Scientists Descending On San Diego Bars Thursday Night To Answer Questions From Regular People

MAUREEN CAVANAUGH: This is KPBS Midday Edition, I am Maureen Cavanaugh. There's nothing like kicking back at your favorite bar after a long day at work, and starting up conversation, with a scientist. That, at least, is the idea behind an event sponsored by the Reuben H Fleet Science Center called ìTwo Scientists Walk into a Bar.î It will take place at twenty-five watering holes tonight. Here to tell us more are our guests, Steve Snyder, Executive Director of the Reuben H Fleet science Center in Balboa Park. Welcome to the program. STEVE SNYDER: Thank you for having me. MAUREEN CAVANAUGH: And one of the scientists on call tonight, organic chemist Doug Phillipson. Doug, welcome. DOUG PHILLIPSON: Thank you, good to be here. MAUREEN CAVANAUGH: Steve, what will the scientists be doing at the bars? STEVE SNYDER: Hanging out, looking to talk to people, looking for conversation, the same thing anybody coming to a bar is looking to do. That is really what it's about, having the scientists all over San Diego. San Diego such a hub for science and technology, we have some he scientists that are a part of the community, it is really getting them out and having them connect with all of the rest of San Diego. MAUREEN CAVANAUGH: How will they be identified? STEVE SNYDER: Well, they will be standing there, each will have a button that says I am a scientist, ask me anything. And they will be standing next to a big sign that says we are scientists, ask us anything. We really mean that, no question is out of bounds. That does not mean it they will be able to answer it, but you can ask the question. MAUREEN CAVANAUGH: Where did this idea come from? STEVE SNYDER: This is based on a program that a staff member of mine did back in Philadelphia. We used to take a group of staff out into a bar and do this set up and start talking to people. We thought we would take it one step figure and start using scientists from the community. We pair them up, people in the bar, ask us anything. We have twenty-five scientists all in San Diego, in one night. MAUREEN CAVANAUGH: The first Two Scientists Walk into a Bar event in San Diego happened in March, how did that go? STEVE SNYDER: It was fantastic. We had a lot of things that we did not expect to see. I jumped from bar to bar, nothing wrong with bar hopping on the job, as it were. I happened to run into people doing the same thing, hopping from bar to bar to talk to different scientists. We look at people who never thought that they would empower a scientist at the bar, it looks kind of surprised and had great conversations. We went in and had seventy-five scientists signed up and we have over 150 now. We have bars calling us, and you send someone out to talk and we have some scientists in the bar, it is great to see San Diego embrace its scientific self. MAUREEN CAVANAUGH: What are some of the things that you saw they did not expect to see the first time around? STEVE SNYDER: People jumping and barhopping looking for different scientists to talk to. They wanted to see which scientist would be where, because they had particular questions. We thought it would just be sort of guerrilla education, out there encountering people, that people who specifically came to look for that. That was surprising and the other pieces how much fun all of the scientists had, because so often we hide quietly. We did tests for this, we had scientists come up to us and say oh, I am a scientist. Don't hide it. Said loud and proud. MAUREEN CAVANAUGH: Doug, you're not in, you took part in the first event and you will be taking part in the event tonight, what kind of reaction did you get from bar patrons? DOUG PHILLIPSON: It was variable. MAUREEN CAVANAUGH: A perfectly scientific response! [ LAUGHTER ] DOUG PHILLIPSON: I am who I am. People wanted to know about what people did in the lab, other people wanted to talk about ethics of science, and since San Diego such a biotech hub, people wanted to know about the drug development process. MAUREEN CAVANAUGH: As an organic chemist, that is what you do? DOUG PHILLIPSON: I'm actually and analytical chemist, but I am represented as an organic chemist. But I do is tell people what it is and how much of it. MAUREEN CAVANAUGH: Can you give us a sample of the kinds of questions that you got? DOUG PHILLIPSON: People wanted to know about drug mechanisms, other people wanted to know why pot was not legal, it spanned the gamut. MAUREEN CAVANAUGH: What was the range of questions that you heard about, Steve? STEVE SNYDER: Everything from aliens to string theory. The whole gamut, anything you can think of, questions about why some meat is dark and some is white, one of the best questions I got is a woman who came up and said twenty years ago I was in my car were driving up the highway and a blue ball of light flew past me, what was it? Okay, what could it have been? It was not so much about the answer, is about the conversation. What was the conversation we could have? What were the things that you wonder about? You find out that scientists often wonder about them too. MAUREEN CAVANAUGH: Did some of the questions strike you as weird? DOUG PHILLIPSON: I'm pretty open to questions. MAUREEN CAVANAUGH: I think people hearing about this with think that the questions would range from people who had maybe a couple of drinks to people who hadn't, and perhaps a lot of the questions would be about climate change or scientific topics in the news. Did you see any kind of theme and what you're being asked? DOUG PHILLIPSON: I would say that folks really wanted to know about the biotech industry and pharmaceutical issues. I was really happy about that, because San Diego such a hub. It was good to hear that the focus on what was in the backyard. MAUREEN CAVANAUGH: Doug has his specialty, and there are two scientists going to each of the bars. Do you try to balance out the scientific specialties? STEVE SNYDER: Yes, we try to pair them up to have a wide range of folks to answer different questions or puzzle through different questions that are out there. MAUREEN CAVANAUGH: If someone asks a question like what is gravity? What are you going to do with that? STEVE SNYDER: I will say if I can answer that I will have a Nobel Prize before I am fifty. That is a big question, also what we do for a question like that, I would say it is one of those big puzzles, one of the fundamental forces that we know of in the universe. It is something that we see and we try to understand for a long time. It is what Einstein's and newtons great works are about. Still, people are trying to understand and look for signs of gravity and other way. Amazing data that came back about the Big Bang a couple of months ago that was looking for gravity waves. You can take a question like that and goes so many different directions, what happened last night when you fell down, or hopefully you won't fall down tonight after the bar. All the way to talking about string theory and where gravity comes from. It is open and explore trait. MAUREEN CAVANAUGH: That was a good answer, I like that answer! Is it hard to talk to non-scientists about what you do? DOUG PHILLIPSON: It is somewhat, the issue tends to be how to hit the correct level of detail. MAUREEN CAVANAUGH: How do you gauge that? Person by person? DOUG PHILLIPSON: You watch for the eyes glazing over. [ LAUGHTER ] DOUG PHILLIPSON: You try to step back from that. MAUREEN CAVANAUGH: That is a good sign to look for! Were there questions that you could not answer? DOUG PHILLIPSON: Of course. MAUREEN CAVANAUGH: What did you tell those sad people? DOUG PHILLIPSON: We try to develop as much of answer as we could from our mutual knowledge. MAUREEN CAVANAUGH: Collective thought, yes. In many surveys we see that there is a significant amount of scientific illiteracy among Americans. You obviously think that people are actually interested in science, that you balance out those two concepts? STEVE SNYDER: That is exactly the reason for an event like this because we know certainly if you look at and hit the surveys that have been done, we don't have a huge literacy or understanding of science. Understanding scientist huge, it it takes a lot of time. Just because we do not understand it does not mean were not curious about it. That is the important thing, we are born naturally curious and we're always naturally curious. When someone does an interaction, that wow, that wonder, that is really the beginning of science. When somebody asks us anything, it is that question you're curious about, what you want to know? Science provides a set of tools to find out the answer. It is really about engaging people from where they start, with curiosity, and taking them somewhere they could learn more. MAUREEN CAVANAUGH: We have been talking a great deal on this program and of course throughout San Diego about the bio international conference this week. It points out tremendous presence that San Diego has in the scientific world. Is it part of this lighthearted effort on your part to bring that awareness into the community? STEVE SNYDER: Absolutely, in San Diego the statistics are stunning. We are the third-highest percentage of PhD's per capita, second-highest percentage of undergraduate degrees in stem, third-place in the country for stem jobs. And yet we do not necessarily think of San Diego as science, even inside of town, even though we are in the top two or three in biotech. But we don't necessarily embrace that. Whether it is weather, climate, sports, somewhere at the bottom we think about science. Part of this is making San Diego embrace its scientific identity. We are a power house of science, we should be extraordinarily proud about it. It is something all San Diegans can do. MAUREEN CAVANAUGH: Can the scientists participating indulge in an adult beverage during the evening? DOUG PHILLIPSON: I tend not to, I don't think it is a good idea to dull one senses when you are talking about science. Maybe afterwards. [ LAUGHTER ] MAUREEN CAVANAUGH: And it could make theories been a little longer than they usually do to if you did that. DOUG PHILLIPSON: Yes, and I tend to be a little long-winded already. MAUREEN CAVANAUGH: How can people find out where the events will be? STEVE SNYDER: You can check our website Rhfleet.org. We have got all of the sites, scientists that will be there, and the hours of the bar on there. You can find the closest place to drink, and a scientist. MAUREEN CAVANAUGH: Do you plan to have these events on a regular basis? STEVE SNYDER: Yes, we're looking to do this hopefully quarterly. Would love to have this be something where you overhear a conversation, let's go to a bar, let's go to this one, maybe a scientist will be there, that would be cool. MAUREEN CAVANAUGH: One of the first comments that really warmed your heart, Steve, was that after people went up to the scientists and ask them a question, that you would hear conversations about science break out at various tables throughout the bar. STEVE SNYDER: Absolutely, that is great, it is about starting the conversation. These are questions that we all have and we all know bits and pieces of it, but oftentimes for whatever reason we let ourselves squash that curiosity. This is a friendly place, you can't get any more friendly than your neighborhood watering hole. Let's have that conversation, ask those questions, indulge that natural curiosity and see where it takes us. MAUREEN CAVANAUGH: What are you hoping to hear tonight? Do you have anything prepared? DOUG PHILLIPSON: No, I don't prepare anything because no one ever knows. But I would like to tease people into thinking that we all engage in scientific processes. We all make observations. We might weave those observations into some sort of theory that we then test. I think that is human, I think we all do that. MAUREEN CAVANAUGH: That is part of what you are doing tonight. STEVE SNYDER: It is about engaging everybody in San Diego in this conversation about science. It is part of who we are. MAUREEN CAVANAUGH: And that website where people can find out? STEVE SNYDER: RHFleet.org. You can pop on that website and click on the two scientists link, and we have a Facebook link, and if you're twittering, tweeting, whatever you do, you can click on that box #twoscientists. We will be out all over San Diego tonight, hopefully come out and see us. MAUREEN CAVANAUGH: Just don't ask him what is twitter. STEVE SNYDER: Exactly, gravity I can deal with! [ LAUGHTER ] MAUREEN CAVANAUGH: Thank you very much. STEVE SNYDER: Thank you. DOUG PHILLIPSON: Thank you.