Biomedicine in museums

I’m not sure if Suzanne Anker‘s “Biota” (Porcelain, rapid prototype figurines, 2011) is fun, imaginative, engaging or plainly irritating (the fluttering movements are not kind to my overstimulated synapses):

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Anyway, it’s an illustration to a talk titled “Fundamentally Human: Contemporary Art and Neuroscience”, which Suzanne Anker is giving at the Suna Kıraç Conferences on Neurodegeneration in Istanbul on 25 June.

In addition to scientific value, neuroscientific images, concepts and theories reflect shifts in perception and expression. In part, brought about by technological intervention, what was once thought to be the stuff of science fiction is now actually real. Fundamentally Human: Contemporary Art and Neuroscience, explores the ways in which state-of-the art technologies are intersecting and augmenting the artist’s imagination in the 21st century. From algorithmic computation, to robotic drawing to rapid-prototype sculpture, high-tech ways and means transform data into aesthetic experience.

More here: http://en.peramuzesi.org.tr and http://www.skconferences.org.

Science Museum in London announces two short-term Visiting Research Fellowships, 2011-2012. The Science Museum very large collection relating to the history of science, technology and medicine.  They welcome proposals for any topic which makes good use of the museum’s collections. The fellowships are available to both established scholars and newly qualified PhDs. The stipend will be £1,600 per month for a maximum of three months, covering travel, accommodation and subsistence and up to £500 will be available for attendance at a conference in connection with the fellowship. The successful candidate’s institution has to accept the stipend to cover the Fellow’s leave of absence. The fellowship shall take place between August 2011 and March 2012. Send CV and a covering letter with a brief explanation of why this research is appropriate for this Fellowship, and the names and addresses of two academic referees + outline of the proposed research, not to exceed two pages of A4, with a timetable for its completion and proposals for the dissemination of the research. Applicants should send a copy of their application to their chosen referees before submission, asking their referees to comment on the professional knowledge of the applicant and the contribution the proposed research would make to scholarship. They should tell their referees to send their references to the email address below by Friday 8th July 2011. As there may not be formal interviews, applicants should ensure that they provide all the information needed to make a decision. The deadline for applications is Friday 1st July 2011; send them to peter.morris@nmsi.ac.uk. No applications will be accepted by mail. They hope to inform the successful candidates by email by 22nd July 2011. More info from Peter Morris at peter.morris@nmsi.ac.uk.

Back in 2006, I wrote a couple of posts (here and here) about the possibility for an emerging DIY biotech movement, concluding that although most science, technology and medicine today originates in ’Empire’, not in ‘Multitude‘, the Multitude nevertheless has the potential to build its own biotech future.

Since then, not only has garage biotech worked up steam, it’s also beginning to receive some institutional recognition. Especially here in 2011: In April, Marcus Wohlsen published Biopunk: Kitchen-Counter Scientists Hack the Software of Life, an overview of the DIY biotech movement, and in May-June DIYbio.org (which started in 2008) has organised conferences in San Fransisco and in London. And next week, Science Gallery in Dublin hosts a 5 day workshop with DIY biotech specialist and “bio-hacker” Cathal Garvey. Wish I could be there!

Apropos the first true Twitter-based medical journal club:

(courtesy: Wellcome images)

Apropos Daniel’s blog post the other day about a not-so-well organised conference at the university here in Copenhagen — I’m afraid badly organised academic meetings are the rule rather than the exception.

The usual conference format — a number of plenaries with 20-40 minutes presentations (with powerpoints) in a theatre, followed by a few minutes of questions from the audience, followed by a 20 minutes coffee break in an ugly lobby, followed by another excruciating plenary — is a cognitive, emotional and social killer, and a major reason why I, for one, rarely attend conferences any more.

The entrenched format is rarely transcended. Even “workshops” and “seminars” are often organised in the same traditional way. Few meeting organisers ask the participants for longer predistributed written presentations; few pay attention to the physical space and routinely seat people in a theatre; few consider using other media than powerpoint; almost no organisers utilise social media as a tool to enhance the meeting; and generally there is a deep unwillingness to experiment with new formats, or just break up the monotonous time pattern. Humanities meetings are hardly better than science meetings; and Scandinavian and Dutch meetings are rarely better than German and American.

For sure, I have attended a few conferences that were memorable exceptions to the usual format. Usually they were small meetings of 15-25 people, but occasionally I’ve attended meetings of 50-75 people that were organised in a way that stimulated interaction and engagement. And I guess most of us have positive experiences that stand out as oases in the usual conference desert.

But few of us take the effort to summarise our experiences publicly. This recent report from a workshop on ‘Personhood and Identity in Medicine’  organised by Elselijn Kingma and MM McCabe at King’s College in March this year, is a rare exception:

In order to facilitate interdisciplinary discussion and engagement, attendance had been limited to a maximum of 30 participants. Following the success of this format in the previous workshop, the day was divided into four topics, each of which was briefly introduced by two participants, one with a predominantly medical and one with a predominantly philosophical background. After these introductions followed 45 minutes of chaired group discussion […].

The aim of facilitating genuine discussion and interaction between people with very different backgrounds was met, and an improvement was noticed in comparison with the previous workshop. Group continuity – which meant many people had experience communicating in this format and knew what to expect – undoubtedly helped, as did explicit instructions to interrupt discussions for clarificatory questions.

It would be great to see more such experiences of good meeting formats published online. I’m looking forward to a blog called “Best practice in conference organisation” or something (maybe there already is one?).

I’ve also discussed with a few colleagues in Denmark and Sweden that we should organise a conference about good conference formats! Let’s get started!

My impression of the first and only Public Communication of Science and Technology (PCST) conference I’ve attended (Malmö in 2008) was quite mixed. The academic quality wasn’t particularly high, there were pretty few theoretically interesting talks, not much surprising stuff, almost no nerds around, no sudden bursts of creativity — and new media were (with few exceptions 🙂 totally absent. The whole thing was smoothly organised but there was an aura of a public and business management hanging over the conference venue. I think these biannual meetings are a major hang-out for science communication managers.

But things can change for the better. And even better if researchers and curators from science, technology and medical museums were to attend (there was almost none in 2008). The next meeting will be held in Firenze in April 2012, and the programme will include themes such as:

• What does quality mean in science communication?
• Evaluating public communication of science
• Art and/in science communication
• Ethics and aesthetics of science communication
• Reflexive challenges: communicating PCST?
• Emerging trends and issues in science communication
• Changing media, changing formats, changing science communication models?
• Public communication of technology: the ‘Cinderella’ of PCST?

In other words, a lot of themes that are central to curators and researchers in museums of science, technology and medicine. Deadline for proposals is 30 September. More here http://www.pcst2012.org.

There has been some noise around the new medical Twitter Journal Club in the last couple of days.

This specific virtual journal club (via #TwitJC) is a Twitter-based chat forum for doctors, medical students and others who are interested in research and clinical practice.

In spite of the recent noise about it, it’s not the first one. I fell over a blog post claiming that the first medical journal club on Twitter (or any specialty) was launched back in 2008. And there has been journal club chat rooms on other platforms, e.g., one through the The Stack Exchange Network and the Science and Society Journal Club organised by the Duke Institute for Genome Sciences & Policy (IGSP). There may have been several others (historians of contemporary social media: please fill in the details!)

In retrospect it’s astonishing that so few have found out to use Twitter as a virtual journal club medium. You miss the tea and cakes, of course (which is part of the charm of the traditional journal club), but on the other hand Twitter very efficiently forces participants to shut up after 140 keystrokes. Not a bad idea at all.

A very special artefact from Medical Museion’s collections in on display in a new exhibition at the Copenhagen Post and Tele Museum, celebrating the centennial of the Danish Association for the Blind.

The insect compund eye looking thing is actually a Braille version of the writing ball patented by Rasmus Malling-Hansen in 1870.

Selling well in Europe (Remington was the favourite typewriting machine in the US), it received prizes at a number of international exhibitions, including the World Exhibitions in Vienna in 1873 and Paris in 1878.

The most famous owner of a Malling-Hansen writing ball was in fact Friedrich Nietzsche, who got one in 1882, but apparently didn’t use it much. (More about the writing ball on the Malling-Hansen Society website.)

Malling-Hansen’s Braille writing ball is part of a collection of more than 4,500 material artefacts (and a number of braille-typed books) associated with the history of blind therapy and training that was acquired by Medical Museion last year when the Danish Museum of Blind History, one of the largest of its kind, was closed down.

One of our conservators, Charlotte Vikkelsø Hansen, has cleaned the writing ball thoroughly before sending it over to our colleagues in the Post and Tele Museum:

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The physical writing ball can be seen here from 8 June until 30 November.

(See also the earlier post about Jan Eric Olséns research project ‘Vision and Touch: A Material History of the World of Blindness’).

The Nordic Research Network for Medical History (in which we play a minor role) is organising a workshop on ‘Categories and Concepts in Health, Medicine and Society’ to take place in Umeå in northern Sweden, 15–17 March 2012 (very chilly place at that time of year, but also a charming academic town with birchs tree all over and lots of sun and snow).

The workshop takes its point of departure in the fact that health and disease concepts and categories are ubiquitious, both in everyday life and in science. The organisers (Per Axelsson, Umeå, and Signild Vallgårda, Copenhagen) want to discuss different types of concepts and categories, the role of categories, and different theoretical approaches to the study of concepts and categories in medicine and health policy. For example, change and continuity in social categories in epidemiological research; comparisons of the uses of race and ethnicity classifications in different countries; inclusion/exclusion of populations; the evolution of new concepts and categories; effects on health policy of categories used; and how categories are shaped and how they shape those categorised. They have invited Eviatar Zerubavel, Department of Sociology, Rutgers University to give a keynote speech.

The network grant will cover accommodation and conference fees (but not travel expenses). So send a <500 words abstract and a short CV to Per Axelsson (per.axelsson@cesam.umu.se) before 15 September. More info from Per Axelsson in Umeå (per.axelsson@cesam.umu.se) or Signild Vallgårda here in Copenhagen (siva@sund.ku.dk).

Many museums struggle with how to integrate Facebook (and other social media) in their collections, exhibitions and physical venues.

Therefore it was interesting to read Benjamin Thompson’s report from a Eureka Live event, ‘Facebook: bad for friendship?’, held at the Wellcome Collection in London, some time ago.

One of the discussion topics was whether you can have too many friends on FB. Spreading yourself ‘too thin’ means you can’t invest as much time into each ‘friend’.

Agree! And, by the way, what does the word ‘friend’ really mean? Frankly I just hate the word ‘friend’ in this context. Facebook is actually more an ‘acquaintancebook’ than a ‘friendbook’. And when people have more than 150-200 ‘friends’ (Dunbar’s number), these aren’t even ‘acquaintances’ anymore, they’re reduced to fans. In fact, institutions, including museums, mainly use FB as a broadcasting platform.

Accordingly, there seems to be a trend that people are purging their Facebook accounts, leaving only close real friends and family, using Twitter instead for the broadcasting of their thoughts. Maybe that’s why our museum recently has put more emphasis on being present on Twitter?

So whereas Facebook is about branding and broadcasting under the disguise of ‘friend-making’, Twitter is a least honest — it’s openly broadcasting, period.