Feature: Talking science in Cumbria
‘If identical twins have identical genes, do they have identical cells?’ ‘I haven’t been able to understand all this GMT (sic) business before, but now I can see what’s been going on - thank you.’ The question was from a 7-year-old girl to whom the topics of cells, genes and clones were entirely new. The comment was from a 70-year-old with a whistling hearing-aid, after a talk on genetic modification of animals.
As an Outreach Associate of PEALS Research Institute, University of Newcastle, I’m now in my second year of ‘Talking Science in Cumbria’, funded by a Wellcome Trust People Award. I’m also a novelist and former scientist, and live on a small-holding in West Cumbria - and in the past 15 months I’ve reached parts of Cumbria I hadn’t known existed, while travelling to give talks on topics such as ‘Making Eyes’ (cells, stem cells and therapeutic cloning), ‘Selection Pressures’ (genetic selection and modification - scrapie, ‘Dolly’ and pharmed sheep have special resonance here), ‘The Human Genome Project’, ‘The How and Why of Cloning’ and ‘Geeks and Trainspotters’ (about ‘being a scientist’).
I tailor each talk to the group’s background as much as possible, but that doesn’t mean I’m not occasionally caught out: the Young Farmers who told me ‘there are a few 12- and 13-year-olds’ - and a wave of about 30 very young farmers poured into the room, mostly hormonally-charged girls in glittery tops and low-slung jeans; or the U3A who assured me ‘they had been studying DNA’ and would love to know about genome sequencing, only to invite along a few non-biologists at the last moment.
I’ve talked to Soroptomists, Rotaries, Townswomen, Agricultural Societies, Rural Women’s Network, WIs, Humanists and even the Quilters’ Guild; I’ve also run interactive sessions at primary and secondary schools (wearing my little enamelled ‘Science Ambassador’ badge, courtesy of SETpoint), and have been kept on my toes by Forensic Science Foundation students.
So why Cumbria? Apart from the obvious fact that it’s where I live and work, it is a predominantly rural county with no university city, and parts of the county are extremely remote. The majority of the people I meet have had no science education beyond a smattering at school, often several decades ago, and have no prospect of discovering the science behind the hyped headlines. So I stagger into hotels, classrooms, village halls down muddy lanes and, if I’m lucky, bars and pubs - laden with laptop and data-projector, extension cables, screen, and a box of my novels on ‘special offer’.
I’ve now driven more than 2500 miles, on glorious summer evenings or autumnal afternoons, in hail and snow, through winter floods and ice and, worst of all, over the Pennines in fog so thick that the white van in front pulled in to allow me the privilege of being ‘path-finder’ down the hairpin bends. I’ve eaten a banana sitting in the car, been given delicious home-made soup, scoffed meringues and scones and ‘tray-bakes’, or made do (after 90 miles of driving) with a plain biscuit and a lukewarm cup of tea. And I have indeed sung Jerusalem (word-perfect, too - where did that come from?) and judged a ‘spectacle-case competition’.
But I have loved every minute of it, even when someone has ticked the ‘confusing’ box on the evaluation sheet (well, she did add that her hearing-aid wasn’t working). Explaining the basic science, and discussing the social and ethical dilemmas that it raises, has been challenging and stimulating - but, most importantly, has obviously been felt to have been very valuable and interesting by a great majority of the audience, so much so that invitations have now far exceeded the project’s ‘quota’. And analysis shows clearly that opinions about the science shift towards the positive after the talks, even when - as an experiment - I tried to present it negatively. Science policymakers, take note.
External links
- PEALS Research Institute
- Dr Ann Lackie is also the novelist Ann Lingard.