Biomedicine on Display

When a new museum is established, it is formed both by ideas of what the role of the medical history museum in society is, and by the context out of which that specific museum comes. The challenge of building new museums was approached from three very different angles at the Copenhagen conference in September.

Kerstin Hulter Åsberg shared her vision of exhibiting the contemporary part of the history of medical sciences in the research centers where it happened and is happening. As it is the researchers and students who are at the same time the audience for the historical exhibitions and the makers of the future of medical science, they should be involved in the making of the museum from the very beginning. Read Kerstin’s full abstract here.

Wendy Atkinson expressed that for her the mission of the new health museum in Lyon she is working on is to demystify the technical side of medicine and focus on the contact between people through aspects of care and healing. Read Wendy’s full abstract here.

Robert Martensen addressed the issue of how to chose what to collect from the enormous corpus of stuff produced in the field of contemporary medical science. He suggested that the challenge of making these collected objects aesthetically appealing to an audience of grown-up academics and scientists might often be solved through displaying them in interesting contexts. Read Robert’s full abstract here.

The discussion afterwards included comments from Thomas Söderqvist, Danny Birchall, Judy Chelnik, Karen Ingham and Silvia Casini.

See a list of the abstracts here. Read more about the EAMHMS video clip project here.

At the conference in September, Kim Sawchuk talked about why, in this micro-molecular age, we are still hanging on to the fantasy of travelling inside the anatomical spaces of our own bodies. Kim admits that she herself has become what she calls a ‘biotourist’, a person who visits medical museums in order to experience the sublime and grotesque landscapes of her own body.

Kim pointed out that museums are part of the reproduction of this narrative of fictional travels through the body. She analyzed the fictions offered to the visitor through vectors in terms of their scale; how we are asked to mentally enlarge objects or shrink ourselves in order to understand the different levels of the biology of our bodies, or space; how the visitor’s movement through the exhibition affects her understanding of the things displayed. Read Kim’s full abstract here.

In the discussion afterwards it was said that the notion of the sublime and grotesque and the issue of scale pointed back to a renaissance perspective on the human body. On the other hand there were references to very new exhibitions made just along those lines.

There were comments from Christa Habrich, Robert Bud, Adam Bencard, Claudia Stein, John Durant and Nurin Veis.

See a list of the abstracts here. Read more about the EAMHMS video clip project here.

Roger Cooter and Claudia Stein’s presentation at the conference on “Contemporary medical science and technology as a challenge to museums” in Copenhagen last month was about the politics of knowledge production, with medical museums as a case study.

One of Roger’s arguments was that the museums, by placing their historical objects in new, global contexts, overlook the original local meanings and the conflicts involved. The museum ought instead to face the political implications of the objects and urge the visitors to take a stand.

Claudia made that point that aesthetics is never neutral; as products of political struggles of decision-making, aesthetics should help provoke such the discussion about such struggles among museum visitors.

Read Claudia and Roger’s full abstract here.

The discussion afterwards continued the debate on how aesthetics and politics are linked together. There were comments from Adam Bencard, Anette Stenslund, Silvia Casini, Lucy Lyons, Morten Skydsgaard, Nurin Veis, Max Liljefors and Wendy Atkinson.

See a full list of the abstracts here. Read more about the EAMHMS video clip project here.

“How do we display artifacts which are neither sexy nor beautiful?” asked Yves Thomas in his presentation at last month’s conference in Copenhagen.

His own answer to the question was to bring a human dimension to these objects by adding virtual elements such as interviews with the researchers or video clips of the object in use. Read Yves’ full abstract here.

Nurin Veis addressed much the same issue in her talk, focusing on changing our idea about what is aesthetically pleasing instead of trying to sex-up the object. Considering the physical nature of the visitor’s presence in the museum space, we should use that space in a theatrical way to give a full experience of the objects in a historical and scientific context.

By asking the visitors to use their bodies in ways they don’t usually do in a museum, and by providing the objects with a broader context, we can change the visitor’s views on which objects are boring and which are beautiful. Read Nurin’s full abstract here.

The following discussion included comments from Morten Skydsgaard, Danny Birchall, Kim Sawchuk, Judy Chelnick, Sniff Andersen Nexø, Yin Chung Au, John Durant and Thomas Söderqvist.

See a list of all abstracts from the conference here. Read more about the EAMHMS video clip project here.

Another theme at the “Contemporary medical science and technology as a challenge to museums”-conference was ‘investigating museum visitors’.

Can visitors’ experiences help us make our museums better? Should an exhibition be guided by what the curator is passionate about or by what she thinks the visitor might find interesting? Or should we simply ask visitors to co-curate exhibitions? This was some of the questions that Stella Mason and Alex Tyrrell put forth in their talks.

The short talks (read Stella’s abstract here and Alex’ here) were followed by a discussion about the different kinds of visitors and how there might be more than one voice (i.e. visitor or curator) present in an exhibition. It was pointed out that visitors react to the passion as much as to the knowledge behind an exhibition. But then again what do visitors think of exhibitions curated by people ‘like themselves’. It’s a nice idea, but does it make a nice exhibition?

The discussion (at the end of the video clip) included comments from Danny Birchall, Thomas Söderqvist, Nurin Veis, Yin Chung Au, John Durant, Wendy Atkinson, Adam Bencard and Ken Arnold.

See a list of all abstracts and video clips from the conference here. Read more about the EAMHMS video clip project here.

Martin Robbins of The Lay Scientist has posted this scathing and completely brilliant look at what most science journalism looks like. It is funny because it is true, as they say. Be sure to read the comments as well, some of them are comedy gold.

Writing on a blog about the benefits of blogging might seem a bit superfluous, but here is a nice reminder of the possibilities that the social web can open.

The philosopher Levi Bryant, one of the central figures in Object-Oriented Ontology (OOO), recently wrote this blogpost on chance encounters and why blogging can be a vital tool in generating new spaces for new philosophical movements.

Speculative realism (SR), the new philosophical umbrella which Bryant’s work falls under, is an almost entirely internet-born phenomenon. In the post, Bryant wonders about the randomness of new connections and raises a central issue about why blogging and participating in discussions on the internet can generate new energy:

The internet, and blogosphere in particular, created a common place that allowed these strange entities of SR and OOO to become a little more real, a little more substantial, a little more existent. Through these discussions and the medium that’s allowed these discussions to take place, new lines of thought, new problematics, new questions, and new positions have emerged.

Bryant raises the very real issue that most of the time, the articles we spend most of our time writing generates almost no response at all. Only a handful of people read them and more often than not, they sink to the bottom like stones, serving little purpose aside from filling up ones CV and as statistical evidence to the administrators that something is actually being done. But blogs can help build contacts and networks in a much more immediate way. And open for new opportunities as well.

These [relationships with other researchers on the web] lead to collaborative projects, intellectual growth and enrichment, further articles, opportunities for conference presentations, and so on. Participation in electronic media increases your likelihood of being read and allows you to meet other researchers that you would never otherwise meet. All of this is a way of encouraging readers to participate, to explore ideas even when they end up going nowhere, and to avoid seeing participation here as something secondary to your academic work.

What exactly will come of these new forms of life being generated by the new media is still blurry. But taking ones ideas and research into the public domain and seeing what new connections it sparks is surely worthwhile.

The RSA – the Royal Society for the encouragement of Arts, Manufactures and Commerce – have a wonderful series of animated lectures which are worth checking out. One of them is based on the American writer Daniel Pink’s work on motivation.

The video seems to me to raise a fundamental issue in science communication, namely that the tried and true stick-and-carror-methods (if you eat too much fatty food, you’ll die) often have little effect because they employ the worst forms of motivation.

Today, Ken Arnold is starting his temporary appointment as Visiting Professor in Medical Science Communication and Museology at Medical Museion.

When he is not visiting Medical Museion, Ken Arnold heads the Public Programmes team at the Wellcome Trust, where his role is to creatively direct Wellcome Collection — a very successful public venue in London that seeks to explore the connections between medicine, art and life. It has received very positive press attention throughout the world, attracted over 300,000 visits per year since 2007, and has been nominated for the Museum of the Year and European Museum of the Year awards.

The Wellcome Collection has emerged as the culmination of 15 years of innovative public work at the Trust, where Ken Arnold has run a variety of arts and exhibitions activities, including a gallery at the Science Museum devoted to exploring medicine in context. He also co-ordinated the establishment of the Wellcome Trust’s arts funding initiatives, which support collaborative work between scientists and artists. He was also Chief Curator of the highly successful exhibition Medicine Man: the Forgotten Museum of Henry Wellcome shown at the British Museum in 2003.

Ken Arnold gained a B.A. in Natural Sciences at Cambridge University and a Ph.D. in the history of science from Princeton University, and worked in a variety of museums (national and local) on both sides of the Atlantic, before joining the Wellcome Trust in 1992. He regularly writes and lectures on the culture of museums past and present and on the contemporary relations between the arts and sciences.

Some of his articles in collected volumes are highly original contributions to the problem of how to use art in the presentation of medical science. Other articles have raised the problems of the relation between history of medicine and medical museums in new and fruitful ways. In the monograph Cabinets for the Curious: Looking Back at Early English Museums (2006), Arnold draws on the historical experiences of the classical 16^th and 17^th century curiosity cabinet as a resource for opening up a new field of discourse for contemporary museum innovation. The Collector’s Voice: Critical Readings in the Practice of Collecting (2000) raised new issues about the role of collecting in the history of museums. His academic activities also include supervision and examination of PhD-projects in science communication and museums studies at the University of Leicester, Leeds Metropolitan University, Oxford University and Open University.

We are very happy to get this opportunity for close encounters with Ken Arnold and thereby draw on his long experience in research-based exhibition making. If anyone wants to meet him during his Copenhagen sojourn, please contact him at k.arnold@wellcome.ac.uk.

(image credit: LabforCulture, www.labforculture.org)

It is difficult to believe, but when Gustav Holmberg, Malin Sandström and I organised a session on science communication and social web media at the 10th conference of The International Network on Public Communication of Science and Technology (PCST-10) two years ago, ours was the only session which discussed social web media (especially blogging) in relation to traditional science communication. The rest of the PCST-10 was about traditional paper and ether media; the venue was filled with journalists and media scholars interested in traditional media.

Coming from the social web media world, we wrongy believed that the traditional science communication discourse was in decline. But science journalists is a conservative profession; they still largely believe science communication is about science journalism. For example, even when the Media for Science Forum 2010 starts a blog, it is all about science journalism in traditional media. I had expected a blog about science communication to involve discussions about social web media, but the journalism scenario lingers on.

I just read a short article by Marion Maria Ruisinger (curator of the medical collections at the Friedrich-Alexander-Universität Erlangen-Nürnberg) in the UMAC Journal — and was struck by the fact that she declares, without much ado, that

“three-dimensional objects … have an immense potential for the communication of science”.

I agree, intuitively. I’ve used the same argument in applications for funding. However, it is one thing to claim that this is the case (and intuitively feel it is right), another thing is to give empirical evidence for it and, if it turns out to be the case, to give some reasons for why (I’m one of those modernist oldies who like empirical evidence and rational arguments  :-).

So, is it true? Do we have any substantial empirically based studies that tell us that people understand or engage better with science after having been confronted with material artefacts from museum collections?

And if this is the case — why is it then that artefacts have such an alleged immense potential for the communication of science — in addition to what can be communicated via popular books, magazine articles, newspapers, TV programs, websites, podcasts, Facebook-groups, Flickr-images, blogs, etc.?

We have just started a search for 1-2 positions at the level of Associate Professor (alternatively Assistant Professor).

As readers of this blog probably knows, Medical Museion is an integrated research and museum unit for promoting medical science communication based on the material and visual medical heritage. The research profile is centered around the contemporary history of the biomedical sciences, medical science communication studies, and studies of the production of the material and visual medical scientific heritage. We have a world-class collection of historical medical artefacts and images, an active program for the acquisitioning and preservation of the contemporary biomedical and biotechnological heritage, a permanent medical-historical public gallery, and an innovative temporary exhibition program.

We are looking for two new members of faculty to contribute to our integrated research, teaching, heritage and outreach programme focussing on late 20th century and contemporary medical and health sciences in a cultural, aesthetic and historical perspective. The aim of the programme is to develop new modes of research-based collecting, exhibition making and web-based outreach by combining scientific content, cultural interpretation and aesthetic expression in innovative ways.

On the outreach side, we are developing research-based science communication practices for a variety of audiences – spanning from health professionals to the general public – in the form of exhibitions and web products, and with special attention to the aesthetics of science communication.

On the acquisition side, we are in the process of developing research-based curatorial practices (heritage production) in close cooperation with research institutions, hospitals, pharma, biotech and medical device companies, and patient organisations in the region (‘museum 2.0’) .

The appointees are required to do research at an international level and research-based teaching, however most of teaching obligations are substituted with museum work.

Read the official full job description below.
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Just saw the early spring Monday seminar program at UCL’s STS department. I like the nice British analytical touch to it. Much more interesting than the usual fashionable Latouresque ANTsemiotics and other STS’ese sociolects. For example:

• Jeremy Howick, ‘When can we trust the experts? Defending the Evidence Based Medicine stance’, 25 January
• David Healy, ‘They used to call it Medicine’, 1 February
• Sam Schweber, ‘Writing the Biography of Hans Bethe’, 8 February
• Jane Gregory, ‘Producing the post-Fordist public, or: What is Science Communication for in a post-industrial society?’, 22 February
• Helena Sheehan, ‘What (if anything) has Marxism to contribute to science studies?’, 8 March
• Jeff Hughes, ‘Before the bomb: on writing the history of unclear physics’, 22 March

Wish I were in London more often, would love to discuss production of a post-Fordic public or hear Jeff unfold his ideas about ’unclear physics’ (no typo, it’s an intended joke, says Jon Agar, who sent the programme around).

People interested in medical science communication in museums are well advised to broaden their vision to other domains of science communication studies and practices. There is much to be learned from science communication studies dealing with a wide array of sciences through a variety of media.

One forum for such learning from others is the series of annual ‘Science and the Public’ conferences in UK. These meetings aim to bring together, as the organisers put it, “the various strands of academia which consider science’s relationships with groups generally called ‘the public’”  (I must admit that I love that phrasing, “groups generally called’ the public’”, it sounds so academically keep-a-distance-ish :-).

I participated (and presented) at the meeting in Manchester in 2008 — a very positive experience; very informal atmosphere and high quality presentations; good scholarly karma.

Next year’s meeting is going to be held at Imperial College in London, 3-4 July 2010. Alice Bell and her organiser-colleagues are expecting participants and contributions from a wide range of disciplines, like science and technology studies, history of science, geography, psychology, cultural studies, media studies, sociology, development studies, English literature, science policy studies and much more. And the range of topics covered may include (but are not limited to):

* PUS, PEST, PR.
* Surveying public knowledge and attitudes.
* Science and the arts (including science fiction).
* Science, publics and personal identity.
* The role of industry and/ or the third sector in public engagement
and scientific research.
* The challenges of ‘upstream’ engagement.
* Popular science and professionalization.
* Specific public-science issues: e.g. climate change, MMR, energy policy, GMOs.
* Studies of specific media: e.g. film, books, the internet, museums, radio.
* Science, religion and the ‘New Atheism’.
* Politically engaged scientists.
* Churnalism vs. investigative science journalism.
* Edu-tainment.
* Scientific advisers, spin and secrecy.
* Patients and publics in health services.
* Science and the sceptics.
* Amateur science.

I guess that would cater for most science communication palates. Send a 300 word abstract to scienceandpublic@googlemail.com by 1 March 2010. You can also send in a panel proposals.

(Thanks to Alice for the info).

I’ve always wondered why bioethics and research ethics are routinely referred to as obligatory passage points in most biomedical and life science PhD programmes — and why science communication is more rarely emphasised in postgraduate training.

Does this emphasis on ethics and the corresponding  lack of attention to science communication reflect a deeply felt need from the side of biomedical and life scientists? No, not necessarily, at least not if we should believe the results of a survey made by the European Molecular Biology Organization (EMBO) about the importance of a variety of useful ‘transferrable skills’.

Of the transferable skills listed in the survey, management and grant application skills are considered the most desirable by senior scientists. But they also value the importance of improving their skills in public communication. Whereas skills in research ethics/bioethics are considered much less important. 

When ~400 senior Europan life scientists were asked which complementary skills they would have liked to receive training in earlier in their career, 37% and 33% mentioned public communication and peer-to-peer communication, whereas only 17% and 11% mentioned research ethics and bioethics:

When asked which complementary skills they would like to improve, public communication and peer-to-peer communication was chosen by 28% and 13% respectively, while research ethics and bioethics was chosen by 3% and 5% only:

Another interesting angle to this is that senior scientists value the importance of research ethics and peer-to-peer communication skills for research students (in contrast to themselves) very highly (4,4 and 4,2 points on a scale from 5-1), whereas bioethics and public communication skills are valued less important for the students (3,6 and 2,8 on the scale). In other words, senior faculty values more general mind-expanding skills for themselves and wants their students to stick to narrow technical training.

All in all, it seems like science communication skills in the biomedical and life sciences — either public engagement skills for senior faculty and peer-to-peer communication skills for PhD students — ought to be upgraded.

(thanks to David Karlin, Wellcome Trust, for making me aware of the EMBO report on transferrable skills)