Last week was spent in Dalian, China, at the World Economic Forums Annual Meeting of New Champions, or ‘summer Davos’ as the AMNC is known. I was nominated by the Wellcome Trust to be one of the 55 Young Scientists nominated from around the globe to participate in the 2017 meeting. To be honest, I had no idea why I was going, or what I was going to do when I got there! Apparently the role of the YS is to bring scientific input to the meeting both formally, by participating in various panels and discussion groups and less formally through attending one of the dizzying program of sessions. Sessions ranged from discussions for groups of 10-20 people, to Ideas Labs, for more like 40 people to sessions in the Arena – a circular venue seating several 100 people. Many sessions were conducted in both English and Mandarin with simultaneous translation. Themes ranged from energy, to neuroscience, to robotics, material sciences, and countless other issues of societal importance. I particularly enjoyed the Ideas labs which were 75 mins long, and featured three 5 minute – extremely slick and polished – talks from scientists interspersed with group discussion in tables of about 10 people focussed on what we liked (on green paper), were worried about (red paper) or wanted to know (yellow paper). While the session evolved, an artist made a massive mind map encompassing the themes. The sessions were moderated by science communicators, NPR correspondents who skilfully led and guided the discussion. Since each table contained a mixture of business men, scientists, entrepreneurs, media, engineers and almost anything else you can imagine it was a great way mix skills, and experiences. Several sessions focussed on the opportunities and risks posed by virtual reality, augmented reality and artificial intelligence across a number of settings from the creative economy to therapy to gaming to brain-computer interfaces. Another key theme both within and beyond the YS community was the issue of trust in scientists – and in experts more generally. Something I’ve been puzzling about lately and which we spent a lot of time discussing is how to reach those who aren’t traditionally reached by science communication and how to solve the conundrum that while scientists are trusted (at least compared to politicians, bankers, estate agents) that doesn’t necessarily mean people change their behaviour on issues like climate change or vaccination. Imran Khan (Wellcome Trust) had a pretty convincing argument that communicating with those that already have a passion for science is equally important - fostering the science loving non-scientists allows them to be our ambassadors. Watch this space for a more official YS line encouraging our generation of scientists to reach out to the public as never before – personally, informally, locally.
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