Famed M*A*S*H actor Alan Alda recently spoke at UNM’s Health Sciences Center to discuss the purpose of his institute, The Alan Alda Center for Communicating Science at Stony Brook University, which aims to make medical and scientific explanations easier for the public to understand.
The Daily Lobo caught up with Alda after his presentation at the Domenici Center and discussed his plans for the partnership between UNM’s HSC and his own organization.
How did your institute begin? What is its history?
“After my near-death experience in Chile, I thought it would be a good idea to train scientists during their science education to be communicators. I suggested that every time I was at a university, but nobody seemed to be interested. Stony Brook University was the only place that was interested and I had experimented with (using improv to train science educators) and I could see that improv helped scientists communicate better.
When we started the Center for Communicating Science there, we broadened it to include writing. My hope was always that we could help the scientists communicate not just in speaking but in writing, and all the ways we have of communicating, social media, all kinds of things.
But the main drive is to get them to make a connection with the person who is at the other end.”
Has this strategy been put in place anywhere?
“In general, I’ve seen wonderful results from these workshops where we only expose the scientists for a couple of days to these techniques. Ideally it should be over a period of time with ‘booster shots’ later on so that it becomes transformational, but even so we (make) the people much better able to communicate.
If they feel better able to communicate, they feel more interested in communicating with an audience. Some people are very shy when standing up in front of an audience and after they take this training, they’re very comfortable communicating to a crowd.
Interestingly, it’s not just communicating with the public that gets better but communicating with other scientists. Scientists that aren’t in your exact field suddenly can understand you better and collaboration is much easier.
Most of the great things we hope to discover will come from collaborations across disciplines and experienced senior scientists have even told us that they do their work better after this training because they’re able to step back and see the bigger picture.”
Anything else you would like to say?
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“I hope as many people as possible can participate in these workshops because it’s an extraordinary experience and everybody has fun. That’s the amazing thing, it’s not a drag and you get better and you have fun. So it’s a good combo."
