Monday, October 8, 2018

Engaging Scientist in The Public

Communication of science to the public is a necessity in this generation. Conveying the significance of science to the population of the world creates opportunities like financial funding and more for scientific research. Communication of science can also help spread awareness of an idea, getting more then one group involved on the same type of research. Both of these points illustrate how spreading the awareness of science can help further increase the rate at which we make new discoveries.



Throughout the scientist discussion there were a few main take aways that stuck with me. A point involving gender discrimination in the scientific field made by Dr. Sarah Carmichael stood out. She talked about how the guys in her grad school class always had an upper hand, and girls were sometimes taken advantage of by the professors. She also talked about how when she ran a drill crew she had a hard time gaining respect from her former colleagues. Another point that stuck out to me was made by Dr. Andy Bellemer. He quoted "none of us do our jobs for the money" this stuck out to me because it showed that all these people love what they do and actually have a passion for it. You could also tell they were extremely happy to talk about their research which helped keep someone like me who knows barely anything about earthquakes interested.

Scientist need to get there message across to public, so that the society can see the influence science has in their daily lives. Also science revolves around everything that we do, so the more people and time we have spent towards research the further we will progress the development of new scientific discoveries.  I feel that a great way for scientist to spread the awareness of their scientific research is through hands on interactions with college students. College students are the next generation of workers in this society and if you can get them involved early in their college careers it can spark new interest in the scientific field.