Popularization.

In the process of figuring out what is that I want to do for a living, I had in mind for a little while now, some scientific popularization. I don't really know who does that for journals, if the scientists do it themselves and then journals copies on one an other and the same message is transmitted and modified over and over again, or if every media has its own person half scientist/half freelance writer. Who prepares science TV show? I've seen a lot of them for kids, they are simple, sometimes to approximate but never uninteresting. What if I become that person?

I've met yesterday an inspiring guy at a networking reception that does exactly what I just described above. His job in one of the biggest company in the world (no name said) is to simplify the work of clinical researchers in a common language that anyone could understand and the accounting team can judge of the risk they take in supporting that project. The only difference with my dream job is that it requires him to sit on a chair all day long. I'm not sure I can stand that.

Anyway, I think it requires some writing skills that I probably should learn somewhere, even so I've got a lot of essay writing to do in my entire scholarship (in french, in english, about biology or about philosophy). I've always liked that but I may not have the proper style to write and be published in something else than a scientific journal. That said, it doesn't hurt to try.

I know I have in my group of blog-readers people that are scientists and people that definitively are not (if you wonder which category you belong to, just try to imagine what a mitochondria is). This diversity in the audience allows me to judge of how good I do translate a scientific article to a everyone-can-read-it abstract. Let's call it a blog journal club (I think I miss that the most from working in the lab). It's the moment where you can have a cup of coffee (or a beer, depending on the timing), enjoying the baking of that poor person that also did the job of putting together a simple slideshow explaining you that damn article from that damn group full of workaholic post-docs about to scoop you. Anyway, go get a cup of something you like, lay back and read my scientific popularization.

To that purpose, I would be using papers mostly from the journals Nature, Science and Cell, first of all because it's mostly biology and because they don't only do biology. The advantage of using these journals is that they are generalist enough that the articles do not focus on one damn unknown protein without interest, but rather on a whole mechanism (this is good in my case but a little more annoying when you try to submit a work to them and they just emphasize in the rejection letter how great you work is but how little you can figure out the big picture of what's going on). 

I'm not sure I have the right to use their article to publish a different version of their work on my blog or judge their paper. I then won't be using their names, I won't be using protein/gene mane either, I would just explain to you the idea and their results, maybe I'll judge sometimes and I'll certainly try to be creative and picture the whole thing instead of loosing you with complicated terms.

About judging, I found that table on a Facebook wall of one of my friend. It's neat, and it's so true. Left side is what's written in most papers, right side is what you should translate from it. I'll do that translation for you.

(taken from Facebook, original source unknown).

To scientific friends, please submit papers that you think could be worth popularizing (it can also be your paper if you think it's worth it) and to non scientific readers, please ask me process you wish to know about and I'll try my best to explain in a few memorable words.

And last, please tell me how you liked the job done. 

I'm not posting one today because I'm a bit short on time, but I'll do that for next week.

Have a good week-end everyone!