The Parliamentary and Scientific Committee Annual Lunch 2013 5th November

Fast cars and shmoozing over free food - is that what the VP does? If I'd known, said one of my colleagues, I would have applied.  Joking aside, shmoozing, or as its officially know "networking" is a very important part of this kind of job and as a rule those who did maths or a physics type subject at university aren't naturally good at that sort of thing. Its even harder of course when you need to network in room full of similar types!  I had hoped that lunch on the Parliamentary terrace would mean meeting the movers and shakers of the scientific business world. Instead however, there were the 80 somethings lords and ladies of this that and the other, the chief scientifc officer of course and a few MPs as well as people representing other learned societies but no business chiefs of small start ups or even people comfortable with social media networking.  I like meeting new people but even I had to work hard when I found myself sitting next to one of the VPs from the Mathematical Society.  However, over a plateful of very rare fillet steak and beautifully cooked green beans we bonded over the lack of post-graduate maths opportunities, although I had to change the subject when the conversation drifted to "if only mathematicians ruled the world!"  I was tempted to say wasn't it you guys who got us into the financial mess in the first place but decided that I'd rather enjoy my dessert of lemon syllabub.

Anyway enough about me I thought for this blog I'd leave you with some networking tips and links to some webpages I've found.   

Networking is:

•                Connecting with others

•                Helping and sharing knowledge and contacts with others

•                Deciding to find people genuinely interesting and fascinating

Networking is not:

•                Promoting or selling goods or services

•                Landing a job

•                Extracting a donation

•                Wrangling funding

•                Schmoozing or ingratiating oneself to gain an advantage

Networking is not about who you know - it’s about who knows you! 

http://www.aim.com.au/networking/10tips.html

http://www.top10networkingtips.com

My own one is "just relax" don't think of it as work, think of it as meeting new friends. 

There are no strangers here; Only friends you haven't yet met.

William Butler Yeats

More than just the NHS - expanding the membership

So I went to Mercedes Benz World on Sunday!!  Who knew this rather magical place existed just down the road in the unsuspecting suburb - Weybridge.  http://tinyurl.com/nf6223h

The reason I'm telling you about this is because apart from the absolutely gorgeous cars, there was rather a gem of an exhibition all about the safety features that are built into their cars. I'm a bit embarrased to say that until that moment the car industry was all fuel efficiency and speed to me but in fact there were exhibits from carefully designed air bags to fit around the entire interior of a car to infra red cameras for night time driving.   While I was wandering around, the IPEM mission statement came to mind - yes really ;) - "Our aim is to advance physics and engineering applied to medicine and biology for the public good" and I thought well you definitely have to have a deep understanding of human biology to design these specific safety features. May be we could persuade these engineers that joining the IPEM would be a good idea. However, while I would welcome a link into this quite different application of engineering and physics to human well-being I wasn't at all sure what it would be that the IPEM would be bringing into their world. 

Comments below please :)  - How do you think we should start swelling our membership now that we don't have compulsory trainee joiners?       

My take on the Gareth Roberts Science Policy Lecture 2013 - Professor Onora O'Neill

Gareth Roberts Science Policy Lecture 2013: 

8th October 6pm, The Law Society, Chancery Lane.

Professor Onora O'Neill

Why Science needs Ethics: why science cannot and should not aspire to be value free.

   

http://www.sciencecouncil.org/content/gareth-roberts-science-policy-lecture-2013

It was a pleasure to listen to Prof O’Neill. No slides just a well rehearsed reading of an essay.  I felt more as if I was in a lecture at Cambridge Uni than I did a public seminar -especially at the law society: dead posh - but that is no bad thing. Although the title was "Why science needs ethics" it was less about why science needs ethics but a description of what “norms” do we have in the scientific community and how or from what did they get formed. For more discussion on norms click here http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/418412/normative-ethics

A video of the talk will be posted on the science council website shortly.

I will try and summarise the talk below and highlight a couple of points that the IPEM community might want to consider.

Prof O’Neill reminded us that the adage “science is and should be ‘value free’” is now “old hat”. It is well recognised that the scientific community is governed by standards that could be described as ethical standards and that these standards have arisen from norms not empirical claims.

Norms are essential for an organised society and the scientific community is definitely an organised something; with units of measurement, language, methods, techniques, peer reviewed publication, 

including value norms such as honesty and integrity, and aesthetic norms: simplicity and elegance.

The professor went on to ask the question how then can science influence societal norms rather than societal norms influence the scientific community. She advocated for a more open transparent means for the public to access scientific data and that we had a responsibility – an ethical responsibility – to make sure that our work is intelligible to a lay audience and that we should not run from opposing views, purporting neutrality, but to confront what we consider to be unfounded facts. Think of homeopathy and climate change debates.

But lets face it, as scientists, we don’t particularly like to get into public spats in the media which is where they usually end up. It seems somehow undignified and yet public debates in almost every other field; think the today programme on Radio4 - arts and humanities, is common place and expected.

It was a thought provoking hour: I wanted to ask a question related to how should science react to the challenge of influencing societal norms when research such as that of David Nutt gets shut down by government because it doesn’t fit with current policy i.e. current societal norms. But it came out wrong and I ended up asking how we should react to government dictating what research should be carried out, which seemed to be asking the question about government only providing funding to what they are interested in e.g David Cameron and Dementia.  There wasn’t really an answer to that except that may be scientists should be not only cross-disciplinary in their approach to researching a problem but also cross-disciplinary in their approach to acquiring funding.

The discussion ended on a personally interesting note – almost as an aside to another question – be careful of allowing personally interested Lay people to polarise the debate.  I think this is of pertinent interest right now in the IPEM community. As scientists and engineers in healthcare we are being asked more and more to consider the patients point of view and seeing patients being represented on committees to discuss new healthcare technology (particularly in cancer treatment).  While I advocate whole heartedly that our first duty to healthcare is safety of the patients, carers and staff I think we can all think of instances where a mis-understanding of the science and technology can lead to unnecessary worry and/or in-appropriate decisions. So as a community do we need to step up and do more to educate the public in healthcare technology? And if so, how do we go about doing that with the resources we have?

Let me introduce myself......

Dear IPEM members,

My name is Anna Barnes and I am the new VP for External Relations at the IPEM. My plan is to blog after I've been to meetings so that you can get an idea what it is this VP is supposed to be doing and to allow you a space to comment on some of the issues that come up during meeting discussions. I really want this to become a place to exchange ideas. I also tweet during meetings as well @annibee70.

This first entry covers my attendance at the Dinner and Debate  RAISING THE BAR – CAN LEARNED SOCIETIES AND PROFESSIONAL INSTITUTIONS DO MORE TO CONTRIBUTE TO ECONOMIC GROWTH? 24th September 2013, The royal Society

Courtesy of The foundation for Science and Technology

"a forum for promoting debate between parliament, government, industry and the research community" www.foundation.org

twitter feed #fstinstitutions

Speakers against: Prof. Tim Broyd (VP-ICE), Prof. James Watson (VP-IET), Patrick Kniveton (Pres – IME), posited they were doing enough

Speakers for: Prof John Uff, posited they weren't doing nearly enough.

My opinion

What a lot of silver haired gentlemen in dark suits was my first thought, but actually some of these silver haired gentlemen had some interesting things to say.  The speakers against gave nice summaries of what their institutions were doing, and why it was great to be an engineer, but none of them addressed the question and instead gave the impression that they felt that they were doing enough. However, I have picked out some interesting bits from each of their talks, even if it doesn’t explicitly relate to the debate.

You can download an official summary and slides from here http://www.foundation.org.uk/

Highlights

Tim Broyd, gave us a history lesson, then a list of all the ICE achievements and patted himself on the back, after taking credit for an increased number of engineering undergraduates and students taking physics at A'level: General consensus from the floor was that it was probably more down to Prof Brian Cox and Dara O'Briain! Interestingly, they have taken the responsibility to archive EVERY SINGLE blueprint/set of plans for major UK public works both in the UK and abroad.

James Watson (looks a bit like Alistair Darling), was more of a smooth customer, and delivered a sales pitch of why you should be an engineer and then join the IET.  Lots of buzz words “Actionable intelligence, job-ready training, the professional home for the engineer, knowledge mapping, inspiring, informing and influencing”, but when all was said and done he also patted himself on the back and felt they too were doing enough, even though he admitted that the gender gap was disgraceful. Oh and they have a TV channel!! IET.TV http://iet.tv. One statement caught my eye/ear: “to provide expert decision support to engineers when needed”. That is they provide a mechanism whereby engineers can get in touch with other engineers to gain expert advice. This "connectivity" is something the IPEM should aspire too.

Patrick Kniveton was the most humble of the 3 and admitted that 20 years ago they were an old boys club and had nothing new to offer anyone.  They had a rethink of their strategy and purpose and decided to engage more with their members.  They started by asking their members what they were interested in rather than what they had been doing, which was telling them what they should be interested in. He felt they could offer more training in soft skills and business but already had plans to put that in to practise. While he talked about famous engineers e.g Adrian Newey OBE, Sir Jonathon Ive ....he didn’t admit to whether any of them were members of any learned society though.

Prof John Uff, while a member of both ICE and IET and is now a barrister accused all of them of not addressing the question and then stated they were all irrelevant and that the best way they could contribute to the economy was to hurry up and finish the HS2, sell their prime real estate in SW1 and head for Birmingham!!!  But joking aside I think he did represent the feelings of the audience who felt that in general the professional organisations they were members of, don't do enough for the economy and don't do enough for their members.  In fact during dinner (which was very nice by the way) the existence of some organisations were questioned and we discussed the pros and cons of lots of different smaller professional bodies vs huge ones like the IET with 20,000 members. In fact someone suggested that we should embrace social networking and then if we have Linkedin do we need societies?  Questions also included supporting science education in schools by allowing science teachers to become members and redressing the gender balance, supporting British engineering start-ups, promoting cross-discipline collaborations. This last one is interesting and probably happens more in medicine than anywhere else. For example the society for neuroscience includes medics, psychologists, mathematicians, physicists, engineers, geneticists........ not sure what the equivalent would be in nonmedical fields.  But of course if you think about it these all relate to building a workforce that can contribute to the economy.

In the end I don't think anyone changed their minds. The Professional organisations thought they were doing more than enough and the audience didn't think they were doing nearly enough. It seems that the IPEM are not the only ones who may be need to re-brand their old boys club image and question their relevance to their members as well as society .