Transcript Diapositiva 1

La comunicazione
scientifica e il progetto
Agorà Scienza
Enrico Predazzi
INRIM – 9 maggio 2013
LAYOUT OF THE TALK
 A brief overview of the relations sciencesociety: from the past to present days
 The traditional missions of the University
 The third mission of the Academic System
(Universities and modern Research Centres)
 A unique case in Italy: the Interuniversity
center Agorà Scienza
 Choice selection of the past activities of
Agorà Scienza
 The case of Active Science
 From Active Science to Active Research: QM
as a possible example
I. THE RELATIONS BETWEEN SCIENCE AND
SOCIETY: FROM THE PAST TO RECENT TIMES.
Science has been largely
ignored by Society until very
recently and Society has been
almost totally ignored by
Science until even more
recently (Lucretius’ scholar
watching people in the plane
from his ivory tower…).
Most everybody would
set the new trend at
the influential 1959
Rede lecture The Two
Cultures by the British
physicist and novelist
Charles Percy Snow.
There are, however, many earlier instances in
which science was brought to the public.
Somebody attributes to Plato the notion that
“more science is better” but already in the
nineteenth century many distinguished men of
science wrote regularly in the daily Press.
The public lectures of some of them remain
famous to our day; Davy’s ones, for example,
are still remembered today as sparkling and
(literally) explosive events by the cultured
Londoner society.
John Haldane in the preface to “Science
and everyday life” in 1939 wrote:
I ‘am convinced that it is the
duty of those scientists who have
a gift for writing to make their
subject
intelligible
to
the
ordinary man and woman.
Without
a
much
broader
knowledge
of
science,
democracy cannot be effective
in an age when science affects
all our lives continually.
Remark the date, 1939 when WWII was about to
explode. In those times the Fascist Party Agenzia
Stefani in Italy was issuing the order to the Italian
press to “Ignore Einstein” on the day of his birthday…
II. FROM TWO TO THREE MISSIONS
OF UNIVERSITIES AND RESEARCH CENTERS
Until the first scientific revolution (essentially,
Galileo) the traditional role of the University was
the formation of the ruling class generation after
generation, physicians, theologians, lawyers,
notaries etc. Basically, this covered two thirds of
the second millennium.
Galileo’s appearance shattered this simple
minded world and; after him, the University’s
role became twofold:
1)Education (formation and higher teaching)
2) Research
The legacy that resulted is known today as the
“scientific method”
Research provides the life blood to
formation and higher education. Higher
education, in turn, provides the turnover
which makes sure that research is
continuously
renovated
with
fresh,
innovative, vital blood.
This cycle has proved
perfectly adequate for
over three centuries i.e.,
not accidentally, until
the start of the second
scientific revolution of
modern times.
Needless to stress that
the same considerations
apply to the modern
Research Centers
III. THE THIRD MISSION OF THE ACADEMY
Things have changed yet very much since
Galileo’s days. A second scientific revolution
has occurred even though we would be hard
put to find a name to whom to attribute it or
an exact moment when this has occurred.
Slowly but steadily, science has
become
all
pervasive
and
commanding. Everything around
us is dictated now by Science
Thanks to Science, in slightly over
a Century the world population
has increased sevenfold and the
span of the human life has nearly
doubled.
In recent times (post WW2), the progressive
strategic increase of the role of scientific
research in the growth not only cultural but
economic of a modern country and the very
perception of the relevance of this new role has
slowly but steadily led to the awareness that the
two above mentioned missions were no longer
adequate.
More and more often it is felt that a third mission
besides "research" and "formation and higher
teaching" qualifies a modern University and
Research Center.
This process is broadly referred to as
"The third mission of the University”
taken to cover all that goes under the heading of
"Science in Society".
the
Academic
System
(Universities
and
Research
Centers must provide a bridge
between science and the entity
which commissions research,
Society .
Differently stated, it is now more and more widely
recognized that the Academy should not just equip
the young with the necessary knowledge and knowhow to teach and make research but make them
aware of the necessary ties between science and
society.
Differently stated:
The scientist must learn to dialogue with
the layman
and, most important,
the third mission should not be viewed as
subordinate but complementary to the other
two.
In this endeavour, the major burden rests on the
scientist who was trained to speak to his peers not
to the general public which is very much harder.
Not trivial to bridge the gap
between Science and Society:
Most people believe that
science provides answers to all
questions and that they hold
forever as inscribed in the
marble.
Science, on the contrary, not only does
not necessarily have a clear-cut answer
most of the times, but this answer is
continually subjected to revision.
Indeed, the main role of science is first of
all that of raising continuous questions, of
questioning
every
conclusion
and
continuously revise the solutions.
In this sense, we see Galileo correct
Aristotle, Newton revise Galileo, Einstein
replace the “instantaneous” Newtonian
mechanics and so on and so forth in an
endless improvement which, presumably
will never end but we see it also searching
and proving itself continuously and, as the
case may be, correct itself.
A word of caution is in order; there doesn’t
seem to exist a unique definition for the Third
mission of the University. Its interpretation
spans over a considerable variety of issues.
Broadly speaking, we can acknowledge actions
covering human resources, intellectual property,
spin offs, contracts with industry, contract with
public bodies, participation into policy making,
involvement into social and cultural life, public
understanding of science.
The HEFCE (Higher Education Funding Council
for England) [PACEC 2009] gives the following
list: providing informal advice on a noncommercial basis, giving public lectures for the
community, provision of community-based
performance arts, provision of communitybased sports, provision of public exhibitions,
involvement with schools projects;
here, we will summarize into a far too simple
slogan: Science and Society relations.
IV. A UNIQUE CASE IN
PROJECT AGORA’ SCIENZA
ITALY:
THE
Italy is not the best example of a country to
promote science on the international panorama
at least as far as public activities are concerned.
Probably the best pedagogical activity is the one
which is known as the Scientific Degrees Project
www.progettolaureescientifiche.it
which I launched almost ten years ago but is still
operative.
The number of Institutions in the country (public
and private) devoted to outreach and to spread
the scientific culture at all levels, on the other
hand, adds up, probably, to several thousand.
A recent count listed around 350 centers of
activity in Piedmont alone (less than 1/10 of
Italy population-wise).
Many are the countries in which the relation
between Science and Society have become a
new endeavour in recent times. Let us just
mention some of them: Sweden, Denmark,
Finland, the UK, the USA, Belgium etc. etc.
In some country (Sweden, for instance),
these activities have been institutionalized .
There are many reasons why Italy has
remained largely absent from the process of
moderniztion in science and technology but
mostly they are related to the tradition of
the country and of its ruling class.
Italy’s state expenditure are just around 1% of its
GDP. Italy runs 34th out of 36 OECD countries for the
number of Academic degrees in the range 25-34
years, and runs 31st out of 34 for the GDP
investment.
On the other hand, the researchers in Italy are
about 100.000, in Europe they number over
1.500.000 units (like in the USA and in China). In
2007 the world estimate was 7.2 millions or slightly
over 1/1000 of the world population. In spite of the
poor background, Italy’s researchers score pretty
high on the world rating (8th according to some
agencies).
Ample space for improvement indeed.
As a unique example of this kind of best practices,
let me discuss the case of Agorà Scienza.
AGORÀ SCIENZA: A UNIQUE CASE IN ITALY
Agorà Scienza was established in 2006 as a
Centre of the University of Torino and became an
Inter-university Centre in 2009. All Piedmontese
Universities are today partners of the Centre:
(see www.agorascienza.it for more details).
In the Greek society (polis), the agorà was the meeting
place, the crossroad where culture and professions met. This
picture suggested the name Agorà Scienza, a Centre open to
multidisciplinary, international studies, to debates, to
innovation and to promote scientific literacy and citizenship.
Agorà Scienza is a virtual meeting point
inside the universities open to society:
 To communicate & disseminate scientific
culture
 To bridge the gap between science and
society
 To teach researchers communication skills
 To innovate science teaching
 To develop research on Science & Society
 To promote scientific citizenship
The Centre vision is to promote the Third
Mission of the University or, specifically:
INNOVATION AND CREATIVITY: Developing and
testing new tools and languages for science
communication in schools, among researchers
etc.
KNOWLEDGE SHARING: Involving citizens and
researchers in public debates about sciencerelated issues.
NETWORKING & INTERNATIONALIZATION: Participating
to international networks and projects, and encouraging
joint actions for the dissemination of the scientific
culture.
The Centre is active in four main areas:
 Research
 Training
 School
 Communication
We will now highlight the main project(s) of
each area and then go a little deeper into
the most relevant one: Active Science.
Warning: Lot more activities have been carried out by Agorà
Scienza during its 7 years of existence: cycles of conferences,
thematic workshops, regional surveys, nationwide days of
cultural activities, participation to Science weeks, Science days,
Science Festivals, Museums activities etc. For space reasons we
shall confine our attention in what follows on very few of them.
RESEARCH
The Italian researchers & Society
Aside from minor scale activities, Agorà Scienza
has recently embarked into a vast survey of what
selected Italian communities of scientists think of
the relationship between science and society and
what they do about it.
Many surveys and studies exist on what the
citizens in a country think on this issue, very few
examples exist on the symmetrical questions of
what the scientists think (starting from physics).
This is the first large scale study of this kind in
Italy.
Another important research contribution of
Agorà Scienza has been a study about
Come cambia la comunicazione della scienza.
Nuovi media e terza missione dell’Università
(How the communication of science changes.
New media and the third mission of the
university.)
which has just appeared (December 2012) as a
book (in Italian) published by Il Mulino under the
supervision of Andrea De Bortoli and Sergio
Scamuzzi.
TRAINING
One of the pillars of Agorà Scienza is that the
problem of communication between science
and society will never be solved unless the new
generations of researchers are trained into
paying the greatest attention to these
problems.
This has led to the School for graduate PhD
students and young researchers called
SCS (Science, Communication, Society)
The themes of the past six editions have been:
SCS2007 Science makes news, science makes opinion
SCS2008 Is science a universal good? Scientific
knowledge as a public good
SCS2009 Science at times of crisis. Challenges of
research and the role of communication
SCS2010 Research and society: communication
effectiveness of a large event
SCS2011 Science for the future. Innovation,
sustainability, uncertainty.
SCS2012 Science, Communication, Society
The forthcoming edition will be September 2013
SCS 2013 Science and Democracy
Check the Agorà Scienza site for updated information
The participants’ subdivision is quite balanced
from both the various Regions of Italy with a
natural relative prevalence from the host
region with (about 40% of the total)
and from basically all scientific areas.
Scienze umane
13%
Scienze economico-sociali
16%
14%
14%
Scienze matematiche,fisiche e naturali
9%
16%
18%
Scienze informatiche,ingegneristiche
Scienze agrarie e ambientali
Scienze biologiche e mediche
altro
Few comments:
The participation to the school has been a
national (and not a regional) affair and has
involved a broad spectrum of scientific areas
implying an obvious very interesting cut of
cross-disciplinarity.
The assessment of the school from the
participants has been quite successful.
It is our contention that similar experiments
could be attempted on a supernational basis by
the European Commission.
COMMUNICATION
Communicating science plays a key role in
determining cultural development in the
knowledge society and in engaging citizens in
the political decision-making process.
Agorà Scienza has been among the promoters
and organisers of the 2010 edition of ESOF in
Turin (www.topesof2010.org).
Agorà Scienza currently coordinates also the
“Researchers’ Night” in Piedmont and has
organized the cycle “The Century of Science”
on the 150th Anniversary of the unification of
the country
We shall confine ourselves to a brief coverage
of these events
BUT Agorà Scienza has been so far involved
in a series of events like: The University: a
bridge between Science and Society (a
workshop held at the opening of the activities
of the Centre), Communicating Physics (a
biennial event organized by the Italian physics
community), FEST (an event of Science games
and conferences organized by the SISSA school
in Trieste), PCST (recently held in Florence),
the Journées Hubert Curien (held in Nancy in
September 2012) and many more.
The Century of Science
http://www.agorascienza.it/en/communication/secoloscienza
Organized
jointly
with
the
Academy of Sciences of Torino, this
has been a series of very high level
series of ten lectures for the
cultivated public held on the
occasion of the 150th Anniversary of
the Unity of Italy in the spring
2011.
These lectures have been amply
advertised and have been followed
by a large and qualified public.
ESOF2010
This is the largest single event
organized by Agorà Scienza jointly
with the Compagnia di San Paolo
and Centroscienza
(see www.topesof2010.org)
within the series of the biennial
ESOF events (Euro Science Open
Forum) organized since 2004 by
the
European
organization
Euroscience
Held in July 2010 under the slogan Passion for
Science, ESOF 2010 attracted to Torino around
5000 scientists and science lovers (over half of
them females and over half of them “young” i.e.
below 35 years old) from close to 80 countries.
Over 300 conferences, sessions and
meetings with more than 700 speakers,
over 75.000 visitors to the outreach program
over 25.000 “virtual” visitors thank to the
webesof program that allowed all
conferences in streaming (available at
www.topesof2010.org).
The European Researcher’s Night
Promoted and funded by the EU within the
7th PF, the European Researcher’s Night is a
clever innovation which dates back to 2006
is, usually, held the last Friday of the month
of September;
Agorà Scienza has taken part in it since the
beginning but, in particular, has organized
the last two editions and is organizing the
present one.
For details, see
http://www.nottedeiricercatori.it/piemonte
Since its first edition in 2006, the European
Researcher’s Night in Piedmont has increased
substantially:
the number of cities involved (from 4 to 8),
i) the number of activities (from about 40
altogether to over 100),
ii) the number of researcher’s involved (from
about 100 to over 500) and, most of all
iii) the number of participants (from about
5.000 to around 15.000);
iv) the commitment of the local Institutions
has remained quite substantial.
Let us just list for the 2012 edition:
The locations: Alessandria, Asti, Biella, Cuneo,
Novara, Torino, Verbania, Vercelli.
The venues in Torino - Piazza Castello, various
Museums (Regional Museum of Natural Sciences,
Università di Torino Museums, Children Museum,
Planetario, etc.), Officine Grandi Riparazioni,
restaurant in city centre)
The main type of activities: games, meetings and
conferences, exhibitions, laboratories and interactive
experiences, theatre and plays, talk-show, live musical
performances, debates and informal exchange with
researchers, audio and video broadcast and
 Organisation of interactive activities and games
 “Rally of science” for 90 children
 Organisation of entertainment activities on the
stage
 Show “The Magic of Chemistry”
 Scientific thalk-show
 Organisation of “Caffè Scienza” event and
selection of speakers (20 Science Coffees)
 Organisation of “Pizza with the Prof” event and
special activities: 48 participants
 Hundreds of participants to the Researchers’ Tram
The 2012 Night ranked
second in Italy (out of 8
italian participants).
This led the EC to grant
Torino and Piedmont the
right to organize The
Researcher’s Night for
the eighth consecutive
year!
Stay tuned: the organization of the
2013 Night is in full swing (thanks,
once again, to the direct efforts of
Andrea De Bortoli) under the heading
Faces to acknowledge the vital role of
the researchers
Check the site www.agorascienza.it to
keep updated on the developments of
the 2013 edition of THE RESEARCHER’S
NIGHT
SCHOOL
Probably the largest effort of Agorà
Scienza has been devoted to fostering
innovative pedagogical projects in science
for (high school) students and teachers and
in promoting the interaction between the
school and the research world.
Aside from conferences, cycles of talks
and nationwide days of specific activities
(Stem Cells, Nanotechnologies) the main
endeavors have been: Active Science and
The Scientific Summer Academy which
we will now briefly review.
The case of
Academy (SSA)
the
Scientific
Summer
A very elitist action involving small groups
(about 50 units) of highly selected high
school students whose application must be
certified by their teachers.
The selection is rigorously confined to the
combined grades of the last two years.
Usually only one student (the best) is
selected per class (often per school given
the large number of applications).
The SSA begins immediately at the end of
regular classes and lasts one entire week (in
2013 will begin on June the 17).
High level and qualified young
researchers provide master classes in
the morning (one per day from Monday
to Friday included) on the research
they and their groups are carrying on.
In the afternoon the students are
divided in small groups (maximum 4
units) and are transferred to selected
University labs where the researchers
involve them directly in their
researches.
Thursday afternoon the students, divided in few
groups, elaborate their considerations on their
experience and these are presented Friday
afternoon to the entire class and to the researchers
that have followed them during the week.
Extraordinary is the appreciation-gratification
of the students that has accompanied the three SSA
held so far.
Perhaps the main point of success is the feeling the
students have of being directly part of an
experience that they view as a part of their future.
The SSA is probably the ideal tool to commit the
brightest student to science.
THE CASE OF ACTIVE SCIENCE
www.scienzattiva.eu
Active Science is probably the most engaging
project run by Agorà Scienza and certainly the
one with the highest flexibility and the highest
potential.
It is a project of Public Engagement with
Science dedicated to the school which has
already been awarded two prestigious
international recognitions:
1) a prize by a group of European Universities,
see [email protected]
2) a prize by the European Stencil network
(http://www.stencil-science.eu)
Ac t iv e Sc ien c e
Active Science is by now a widely tested
action since it has arrived to its fourth
complete edition.
It is based on very innovative tools for
science communication and scientific
citizenship since:
1) it relies almost entirely on the use of
the Web and
2) It is founded on the processes of
deliberative democracy.
The major bonuses are:
A) as applied to the school system
1) The use of the web makes the project adaptable
to a large number of students and their teachers;
2) offers the opportunity of a continuous dialogue
among the participants: students, teachers and
researchers. It privileges the role of Universities
as centres of the most advanced scientific
knowledge;
3) explores and uses the methods of deliberative
democracy;
B) Perhaps even more potentially important, as
applied to disseminating research
4) The project is adaptable to a large spectrum of
international research realities (see below)
Original Target
High school students and teachers.
The four editions that have so far
occurred have involved close to
6000 students altogether.
The original local-scale approach
(Piemonte Region) of the first two
editions, has been expanded in
2011 to involve other Italian
regions
(Lombardia,
Emilia
Romagna, Friuli Venezia Giulia,
Sicilia).
In the year 2012-2013, thanks to the sponsorship of the
Italian Ministry of University and Research (MIUR):
the project has been expanded to the entire country
involving 86 classes from 14 Regions, about 70 teachers,
30 experts and a body of around 2000 students from all
over Italy.
More than 200 questions have been posed by the classes to
the experts just in this session.
Objectives
 Increase the scientific offer in the high school
with innovative pedagogical tools
 Use the web for new formative teaching
methods
 Encourage active participation, scientific
citizenship and dialogue with research
 Train teachers to use new methods of
teaching
 Raise the awareness of scientific topics among
young people and promote science
 Also: a handy and flexible tool
Active Science is articulated in five steps
1) The class signs in the project launched by
the school system:
2) Recognition and verification of prior
knowledge: summary of what the students
know about the topic before the project
starts
3) Information and dialogue: group work and
dialogue with our experts to build a
scientific knowledge about the topic chosen
4) Development of future scenarios: group work
and dialogue with experts in order to
hypothesize future scenarios
5) Final live events: deliberation, preparation,
handing of the final document to researchers
and authorities.
Web
The web site www.scienzattiva.eu is the
virtual space where the various steps of the
project develop.
An open space where the students talk,
discuss, generate knowledge and share future
perspectives.
In this framework, the web offers huge
opportunities and tools already tested and
close to the experience of young people.
The web site of Active Science combines the
features of a social network with those of
collaborative work software, all open source.
Topics that have been covered so far







Energy
Air pollution
Climate Change
Water
Stem Cells
Nanosciences
Environment and sustainability (for the coming
year)
A large very useful repository to be continuously
updated and revised which we plan to make
available to the public
Results and evaluation
The deliberative methods of the project have
various effects: learning, awareness, informed
opinion, recommendations.
Its effectiveness, monitored by social scientists,
reflects in the change of opinion from the debate
that develops during the whole process as a proxy
variable for cognitive learning and awareness. A
questionnaire is administered at the beginning
and at the end of the project where the students
indicate their solutions to a number of questions.
This allows one to see for each question how
many of them did change opinion and preference
intensity. The students, after the event, are
asked to self-evaluate the deliberative process on
the basis of a series of statements.
In the four editions so far carried out, this
change has been considerable; all changes
considered (opinion and intensity) it is on
the average between 30% and 48%.
Active Science is innovative because it
stimulates the participation of a large scale
of people through the use of the Web and
promotes creativity and critical thinking of
young people.
It is sustainable because is almost entirely
built on the web through an open source
platform developed specifically. This aspect
makes the design easily and economically
exportable for use by other organizations.
The web allows the involvement of a large
number of participants while maintaining
high the interaction between them.
Active Science is the ideal tool to fulfil
practically the third mission of the university
Even more relevant, Active Science can
easily be adapted to become an action
of Active Research as we will soon
illustrate
FROM ACTIVE SCIENCE TO ACTIVE RESEARCH
The basic idea to extend Active Science is to
promote directly research thanks to the new highly
flexible and performant platform Agorà Scienza is
about to open (May-June 2013)
i) Imagine a network of European Institutions
collaborating on a specific research activity where
part of the endowment is foreseen to go in an
effective dissemination (to make an example,
Quantum Mechanics and its applications);
ii) Imagine that the dissemination proceeds along
the lines described above for Active Science.
How?
The counterpart of the classe are the collaborating
Institutions,
The counterpart of the teachers are the group leaders
within each Institution
The counterpart of the students are the researchers
The counterpart of the experts are those high profile
members of the collaboration particularly learned in
the specific themes selected
The counterpart of the scientific topics are the specific
themes chosen every year by the collaboration itself
In the example of QM, the first two themes chosen for
next year could be, for instance 1) Experimental
verification of QM and 2) Quantum computers (any
other choice could obviously do)
During the year, the collaboration members interact
with the experts (“raise questions”) and the experts
give their answers
Imagine, finally, that in the spring next year, the
collaboration meets (for instance at a Symposium) and
discusses the various steps of the interactions that
have occurred. A paper could then be produced to give
a large band vision of the chosen themes to be dutifully
publicized and made available and internationally
known to all those interested in the subject.
Next year a new set of large interest themes will be
selected.
Needless to say, proper adjustements could
be suggested and made (the project, for
instance does not need to have the time limits
appropriate for the school.
The only really relevant point is that Agorà
Scienza has already available the platform
most appropriate to run the process
CONCLUSION
Agorà Scienza has a big goal for the future:
i) the implementation of the third mission
in Italy and abroad for a better future of
mankind through the dissemination of
science,
ii) the extension and the control of the
scientific culture and
iii) the dialogue between research and
society through the promotion of Science
and Research and the interaction
Science <—> Society.
CONTACTS
Agorà Scienza
via Po 18, 10123 Torino
Phone: +39 0116702738
Fax: +39 0116702746
[email protected]
www.agorascienza.it
THANK YOU FOR YOUR ATTENTION