EGN Conference 2013 - Poetry in Residence

by Samantha Walton - Genomics Forum Poet in Residence

While dedicated bloggers across the Genomics Network were providing detailed accounts of arguments raised and research outlined in panels and plenary sessions at the EGN Conference 2013 , the TTAGGG poetry sequence began to be mapped. In her welcoming address, Catherine Lyall introduced delegates to the sequence and to the presence of a poet at the conference as an ‘experiment’, a term which I thought summarised the project with particular accuracy. In my own description of the sequence in the conference programme, I had urged delegates to get involved in the following (I hoped, persuasive) way:

TTAGGG is an open source poetry sequence generated through contributions from EGN 13 delegates. Contributions may be segments of verse borrowed (or hacked) from existing poems or prose, or they may be individual words or fragments of ‘found’ text snipped from the conference programme or heard in presentations and discussions. You might write your own poetic responses to ideas generated throughout the conference, or to the poem itself as it is built and modified online. An experiment in artificial evolution in the creative commons, the TTAGGG sequence will store complex information, respond to its environment and be a thing of strange beauty, open to modification, enhancement, repetition and mutation.

While the poetry I had been writing ‘in residence’ at the Forum was mostly concerned with epigenetics, I saw the TTAGGG sequence as a way of testing the notion of the poem as a mode of recording personal emotion expression. This was in part an attempt to move away from the kind of anecdotal lyricism that is often the obvious poetic response to ‘difficult’ issues in medicine and science: it seemed there were far more interesting and relevant ways of considering how developments in the life sciences could be discussed in poetry than imagining how they might make a single poetic speaker feel. I’ve been interested in the representation of medicine in literature for some time, and I wanted to produce something quite different from the kind of first-person poetry that frequently comes out of such interchanges – a frustrated and often powerless voice, an ‘I’ trying to understand how developments may affect my understanding of my body, myself. It wasn’t that I found such personal insight insignificant, rather it seemed that to do justice to the unique interface between the life sciences and social sciences achieved throughout the run of the Genomics Network, an approach which incorporated a range of perspectives and modes of address needed to be attempted. By eliciting contributions from delegates, and by trying to depersonalise my own contributions to the sequence by using found text, snippets of conversations and presentations, I hoped to sidestep the responsibility of providing a subjective account of such a diverse programme and try to achieve the kind of plurality, performative objectivity and variation of thought and insight that these complex issues deserved.

           Getting policy makers, social scientists, philosophers of bioethics and life science researchers to write poetry, even in little bits, proved, at first, to be a challenge. There’s something about poetry … for a start, people think they can’t do it (make words sound nice etc.), or they feel embarrassed about the image of Romantic swaggering and detached pondering that the word ‘poetry’ summons up. Also, in the midst of the EGN conference, when so much demanding critical, sociological, ethical, scientific, political and philosophical thought is taking place, I suspect that for some delegates it seemed like too much of a mental shift to start thinking ‘poetically’, as if thinking poetically could lead you astray from the serious topics under consideration. I think these reservations, this division of mental labour, suggests that poetry is often perceived to something other than critical public discourse. I haven’t conducted my research yet, but I’d like to postulate that a survey of public attitudes would return the conclusions that the best poetry consists of moving responses to grand themes like love and loss, making it something readers withdraw to help clarify or find voiced their own private troubles and joys. Poetry is often treated like this – an imaginative and aesthetic escape from public life and social realities, providing an affective insight into a kind of subjective territory somewhere between lifeworld and the public sphere. Like much of the ‘health’ themed poetry I read through the medical humanities, the poetic response to genomics, confirming to this idea of poetry, might just have to stop at bittersweet and aggrieved responses to difficult questions and controversial innovations: “Yes, science may say ‘I’ am my genes, but I know better, I can appreciate beauty and feel love, you can’t quantify that.”

Although I don’t doubt that science (even qualitative analysis) can’t process many of the concerns that are central to various poetic traditions (beauty and love included) I can’t help but feel that in poetry’s wider readership, the idea that poetry provides a unique medium not only for responding to, subverting, translating or resisting important and complex new ideas, but actually working through those ideas, testing them, and even contributing to their development, seems to have been, if not forgotten, then perhaps sidelined. This perception seems to run counter to the many ways that poets have written of and using specialised discourses of political thought and scientific enquiry: an incredibly general account might allude to Dante’s interrogations of political practice and faith, Elizabethan discussions of the body politic, Metaphysical poets’ yoking of love and religion to scientific and geographic discoveries, the Romantics’ testing of associationism and the profound engagements with science – from theories of relativity to Heisenberg’s Uncertainty Principle, Mendelian genetics to Habermasian theory – found in Modernist and contemporary late-Modernist verse. As such, the premise of the TTAGGG Sequence was not just to provide a counter account of the day’s discussions and events – although one delegate did tell me that following the development of the sequence on Twitter provided something of a disruptive echo to the more formal discussions taking place in sessions. Instead, I hoped the fragments, commentaries and contributions might contain questions, provocations and alternative accounts which could feed into a serious discussion of the main issues of the conference. A contemporary poet I admire, Sean Bonney, has spoken of the possibilities of poetry in this way: “there’s certain poems that give me an information, an account of a social reality, that other types of writing don’t. It’s something to do with the speed of connections through the work, the intensity of the communication: conjunctions and intensities that put information across in a way that I don’t find anywhere else.”

I don’t know if the TTAGGG Sequence achieved this, but part of its ‘experimental’ nature was the acceptance that failure might lead to a better understanding of how to frame the question, or what the problem might be. Of the definite successes of the project, I count highly the enthusiastic and intrigued responses I got from many conference delegates. It was refreshing for me to explain how my project tried to participate in the debates of the conference, and to find that though I was coming from a different epistemological position, there was some common ground, and much openness for engagement. The actual poetic contributions I got were delightfully various. Some followed tradition verse structures (the clipped form of the Haiku appealed to many) while others concentrated on the rhetoric of social science and policy communication – the repetitions, freewheeling metaphors, strangeness and contradictions of the language employed in this supposedly objective discipline. In my own contributions, I was surprised by how quickly I fell into an imperative register and how the demands of writing on the spot led me to use the present tense, often utterly eschewing pronouns and prepositions. While anonymity was guaranteed for delegates who wrote their contributions on cards and posted them in the ‘TTAGGG Sequencer’ (my gratitude to Steph Wright for helping me build this complex machine!), additions from private Twitter accounts constituted more of a public statement, and I’m grateful to those who spoke out in this way. I don’t think anyone used my password and took up the offer to sign in to the TTAGGG Twitter account and tweet impersonally from there, which gives an interesting insight into possible concerns about invasions of privacy and the dangers of open access in a field where large data sets and their possible uses is a major point of ethical and legal discussion.

The TTAGGG Sequence will remain on Twitter and can be found at #egn13poetry. However, I am currently working on a number of different ways to manipulate the sequence. In a nod to a purely scientific approach, I am ordering it in simple chronological order (fig. A). In honour of traditional poetic formal constraints, I’m using a programme that organises individual lines into rhyming couplets (and only removing auto-rhymed lines) (fig. B). Finally, I am asserting the troublesome aesthetic and subjective authority of the poet by organising the text into what seems (to me at least) a coherent poem (fig.C). I hope to perform some of it at Syndicate, a new media poetry series I co-host held at Inspace in Edinburgh, on 21^st May.

What the opportunity to act as Poet in Residence at the EGN Conference 2013 and the Genomics Forum through April gave me was the invaluable space to write and also to reflect on the possible modes of communication between poetry, science and social study. I’ve always been interested in the critical potential of poetry, so the insights I have gained ways of approaching and understanding public ethics, cultural differences and social impact within the social sciences have encouraged me to reflect on my own practice as a poet and researcher. I am incredibly grateful for the welcoming and generous response I received at the Forum. I hope the exciting interactions between art and life science studies fostered here will continue in many forms in the future.

Cuts from the TTAGGG Sequence

Fig A.  Chronological

opening provocation: promise/ peril         

what is ... what ... um it's ... a hard question         the people legacy

borrowed from the network

globalisation of the subjects we address

challenges around life s/ on the brink/ of major scale

these bugs/ can eat their own waste!

ignore these/ listen to them/ pull out the science, hold it up/ an heroic vision in messy places

messy like democracy/ sounds like science, golden age/ speaking truth to power

dossier of compromise/ science disappears/ elite compromise vs. idealised advice/ pure & removed: the science dictates

Fig. B.  Rhyming Sequence

Transcription is not fit matter for poesy

TTAGGG poetry sequence is under citizens enquiry

Replication is serious flattery

The enlightenment is not the enemy

Become knowledge, circulate freely

From cutting paper, to CAD molecule, a filmmaker's journey

The deficit model is bankrupt, but has so much currency

If someone mutated my DNA would this then lead my soul astray

Climate change fury, decimation of mankind, fascinating, play

Please capture my core, decorate your DNA for your children

My sweetheart took his burnt toast & departed with his cellular automaton. 

Infinitesimal paper & scissors that should play with hierarchies

Public & private together in this space, between plate & lip

millions of wells reading sequences

Of shrug biologists who say PUBLIC but face but a sacral population's

extended phenotypic structure fluffed to rubric lattices

Fig. C. Poet as Structuring Process

We start with an opening provocation,

under the sign of Watt & ether

shouting out to find a common ground

There weren't too many rules, only

you have to lock people together

for days to get them to understand one another

     's vocabulary

Converting jargon into something

people can understand, that's the knack

Feedback loops between consumers & providers are fraught

with the sheer density & complexity

           of poetry refusing to cooperate

ignore these, listen to them

pull out the science, hold it up: an heroic vision in messy places

 (messy like democracy)

this is sounding like science speaking truth to power

public understanding is itself a metaphor

I liked the people

but I have just one question    a critical remark

 really

What … what would NA12878 do?

what is ... what ... um it's ... a hard question        

it’s a hard thing, being a critical friend: waxing or waning,

meeting for breakfast etc., having a life

talking through issues

etcetera.

Imagining the genome

retro futures under review

the myth of science lives on

a new golden age a newly acceptable Enlightenment continuing

between Adam Smith's tomb at Canongate Kirk

& the cone on David Hume's head

Fluid networks permeate the life science web

philosophers of the future rebound

reflecting on the sound of glitchy data

For philosophies read textual

error: ask a stem cell what it is, res public collaboration shaving words off acronyms

           the TTAGGG Cloud: impossibly linear Wordle!

Perfect distribution of emphasis cut with rigour & balance!

nothing in life expresses ©  like an MOU/kou/□/xxx

we don't yet have a language that doesn't begin

with an assumption of separateness

EGN Conference 2013 – Plenary One: What's special about scientific advice, governance and policy-making in the life sciences?

by Chris Berry, Genomics Forum Press and Communications Officer

#egn13

The first plenary session of the EGN 13 conference examined the nexus between scientific advice, governance and policy making, with specific reference the life sciences. As the chair - Innogen Director, Professor David Wield - indicated in his introduction to the session, The Genomics Network has been highley successful at working with policy makers, both across the UK and internationally, even though engaging the policy community in issues relating to social implications of genomics is not always straightforward.

The first of four speakers to offer their perspective on the session's topic was Professor Brian Collins - a former Chief Scientific Advisor (CSA) to BIS and the Department of Transport. Professor Collins used two case studies from his time as a CSA to illustrate how differing approaches to dealing with policy issues can be progressed.

The first example related to Biofuels, which are already economically important to countries such as Brazil, and potentially have increasing significance for the UK. Professor Collins illustrated a number of confliciting issues impinging on the development of UK biofuel policy at the beginging of the last decade, including: the drive for biofuel crops impacting food production; the fact that biomass is much more suited to producing heat/energy than vehicular fuel; responsibility for different policy areas for biofuels resting with different government departments; and the fact that international agreements framing biofuel policy were already in existence. Through a coordinated approach by scientific advisors from different sections of government, it was possible to address these conflicting demands and produce an approropriately framed policy.

Following his second example, relating to the policy on the use of non-human primates in medical research, Professor Collins teased out some of the factors important to the approach taken by CSAs, including:

• Whether emphasis was placed on preventing or curing an issue;
• The need to be a "critical friend" when offering scientific advice; 
• The ability to work cooperatively across government departments; and 
• Maintining an external view, through links with academia and other CSAs etc.

Andrew Miller MP - Chair of the House of Commons' Select Committee on Science and Technology, offered insightful overview of the importance of scientific advice from the perspective of a policy-maker.

He provided an overview and the structure and work of the Select Committee - how through undertaking enquiries it ensures that government policy is based on sound scientific advice, and how it can also ensure certain issues are pushed onto the policy agenda. He also pointed out that as the Committee is not necessarily composed of scientific experts, its members also rely on scientific advice.

Mr Miller then went on to speak specifically about policy relating to the life science sector, and how its increasing socio-econimic importance brings both opportunities and challenges for policy-makers. For example, the life sciences are unique insofar as they form a central componenet in a number of government areas, including health, enterprise, agriculture etc. Fortunatley, there is much expertise to draw upon to help formulate life sciene policy relating to different government departments, as each of these now has a team of dedicated scientific advisors.

Andrew Miller concluded his presentation by pointing out that to be truly effective scientific advice (including that relating to the life sciences) needs to be transparent. Currently, scientific advice is in a healthy state, and it is his Committee's objective that this should continue by ensuring goverment draws upon appropriate advice in its policy decision-making.

Jim Philp - Science and Technology Analyst with the OECD - brought an international insight to the relationship between scientific advice and policy development. Within his role this involved analysing the cost, risks and benefits of particular policy directions.

He indicated that there were a number of factors inherent in policy development that impacted upon how scientific advice influences this, such as governements working to five year, as oppossed to 50 year cycles. Conversely, exhisting - but overley complex - regulatory regimes can inhibit the timely delivery of beneficial biotechnology.

Focusing on the example of biofuels, Philp presented a case study on the parallels between the adoption of previous fuel sources - coal, oil etc. - and the policy challenges in relation to the acceptance and viability of new fuel sources produced through biotechnology.

He closed his presentation by concluding that in order for advances in biotechnology to gain societal acceptance, a policy roadmap informed by transparent scientific advice is required.

Innogen's Professor Joanna Chataway provided a social science perspective on UK public private partnerships in the field of stratified medicinie. Stratified (or personalised) medicine involves using biotechnology to tailor treatements to individuals or specific groups of people.

Professor Chataway identified that in the UK there was a growing number of public/private partnerships aimed at developing stratified medicine. The UK Life Science Strategy puts this kind of partnerships and coolaboration at heart of policy in relation to developing such treatments.

This has resulted in a lot of scientific research and experimentation, but this can often be fragmented, and there is a limited evidence base and lack of evaluation in relation to its efficacy. Professor Chataway concluded by identifying the role enhanced scientific and social scientific advice could play in contributing to policy responses to this area of bioscience.

Imaginative Approaches to Science Writing

by Barbara Melville, Writer in Residence at the MRC Centre for Regenerative Medicine

I was delighted to spend time with the ESRC Genomics Policy and Research Forum, where I prepared and ran a full-day workshop called Nonfiction for Science – Imaginative Approaches to Science Writing. I was fortunate to be co-facilitating with fabulous writer and comedian Siân Bevan, and working with a group of receptive and talented students. Together we explored the theory and practice of creative nonfiction, and its place in communicating science.

Creative nonfiction, like any genre, does a cunning job of resisting definition. Broadly, the aim is to communicate the facts with literary style. These narratives often include personal journeys, like in Primo Levi’s The Periodic Table and Lone Frank’s My Beautiful Genome. But despite the demand for imaginative science writing, there’s a paucity of such works. My guess is people are interested, but don’t feel they have the tools. After all, if you’re used to academic writing, or your background isn’t science, how do you get started? How can you combine fact with subjectivity?

These were among many questions we tackled throughout the day. We worked on drafting personal essays, allowing ourselves to play with ideas before questioning what we’d produced. We studied the underlying principles of narration, including why people tell stories, how to keep writing consistent, and how to combine personal and impersonal information. After lunch, we had a refreshing discussion on accuracy and accessibility in science communication, before spending the final hour reading, rewriting, and brainstorming ideas for essays.

I was thrilled this workshop was so popular, and that I got to run another in partnership with the Beltane Public Engagement Network and the Roslin Institute. I’m now pursuing a website dedicated to this kind of writing, and I hope to run more workshops in the future. I can’t overstate how grateful I am to everyone at the Genomics Forum, our hard-working attendees, my awesome co-facilitators, the Beltane Network and the Roslin Institute for their unending guidance and support in putting these events together. Here’s to many more.

The Evaporation of Things, distilled

Ken MacLeod at the Evaporation of Things

Social science has a permanent problem of identifying its objects of study. The relationships, interactions, institutions, organizations and other aspects of society may have all sorts of things connected with them that we can see and touch, such as houses and police stations and pound coins and wedding rings, but the relationships themselves they aren't stuff you can spot on CCTV. Identifying new or hitherto unnoticed goings-on between people or in their minds or in how they relate to the world around them is always going to be tricky and contestable. Is such-and-such a one-off, a will-o-the-wisp, or is it, as the fashion columnists would say, a thing? (This usage of 'a thing' has definitely become a thing.)

Artists, at least the kind of artists who cause outrage and bafflement when their work is exhibited in the Tate, have a similar problem. You want your work to glom onto something significant and say something about it that makes sense to yourself if to no one else, and you're allowed to do that with any material at all within the law and health and safety regulations: bits of tin, wire, plaster of Paris, marble, bronze, paint, canvas, neon tubes, dust bunnies, pickled shark... If you're very clever and /or lucky, you might hit on exactly the right expression for some feeling or situation or condition that no one has quite put their finger on before. Fame, fortune, and an angry editorial in the Daily Mail await.

So there they are, social scientists and artists, looking about, antennae quivering, alert for the new. Might they sometimes help each other lock onto the same scent?

Last week I attended a symposium at Inspace, the arts venue of Edinburgh University's Informatics Department. The space is functionally divided between an auditorium and a gallery, and is so modern it aches -- literally enough after a while, as the audience sits on thin cushions scattered along steps. The event, initiated by the Genomics Forum, brought together social scientists, natural scientists, and artists. I was there to blog the event's first day; Pat Kane, currently a visiting fellow at the Forum, would cover the second. The question the symposium asks, I suppose, is: 'Is the question "Where is the thing?" becoming a thing?' Its hashtag is #eot13. Its rubric:

The symposium Evaporation of Things is intended to explore the increasingly digital interface to biological ‘things’. From the phylogenetic analysis of plants, to the data representation of the human genome project, studying the subject on a screen has replaced the study of the material artefact. For the general public, astronomy remains a question of looking at the stars in the night sky, whereas for astronomers the use of optical telescopes is a thing of the past – so the question emerges “where is the thing?”

The natural sciences have been prolific in practising not only this evaporation of things but also in reassembling innovative living entities, such as genetically modified organisms, and new creative possibilities are emerging with the advent of the enhancement of the human body with cybertechnologies. This fluidity of the living things is potentiated by interdisciplinary engagements, and entities which are in one minute the subjects of sciences become in the next the raw materials for arts.

Forum Director Steve Yearley welcomed us to the event. Then one of the organisers, Maria Grade Godinho, introduced the session. She explained how she'd trained and worked as a biologist. Encountering genes with patents had brought home to her that what she did in the lab was part of a wider social world, which she wanted to investigate further. Here, she wanted to explore the possibility that the relationship between objects and data wasn't one between matter and mind, but between two different states of matter -- hence the metaphor of evaporation.

Maria's co-organiser Chris Speed of the College of Art kicked off with a clip of the Challenger disaster, with its familiar voice-over of a man reading from the space shuttle's instruments and continuing to relay numbers for several seconds after the rest of America had watched the craft explode live on television. That shocked moment of delayed realisation when someone tapped the announcer's shoulder and pointed to the TV screen was, Chris said, what this symposium was about. He gave other examples: the debris of the later space shuttle crash, Columbia, tagged, connected by strips of tape, and spread across across a floor as a physical database; the flash crash of May 6 2010, as two duelling algorithms dumped stocks in a death spiral only interrupted by physically pulling the plugs; and one of his students' art projects, which consisted of a thick stack of A4, a printout of reports from her iPhone for one day.

The presentations that followed were intriguing, varied, and of high quality. Mike Phillips took us from the melting Wicked Witch to the unease-inducing ambiguities of how scientific imaging converts numbers to visuals. Synthetic biologist Vincent Danos took us ever deeper into the molecular structure of starch and the phenomenology of mathematical modelling. Laura Beloff charmed and delighted with her sci-art projects, starting with a portable 'space station for fruit flies'. Sociologist Gill Haddow walked us through how 'human' became in some contexts legally defined in terms of percentages of DNA.

After and over drinks in the early evening, the exhibiting artists displayed and discussed their work. I wouldn't presume to judge or compare -- take a look for yourself -- but for me by far the most memorable and disturbing of their artefacts was Ai Hasegawa's short film of a woman giving birth to a salmon, which she later eats. Sushi will never be the same.

So was the symposium a success? Did the artists, scientists, and sociologists combine their particular points of view to outline, somewhere in the room, an elephant we'd have otherwise missed? I think they did. The evaporation of things is a thing.  

Thank you!

by Stephanie Dyke, Genomics Forum Bright Ideas Fellow
Policy Adviser, Wellcome Trust Sanger Institute

The ESRC Bright Ideas Fellowship allowed me to spend time in Edinburgh at the Genomics Policy and Research Forum to work on some of the ethical aspects of data sharing policy and to learn more about the work of researchers at the Forum and throughout the ESRC Genomics Network.

As policy adviser for a scientific research institute one of my main tasks is to focus on how science is conducted. Having the opportunity to discuss my work with Genomics Network researchers from different disciplines, and to hear about their experiences and current interests, was very enriching.

I also met students interested in scientific policy and writers in residence at the Forum, which reminded me again of the importance of interdisciplinary understanding. Thanks again to everyone involved.

Creating space in Science Centers for public discussions about the social aspects of science and technology

by Jameson Wetmore & Ira Bennett - Center for Nanotechnology in Society

Arizona State University, USA

There are approximately 300 science centers in the United States. They range from two room centers in tiny towns to enormous museums in Chicago and Boston. They vary widely from place to place, but typically they have three goals: First, they try to relate basic scientific facts so that the lay public can understand them. Second, they seek to inspire young people to consider science and engineering as a career. And third, they attempt to entertain so that families and children will want to return again and again.

Because science and technology play an ever increasingly important role in our daily lives, there is currently a movement to add a fourth goal to the list.  To be an informed citizen one must not only follow the obvious social issues like taxes, international relations, and heath care, but also the research and technologies that shape our world.  Understanding the big bang theory or the ways that molecules interact might be able to assist in this process, but perhaps even more important is an appreciation of the variety of ways in which science and technology affect communities and vice versa. As science centers are both trusted and one of the few places where the general public actively engage science, they could provide a space for such engagements. 

Behind the scenes..

by Cameron Duguid - Documentary Filmmaker in Residence

'Topographies of the Genome' - Deborah Robinson

Well, how time flies with so much is going on- I’m a good few steps behind with this!

After a hectic 3 day trip to Lancaster, Cardiff and Exeter my mind is buzzing. A wide range of enlightening and thought provoking meetings, and a great chance to see sequencing in action. I’ll write more on our trip once my flitting thoughts have settled a little!

Over the previous weeks it has been inspiring to talk with and attend seminars by Deborah Robinson with interesting ideas on engaging with science in art. Of huge relevance to me as I feel that, having started off at art college, I have moved away from the open artistic projects I worked on in college, towards more conventional documentary making and science communication- less critical and not drawing in an abstracted ways from science and scientists. I have a tendency to get caught up in trying to find ways to illustrate molecular goings on, rather than outwardly observing.

I've visited a few labs in different countries, and have definitely subconsciously assessed their cleanliness (Lausanne- super clean: closer to home- possibly less so! Although I may have been influenced by bad decor and a lack sparkling stainless steel) However, actually thinking of the dust under a lab machine as a subject for art, as with Deborah's Genomic Dirt project I find really inspiring. That kind of more divergent thinking is really interesting, and in no small way part of a picture of the daily life of scientists.

The scientist in fiction – does science and literature have more in common than we imagine? - 22 August 2012

Genomics Forum blogging team at the Edinburgh International Book Festival 2012
Blog by Chris Berry

When mention is made of science and literature, it is all too easy to immediately think of the genre that is “sci-fi”. Engaging and important though the literary genre of science fiction is, it by no means represents the only manifestation of science and scientists in creative writing. Since science started to have a major impact upon society – during the Victorian period – it simultaneously began to have an influence upon literature. From Frankenstein to Dr Jekyll , from HG Well’s Time Machine to Ian Fleming’s Dr No, science and scientists form a rich vein that runs through much of our recent literature.

But does fiction portray scientists (and science) accurately? Are scientists, in reality, merely boring academics or are they more akin to the creative – or sometimes crazed - geniuses frequently represented in the pages of novels? These were some of the questions up for consideration in the ESRC Genomics Forum’s final event at this year’s Edinburgh International Book Festival: Scientists in Fiction- Creative or Crazed Genius?

Science fiction, double feature ... - Jennifer Rohn & Neal Stephenson, 18 August 2012

Ken MacLeod at the Edinburgh International Book Festival 2012

A sunny Saturday afternoon (18 August, 5-6 pm) saw the Scottish Power Theatre tent filled almost to capacity for the Wellcome Trust Event 'Putting the Cult into Culture', a discussion on science fiction and science in fiction. Chaired by Forum Writer in Residence, Pippa Goldschmidt, the discussion featured best-selling SF writer and tech guru Neal Stephenson, with cell biologist, novelist and LabLit editor Jennifer Rohn.

Rohn began by explaining that lab lit, as distinct from science fiction, is fiction about scientists and scientific practice in the real world, historical or present-day, rather than in imagined or future worlds. The number of novels that fit this description is suprisingly small - she knew of about 120 in English, which is not a lot to show for the four centuries (more or less) in which science and the novel have flourished in the English-speaking world.

Scientists, she went on, are 'not trusted messengers'. Their views on controversial topics, even within their own specialty, are seen as just their opinion. By showing scientists as human beings, and showing their daily work realistically, lab lit could help to overcome popular suspicion and incomprehension of what scientists are up to. It could also, of course, be of value and enjoyment to scientists and science students to see their world and way of life reflected in literature, and these are among lab lit's most avid readers.

I am not my ancestors - Alistair Moffat, 14 August 2012

Genomics Forum blogging team at the Edinburgh International Book Festival 2012
Blog by Christine Knight 

I must confess to feeling a wee bit grumpy in today’s Book Festival session on Looking Inside Scotland’s Genes! Alistair Moffat and the Scotland’s DNA team are doing some absolutely fascinating research to create a ‘people’s history’ of Scotland using population genetics, so perhaps the oppressive humidity and long queue played their part in my mood! But as a sociologist, I do have a bone to pick with Moffat – not about his research itself, but about the words he uses to talk about it. One word in particular: identity.

As a sociologist of science and a critic of geneticisation, my hackles (alas!) were up from the moment chair Magnus Linklater told the audience that in the next hour, ‘You are going to discover who you are’. Moffat himself told us his involvement in the Scotland’s DNA project stemmed from his interest in the link between ‘cutting edge science and people’s sense of themselves’, and the project website encourages visitors to ‘Take the first step to discovering your origins and identity’.

Enter Science stage left - Ned Beauman and Nick Harkaway, 14 August 2012

Genomics Forum blogging team at the Edinburgh International Book Festival 2012
Blog by Christine Knight

I went along to Ned Beauman and Nick Harkaway’s session Fiction for When You’re Feeling Sinister having not read either of the authors’ books (confession!), but looking forward in particular to hearing about Beauman’s latest, The Teleportation Accident. Part of the novel (as the Book Festival programme informed me) is set in the physics laboratories of Los Angeles in the 1930s, and representations of science in fiction are something I’m especially interested in right now because of my own What Scientists Read project (shameless plug!). This is investigating the influence of literature on scientists, but often brings up the opposite phenomenon – how science and scientists appear in fiction.

Fact and fiction on course to the future - Charles Fernyhough and Ben Marcus, 11 August 2012

Genomics Forum blogging team at the Edinburgh International Book Festival 2012
Blog by Pippa Goldschmidt

Some fiction writers are apt to be magpies with science and pick off the shinier bits for use as metaphors to adorn novels that otherwise have little to say explicitly about the subject. And scientists’ activities around communicating their work usually assumes that the science itself will remain unchanged.

But yesterday’s event with Ben Marcus and Charles Fernyhough turned this assumption on its head to consider the influence of fiction on science. In his latest novel ‘The Flame Alphabet’ Ben Marcus makes concrete the power of language to hurt us; children’s language has become toxic to adults who struggle to find an antidote. It’s a metaphor for the inevitable separation between parents and their children, as well as the gap between speech and thought. Charles Fernyhough is an academic psychologist and author who has written both non-fiction as well as fiction. His most recent book ‘Pieces of Light’ is an exploration of the science of memory and his forthcoming novel ‘A Box of Birds’ tests a neuroscientist’s view that her sense of self is only an illusion.

Both speakers talked about the capacity of fiction to put science under the microscope – Charles Fernyhough stated that if neuroscience’s recent theories of how we think and remember aren’t convincing in fictional settings then it should be neuroscience that is found wanting. Ben Marcus views fiction as a way of telling the truth about the world.  This shouldn’t be particularly startling, after all science relies on thought experiments such as Schrodinger’s Cat – experiments which are undoable in the real world and yet which tell us something about how that world operates. Fiction can be seen as a thought experiment – one where the author sets up the initial conditions and the reader creates the outcome. We all do science, every day, when we interact with the world and try and make sense of it. And scientists are influenced by apparently non-scientific thoughts and ideas. See ‘What Scientists Read’ for a neat little experiment about literary influences on science.

Let the (Forum’s) festivities commence!

August, in Edinburgh, is Festival time.  For four weeks the city is alive as it plays host to the world’s biggest arts event, comprising several festivals spanning a plethora of cultural forms.

For the sixth year in succession, the Genomics Forum will be contributing several threads to this rich artistic tapestry as it once again supports and participates in the Edinburgh International Book Festival – one of the world’s largest and most prestigious literary events.

The Forum is delighted to be involved in the production of three events at this year’s Book Festival that will allow both the public and experts to explore the interaction between science and society. 

Proceedings commence on Monday 13 August, when editor of Wired magazine, Ben Hammersley; author of the forthcoming Biohackers, Dr Alessandro Delfanti; and synthetic aesthetics researcher Dr Jane Calvert, will discuss the innovative advances and political and ethical challenges behind the rise of DIY-bio and citizen science, in the event: DIY-Bio: Empowerment or anarchy?, which will be chaired by Forum Writer-in-Residence Dr Pippa Goldschmidt.

On Saturday 18 August attention turns to how our physical and social environment actually influences the way our genetic inheritance is realised, and the implications this potentially has for social policy, when Dr Nessa Carey, author of The Epigenetics Revolution; Dr Paul Shiels, from Glasgow University’s Institute of Cancer Sciences; and Professor Steve Yearley from the Genomics Forum discuss, with Richard Holloway, the implications of The Epigenetic Evolution.

Forum-produced events conclude on Wednesday 22 August when consideration is given to how fiction – and particularly young people’s literature – represents scientists.  In Scientistsin fiction – creative or crazed geniuses? author Sophie McKenzie, who has written about genetics in her Medusa Project and Blood Ties series, is joined by Dr Alistair Elfick, Director of the Centre for Biomedical Engineering at the University of Edinburgh and Dr David Kirby, Senior Lecturer in Science Communication at the University of Manchester, when they debate whether the way in which authors portray scientists within their work reflects the collective fears and insecurities of society.  

The Genomics Forum’s involvement with this year’s Book Festival is not merely confined to the three engaging and informative events detailed above, however.   Forum Writers-in-Residence Pippa Goldschmidt and Ken MacLeod will also be appearing in their own science-themed events.  Pippa will be hosting a writing workshop on Monday 27 August, entitled Science and Literature: Separated by a Common Language?; and Ken will be a panellist in a session, also taking place on Monday 27 August, that will consider Scary Futuristic Fictions.  Genomics Forum Director, Professor Steve Yearley, will make his second appearance at the Book Festival, again on Monday 27 August, when he chairs a discussion with science writer Lone Frank about the issues explored in her book My Beautiful Genome, in an event entitled Letting the Genome Out of the Bottle.

And as if the above Book Festival interaction were not expansive enough, the Genomics Forum will once again this year be blogging on a number of scientifically, socially and ethically relevant events.  So be sure to check Genotype regularly during August for updates from our blogging team of Christine Knight, Pippa Goldschmidt, and Hazel McHaffie.

This August, the Genomics Forum will certainly be playing its part in making the world’s biggest arts Festival engaging, informative and fun. The Edinburgh International Book Festival takes place at Charlotte Square Gardens, Edinburgh, from 11 to 27 August 2012.

Never mind the biologists, here come the biopunks!

Blog by Morgan Meyer: Genomics Forum Bright Ideas Fellow

 A new, strange breed of people has come to life. They live in major European, US and Asian cities. They provoke dreams and fears, they talk science and politics. Their object of interest is life; and hacking and tinkering with biology is what they do. They come, in fact, in various guises and call themselves “biohackers”, “biopunks”, and “DIY biologists”.

Should we be afraid of them or not? Do they represent a danger or can they empower citizens? These are some of the most common questions asked when biohackers are being discussed.

But there are other questions we can ask, for example: who are these biohackers and biopunks and how many of them are there? Do they have a tangible influence on science, politics and society? Or, if it is too early or too difficult to answer such questions, we can still ask: which visions of science, technology and society do they promote? What do they want to change? Which new institutions, forums, places, activities, objects, do they want to create?

Questions like these are, I think, a way to avoid reducing the discussion about biopunks/hackers to common dichotomies: safety vs. danger, establishment vs. anti-establishment, experts vs. citizens, responsibility vs. anarchy, innovating vs. tinkering, closed vs. open. The danger is to assume that science is all the former, and biopunks/hackers all the latter. Science on the one side of the ring, punks on the other side of the ring.

The story is more complex. Both institutional science and DIY practices also co-evolve, influence, and probably even need one another. But we must dig even deeper than that. Around the notions of garage biology, DIY biology, and biohacking, new and rather open collectives of people, ideas and objects are currently materialising. We might be witnessing the emergence of “citizen biotech-economies” (Meyer, 2012).

In order to do biology in a garage at home or in a hackerspace, hackers and bricoleurs depend on a whole economy of objects, knowledge, networks, and people. They depend on other people, on scientific institutions (even if indirectly), they rely on the sharing of information, on the circulation of tools, on Internet platforms, on emails, on donations, etc. These economies are usually non-market economies: most information and innovations are accessible for free. And, while money is not the key driver for these economies, they give rise to, and provide channels for, new ‘styles’, identities, ethics, and values for doing science.

The infamous album Never Mind the Bollocks, Here’s the Sex Pistols (1977) can actually offer us some food for thought for reflecting about biohackers and biopunks. We could, on the one hand, have long debates about whether that album’s music is actually good or bad, whether its messages are outrageous or creative, disrespectful or liberating.

The fact is: whether we like it or not, Never Mind turned out to be a highly influential album, a milestone in punk and rock music. It changed music. Punks, nowadays, are a recognisable figure in terms of music, fashion, revolts, and anti-establishment attitude. Will biopunks bring about a similar cultural revolution in science and technology? Will biohackers change, and have a tangible influence on, scientific practice, scientific institutions, and technologies?

They might. Or maybe not: “hackers today prefer to be “Anonymous” and collective force, tricksters and jokers rather than typical revolutionaries, with an agenda intentionally left open” writes Denisa Kera (2012).

For those readers interested, and who will be at the 2012 Edinburgh Book Festival, an absolute must is the session that will be dedicated to do-it-yourself biology on August the 13th. Panellists are: Alessandro Delfanti from the University of Milan, who has done his PhD (Delfanti 2010) – and who is about to publish a book – on the subject; Jane Calvert, a researcher from the University of Edinburgh who is very active in examining the field of synthetic biology from a social science perspective; Ben Hammersley, editor of the magazine Wired UK; and Pippa Goldschmidt, a writer, who will chair the session.

References 

Delfanti, A. (2010) Genome Hackers, rebel biology, open source and science ethic, PhD thesis, University of Milan

 Kera, D. (2012) ‘Hackerspaces and DIYbio in Asia: Connecting Science and Community with Open Data, Kits and Protocols’ in Journal of Peer Production, Issue 2

 Meyer, M. (2012) ‘Build your own lab: Do-it-yourself biology and the rise of citizen biotech-economies’ in Journal of Peer Production, Issue 2

Useful links:
Genomics Forum Bright Ideas Fellowships
DIY-Bio: Empowerment or Anarchy?- Genomics Forum event at the Edinburgh International Book Festival

We Want You! (And we promise it won’t hurt a bit)

Blog by Dr. Christine Knight, Genomics Forum Policy Research Fellow

This month I was extremely proud to launch the website for a new project designed to investigate the influence of literature on scientific thought and practice, What Scientists Read. If you’re a scientist, we’d love to hear from you about your reading habits and how these relate to your work. If you’re based in the Scottish Central Belt (Edinburgh, Glasgow or nearby) please consider signing up for a 1-hour interview. But no matter where you are in the world, you can contribute your thoughts and experiences via the online discussion. Please do get involved!

The project got off to a flying (if early!) start with an interview on BBC Radio Scotland in their breakfast programme on Wednesday 9 May. We’ve also been lucky enough to be covered on the New Scientist blog CultureLab, and the twitterati haven’t been silent, either – check us out @whatsciread.

For me personally one of the most exciting parts of the project is the opportunity to collect research data (scientists’ online contributions) at the same time as engaging with the public, scientists and other interested groups. By investing a relatively small amount of money in an online interface like this, we can create a genuinely international community and allow anyone, anywhere to keep up to date with what we’re doing. You can’t beat a traditional research interview for real-time, face-to-face discussion – but in practice any research project can usually only include a small number of interviews; they’re time-consuming to conduct and expensive to transcribe. In What Scientists Read we have the best of both worlds.

My fellow researchers on the project are Dr Sarah Dillon, Lecturer in Contemporary Fiction at the University of St Andrews, and Dr PippaGoldschmidt, the Genomics Forum’s Writer in Residence. Our scientific advisor is Miles Padgett, Professor of Optics at the University of Glasgow. What Scientists Read is funded by the Scottish Crucible, the professional development and leadership programme developed by NESTA for junior academics. Sarah and I were participants in Scottish Crucible 2011… which is how What Scientists Read got started.