Making Science Fun

By YUAN YUAN

Making Science Fun

By YUAN YUAN

Increasing the general public’s awareness of sci-tech development is now a top priority

On August 22, a young woman holding a board stood at Nanping Street in downtown Kunming, capital of southwest China’s Yunnan Province,and diverted the attention of passersby. It was the writing on the board that made people stop. “I am a carrier of hepatitis B(HBV), which is not transmitted by simple contact. I am here to invite you to have dinner with me.”

This woman’s name is Xiao Jing, and she had been to more than 10 cities around China to invite strangers for dinner since July 3.

“A lot of people are misinformed about HBV and the diseases related to it,” said Xiao, who was found to be a carrier as a sophomore student in college. Due to her diagnosis, she was denied jobs by several companies after graduation last year.

“I don’t know how people get such wrong ideas, but it is unfair,” Xiao said. To confront the ignorance she encountered,Xiao started her “inviting-people-for-dinner”tour around China in July.

Xiao is also a member of an informal philanthropic organization known as the“weeding” group. The group is made up of six HBV carriers who are endeavoring to help people rid themselves of the weeds of discrimination that have grown in their hearts.

China has 93 million people infected with HBV, according to statistics released by the Ministry of Health on July 28.

“It is not only HBV carriers who are discriminated against in China,” said Lei Chuang, an HBV carrier and initiator of the group. “The majority of people in the country have very wrong ideas concerning things like this. I think it is necessary to spread basic knowledge about science and technology.”

Scientific unawareness

From November 2009 to May 2010, a survey on scientific literacy was conducted by the China Association for Science and Technology. The results suggested only three out of every 100 Chinese citizens possess scienti fi c literacy.

“China has made great progress in some key scientific programs, such as manned space fl ight and new energy. But there is still a wide gap when it comes to basic knowledge about science and technology,” said Ren Fujun, Director of the China Research Institute for Science Popularization.

According to Ren, the popularization of science remains a dif fi cult task given the fact a large educational disparity exists among various groups of people, such as urban and rural residents.

Li Daguang, Director of the Science Communication Center at the Chinese Academy of Sciences, attributes the gap to a lack of science courses in school and limited means of accessing a rigorous science-based education.

“People receive scientific information from TV, films, the Internet, newspapers,magazines and books. The level of scienti fi c literacy therefore greatly depends on sciencerelated information from the media, while the number of such programs actually in the media is quite limited,” Li said.

The Chinese Government has made promoting scienti fi c literacy one of its main tasks. The goal is to have 5 percent of the population attaining a basic understanding of science and technology by the end of 2015. According to a government plan, more science education centers and science and technology museums will be built to ensure that every city with a population of 1 million or more has at least one such museum.

According to the China Association for Science and Technology, as of February 2011, China had a total of 273 science and technology museums. However, the majority of these museums, in terms of their number,size, and facilities, are far below international standards.

Cheng Zhongyan, Editor in Chief ofScience Pictorial, China’s oldest periodical promoting sci-tech knowledge, has his own explanation for the public’s disinterest in science and technology.

“In the late 1970s and the 1980s, the government supported and assisted scienti fi c research and development that boosted the public scienti fi c literacy. There was a strong social interest in accruing scientific knowledge,” Cheng said.

In the 1980s, the circulation ofScience Pictorial, which was fi rst published in 1933,reached its peak, with around 1.4 million copies being distributed every month. It became a “must-read” for those studying science and was part of the lives of many Chinese. But since the 1990s, the magazine’s sales have decreased sharply to under 60,000. In many newsstands in big cities, it is no longer even on display.

WOW!: A pupil marvels at a robot at the National Week of Science and Technology in Bejing on May 14

Cheng said a major reason for this is many people now read books for specific purposes. “For instance, many parents only encourage their children to read textbooks and reference materials, because these books help them get higher scores in exams. This situation greatly influences the market for science books,” Cheng said.

“Besides, many scientists and scholars do not know how to make science popular and understandable with easy words.Chinese academics often tend to have the ridiculous opinion the more difficult an article is to understand, the more academically valuable it is. Even adults cannot understand their works, not to mention children.”

The focus on narrow educational outcomes like tests and the poor quality of science writing has had an adverse impact on the dissemination of scientific knowledge in China. But with a new generation of dedicated science writers and the advent of the Internet, tablet computers and e-readers,China still has every chance of realizing the scienti fi c literacy goals outlined in the government’s plan.

Squirrels’ efforts

In March 2011, waves of misinformation and panic swept through China after news of radioactive leaks at Japan’s tsunami-hit Fukushima nuclear power plant was released.Rumors warning of plumes of radioactive vapor fl oating across the Sea of Japan did the rounds. Shoppers cleared shelves of iodized salt, believing it would protect them against exposure to radiation.

ENJOY SCIENCE: Primary school students do experiments with the instruction of college students in Hohhot, Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region on August 3

RIGHT DEFENDER: Xiao Jing (center), a carrier of hepatitis B,invites people to have dinner together at Nanping Street in Kunming, Yunnan Province, on August 22

“You should take 99.4 mg of iodine within 24 hours to alleviate the effects of radiation.Each 1 kg of salt contains a maximum of 30 mg of iodine, which means you have to take about 3.3 kg salt every day. This is obviously impossible,” cautioned a post on Sina Weibo,a twitter-like micro-blogging service in China,which tried to calm the panic.

The post came from the Science Squirrels Club, a group founded in April 2008 by Ji Xiaohua, who is better known by his pen name Ji Shisan, with the purpose of spreading information on science and technology in a more interesting and accessible way.

Having graduated from the Shanghaibased Fudan University in 2007 with a doctoral degree in neurobiology, Ji became a freelance science writer instead of staying in school or labs as a researcher, as many Ph.D.students do. He wrote science columns for more than 10 media outlets at a time.

“I fl ed campus because I didn’t like the research environment. Science is great and cool when we are enjoying the comforts we get from new technology. But working in a lab is very boring. Some people find the monotony comforting, but I want to do something more interesting with my life,”Ji said.

In 2008, Ji moved from Shanghai to Beijing and started a blog together with 10 people with similar interests. “I called upon a group of young science writers. They were very talented and fully aware of the advantages of the website. They all maintain a good reputation in the media and on the Internet, and many have had a significant in fl uence on their followers,” Ji said.

The blog was listed as one of the winners of the Best of Global Chinese Blogs in 2008.The citation said, “They (the authors) write on everything from roses to spaceships, covering almost all the themes in science, and the authors always make topics interesting and academically correct.”

As the blog grew more popular, Ji and his co-founders decided to set up an online science club, which they named the Science Squirrels Club.

“Let science be popular, this is my dream. I want science to become something like music, fi lm and sports, getting out of the ivory tower and walking into our daily life,turning into a common topic at the dinner table and in travel,” Ji said.

The logo of the club is a squirrel eating a pinecone with its tail forming a question mark. The co-founders view the pinecone as representative of science: delicious on the inside, but a hard nut to crack.

The club’s first book was published shortly after it was founded. TitledWhen Colorful Voice Tastes Sweet, it consists of 54 popular science articles collected from thousands of submissions by the Science Squirrel Club members over the past three years.

“To show the beauty of science with beautiful words is the main purpose of the club,” Ji said.

At the end of 2010, Ji launched a website, Guokr.com, with the same purpose.“Guokr.com in Chinese means nutshell.Our purpose is to crack the nutshell and offer the tasty fruits of science to more people.”

The club and the website have gained popularity among young people in big cities such as Shanghai and Beijing. “They often hold some lectures or activities on weekends and holidays which are very interesting and I enjoy science much more,” said Yang Minmo, a journalism major from the Renmin University of China in Beijing. “Before encountering the club, I wasn’t a fan of science and technology. I thought they were boring and too complicated.”

However, a netizen self-proclaimed Mondora wasn’t so convinced by the club’s efforts. On Douban.com, a website popular among young people, Mondora posted a message saying, “I really dislike the Science Squirrels Club and Guokr.com.” More than 100 people have expressed similar opinions.

“I still can’t understand a lot of their articles. The articles are still full of technical jargon and I think some of the writers can’t even write basic articles,” wrote a netizen,Monkeywii.

“Of course we have some problems,” Ji said. “The fi nancial pressure is mounting and the biggest problem is a shortage of writers.There is no money to hire more and volunteers are leaving.”

“It makes you desperate when you dream big but nobody is around to help. But the Science Squirrels Club is a long-term project, and we are still on the right path,” Ji said. “After all, science is all about the possibilities.”