Breaking down barriers

One problem that Steven’s research group are interested in is the way in which protein misfolding causes diseases such as Parkinson’s and Alzheimer’s. Building on his post-doctoral work under 2014 Nobel Prize winner W.E. Moerner, Steven and his team have recently developed a technique to visualise how the environment of single proteins changes at different stages of misfolding – something that can’t be seen with traditional microscope techniques. Their research was picked up by the national press and the experience led Steven to realise the importance of making research engaging and accessible, especially when that work is publicly funded.

“I think there’s been a tendency amongst academics to not work very hard at communication through the media; I think that has to change. The general taxpayer pays for the research that goes on in our labs and they deserve to know what we’re doing with their money. We feel incredibly privileged to be in this position and I see it as a responsibility to give back.

“Traditionally, there has been an attitude of ‘I’ve made my paper open source so people can access it’ and I think that’s a really archaic way of looking at communication. We can’t just say ‘well anyone can read it’. While they should absolutely have the right to access the information and the paper, because they paid for the research, they also require a little bit of help to understand why we think what we’re doing is so important.”

“We’re both experimentalists, and experimenting is all about being wrong; 95% of everything I do fails, which is a weird career. You have to be comfortable in failure but when you see press releases, there’s a publication bias. You only see the experiments that work and so consequently, you think people are just doing experiments that work all the time, and that’s just not the case. Progress happens through mistakes and that’s what we’re trying to get across. We also wanted people to see that scientists are real people too, in the sense that of course we watch movies, get frustrated and things like that. I think intermingling those two worlds will make science accessible to people who wouldn’t normally get involved.”

The feedback Steven and Nick have received so far has been very positive, so their plans are to continue recording and look for sources of funding to support the production aspects. “The podcasts that I like listening to are the ones where you feel like you’re eavesdropping on a conversation between two people that you wouldn’t normally hear. People quite like that it’s not super polished, it’s never trying to be a Radio 4 documentary, and people respond well to that. I think with podcasting there’s definitely a demand for continual content; people like to tune in repeatedly and let you join in with their lives for a bus ride. If you’re talking about something that’s interesting then you can forgive quite a lot.”

“We’re interested in ways of getting our science out there, whether that’s through podcasting or YouTube or whatever else. Social media presents some exciting opportunities that weren’t possible even 5 years ago. We’re in the process of recording some preliminary movies that we’re going to put on the web about what our labs look like and the people that work with us at Cambridge – particularly young PhD students because they’re the people that actually do the work. We want people to realise that it’s not just old white men in dusty research labs, it’s a young, dynamic environment. The gender balance, particularly in the physical sciences is poor, so we’re trying to fight that.

“To think that there’s one solution for everybody, no matter what their demographic, and to think that there’s one solution to communicating effectively, is probably flawed. So our idea is to try a few different things. We’re obviously busy with other commitments; our job is not just to communicate, but we recognise that we’ve got to do this, and do it better...”