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April 2011

How to use museum collections in teaching history?

By Biomedicine in museums

Of course you can, but few history teachers actually take the opportunity. Museum collections remain a remarkably underutilised resource in academic history teaching. And the history of science, technology and medicine is no exception.

Here at Medical Museion we have occasionally brought material objects into our medical history courses and also into the course we’re giving on medical science and technology studies for medical engineering students. We have plans to do much more, especially when it comes to integrating traditional academic and curatorial perspectives on material objects, and we are very eager to learn about other university museums with more teaching experience than we have.

Therefore, the initiative taken by The Subject Centre for Philosophical and Religious Studies to organise a ‘Using Museum Collections in Teaching History of Science, Technology and Medicine’ workshop on 14 June is much welcomed. The aim is to bring together people teaching history of STM in higher education with staff from major science, technology and medicine museums throughout the UK. The workshop will look at how the study of museum collections can be incorporated into standard taught courses and used for dissertation purposes. Confirmed speakers include Claire Jones (Centre for the History of Medicine, University of Warwick); Jo Booth (National Media Museum); Delphi Tatarus (Thackray Museum); John Beckerson (Manchester Museum of Science and Industry); Tim Procter (National Railway Museum); Alison Watson (Royal Armouries); and Richard Dunn (National Maritime Museum and Subject Centre for PRS)

Attendance is free of charge, but places are limited. Register here, before 1 June.

What is 'biomedicine'?

By Biomedicine in museums

Sometimes I’m asked what ‘biomedicine’ means. It’s rarely medical people that ask, but people from the humanities often do. I use to answer that ‘biomedicine’ is the emerging amalgamation throughout the 20th century of the life sciences and medical research, but I haven’t had an authoritative history of the term to refer to.

Now there is one, however. In a recent article (“Biomedizin‘ in sozial- und kulturwissenschaftlichen Beiträgen: Eine Begriffskarriere zwischen Analyse und Polemik”) in NTM Zeitschrift für Geschichte der Wissenschaften, Technik und Medizin (vol. 18: 497-522), Walter Bruchhausen analyses the trajectory of the term ‘biomedicine’ during the last half century in the social science literature. Not unexpectedly he finds that when the term ‘biomedical’ entered politics and the social sciences, especially medical anthropology, it meant medical research methods derived from biology as opposed to behavioural research or social sciences in general, but also “the complex of Western health care in non-Western countries and the reductionism and alleged Cartesian dualism of its approach – the opposite of traditional, religious, holistic and psychic views and treatment of illness”. The rather late German reception of the term ‘biomedicine’ replaced the older term ‘Schulmedizin’.

It’s behind a paywall, of course (it’s Springer), which reminds me that open access isn’t really an acute issue in highly technical fields, but a major problem for the humanities and social sciences.

Museums use social media mostly for marketing reasons and PR

By Biomedicine in museums

Yes, we knew that:

State-of-the-art: Museums use social media mostly for marketing reasons and PR. In many institutions social media (social networks, sharing platforms, blogs, wikis etc.) is treated as an information tool, not as a dialogue oriented and participatory media tool.

(from here). This is indeed one of the major problems that enthuasiasts of social web media in museums are being confronted with …

Collecting the voices and materials of genomics

By Biomedicine in museums

I haven’t been to an interesting scholarly meeting for a long time — so it was pretty frustrating to realise that two meetings on some of my favourite research and curatorial interests are taking place at the same time.

The first meeting (which I’ve already signed up for as a contributor) is a small workshop on “collecting genomics”, 12-14 May. It’s organised by John Durant at the MIT Museum and Liba Taub at HPS Cambridge and there are only going to be 15-20 people around the table; a perfect setting for in-depth discussions about one of the crucial challenges to science, technology and medical museums in the future: how to document, collect and make sense of one of the most important developments in late 20th century ST&M.

The other meeting is no less interesting, at least for me as a combined biographer and science communication/museum person. On 12-13 May, the Royal Society organises a conference titled ‘Science Voices: Scientists speak about science and themselves’ to “explore the creation and use of a number of projects which bring science and scientists to historians and the public through scientists’ own vibrant personal voices and testimony”. The projects to be discussed include the current project on the history of the Royal Society in the 20th century, the oral history of Natural History Museum project (‘Museum Lives’), and the Oral History of British Science project. Oral history looms large in these three projects — and accordingly the organisers expect discussions about topics like oral history techniques, witness seminars, how to construct coherent intellectual frameworks for interview subject selection and project design, making use of oral history in history and epistemology of science, etc.

The Royal Society meeting (more details here) is important for museum purposes too — after all, I strongly believe that the individual scientific voice (autobiographical or biographical) is one of the best ways to communicate science, also in a museum context. In the best of worlds, somebody would had organised a meeting on ‘Collecting the voices and materials of genomics’, or something like that.

But that’s not the case, so I’ll opt for the genomic collection meeting. Not just because I’ve signed up already, but because it’s a smaller, more intimate and discussion-oriented meeting that aims to brake new ground for museum work. Frankly, oral history is a fairly well-chewed methodology. (But oh, my heart beats for scientists speaking about themselves and others).

Another packed programme for a Universeum meeting — when will they ever learn?

By Biomedicine in museums

The programme for this year’s Universeum meeting (in Padua, 26-29 May) is available here.

Universeum has rapidly become a vital organisation for the revival of European university museums. The annual meetings have an important role to play to raise the awareness among university administrations that their museums are not only worth preserving but, even better, worth expanding.

Last year’s programme in Uppsala was terribly packed, however: one damn 15-20 minutes presentation (including comments) after the other, short and inevitably rushed coffee breaks, etc. Unfortunately this year’s programme seems to suffer from the same illness. When will they ever learn?

But Padua is beautiful in late May and some of the presentation titles, like “To be or not to be a museum”, sound alluring. So, register not later than Friday 15 April.

Forskningsformidling via sociale webmedier forenkler ikke budskabet — tværtimod

By Biomedicine in museums

Her er mit oplæg til seminaret om forskningsformidling, arrangeret af Københavns Universitets Praksisudvalg den 23. marts. Powerpointbillederne ligger her.

Jeg er blevet inviteret til seminaret i dag fordi jeg i slutningen af januar skrev en kritisk blogpost på Museionblog, hvor jeg kommenterede baggrundsmaterialet til seminaret.

Mit formål var at gøre opmærksom på den, i mine øjne, forkerte idé om at formidling nødvendigvis indebærer simplificering (og det er også et af de spørgsmål som Peter Sandøe har bedt os i panelet om at holde os til her i eftermiddag).

I baggrundsmaterialet til mødet så skrev man, at “den diskussion, der føres i medierne, nødvendigvis må være mere enkel end den videnskabelige diskussion, der føres i artikler og på konferencer”, fordi medierne har et krav om “enkle budskaber i one-liner-form”.

Og man skrev også at der ikke er mulighed for “mellemregninger … i det offentlige rum” og at forskningsformidling i medierne derfor indebærer en “nødvendig simplifikation”.

Det var disse påstande jeg reagerede imod. Fordi jeg mente – og mener stadigvæk – at de udtrykker en forståelse af det forskningskommunikative landskab som hurtigt er ved at blive inaktuel.

Der findes godt nok stadigvæk et simplifikationsproblem i forbindelse med forskningsformidling igennem traditionelle trykte og især elektroniske massemedier.

Men fremvæksten af  sociale webmedier er ved at ændre medielandskabet radikalt. Som en af ansøgerne til en webkommunikationsstilling, som vi lige har besat på Medicinsk Museion, sagde: ”der er jo ingen mellem 20 og 35 som læser aviser mere, alle er på webben og især på den sociale web”.

Det var lidt bombastisk udtrykt. Men det er ikke helt forkert. Og én af konsekvenserne af denne forskydning er, mener jeg, at forudsætningerne for hele problemstillingen om den påståede simplificering i forskningsformidling falder væk.

Fordi det er ikke bare unge oprørere i Arabverden som skaber historie ved hjælp af sociale webmedier. Forskere bruger også sociale webmedier i deres daglige forskningskommunikation. Og de gør det altså i hurtigt stigende omfang.

Det er måske ikke en så stor procentdel af forskerverden som bidrager til artikler på Wikipedia. Men det er alligevel så mange der gør det, at der findes artikler inden for stort set alle slags forskningsområder, ikke mindst inden for den naturvidenskabelige, medicinske og tekniske fag. Og vel at mærke, Wikipedia-artiklerne bliver hele tiden løbende opdateret.

Der findes også mange tusinder af forskerblogs, fra helt nørdede fysik- og kemiblogs til brede og populære blogs som blander videnskabelige og politiske diskussioner. Her (PP #7) er en af mine favoriter – kemikeren Derek Lowe, som blogger om drug-discovery og som tit får flere hundrede kommentarer på hver post.

For ikke at tale om alle de yngre forskere som er på Facebook. Vel at mærke ikke bare for at skrive om deres privatliv, men også for at føre intellektuelle diskussioner, give hinanden tips om litteratur, konferenser og seminarer. Nogle af os ældre er også med – som her (#8), hvor kunsteoretikern James Elkins i midten af februar postede sin seneste analyse af begrebet ’færdiggørelse’ på Huffington Post (istedet for at publicere den i en peer-reviewed tidskrift), og som i løbet af få dage gav ophav till 44 mere eller mindre begave kommentarer – både fra kolleger og ’almindelige læsere’.

Detsamme gælder Twitter, som i stigende omfang bruges som en kommentarbaggrund til videnskabelige konferenser og workshops og som, ligesom alle andre sociale webmedier, kan læses af alle og enhver.

Konsekvensen af den her eksplosion i brugen af sociale webmedier er altså, at flere og flere forskere er ved at indse, at man ganske udmærket kan tale om sin forskning med ikke-forskere uden at skulle inddrage massemedier, journalister eller talkshow-værter. Og det medfører også at grænsen mellem peer-to-peer-kommunikation og offentlig formidling er ved at opløses.

Min pointe idag er, at dette får konsekvenser for tesen om at forskningsformidling indebærer en nødvendig simplificering. Den tese gælder altså kun den begrænsede del af det samlede medieunivers som udgøres af traditionelle massemedier.

Med mulig undtagelse af Twitter (i hvert fald hvis man kun ser til den enkelte 140 karakterer lange tweet), så danner de sociale webmedier et mangdimensionelt offentligt rum, som ikke bare tillader, men endda opmunter til diskussion af (som Praksisudvalget udtrykte det i baggrundsmaterialet til mødet i dag) “delikate spørgsmål, der kræver mange mellemregninger”.

Lad mig tage et afsluttende eksempel på det med mellemregninger. Sidste torsdag (#9) publicerede evolutionbiologen Jonathan Eisen (UC Davis) en meget interessant artikel om livets tidlige stadier på jorden sammen med Craig Venter.

For vores diskussionen her i dag er det lige meget hvad den handlede om. Det interessante er, at dagen efter, i fredags, skrev Eisen (#10) en post på sin blog ’The Tree of Life’, hvor han forklarede (i et uteknisk sprog som også jeg kan forstå) hvad artikeln går ud på – med alle mellemregningerne.

Og lørdag morgen kunne jeg (#11) læse en blogpost om sagen skrevet af den flittigt bloggende evolutionsbiolog P. Z. Meyers (Pharyngula), som har hundredetusindevis af læsere – en post som hurtigt gav ophav til 45 aktive kommentarer, 74 tweets og 26 ’likes’ på Facebook.

Nå, men for at sammenfatte, min pointe i dag er altså, at den sociale web – ikke mindst takket være hyperlinkfunktionen – åbner op muligheder for en forskningskommunikation, som slet ikke er underlagt det imperativ om simplificering som traditionelle massemedier er.

Forskningskommunikation på den sociale web fungerer altså ikke som en forsimplingstragt som i massmedier eller på traditionelle webportaler – men som et kommunikationsgenerator, hvor man godt nok kan forenkle tingene, men hvor man – fordi der er så mange aktive aktører involverede – i næste øjeblik kan komplicere diskussionen yderligere og indføre flere og flere mellemregninger.

Så tesen om forskningsformidling som forsimpling holder efter min bedste overbevisning simpelt hen ikke. Det er en forsimplet tese. Og jeg vil påstå, at hvis den tese var blevet lagt ud på Facebook eller Twitter, så ville den være blevet haglet igennem og undergået et kvalificering og komplexificering i den kæmpe generator af mellemregninger som den sociale web er.

Why do STS?

By Biomedicine in museums

Criticisms of bullshit excesses in some parts of the STS community aside, museums of science, tech nology and medicine can learn lots from the ongoing discussion in the STS community.

So why not follow the live feed from the conference STS 20+20 — Science and Technology Studies: The Next Twenty, to be held at Harvard, 7-9 April?

The aim of the meeting is simple: “to provoke thinking and discussion on both the last twenty years of STS development and how we are preparing ourselves for the next twenty”. The organisers are asking questions like:

After two decades of increased public funding for STS, what can we say about our achievements as a “thought collective”?

What have we learned from speaking the truths of our field to the power of established disciplines?

Which areas of work do we recognize as displaying the greatest theoretical depth and creativity?

What do we impart to STS scholars-in-the-making, and what can we do to ensure that their ideas are heard more widely and that they find appropriate academic homes?

Why do STS? What makes it interesting, distinctive, coherent, relevant, and deserving of stronger institutionalization?

I’m not sure I like that exclusive “we”-speak in the way the organisers phrase the questions (it smacks too much of religious congregation announcements) — but that said, it will be interesting to follow the discussions.

If you cannot be there in person, you can always join via the live feed on the meeting’s website, where you can also find the program, participant bios, etc.