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So people who read this blog (*one person cheers off in the distance*) may have noticed that my partner-in-crime, Jane Robb, recently abandoned me to the fusty claws of Nature. *sniff* Fear not though! Jane is pursuing awesome things now with the European Geosciences Union, the other organisation I also happen to write for. She also maintains a personal blog, which is well worth following.
So last week, I wrote about how we can use different plots to help craft stories within geoscience. I want to stay along the theme of ‘science communication' for a while, and write about an excellent paper Jane had published recently, calling for an increase in public engagement within geology higher education. Expect tonnes more along this in the future, as Jane develops her role at the EGU, but for now, I figured it would be cool to highlight some of the key points in Jane's paper, as a sort of weird, blog-eulogy to her passing.
This is not an article about scientists doing more to engage the public with science, an ever-popular theme throughout the blogosphere. It's about providing students with the tools and skills they need to, starting with within-institution education, and demonstrating to them the broader impacts of geoscience beyond just raw science.
The motive for writing such a piece is due to the apparent changing nature of universities, and the interaction they are being called upon to increase with respect to the wider public, and industry in particular. In a time when tuition fees are rising and university budgets are being squeezed, demonstrating to prospective students that you have their future outside of academic in mind, particularly career-wise, has never been more important.
The second aspect of this comes from providing students an understanding of the effects of geology on society, economics, politics, and other aspects of everyday life. For example, the discussion about whether we are entering a new geological era, the Anthropocene, or the effects and mitigation of natural disasters. From a personal perspective, I don't think even once in my 4 years of undergraduate geology did the broader effects of ‘science in society' come up (I know it was the subject of a couple of optional modules though, which still nonetheless focussed on the core geology, rather than the social aspects, if memory serves).
A theme throughout these factors is non-academic communication. For example, when writing to policymakers regarding natural disasters, a different mode of language is needed as you have to communicate often a large amount of communication to non-specialists, in a manner that can then be translated throughout the policy development process. A fine example of this is a recent submission to the UK Parliament by James Verdon and colleagues at Bristol University regarding Carbon Capture and Storage and induced seismicity - check out the different style between this piece and pretty much any scholarly article in a journal.
Jane goes on to discuss the merits of direct engagement, for example, through science centres. Anyone who's ever seen me face-to-face will realise why I stick to blogging, so I won't dwell on that part too much. You can read the article for free (see link below) if you're more into the merits of and approaches to actual in-person communication.
What this all bores down to at the end of the day though are skills. As a geology student, you'll be trained to become mesmerised by rock thin sections under cross-polarised light, how to figure out the precise amount of gold in a river bend, and the precise angle with which to thwack an exposure to achieve maximum demolition. At the PhD level, many institutions have now implemented [near-useless] external skills courses that are obligatory for all students. How cool would it be if skills such as public communication, event organising, policy understanding, non-specialist writing, were all included as courses or modules, or external workshops, throughout undergraduate degrees?
A few cool organisations, if you fancy learning more and getting involved with ‘science beyond science', are Geology for Global Development, STEMNET, Science is Vital, Campaign for Science and Engineering, Sense About Science, The Geological Society, and many others, including local geological societies which are pretty easy to track down online. My recommendation, echoed by Jane, would be to explore Twitter. It's probably the most invaluable information resource for academics at the present, once you develop the networks and figure out what it is (can take some time to get used to), and doubles as a method of communicating your own voice out there too.
Jane provides some excellent suggestions for external reading and helpful resources that are well worth checking out. But I guess the main point to take away is that academia is evolving, and geology departments need to get on board and realise that there's a whole world out there beyond ‘ivory towers' of research, journals and laboratories. It's crucial that we train our next generations of geoscientists to become aware of the breadth and depth of geology (and related subjects), and the impact it has both on themselves and within wider society. Above all, don't forget that geology rocks.
Reference: Robb, J. (2013) A call for increased public engagement in geology higher education, Geology Today, 29(2), 63-67 (free version!)
So a cool paper came out a while back about using plots when attempting to construct stories as a mode of communicating in Earth Science. I cannot, as always, emphasise my frustration when someone writes an article that's supposed to be broadly educational, and sticks it behind a paywall. In this case, it might have reached the target audience of practising institutionalised Earth scientists (hello), but not the many who aren't fortunate to have a subscription.
This is a much delayed attempt to distil the information contained within the article, which is otherwise a fab piece, so that it might actually be of additional use than stagnating in Elsevier's draughty vaults.
I've written many pieces before about the importance of science communication in Earth Science/Geoscience/Rocks/whatever, largely inspired by [massive name drops] Iain Stewart and Ted Nield's piece from a while back. While some of the time, I think a lot of people might dedicate a bit too much time to thinking about the process of communicating science rather than actually doing it, sometimes it's nice to take a breather and perhaps pick up a few new things to refine your techniques, particularly with respect to blogging, my main communications output.
Back in one second, I need to make some pasta.
So the premise of the paper is pretty awesome. One current idea floating around the science communication realm is this concept of stories, in that you can use them to create a context that is more relevant to the average reader. In this case, it is the idea of tying specific events or situations to the principles, or foundation, of Earth science. The tying of these two together exposes the idea of ‘plots', which are common structures that provide insight into the science, while maintaining relevance to a non-specialist audience.
Here are the 8 plots described in the article, and yes, they do mostly have awesome names.
Cause and Effect
Leepsteek? There is no leepsteek! While The Merovingian might not have been the best geoscience communicator in the world, he nailed the first theme here. Cause and effect is simple: if you disturb a system or aspects of a system in some way, then that will cause ripples and they will be felt. This is a key factor in Earth science, due to the very nature of our dynamic planet.
This plot, naturally, has two parts: the process of change, such as a climatic perturbation, and the result, such as how this affects the rate of erosion at a cliff face. The opposite of this is also possible, for example trying to determine the cau
In the beginning, God created rocks, and then a separate race of humans called ‘geologists' who had an enhanced love of beer, hammers, shiny things, and beer, to study them. Genesis, as I'm sure you're all scratching your head trying to figure out, relates to the origins of features, groups of features, or processes. Geologically speaking, this could be anything from geomorphological features like hills and mountains, or sedimentary structures like ripple marks, to something more unusual or exotic like an impact crater.
Emergence
Earth systems are complex. They're the products of suites of processes that interact, and are variably non-dependent on each other. Where these processes, or components, interact within a system and create a pattern, this is the emergent theme. Phillips describes these plots as ‘by-products of the rules governing systems, rather than direct outcomes of those rules'. Sounding a bit Matrix-y again. Examples where this sort of plot er, emerges, are in climate change, or how landforms change through time.
Metamorphosis
One of the coolest things about geology is describing and trying to unravel the processes that create what we see preserved in the rock record. We can actually see geological processes happening in everyday life, such as erosion, or how a river shifts course or changes from a linear to braided form. The cool thing about metamorphosis is the variation in scale, both in terms of process size, and length of time; for example, the millions of years timescale to build a mountain, compared to a near-instantaneous landslip on a local beach.
Destruction
One of the long-standing questions in geology is ‘do rocks feel pain'? Destruction describes the process whereby rocks may or may not feel pain, through complete or incomplete loss of structure. A classic example of this sort of story would be extinction, or degradation of an environment due to human influence. This has a clear anthropogenic impact, as many geological features act secondarily as resources, so loss of any sort can have a negative influence. An example of this might be through coastal erosion, which can lead to the destruction of property. Destruction is probably the most prominent plot to have a social and economic influence. Cooler examples might include the loss of ancient civilisations, which may be related in some way to geological processes (e.g., Atlantis).
Convergence
Convergence describes the process of multiple independent factors becoming more similar through time, often towards a common state. Such processes might include how a river incises through time through erosion, in incremental developmental stages. Such plots would often terminate in a steady state or dynamic equilibrium, where factors cancel each other out, or the process stream changes; for example, when the critical threshold of hillside erosion is achieved.
Divergence
Essentially the opposite of convergence. Probably the best, and most obvious, version of this would be biological evolution, and the micro- and macro-scale, whereby populations and species diverge from each other through time, becoming more dissimilar.
Oscillation
Cyclical patterns are commonly known in the geological record, ranging from Milankovitch cycles to the frequency of mass extinctions, plausibly driven by an external force such as solar flaring. Cycles are critical in regulating Earth systems, such as biogeochemical cycles, nutrient cycles, ocean stratification and currents, and occur in almost all environments in many different ways.
These plots are by no means completely mutually exclusive of each other, and it is entirely possible to combine hybrids as the purpose requires. They are also not exhaustive - I'm sure you can conjure up multiple plots that would suit your own line of research (comments below please!), and they are also perfectly divisible depending on how general or precise you wish to construct a piece. Anyway, I hope this extraction is adequate, and you've gained a little understanding of how to apply a directed narrative to writing in future.
Now to figure out how this works for dinosaurs...