell them what you'd like to research and they might give you a year or two of funding until you can prove to the funding bodies that you have the nous to pull this off and they give you some more money (usually for another couple of years) or, alternatively, you can apply for (even more competitive) fellowships where the situation is much the same but you get more autonomy and prestige. The pain in the arse here is that you will 'lather, rinse and repeat' this step for the rest of your career. One set of funding or another will always be running down, running out or running away from you. The upside is that you get to do the most important thing in the world to you, your ideal job - that of an academic researcher. All academics bemoan the funding system but I think they all (at least, the ones I know) really love what they do.

So, back to this presentation: Both talks had the common theme of the requirements of hard work and luck. T o ensure the science theme, one even quoted Pasteur with 'Chance favours the prepared mind'. In other words, you need to be bloody lucky in this game, but a bit of nose-to-the-grind-working-until-4am hard work won't do you any harm. What made all this hard work so worthwhile is that they don"t mind reading papers at the weekends and staying in the lab until 8 pm (or 10 pm) because they're so obsessed with the work, because they honestly love it so much. And they genuinely seemed to.

In the interest of completeness and giving this a 'fair test', I'll add their pros and cons of their career choices, I stress, these are 'lifted', with only a little rewording for clarity, from their presentations:

Downsides:
- You go into this job because of the science, but, increasingly, the job is administration.
- You end up getting worse at the technical stuff (see above)
 - You have increasingly little control over the experiments (see above the above)
- Frustrating negative results (regardless of the hours put in)
- Agonisingly slow progress (regardless of the hours put in)
- Endless rejections (regardless of the hours put in)
- Lack of grant funding (regardless of the hours put in)
- Career insecurity (regardless of the hours put in)
- The work never finishes (regardless of the hours put in)
- Are you really making a difference? (regardless of the hours put in)
- The constant, aforementioned, begging for money
- Due to the above, there are not always the resources to do what you want.
- The financial buck stops with you: YOU need to find the money!

For those for whom this is their correct career path, so many things can make it worthwhile...

Upsides:
- You get to do your hobby for a job
- You are fascinated by your work (genuinely - not just on your CV)
- You get to show off (what you've done and the fact that you did it)
- The field is rapidly evolving
- Getting things right and getting things to work is really satisfying
- A new discovery is thrilling
- You feel (however unlikely it might be) that there IS a chance you could make a difference
- A university is actually a pretty nice place to work - it's got a young, usually international atmosphere and people are pretty friendly (most of the time - not when grants have just been refused)]
- It's rewarding to teach and communicate your work to other people (not all researchers actually like this bit)
- There's a lot of opportunity to travel if you can fit it in to your schedule
- You get a lot of independence (eventually)
- You get paid well (eventually)
- SOMETHING is usually working, so the failures get 'diluted'
-You get pretty much all the glory and recognition for others' lab work (honestly not my words!)
- No career can compete with complete freedom for discovery

Perspective is important
One of the presenters was also a doctor, a 'real' one (the kind that is actually useful on a plane or as a relative to show a rash to. You can show a PhD a rash but generally all you're going to get is 'Urgh' or 'Oh, yeah, Mike in genetics had that once'). Anyway, I digress, she was a clinician, as we say, so she had a really good sense of perspective. She basically said that she could much more easily see the point of her reseach when she met patients struggling with a disease she was trying to understand, or, she didn't find herself too bogged down in depression when an experiment failed for the seventeenth time when she has to deal with someone terminally ill. I think this is something that is really hard to do. You need to care about your research enough to put in all your hard work, but not be completely depressed when your three weeks of work come to nothing.

The overall message from one of the professors was that you need to know what you want to do if you expect to get far. This was great advice for life in general, I suppose, but when someone from the floor asked 'What if we don't?' There was much shrugging of shoulders. Fundamentally I think if you want to be an academic researcher, you probably already know, you're probably already on your way to being one. In my opinion, which I've previuosly suggested may be completely wrong (but it's all I have) I don't think this is an area people need to be or should be convinced to do - if your not taking your research home (like I'm not) and you're not happy to be in the lab until 10 pm (which I'm not-more on that below) then becoming an academic is probably not for you. I'm certain, no more than ever, that it's not for me.

I feel like I should comment on the fact that I'm actually not happy to work on weekends and until 10 pm and the fact that I feel I need to justify that feeling tells you a lot about academia and a lot about me. I feel I work hard and I like to have that recognised (rightly or wrongly) and if not recognised, then at least not made to feel like a slacker if I want to leave after a meagre 9-10 hour day and this is how I feel academic research is. That's fine and admirable if you love it and it probably is those completely dedicated people who should go for (and get) these jobs, but I feel I paid my 'dues' during my PhD and now, whilst I'm happy to work hard, it should probably be on something I enjoy.

I'll try and wrap up with a positive and say that if you're passionate and if you're resilient, you'll probably make it in this field. There are support schemes and fellowships open to help early researchers but a mentor will help. Ask around, who in your department do you admire? They'll probably be really busy but everyone loves being told they're great and giving advice, so ask them for pointers. In academia, I think people can be afraid of asking for help because we're all supposed to be experts. I think we should be experts at asking questions. If that question is 'How do I get to be you?', then you're likely to at least get an answer! 
If you get a rejection, particularly for a grant or fellowship, follow up, call them or e-mail them, and tell them why they've made a terrible mistake. The worst they're going to do is think you're arrogant or a bit rude but they just refused to give you any money to further your career, so what do you care if they like you? You'll notice I haven't included links to the grants or funding bodies for academic reserach - this is because there are loads and they're often very field specific. If you don't know who best to speak to about this, ask your departmental secretary. Like most things, it's not really their job to help you with this, but they're so busy and over-worked that it's quicker to just tell you who you need to ask than to berate you for asking them in the first place.



Something you should probably be aware of in academias is the general trend towards men in this environment - particularly the higher up you go. One slide in particular that stood out depicted the number of female professors in the major London universities, as well as some places in the countryside - it was pretty obvious that professorships are mostly male-dominated but there is a drive to change this. I don't mean that you'll get a job if you're crap if you also happen to be a woman, but you might find that the consious or unconcious bias that has lead to such complete under-representation is starting to get better. Oh yeah, if you're a potential male academic, keep applying - the stats say you're much better at showing confidence on your CV so that you can shine in person at the intervew, so genuine kudos for that one.

The seminar started to get a bit lost towards the end with off-topic talk of open-access, peer-review and maternity leave for Post-Docs, which there simply wasn't time to get into. As we inevitably veered into the rights and wrongs of competition in science and the best way to combat this I'm honestly not paraphrasing (much) when I wrap up with a quote from one of the professors with:

                'There need to be sacrifices on the altar of science and to hell with everyone else'.
 

Tuesday 12 November 2013

Bloody hell, that was intense!

It’s Tuesday, I’m back in the day-job and people keep saying ‘How was the conference?’ and ‘What did you get out of it?’ The first answer is easy – ‘It was great, there were tappy-tap-tap badges!!’ The second answer is taking a bit more thought. 

I could now write a detailed description of all the sessions I went to, explaining the goals and motivations of the panel, the attendees and ending with profound ‘take home’ message from each session. But I won’t. Mainly because a lot of people are already doing this and also because I was told that all bloggers are basically narcissists and only really write from their point of view so I thought I’d add fuel to that flame. Realistically though, this blog is supposed to be my take on finding out about new careers, so I’ll try and keep it personal.

I went out the night before (not a great idea, but it was with a very good friend!) so I missed the StoryCollider (although I intend to catch up via Storify, blogs etc.) so I was a bit tired, but very enthusiastic, when I arrived with no idea what to expect. I received my Blendology badge, which you tap with each new person to share contact information, got a speedy cup of tea and entered the conference… 


The first session, I can say without fear of exaggeration was ‘brilliant’. Salvatore Mele from CERN discussing how they work at one of the most famous ‘labs’ in the world and how they publish their data. Might sound a bit ‘meh’– but he was an excellent raconteur! He was really enthusiastic about his work, comparing the attention around the recent Nobel prize announcement to a football match and commenting on publishing papers with so many contributors.

Some excellent moments/quotes were:

His précis of a paper with 3000 authors 


His take on an awful lot of data analysing their site usage...





Describing the previously baffling Higgs field with a cartoon video  – still a bit baffling but at least I have a cool link I can send to people now.






And the fact that you can make a Lego version of their particle accelerator!

Instructions here

If you're still a sceptic, you can watch the presentation here

Then I attended two sessions that have blurred together in my mind – one on open access journals and one about peer review. These are rather hot topics in the field with the general 'ScienceGist' being – when we are fundamentally funded by the public and then published, the material we write should then be physically and mentally accessible by the public. The peer review session was looking at organisations and newer publications such as F1000, Frontiers, Rubriq and Peerage of Science that are attempting to change peer review. This is the standard current process adopted by most journals by which our colleagues must ‘approve’ our work before it’s accessed by the rest of the world. Currently the system is under scrutiny due to a number of critiques ranging from misconduct, retractions, time-delays and ‘it’s simply not the best way to do this in a modern world’. I’m tempted to agree but, as with most things, I think it’ll take time to change the status quo. There is still a lot of prestige (and funding) tied in to publication in the high-end peer-reviewed journals.

After lunch there was talk of a revolution involving such choice life advice such as:



All interspersed with ponderings on just how Alok Jha keeps his hair so voluminous?

The afternoon went by in a blur of saying NO to PDFs and deciding on some do’s and don’ts of Twitter before trundling off to the pub.

Science Showoff showed us that scientists do have a personality, as well as a love of chocolate, guitars, clocks, juggling and of disproving ghosts (or should that say LENS FLARE!).

The  next morning we were thrown in to a session on procrastination, ahem, I mean science games. They were all pretty cool, especially the game that lets you build up neuronal connections by ‘connecting the dots' to a snazzy 80s sci-fi theme tune. I have to wonder though, how many game-players are learning  and how many are just  scientists playing the game as it has less of a guilt-burden than Candy-Crush. I should stress, I honestly never play games on my computer/phone, but, after this session I’ll probably start.

Then… it was time…I had to do my session….Well, there’s the narcissism again, not my session but the session on blogging...

I introduced myself as the newbie I am, got through without getting into hyper-speed speech (too much) and mostly ‘got away with it’. I did get shot down once or twice but that actually helped things move along. We discussed what we blog on and why, who to and if we care what they think.
The floor discussions were really useful for me to understand lots of emerging opinions in the area, as well as those I disagree with, such as ‘blog comments are dead’ (Thanks Roland Krause!). Personally, I would really appreciate someone leaving comments on this blog - this whole thing is a learning exercise so I’d love to know what people think about what I’ve said and how I’ve said it – I’ve been warned that the number of comments is usually inversely proportional to how useful they are though so keep it clean, people.

Here’s the video - Yes, I have watched it back (narcissists, remember?)


After our session there was a really interesting panel discussion about staying in research and doing scientific communication at the same time. I think I’ll add it to a full post when I ‘officially’ cover scientific communication careers but needless-to-say, it seems that you can ‘have your cake and eat it’ (although there was no cake) but you can’t (and perhaps shouldn’t) expect your institution to understand/be supportive, especially at the start.

The final session I attended covered the idea behind the XKCD comic Up Goer Five project. In this, a rocket scientist described his rocket or (Up Goer) using the ‘top ten hundred words people use most often’. As ‘thousand’ wasn’t in it, you can see how they start to immediately rewrite their description using simpler words – ‘door’ instead of hatch,  ‘people-box’ instead of capsule or cockpit and (my personal favourite) for the helium store – 'things holding that kind of air that makes your voice funny.' It sounds a bit pointless until you realise it’s a good way to stop using unnecessary words as ‘standard’. I confess, I’m really guilty  of this – I’ve already used the word raconteur today, but it’s a good exercise to go to their website and try it out. Try describing your job without the words associate, manager, web, retail, engineer or project’ or spaghetti Bolognese without ‘cow’, ‘beef’ or ‘meat’

On the 'What did you get out of it' stream-of-consciousness, well, that's going to take some time but one thing that I found really interesting was the big idea of the conference: Impact. For those who don’t work in science and don’t have to write grants (lucky you, when you read 'grant' think ‘written begging for money’) nowadays scientists have to outline the ‘impact’ of their research. I write it like that because the impact of my research is often very limited at the start, but doesn’t mean it doesn’t matter.

For example, your average Joe isn’t ‘impacted’ by Bragg’s law, they couldn’t care less about X-ray diffraction, they don’t know who Rosalind Franklin, Francis Crick or James Watson are, but they probably know what DNA is, and their lives and education will have been shaped by the early fundamental science that lead to Bragg’s law. How does your average physicist assert the impact of an equation that could, someday, have enormous uses and ramifications?

Answer: They could use scientific communication.

They could make people ‘ooh’ and ‘aah’ at the seemingly magical function of a gyroscope. They could make chocolate mayonnaise to describe surfactants. They could enter schools and discuss the interesting facets of a career in science. They could blog about their research to the public. They could tweet from the lab or a conference. They could do all manner of things to show the funding bodies that they have IMPACT. They could go the extra mile to show that their research isn’t just a bunch of self-serving superiority-complexed people swanning around the corridors of their local institution. If we want, expect and need the government (i.e. taxpayers) to fund us then we need to be part of their lives as much as the local community centre, the playground, the museums and the art centres or, when it comes to chopping funding, who do you think will come first?