In the process of …

Don’t get me wrong … it’s wonderful to have the time, space and freedon to read and think but I’m a scientist at heart and I’ve been itching to be ‘doing’ something.

And in the spirit of open science, I should tell … whoever’s reading this … that I am actually doing something. No, it doesn’t matter that I haven’t processed the data yet. Or that I have the teensiest possible amount of data to process as yet. The point is, I am in the process of …!

I’ve plunged in and done my first interview, with a generous scientist who kindly gave up an hour of his time to answer my rambling attempts at questions. A small step but I am ridiculously excited about it.

I’m mid-way through transcribing the interview as we speak. Writing this post is by way of giving my poor ears a rest.  There are two reasons to give my ears a rest: one physical – not being of the ‘digitial native’ generation (my first calculator was a slide rule), my ears scream after more than an hour with earphones in. and one mental – can anyone bear to listen to themselves in a recording?

The conversation was interesting and of course, as any good conversation should, threw up more questions than answers. For example – I’d missed an obvious point – I need to find some open science sceptics to talk to. And then there’s publishing … and journalism … and education …

A barrel of herrings to look over in case they turn out to be red.

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Public engagement means points

I’ve read in a few places now that one of the reasons scientists give for not taking part in public engagement work is because, bluntly, it’s not part of their funding and they don’t get recognised for it.

This could be about to change in the UK. The Minister for Science, Lord Drayson, made a speech last week that committed the government to rewarding scientists who engage with the public. The government, he said, took public engagement very seriously.

However, the Times Higher Education supplement wrote much more clearly about his speech. See the article here.