Quantcast
Channel: Boundary Vision
Viewing all 23 articles
Browse latest View live

*Two stories, same scientist: Gender and coverage of the Herzberg medal

0
0

[Correction: The title of this post has been changed. The title had been “Why do we always have to say she’s a good mom too?” I had meant that title to reflect the historical trend in reporting on women scientists, but in email correspondence from Feb. 23 Ivan Semeniuk has rightly pointed out that the title implied that he had reported on Kaspi as a “good mom”. While he writes about her family, that is not a claim that he makes in his story. I apologize for this implication and have reverted to what was the original draft title of the post.]

This week, Canadian astrophysicist Victoria Kaspi was awarded the Gerhard Herzberg Canada Gold Medal for Science and Engineering, one of the country’s highest scientific honours. Her work on neutron stars is exciting and important. The way Canadian media have covered the story is important though too, illustrating two polar opposite approaches.

I first read about her honour in an online piece from the CBC, written by Emily Chung: “Victoria Kaspi, neutron star researcher at McGill, wins $1M Herzberg medal”. I was impressed. It isn’t a typical inspiring woman-in-science story. It is a straight forward account of a highly acclaimed scientist. The only mention of her femininity is to state that she is the first woman to win the prize. The rest of piece dives into the complexity of her work, her career path as scientist, and why she is so deserving of the honour.

Only one other national outlet has so far covered the story, and the contrast is startling. Ivan Semeniuk’s piece for the Globe and Mail, “McGill astrophysicist is first woman to win Canada’s top science award” takes the perspective that the award is important precisely because she is a woman.

It is not news to say that women and men, particularly scientists, are treated differently in media coverage. Marcel LaFollette’s review of American popular magazine profiles from 1910-1955 paints a clear picture, where women are profiled as women first and scientists second. She wrote, “Through their language and ideas, magazine biographers echoed such attitudes by asserting that women–even women who were successful scientists—were still more fulfilled through marriage and motherhood than through research” (p. 256-266). LaFollette describes the Saturday Evening Post as “relentless” in their efforts to describe Marie Curie as devoted to her family and husband. And hitting close to home for me, University of Toronto Astronomer Helen Sawyer Hogg, a full professor and internationally recognized specialist in globular clusters, was described by American Magazine as a “housewife”. “Even if her mind is in the sky, Dr. Hogg keeps her feet on the ground. She runs the house for her husband and three kids, collects stamps, makes bedspreads.”

More recently, Orly Shacher (2000) focused on the “Scientists at Work” columns in the New York Times for 1996 and 1997: 30 profiles in all, 6 of women. She found the same common theme. The men were presented as scientists. Biographical details, such as spouses, were mentioned briefly if at all. Hobbies were described in ways that complemented the scientific work, such highlighting the nuclear activism of an atomic physicist. In contrast, the journalists seemed to include excruciating details of struggles of women in science in a way that suggested that there was a need to justify the inclusion of women beyond their professional performance. She proposed that these profiles leave the reader to conclude that to profile a women, there must be a women-in-science story there, not just a story of a scientist who happens to be a women. As she argues, the female profiles exhibit a particular kind of tokenism, where women are presented as symbols rather than as individuals. They are glorified as exceptions and lauded for overcoming hardship but that’s the only reason their story is deemed to be worth telling.

Scientists themselves have expressed frustration with constantly being presented as special cases and as the human face of science, not a scientists. Mwenya Chimba and Jenny Kitzinger (2009) gathered feedback from 86 prominent women scientists in the UK and many expressed conflicting emotions, saying they were pleased to be able to tell their stories but frustrated that they were only ever presented in that light. “One explained that whenever she made a public statement it was characterize as: ‘female scientist says x, y and z…[but] why should the fact that I am a female make any difference whatsoever?'” As Chimba and Kitzinger conclude, the problem isn’t sharing inspiring stories about women in science and taking opportunities to humanize science by sharing personal stories of these women. These are important things to write about. The problem is that it is overwhelmingly women who are cast in this way and it’s often the only story ever told about them, leaving men to continue to be cast as the objective and authoritative voices of science.

In online science writing circles, the remedy is sometimes referred to as the Finkbeiner test. Science journalist Christie Ashwanden coined it while describing her colleague’s (Ann Finkbeiner’s) frustration with having to write endless inspiring woman-in-science stories instead of science stories about women. It is meant to guide writers in talking about high profile scientists in venues where their work should be taking centre stage. Passing the test means refraining from mentioning: The fact that she’s a woman, Her husband’s job, Her child care arrangements, How she nurtures her underlings, How she was taken aback by the competitiveness in her field, How she’s such a role model for other women, How she’s the “first woman to…”

Emily Chung’s CBC piece about Kaspi and the Herzberg medal is exactly this. Except for mentioning that Kaspi is the first woman to receive the prize, absolutely every remaining word of the story is about her as a scientist.”Much of her research has been on pulsars, a special kind of neutron star that spins at enormous speeds while beaming out radio waves that can be detected in rhythmic pulses on Earth.” “Kaspi’s research has had ‘major impacts in the field of astrophysics,’ NSERC says.”

Chung writes in a way that humanizes Kaspi, but when she does so she humanizes her as a scientist: as someone who was surprised and thrilled to receive a prestigious honour, even as a Star Trek fan. From Chung’s description, I have no idea if Kaspi has children, what her husband does (if she has one) or how she manages her work-life balance. It’s just a story about a great scientist who does world-renowned work on “zombie stars”. And who doesn’t like the sound of that?

Semeniuk’s treatment in the Globe and Mail could hardly be more different. It is the epitome of an inspiring woman-in-science story. Instead of leading with the research, the second sentence goes directly into framing Kaspi as a role model and someone who has struggled and won as a woman in science. “Victoria Kaspi, director of the McGill Space Institute, is the first woman to claim the prestigious award in its 25-year history, a startling reminder of the overwhelming gender imbalance that persists at the highest levels of Canadian academia.” The next two paragraphs aren’t even about Kaspi, but instead about how this honour “signals to girls and young women that science is exciting and it’s possible to achieve the highest honour”, in words of Mario Pinto, President of the Natural Science and Engineering Research Council who administers the award. Kaspi’s research then receives several solid paragraphs, before sliding into some strange attention to the hominess of the décor of her research facility and then the seemingly inevitable paragraph about her husband, his job, their children and how busy her life is. (Which I’m honestly sure it is.) All this before capping off the near Finkbeiner clean-sweep with a description her attention to gender issues as a mentor.

The deliberate choice to frame this as an inspiring woman-in-science story is highlighted by the fact that Semeniuk himself covered last year’s male winner. That Kaspi is female is not what made this newsworthy, the prize itself is. Last year’s profile of Dalhousie University chemist Axel Becke is all business, opening with an anecdote about convincing a colleague about the value of his new analysis methods over lunch and going on to describe the immense impact of his work. The only personal details are in a short paragraph about how he came to Canada from Germany as a child, details that are also included in the piece on Kaspi. He isn’t framed as a role model and his accomplishments as a potential family man are completely absent.

Now I don’t want to fault Semeniuk for drawing attention to gender imbalance. And if these details are important to Kaspi’s own story as a scientist, then she should tell them as often and as loudly as she wants. But for writers like Semeniuk, I would argue that taking the focus away from her scientific accomplishments may instead reinforce the stereotypes he might have hoped to break. Write a great piece on the under representation of women in the upper levels of Canadian science departments for tomorrow’s paper. I would absolutely love to read it. But by turning Kaspi’s award into an inspiring woman-in-science story it becomes just one more example that no matter how high the honour, the fact that a woman can do that and also manage her home life is why we should admire her. Rather than signalling to girls that science is attainable, the never ending repetition of this style of story (for more than a century now) sends the same messages as those examples studied by LaFollette and Shacher: 1) Women have to be a particular type of super woman to be worthwhile, not only as scientists but accomplished as wives and mothers and 2) A woman’s story in science is only worth telling if it’s an inspiring woman-in-science story and not just because she does outstanding work. By using a style that highlights elements of tokenism (Look! A successful woman! A role model!) the place of women as irregular participants in science is reinforced, not challenged.

February 29, 2016: Ivan Semeniuk has kindly provided a response. His correspondence and my reply can be found in this post: Herzberg medal coverage follow up.

References

Chimba, M. D., & Kitzinger, J. (2009). Bimbo or boffin? Women in science: an analysis of media representations and how female scientists negotiate cultural contradictions. Public Understanding of Science.
LaFollette, M. C. (1988). Eyes on the stars: Images of women scientists in popular magazines. Science, Technology, & Human Values, 13(3/4), 262-275.
Shachar, O. (2000). Spotlighting women scientists in the press: Tokenism in science journalism. Public Understanding of Science, 9(4), 347-358.
 [Edit, February 19, 2016: The fifth sentence in the final paragraph previously read: “But by turning Kaspi’s award into an inspiring woman-in-science story it becomes just one more example that no matter how high the honour, how a woman manages her home life is why we should admire her.” It has been edited to express my thought my clearly.]


Herzberg medal coverage follow up

0
0

On February 18, I wrote about two pieces of national coverage of the Herzberg medal, won this year by Victoria Kaspi. She is the first woman to do so, and the two pieces approached this element of the story very differently. One (written by Emily Chung for CBC) reported that fact briefly but focused solely on her award-winning research. The other (written by Ivan Semeniuk for the Globe and Mail) made the breaking of a gender barrier a central part of the story along with the research that had earned her the award. As a reader, they both struck me very differently, and I wanted to explore why. While it is very important to bring attention to gender issues in science, I felt that writing the prize announcement as a gender in science story shared some resemblance to a pattern Shachar (2000) identified in scientist profiles in the New York Times: the “inspiring woman in science” story which often emphasizes how a woman has overcome challenges (such as those related to family care) and acts as a role model, for example. I argued that it is a format that can have the unintended consequence of reinforcing the perception of women as irregular participants in science.

After my post went up, Ivan Semeniuk contacted me to ask if I would be willing to post a response from him explaining some of the editorial decisions that went into the piece. I said, yes of course. Through our correspondence he expressed concern about the original title of the post. As a result, I have changed the title of that original post and added a correction at the top.

His response follows (including that concern). It is presented in full as it was sent to me, and I have in turn responded below. My original post was written from my perspective as a science educator with a strong concern for how media messages about women in science impact girls and young women. It is interesting and helpful to me to learn more about the decisions that went into framing the article, and I can appreciate the very different perspective of a journalist and editorial team from my own perspective outside of that world. I really appreciate that he took the time to engage with me and provide these details. I do want to make clear from the outset, however, that my first post was not meant as an accusation of an individual writer with a bias problem. As reiterated above, my interest was in making sense of two very different approaches to the story from the perspective of a few studies that have examined how women scientists are presented in the media.

In her blog post, originally titled “Why do we always have to say she’s a good mom too?” Marie-Claire Shanahan seems to suggest that a journalist who reports on gender imbalance is reinforcing gender imbalance. This is flawed premise and must be rejected. To do otherwise would be a setback to efforts to improve gender equality in Canadian research institutions.

Like Marie-Claire Shanahan, I agree that it would be cause for concern if a profile of a prominent Canadian researcher on the occasion of her winning a major professional award were to dwell on her parenting and other gender-related qualities instead of her contributions as a scientist.

But I emphatically disagree that this description bears any resemblance to my recent profile of astrophysicist Victoria Kaspi who this month became the first woman to win the Herzberg Gold medal. Although a blog post is not required to meet the standards of academic rigour or journalistic accountability, I am dismayed to see such a careless and misinformed characterization of my work.

Dr. Shanahan compares my story in unfavourable terms to one by Emily Chung which appeared on the CBC Technology & Science website. In contrast to my story, she writes, the CBC piece is “a straightforward account of a highly acclaimed scientist” because it makes only a passing mention of that fact Dr. Kaspi is the first woman to win the medal.

Emily Chung is an excellent science journalist and a friend. I admire her work. But in this instance, our stories about Dr. Kaspi are not comparable in scope or depth — a fact that Dr. Shanahan manages to overlook entirely.

The CBC story devotes about 650 words to its description of Dr. Kaspi and her research accomplishments. It quotes one person — Dr. Kaspi herself — before moving on to another prize-winner.

In contrast, my profile of Dr. Kaspi runs over 1000 words and draws on multiple sources including colleagues and peers, some (but not all) of whom are quoted directly. My reporting included spending two mornings with Dr. Kapsi and her team at the McGill Space Institute in Montreal and a review of her published work. It’s clear my piece was designed from the outset to be a larger story than the CBC item. It presents a fuller portrayal of Dr. Kaspi that includes both professional and personal details.

Contrary to Dr. Shanahan’s assertions, it’s clear that my piece, just like the CBC story, “dives into the complexity of [Dr. Kaspi’s] work, her career path as scientist, and why she is so deserving of the honour.” But because my story is longer, it also has the space to do something more.

That something more is an exploration of why Dr. Kaspi is the first woman to win Canada’s top science prize. For my assigning editor, Christine Brousseau, and me, this is what made the story a contender for front page treatment by The Globe and Mail. (It did appear on the front page in most print editions.)

It is stunning — one might say appalling — to realize that it has taken until 2016 for a female researcher in Canada to earn this recognition. We chose to draw attention to this because of its broader significance as an indicator of gender imbalance in Canada’s research enterprise. Anyone who does not understand why this is an important issue for our country has not been paying attention.

In newspaper writing, the mechanics of a front page-style story requires that the most salient information — the stuff that makes the case for why the reader should pay attention — is typically delivered within the first 150 words. This is deliberate, in order to convey that information “before the turn”, when the story goes from the front page to an interior page. My story obeys this rule when it first states that Dr. Kaspi has won the prize, along with who she is, and then makes note of the historic circumstances of this particular award.

The very next thing my story does is ask why it has taken so long for a Canadian woman to be recognized in this way. The answer, in part, is that very few full professors at Canadian universities who receive federal funding for scientific research are women. This points to the broader significance of Dr. Kaspi’s achievement and, from The Globe and Mail’s perspective, makes this a national story rather than simply a science story. To write it differently would be to bury the lede — a mistake my editors would quickly have remedied had I chosen to do so.

So what of my previous year’s coverage of chemist Axel Becke, a male researcher who won the Herzberg medal in 2015? Dr. Becke, also an exceptional scientist, broke no gender barriers in winning the medal. My story about him ran 700 words, leaving little room for anything beyond a description of his work. I did not visit him personally. The treatment is different not because of gender bias but because, from a news perspective, it is an altogether different type of story.

It would be a fairer comparison to ask how I covered a female researcher who similarly won an important award but was not the only woman to do so. That was the case last year when Janet Rossant, a senior scientist in developmental and stem cell biology became a Gairdner Award winner. (To be specific: She was the first female Gairdner Wightman Award winner, which is reserved for Canadian researchers, but not the first woman to be named a Gairdner winner overall and so the story did not expand on that.)

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/technology/science/gairdners-honour-researcher-who-went-from-outsider-to-stem-cell-pioneer/article23610112/

My story about Dr. Rossant barely touches on gender or personal matters, except to note that she came to Canada after marrying a Canadian — a relevant piece of information for that particular profile.

A more careful analysis might also look to see if I have written about Dr. Kaspi on other occasions when she was not crossing a significant gender milestone. I have done so, and the result is a gender neutral story about Dr. Kaspi’s work:

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/technology/science/a-stars-spin-opens-an-exotic-window-for-mcgill-university-researcher/article12253160/

To counter the possibility of selection effects on my part, I would also point to my past 10 stories in which a female scientist is featured prominently [see list below]. Only in one case is gender discussed in any significant way – and then only because Canadian anthropologist Marina Elliott was one of a handful of all-female researchers who were physically small enough to squeeze into a cave bearing the fossil remains of a previously undescribed human relative.

My work at The Globe and Mail consistently shows that I am not, as Dr. Shanahan implies, inclined to portray female researches as women first, scientists second. In my previous professional roles as an editor at Nature and New Scientist and as a producer of science television, I can point to scores of additional examples where stories under my direction assumed a gender neutral stance except in cases when gender was an essential element of the story. All of these stories pass the “Finkbeiner test” as reiterated by Dr. Shanahan.

It’s worth noting that the term Finkbeiner test — to the extent that it has relevance here — was not coined in connection with a story where gender actually matters, but in those where it clearly doesn’t. Regardless of what Dr. Shanhan seems to think, Canada’s females scientists are most definitely not living in a world where gender doesn’t matter when it comes to recognition and advancement. And for The Globe and Mail, gender is clearly part of the story when it comes to Dr. Kaspi’s prize. Furthermore, sexual harassment of female researchers has been a pressing issue in astronomy and other science faculties this past year and Dr. Kaspi’s leadership role in her field required that I explore her experiences and attitudes on that score as well.

These are all facts that I feel Dr. Shanahan has overlooked in error. But in one particular detail, I feel her post crosses the boundary from uninformed to misleading.

This is because the title of the blog initially asked: “Why do we always have to say she’s a good mom too?”

The answer is we don’t, and I didn’t.

While my story makes mention of the fact that Dr. Kaspi has three school-age children (in the 20th paragraph of the piece) it makes no assertions whatsoever about whether Dr. Kaspi is a “good mom”. As a journalist, such a statement would at least require me to interview family members and friends. I did not do so in this case because Dr. Kaspi’s parenting was not the focus of the profile. The title misrepresents my work unfairly and Dr. Shanahan should acknowledge this point for the benefit of her readers.

So why did I mention Dr. Kaspi’s family at all? Because unlike most Herzberg medal winners, Dr. Kaspi is not approaching retirement. She is in the prime of her research career and also running an institute as well as mentoring a large team of graduate students and post docs. It is widely acknowledged that female researchers tend to face more barriers and demands on their time when they are raising families than their male counterparts do specifically because of differences in social expectations related to parenting.

It would have been a disservice to readers of The Globe and Mail for me not to address the significant time pressures that Dr. Kaspi faces in a system that has not yet learned to accommodate senior scientists of the highest rank who also happen to be working mothers.

To my mind, this blog post missed an excellent opportunity to examine the real challenges that journalists face when trying to portray female scientist in a non-patronizing way against the backdrop of a persistently imbalanced system of academic rewards and incentives. Instead it uses a misinterpretation of my story to set up a straw man argument and claims The Globe and Mail is somehow flaunting Dr. Kaspi’s femininity by drawing attention to her barrier breaking accomplishment. This is not just wrong. It is counterproductive in the extreme.

Let’s be clear that there are very few voices in the media paying attention to gender issues in Canadian science. It is imperative that those of us who are doing so not be intimidated or shut down from reporting on these issues because of misperceptions like those presented here.

I sincerely hope that Dr. Shanahan will consider amending her analysis where it concerns my profile of Dr. Kaspi and I encourage her to examine the additional examples of my work listed here.

I really want to thank Ivan Semeniuk for engaging with these ideas and for sharing his expertise and perspective here. I appreciate him sharing the details above of how the decision was made to report the story in this way and understand how they saw gender as an essential piece of this story from a news point of view. I do think we have the same goals in mind: a media environment that recognizes gender issues in science but that also supports women’s scientific achievements at the highest level. But these are very difficult and complicated issues. It’s not a surprise that based on the different perspectives and expertise we bring to this problem, that we see some of the journey to those goals differently.

Media representations are particularly powerful for creating and reinforced expectations of what it means to be a woman scientist. Adrienne Lafrance, who writes for the The Atlantic, has taken it so seriously that for the past two years she has hired an MIT grad student to analyse her stories for unintended gender bias in her choice of sources. She published her second self-report earlier this week. In explaining why she conducts the analysis, she quotes Julie Burton, the president of the Women’s Media Center: “Media tells us our roles in society—it tells us who we are and what we can be.”

Inspiring women in science stories, like those described by Shachar (2000) and to which I compared the Herzberg coverage, are difficult to wrestle with because they can mean very different things, even at the same time. These stories can be read to celebrate women’s accomplishments in difficult circumstances and to bring attention to these challenges. But they take on a different meaning when viewed together as a repeating pattern over time in the media at large, creating expectations around what it means to be a women in science. One of the most powerful and problematic forces facing women and girls in science are the impressions created and reproduced in everyday conversations and interactions. Media representations like this become part of the fabric of how we talk about who does science: in boardrooms, labs, classrooms and around dinner tables.

Education efforts aimed at encouraging girls face similar challenges. In some of my own research, we have found that women in undergraduate physics are more likely to want to stay in physics when their high school teachers explicitly talked about gender issues. But on the other hand, a high school physics program created specifically to encourage girls’ interest (led by a leading researcher and educator on equity in science education) had surprising unintended consequences for the way that it portrayed the role of girls in physics as separate and different from the role of boys, suggesting to the girls that they weren’t doing real physics. For women scientists, patterns in the way that they are written and talked about (such as the “inspiring woman in science story” pattern) can contribute to creating a narrow version of who they can be, of what roles are available even when the intent is to highlight the struggles they may face. It was from this perspective that I wrote my post.

I do also need to address some of the specific claims that are made about my argument because I think we have a misunderstanding of my intent. The post was not an accusation that Semeniuk himself has a history of gender bias. I appreciate the additional stories that he shared and there are more below. I did compare to the article about last year’s winner, but I did so to support the argument that the prize itself was newsworthy; It wasn’t only newsworthy because a woman had won this year. To me, that suggested that a specific decision had been made to write this year’s announcement as a story about women in science. And I think his explanation of the processes above is very helpful in understanding how and why that decision was made and how it relates to the ways in which a news organization decides how to frame a story.

With respect to my understanding of women’s challenges in science, I most emphatically do not believe that Canada’s female scientists are living in a world where gender doesn’t matter. Quite the opposite, I think it often matters each and every day for everyone from senior award winners to new grad students. I think where we differ, however, is in its place in this particular issue. In my conclusion, I expressed my wish that this had been written as two different stories: one highlighting an exceptional scientist and one exploring the reasons why no women had yet been won this medal. My use of the Finkbeiner test, and my wish that this could have been written as two stories, are because I see the prize itself and the reasons she is the first women to win it as somewhat separate issues. She won the prize because of her significant scientific accomplishments, not because of her gender or because she was able to do good work in spite of her gender. And these same challenges equally face non-award-winners. And therefore I would see a place for a profile that reflects that (thereby also avoiding the inspiring woman in science pattern) and a separate examination of why it has taken so long. While it is certainly less in depth, The Montreal Gazette, for example, ran a brief award profile and then an editorial on the shortage of women in science and a Q+A with another female award winner, Elena Bennett, on the topic. But to be very clear, I don’t think Semeniuk or anyone at the Globe and Mail believes she won for her gender either. Though I see them separately, I understand his perspective that from a journalistic point of view they saw this as single story where being the first woman was central and that this made it a front page story.

I would also like to commend Semeniuk on addressing harassment. I did overlook making that compliment in my original post. Having decided to frame this around women’s challenges in science, I commend strongly the choice to include harassment among them. This is a more difficult topic, often overlooked, and I should have said that.

Finally, though, with respect to the implication that the intent here is to shut down or intimidate journalists from covering gender issues in science: This is so far from my argument that I hardly know how to respond. It was stated explicitly in my post that these are important issues and that if a story were written on them tomorrow (separate from an award profile), I would read it enthusiastically. And I have happily talked to journalists from Macleans and the Globe and Mail about gender issues in science in the past. My intention here was to highlight the challenges that can be inherent in these stories. It was my personal response to how this one might be interpreted and talked about within that context. There are absolutely no easy answers when it comes to changing perceptions and experiences for women in science. Even efforts to encourage, support and make change (and I have been involved in many) have unintended consequences and messages. It’s something I think about often in reflecting on my own early work in science outreach. If there were simple answers (in more media coverage, better educational programs or policy changes) we wouldn’t still be here after decades of efforts to change the representation of women in science, in particular in physics.

Again I want to thank Ivan Semeniuk for engaging, for offering to share his perspective here and for his efforts to draw attention to these issues. Additional supporting links that he sent are below.

SUPPORTING  MATERIAL:

Ten recent stories by Ivan Semeniuk that feature female researchers:

January 19, 2016

Jack Goordial, environmental microbiologist

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/technology/science/study-reveals-lifes-outer-limits-in-antarctic-valley/article28253047

December 17, 2015

Sally Leys, developmental biologist

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/national/after-years-of-delay-ottawa-setting-aside-ocean-territory-for-specialprotection/article27730642/

October 9, 2015

Katie Gibbs, biologist & director, Evidence for Democracy

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/national/scientist-urges-straight-talk-on-research-ahead-of-federal-vote/article26764369/

September 15, 2015

Kalifi Ferretti-Gallon, climate policy analyst

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/national/federal-climate-plan-disregards-farming-forestry-industries-report/article26375323/

September 10, 2015

Marina Elliott, paleoanthropologist

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/technology/science/claustrophobic-fissures-lead-to-new-link-in-evolutionary-chain/article26299529/

May 11, 2015

Kaitlin Alexander, oceanographer

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/national/what-we-can-learn-from-55-million-year-old-climate-change/article24381279/

May 11, 2015

Molly Shoichet, biomedical engineer

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/national/what-we-can-learn-from-55-million-year-old-climate-change/article24381279/

May 7, 2015

Catherine Johnson, planetary scientist

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/national/doomed-space-probe-reveals-mercurys-magnetic-past/article24315928/

April 17, 2015

Jane Goodall, primatologist

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/technology/science/jane-goodall/article24016332/

April 8, 2015

Merritt Turetsky, ecologist

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/technology/science/over-100-billion-tonnes-of-carbon-may-be-released-from-thawing-permafrost-report/article23852788/

Recent stories by Ivan Semeniuk related to gender in Canadian science:

April 10, 2015

“Science and engineering hall of fame lacks female nominations”

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/technology/science/science-and-engineering-hall-of-fame-lacks-female-nominations/article23887232/

May 6, 2015

Canadian museum urged to address gender gap in science hall of fame

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/national/canadian-museum-urged-to-address-gender-gap-in-science-hall-of-fame/article24297988/

 


Being a part of public science culture – speaking at The March for Science, Calgary

0
0

Scientific knowledge is public knowledge

speaking at sci march

Speaking at Science March YYC. (Photo by Miwa Takeuchi)

That’s how I opened my speech at the Calgary March for Science. I was honoured to be invited, but for many reasons I thought carefully about whether I wanted to say yes. In the end, that message is what did it for me. Almost all of my teaching, research and writing comes down to a commitment to creating opportunities for access and engagement in science for everyone and a recognition that creating a public scientific culture is essential: culture where where families, communities and popular media discuss scientific issues, value scientific ideas and practices and can contribute to creating the kind of science that they need. The March was a chance to do just that, to be a part of public scientific culture. So I bundled my daughter up in her stroller (they were calling for snow!) and said that I would speak at the March. And after hearing the other speakers share their professional and personal experiences, hearing what the crowd cheered for (yay, science teachers!), and shaking hands with kids who had made their own signs, I am proud to say that I did.

Below you can find a video of all of the talks, including extraordinary science communicator Jay Ingram, web developed and blogger Aurooba Ahmed, and University of Calgary neuroscientist Naweed Syed. And here is the text of speech I had planned. Mostly because of nervousness, I forgot to say some of it, said some things differently, and added some mention of science dogs (because there were so many good dogs there) but this is what I had planned to say. And I’m glad I took the chance to be a part of the public science culture that I talk about in my work. Afterwards, the first thing my daughter said was “Mommy teacher” and that was pretty much the best review of all.

*********

Hi everyone – I’m Marie-Claire Shanahan and I am incredibly lucky to get to spend every day thinking about and acting to encourage engagement and participation in science. I’m a professor who studies how people of all ages create and become part of scientific communities, I teach future high school science teachers how to design rich learning experiences for their students and I’m a former middle and high school science teacher myself.

The reason that I do all of that, what drives all of it is a simple statement:

Scientific knowledge is public knowledge

It belongs to everyone.

I spend a lot of time working with students in schools. So what does that mean for them that scientific knowledge is public knowledge?

Students deserve opportunities in schools to gain access to scientific knowledge, to learn how to participate in scientific activities and how to use scientific knowledge in their every day lives.

But more than that, when we study the reasons that kids choose to maintain an interest in science or to dismiss and abandon it there is so much more to it than getting good grades or having good science teachers. One of the biggest influences is the value placed on science in families, community culture and popular culture. When it’s clear to kids that science is important, interesting and a valued thing to participate in and to care about, that’s when they stay–and not just to become scientists but to become parents, policy makers, politicians and journalists who care about and value scientific knowledge and practices, even caring enough to question and challenge them sometimes too. And that’s one of the main reasons that I am so pleased to be here today. This is creating public science culture. We are here today saying we care about science, that there are many many different ways to be involved in science and that all kinds of people can participate in and care about it. I’m here because kids deserve communities, families and popular culture stories that value science and their participation in it.

Another major force in supporting and encouraging people to maintain an interest in science is belonging. Students care deeply about whether science is place they feel they belong, that values who they are and the skills and talents that they bring. And sometimes school science can send very rigid messages about who belongs, about who is a science kind of person and for which students there is space to be themselves in science. Science in education settings at all levels need to be places that are for all students – students with disabilities, students of colour, Indigenous students, rural, newcomers, refugees, LGBT students…also creative students, maker students, drama students and political students and for students who begged for a telescope for Christmas (um, me). If science is public knowledge then all of us belong. That means creating spaces in the way we talk about science for students to see themselves and it means working hard to fight discrimination and harassment and drive students out and tell them they don’t belong.

Now so far what I’ve talked about has been my work, work that I’ve been devoted to since I first started visiting elementary schools to do science demos as teenager. But my relationship to public science has also changed dramatically in the past few years. My hilarious, smart and determined daughter also has a rare disease. Her medical care is complex and we need public science in a way I had never experienced before. We need public support and we need stable public funding for basic and applied research contributing to improved care and management, we need research that includes patients and families as knowledgeable participants and collaborators and we need access to that research through open access publications and open science organizations. And she needs a science education that allows her to develop knowledge and skills to understand the medical science that affects her life everyday, to take ownership of it and to advocate for herself on her medical journey. And she needs science education that recognizes that building those abilities in students is every bit as important to science as educating future scientists.

So thank you. This today is public science culture. You are here saying to each other and to anyone who sees this that science is important, science is valued and science belongs to us all. Scientific knowledge is public knowledge and thank you for being here to show that to the city and far beyond.

*********

And also I want to add a special thanks to my colleagues who came out and encouraged me and even looked after my daughter while I spoke. Thank you a million times Gabriela Alsonso-Yanez, Armando Preciado Babb and Miwa Takeuchi (who also managed to grab a few pics for me, thanks!). And thank you to the organizers, Grand Marshall Chantal Chagnon, and the amazing emcee, Adora Nwofor, who created a positive, welcoming and exciting event. 

PS – the embed on the video isn’t really working, but you can see video if you click.

https://www.facebook.com/plugins/video.php?href=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.facebook.com%2Fmarchforscienceyyc%2Fvideos%2F1300338150055337%2F&show_text=0&width=400


Viewing all 23 articles
Browse latest View live




Latest Images