Dear all,
feeling encouraged by Andy Boddingtonīs note about "Sweet as you
are", I want to share my experience concerning the adding of scientific
topics to "trivial media formats". Last year, we adapted the subject breast
cancer to one of the most popular german soap operas - we got the
storyboard, the description/biographies of the characters and so on and
integrated the precise facts about breast cancer, diagnostics and therapies
into it - itīs not as easy as it sounds because the format of the soap opera
contained some quite rigid frame conditions in how this episode had to
develop and to end (no death, no total mastectomia, the process had to be
visualised etc.).
Of course we asked oncologists for help and expertise and were
surprised to see that after a short explanation, they really helped us a
lot. So everybody was happy.
But when we told other scientists about these activities (and asked
for future cooperation), they just went off with their noses high up in the
air: "Too trivial for real scientists - and too commercial"
So why is it still such a horrible thing to do for scientists, to
meet people just where they are? "Sweet as you are" seems to be a good
example that it is necessary to integrate Science into every-day life,
stories and situations. Go for broadly known clusters of identification and
put science into it. Trivial media doesnīt mean trivial approaches.
After all, we summerised our experiences, tried to find a systematic
scheme and wrote it up - please feel free to request an english PDF-version
of this concept.
Marc Bovenschulte
Forum fuer Wissenschaft und Technik
(Forum for Science and Technology)
e-mail: [log in to unmask]
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