KEY POINTS:
Most of us have sat through an account of some technological or scientific wonder and come away more confused than enlightened.
This can't just be put down to poor communication. Concepts in science and technology can be difficult to grasp, which is why a large proportion of the
population drop them as school subjects as soon as they have a choice.
But University of Otago professor Lloyd Davis believes there's a growing appetite - and need - in the community for clear explanations of scientific topics.
"The only real way we can know about the world around us is through science," Davis says.
But in the past few decades, science has become more complicated than ever before.
"The volume of science being produced is enormous - there are over a million [academic] papers being produced a year. There's no way even scientists can keep up with it."
A scientific problem like global warming, for instance, demands the public's understanding when governments are beginning to spend billions of dollars on trying to do something about it.
"We can only cause our politicians to make responsible decisions if we, the public, understand what's at stake and what's going on."
Davis thinks there's a "hole" in the communication between scientists and the public, which the university's newly established centre of science communication, of which he is the head, can help bridge. For the first time this year, it is offering a Master of Science Communication degree. Eventually, it will be churning out about 70 graduates a year.
The three-stream programme is aimed at a wide range of students, from scientists who realise they would rather be talking about scientific developments than making them, to those who want to continue as researchers but with better communications skills, to non-scientists with an urge to be a "conduit" of scientific information to the public.
The last group don't need to be working at the research coalface but need to understand science to the extent that they can explain concepts in terms understood by a general audience.
Students can specialise in film-making, creative non-fiction writing and ways of popularising science using the internet and public displays at museums.
The courses do have a precedent. For the past six years, the university has offered a diploma in natural history film-making, run in conjunction with Dunedin's renowned Natural History New Zealand (formerly TVNZ's Natural History Unit, now owned by Fox Television).
NHNZ is the world's second most prolific maker of factual programming, says Davis, so has abundant expertise and state-of-the-art facilities for students to use.
That collaborative approach is being adopted for the other two courses as well. Students doing the popularising science stream will work with Otago Museum staff, while those who choose the writing course will learn the tricks of the trade from local non-fiction authors, with whom Dunedin is again well endowed.
Among them are Philip Temple, whose books include fiction with an environmental theme and non-fiction accounts of the exploration of New Zealand, and Neville Peat, with about 30 natural history and geography titles to his name.
Davis could count himself among the accomplished communicators who will be involved in teaching the degree. He has a PhD in zoology, has made numerous documentaries and, last year, published Looking for Darwin, a book described as "a search for meaning in a world that pits evolution against creationism".
An earlier book, The Plight of the Penguin, was the 2001 NZ Post children's book of the year.
"I've always had a passion for communicating science to the public," he says. The key, which he will be trying to impart to his students, is to do it creatively.
"Not your boring old bit of writing that you might expect from a scientist about something that is really dry but using the techniques that are available to fiction writers and make something still accurate but actually interesting to read."
Davis says the centre will be putting an emphasis on "walking the talk", by which he means producing work that goes into the public arena rather than gathering dust on a university library shelf.
"We are after bright, creative people because you need to be bright to be able to understand the ramifications of the science and the factual information, but you also need to be creative in terms of communicating it and making that material exciting."
And the best people to be doing it, he reckons, are scientists themselves.
"Nothing works better than a scientist who can give you an insight into what they are doing from the coalface; it just has that impact, that immediacy, that relevance."
* Anthony Doesburg is an Auckland-based technology journalist.
