thebrainscoop: I’m currently in Raleigh, NC, attending Science…
I’m currently in Raleigh, NC, attending Science Online, a conference focusing on science writers, communicators, educational channels and blogs and comedians and artists. We come together to reaffirm our own knowledge and encourage those around us to hone and improve their messages, which primarily aim to increase science literacy worldwide.
Yesterday afternoon I went to the North Carolina Museum of Natural Sciences with some other attendees; the museum’s resident mammalogists and graduate students assisted us in preparing a variety of squirrels for their collection. I jumped at the chance because it’s a great opportunity to chat with other natural scientists, learn techniques from other museums, and share my favorite hobby and dual learning experience with people I respect and enjoy.
One of the graduate students watching us identified as some type of geneticist studying evolutionary biology EDIT: animal behavior. She and I exchanged casual words throughout the process but didn’t engage in any sort of meaningful conversation, and she left. Us novice preparators wrapped up, discussed the good time we had, and shared in a mutual feeling of accomplishment while scrubbing the blood from our hands.
This is all contextual information to say that after the talks and sessions, after dinner and drinks and an impromptu comedy science karaoke spiel I was sitting downstairs and catching up with some friends when the evolutionary biologist sat at our table.
I don’t remember how the conversation got started but this biologist went on to share how she didn’t understand how dissections could prove to be useful for students of any kind, and how she failed to see the educational value in cutting up a dead thing. I said I owed everything I understand about the biological world to dissections. She said, what do you mean “everything”?
I wouldn’t be a natural scientist or museum person if it were not for specimen preparation. I now better understand and appreciate the world as I know it since I am able to visualize the mechanics of the animals around us. I went on to say how I now host and share an educational channel of my own where I aim to instill this potential for better understanding to others, and perhaps help people who don’t necessarily identify as scientists to also be able to appreciate their worlds simply from having this knowledge. I aim for accessibility in science and opening the door to others by demonstrating my learning process and transition from artist to naturalist. And I didn’t say it blatantly but I am sure she saw that I was obviously offended that she would come and say what we do is gross and unhelpful, to any and all.
What I’m getting at is that I felt like a total failure in that moment. I am at a science communication conference and I failed to help a fellow biologist understand the value of what I teach and demonstrate every day. The irony is in my inability to convince someone who studies at a museum the value of this method of hands-on tactile learning, that I failed to use that conversation as a learning opportunity for her. Mostly it brought up all kinds of insecurities that what I’m doing is useless and wrong, and I’ve done a beautiful job of tricking myself and others into thinking we are actually learning something when really we are archaic and primitive in our methods. But if I’m fooling people into knowing more about the world, is there a real harm to that?
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