Being a Real Scientist

Science without the scientist is a difficult adventure, this is especially true for @RealScientists (photo from UnSplash)

Last week I had the pleasure and privilege of curating the @realscientists account. In case you’re unaware, @realscientists is an account on twitter where the person tweeting rotates each week. The account was started in February 2013, and now has in excess of 82,000 followers.

Upon hearing the news, I found myself excited at the prospect of broadening my reach online, even if only for a short period. Those who have been following me for some time, probably know the broad themes of my online engagement.

While my time would be short looking after @RealScientists, I was excited. I had the potential to use this platform to share ideas about materials science and engineering; equality, diversity, inclusion and accessibility; nuclear power; jet engines; and my day-to-day life as a scientist with a whole new crowd.

I started on the account giddy with the excitement, quickly though I was nervous. The people engaging with the account were clearly different to my usual crowd, and I felt slightly less empowered to be quite so political (the briefing I was given by the mods was massively supportive, but I felt a personal sense of care that I could damage their brand!). This eased as the week progressed, as I got into the habit of how to speak ‘in my RealScientists voice’.

There were times I felt that my tweets were a bit like shouting into the void, with a twitter-sized megaphone. Quickly the audience engagement, be it through ‘likes’ or replies, reminded me that the ideas and stories I was sharing were resonating with others. Excitingly this included both ‘academic scientists’ as well as laypeople. (Photo from unsplash)

In the lead up to me taking over, I shared with a few close confidants that I was going to look after the account. I asked them for advice, as I was uncertain about what I should I discuss. I immediately got back “equality, LGBTQ+, and materials science”. This was empowering — I feared that I should “just talk about the science” — but this would be entirely off-brand for me, talking about the science includes talking about the scientist.

Through out the week, I decided on a few themes. We’d make sure there was some work life balance, some academic stories, and some ‘real time’ engagement with the maelstrom that is twitter at large. This meant I aimed for careful mix of “technical science” balanced with “stories of the scientist”.

If you are interested in what we discussed, I collected the threads together in a “thread of threads”.

In general, the whole experience was positive. It was fun to share, and discuss, a whole range of topics. The feedback I have received has been buoying, which was refreshing given an especially difficult time at work. I’ve also learnt some more science communication skills.

If you are interested in curating @Realscientists or want to find out more, please visit their website: http://realscientists.org/about-realscientists/

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If your are interested in the research group head to: http://expmicromech.com

If you fancy getting in touch, telling me your stories, and helping me understand the world better, you can find me on twitter as @BMatB, or keep up to date with the group’s work via @ExpMicroMech.