Word!

While I appreciate biology from a purely scientific standpoint, I strongly believe research is useless if you can't communicate it. There's a great quote by Jules Poincaré that says: "Science is facts; just as houses are made of stone, so is science made of facts; but a pile of stones is not a house, and a collection of facts is not necessarily science." In my mind, what turns facts into science is the integration of research into society, whether for purely educational purposes or society's benefit, and that the key to that is communication. That's why I decided to start a science blog in 2008. As a scientist, I really believe that it is my responsibility to engage non-scientists and the public in general in my endeavors to give my work meaning.
Scientists already share what we do with each other. That's what journals are for. I wanted to share what I loved with everyone, not just my like-minded peers. I feel it is important to take jargon-filled scientific publications and break them down in such a way that everyone can understand what is being studied and why it is important. In modern media, science is only talked about if it can be sensationalized. So-called "real" journalists seem to think experiments are only worth mentioning if they can be summed up in a catchy but untrue headline or are controversial. But every day I read papers no one hears about that are just so.... *cool*. Science is unbelievably cool, and I blog because I think that maybe if the rest of the world saw science how I do, they would think it was pretty cool, too. And maybe if they did, there would be more scientists doing unbelievably cool stuff for me to blog about!


(via scienceblog feed)