A Bit of Bilingual Science Outreach

When you can’t bring the masses to science, bring science to the masses. At least that’s the approach recently for many science outreach programs, including Explorando las Ciencias, or Exploring the Sciences, a bilingual community event held Oct. 23 on Madison’s south side that catered to both Spanish and English speakers. 

Crowdsourcing Science

In this age of the ever-expanding scope and complexity of cutting-edge science, researchers are increasingly using any and all resources at their disposal to expand their capacity for data collection and analysis.  This may mean borrowing time on massive, multi-user super-computers to run complex simulations (climate models, for example), or it may mean larger and larger interdisciplinary collaborations among scientists who each have their own equipment and expertise.

In this age of ever-expanding wired interconnectivity, there are also a growing number of opportunities for members of the everyday public to voluntarily offer up their services in the name of scientific awareness and progress.  These citizen scientists have been helping in everything from surveys of wildlife (see, for instance, my last post about the updated winter wolf count in Wisconsin, which relies in part on observations from knowledgeable amateurs) to surveys of interstellar gravitational waves.

A plea for more science coverage in local and community papers

Last week’s Isthmus (January 21, 2011) cover story, which ran under the provocative headline, “The Truth about Adult Stem Cells,” set my mind racing for the better part of an hour as I considered various arguments that swirl around the stem cell debate.  (For those that aren’t familiar with it, Isthmus is a weekly local paper in Madison, WI.)  I, like a lot of people it seems, have an opinion, albeit a murky one, on the subject. Although I have no intention of sharing it here.  I know better than to wade too quickly into a sure quagmire.  Plus, that’s not what this post is about.

After that initial hour or so the other day, my mind settled back down and I was able focus on other concerns.  But the article stuck with me.  I came back to it today, reread it, read the ensuing online commentary, and began the debate all over again in my head.

At some point, it dawned on me how effective the story had been—whether through solid writing, or because of the subject matter, or both—at holding my attention and causing me to weigh the issue.  It also got me thinking about how rare it is to find coverage of important scientific issues in local and community newspapers (i.e., circulation under about 50,000).