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Abstract

iGEM teams regularly engage with the general public in explaining what synthetic biology signifies. A concept rarely explored within iGEM is the reflection on these interactions with the public, which is a shame since there is always room for improvements. Besides that, the interactions between scientists and the public are highly criticized by scientists. To improve our dialogue with the public we invited Paulien Poelarends to organize a workshop. In this workshop, we analysed conversations of previous iGEM teams. The workshop gave us new insights in how to improve our conversations with the public. After the workshop we decided to set-up a longitudinal study to keep on improving the conversations of iGEM members in the future.

Though iGEM is a mostly scientific adventure, an essential aspect in education of the esting example on scientific reflection was the 2012 iGEM team from Evry, who included a philosopher in their team that catalysed the discussion on ‘am I a chassis?’. new scientists is letting them engage with the public. This could be with school kids, or through video games, art festivals or scientific festivals with college students of all disciplines or a science cafe which attracts a broad audience. These efforts are greatly contributing to the interactions between the general public and the scientific community. However, few iGEM teams have analysed, or reflected on the role of the scientist in these interactions.

Analysing conversations of iGEM members

Paulien did her master thesis (link naar abstract) on last year’s iGEM teams and their way of communicating with the public and politicians. She observed them during the Discovery Festival and two debates (The Meeting of Young Minds 2011 and 2012 organized by the Rathenau Institute) and analysed the conversations with a special focus on how the iGEM members present or construct themselves in the conversations. The conversations were analysed using Discursive Psychology, a theory that defines talk as the primary arena of human action and tries to find out what actions people achieve in the conversations. The analysis of the conversations resulted in 5 identity constructions that occurred often and she therefore focused on. The identity constructions often observed are: “just normal”, having good will, a solver of global problems, careful and knowledgeable. This summer, Paulien finished her report and this gave us the opportunity to learn about and discuss the results of her study.

Workshop

The expectations of the workshop were quite high because a lot of team-members noticed before, that they were not good at communicating science with for example their parents and friends. Michiel: “In addition the team was curious about Paulien’s interpretation of last year’s human practice efforts. This was because we can learn a lot from this and we can use it to improve our human practice effort, especially the science cafe we were planning to organize in September”.
Paulien started out by a short introduction of her MSc thesis. Then we got a crash course in discursive psychology, the theory she used to analyse the conversations of iGEM teams in great detail.
Our newly acquired knowledge then was used to analyse four fragments Paulien selected from here data collection.

This is one of the fragments we analysed, recorded at the Discovery Festival.
Discovery Festival 21 (372:377)
1 iGEM       but u:hm (.2) but and that is what we are sort of like through nature trying to
2                 control so that it in uhm well then you get Wageningen theme (.8) in
3                  a nice way it gets done because nature does it it best
4 visitor2    haha
5 iGEM            but is just also fun to fiddle around with that
6 visitor     okay¬cool
With this sentence in the fragment: “in a nice way it gets done because nature does it it best”, synthetic biology is constructed as more natural, hereby denying that scientists only use more “difficult synthetic things”. In line 4, one of the visitors reacts with laughter. After the laughter, the iGEM member starts with: “but is just also fun to fiddle around with that”. He constructs the work they do as something that is “fun” and is like “fiddling”. By doing this, he presents the topic iGEM works on as “light and easy” and nice to do in the study of Paulien referred to as “just normal”.

The group working on the text fragments we got.

After one hour of analysing, we had a whole group discussion to discuss our findings and we put up several points on a whiteboard that in our eyes were important for interactions with society. Each team member was then given four arrows to be put at the topic they thought needed some extra attention.

Figuring out which points are most important to us by putting arrows on the white-board.

The most highlighted topics were subsequently discussed and finally we selected five issues we wanted to work on in the next months. Responsibility: We want to show (non-) scientists that we do not fiddle around and approach research responsibly. Receiver: We want to inform people on a level that is adjusted to their knowledge and interest. Context: We need to be aware of the difference in context at different occasions; perceptions change according to recent events and are thus related to both the location and time. Expectations: Find out what the public expects of a presentation and adjust the story we wish to tell accordingly. Usefulness: We want to show that we add something new to the already existing knowledge and that our work is useful.

What did we learn?

Next to the five points mentioned in the discussion we learned that: 1. Outreach activities are greatly appreciated: not only do iGEM students enjoy these excursions away from the lab, they help you step outside of your (scientific) comfort zone. 2. As an iGEM team, stay in contact with members of the previous years: they are an ENORMOUS source of experience. 3. Even though the scientific projects between teams from the same institution can differ vastly, there is always overlap in the scientific outreach activities (resources): It is better to build on the outreach efforts from previous years then start over yourself again to make improvements possible.

How to improve the conversations of iGEM over the years

When scientific outreach is continued over the years (and therefore over different teams), it can be reflected upon, thus allowing for progression of the work, rather than starting all over again. In our case, we were able to use the outreach activities of one team as study material for a communication sciences project. And this project could subsequently be used as material for a workshop next year. Planning outreach activities with teams elsewhere in the world is difficult. However, your institute’s team of the previous years are usually still close by, and could be used as local expertise, and it thereby becomes a relay baton of scientific culture that is handed down from generation to generation.