Frequently asked questions

It can be absolutely anything – moderators will take out clearly nonsensical, or gratuitously rude questions, but that leaves a big field! The most common questions last year were:-

1.Variations on, ‘What made you want to be a scientist?’ (this is the most popular question by far)
2.What will you do with the money if you win?
3.Will the world end in 2012?
4.Will X give me cancer?
5.Which came first the chicken or the egg?

Also, quite a lot about zombies and dinosaurs.

But there is a huuuuuuge long tail of questions about everything from the speed of light to where bogies come from.

DO NOT feel you need to be up all night on google to answer questions way out of your area. Although remember, you’ll know more than most of the students. Answer what you feel you can, but it’s fine to say you don’t know. You can suggest who they should ask, or how they could try to find out.

A cautionary tale. Last year two scientists ignored our advice to say ‘I don’t know’, googled the answer to one question, found the same spoof site, didn’t realise the information was nonsense and repeated it in their answers. I think they must have been rushing, because it was pretty obviously nonsense if you thought about it. I hope I don’t have to say this, but use your critical faculties if you’re going outside your area and want to avoid looking silly.

Do you have any advice for filling out the scientist registration form?

Yes! The most important part of the registration form is the one sentence summary description of your work.

We ask teachers and students to rate this one sentence description of your work, then use this to help select the scientists to take part in each event. It’s therefore really important that your one sentence description explains what you do in a simple, interesting and accessible way that appeals to 13-14 year olds.

Top tips for writing your one sentence description:

The 13/14 year old students are from all across the ability range, and prefer it if you use language they understand: deadly not pathogenic, find not identify, use not utilize.
Use imaginative language to describe your work, to grab the students’ attention by giving a real sense of what your work involves.
Show your one sentence desciption to someone else - not a scientist working in your field!

Who do you think got in from these descriptions?

I am a space engineer and am involved in many projects developing and building satellites and other spacecraft.
I search for dead and dying stars – neutron stars and black holes, the most extreme laboratories in the Universe!

The trainee Clinical Biochemist role involves producing and interpreting results of chemical and biochemical analyses performed on blood and other body fluids to help diagnosis and management of disease.
I’m a Forensic Anthropologist, which means I examine skeletons, bones or fleshed bodies from crime scenes or mass disasters to work out as much as I can about the person – who they were, how they lived and especially how they died.

I use biomechanics and perception tests to understand how lame horses move and how clinicians see that they are lame – by combining these objective and subjective methods, I hope to improve lameness detection in the future.
I run a fitness gym for bacteria, the ‘Gene Gym’, to see whether being resistant to antibiotics actually makes bacteria unhealthy

Epidemiology of meningococcal disease in Europe
I’m working with a small sea creature called a “gribble” to learn how it is able to eat and digest wood so that we can use this to make petrol for our cars out of farming waste.

(Yes, it was number 2 each time)

What do I do about problem questions, or ones I’m worried about?

There’s some examples below, with our advice, but if in doubt do ask, it’s what we’re here for!

‘Are you gay?’
This is quite a common question. Sometimes, doubtless, the student is just trying to be cheeky. But they could be a young person struggling with their sexuality and trying to start a conversation with a non-threatening adult about it. Because we’ve no way of knowing the difference, we will always approve this question.
We recommend you’re as honest as you feel comfortable with in your answer. And bear in mind that whatever the motivation of the original questioner, there will certainly be gay teens who read your answer.

Questions about sex and relationships
If the question is relatively scientific, then answer as you would on any other topic – sex isn’t something to be ashamed of.

We won’t approve personal question which are inappropriately intrusive, but you may get things like, ‘Do you remember your first kiss?’, or, ‘Do you believe in love at first sight?’

It’s possible, but extremely unlikely, you’ll get more personal questions where students are asking for your advice about their own lives. If you do, answer in a friendly, reassuring way, but remember you are not a trained sex and relationships educator. It’s probably a good idea to refer them to accessible but reliable information (we recommend Bish’s website) and if appropriate, suggest they speak to a trusted adult or their doctor.

Bullying
It’s very rare, but we occasionally get questions about bullying. Refer students to accessible but reliable information (we recommend Bullying UK) and suggest they speak to a trusted adult, if appropriate. If there seems reason for concern we will alert the teacher.

What’s your moderation policy for questions?

All questions are moderated before they are sent to you, in order to strike a balance between making your lives easier as scientist participants and giving students the chance to ask real questions.

Moderators will take out:

Duplicate questions, but allow through similar questions which make slightly different points.

Rude or offensive questions, but allow challenging and irreverent, but friendly, questions.

Moderators will allow questions which may be unclear – you can start dialogues with students to clarify them.

Time commitment

During the event scientists typically spend about 2 hours a day participating, for the ten weekdays that the event is on. This will vary according to how busy your zone is and how much detail you go into with your answers. Last year some people spent a lot more (up to six hours a day), but that’s not compulsory!

Don’t worry if work is taking you abroad during the event, you can easily take part from there, as long as you have access to the internet and some free time. In fact several of our scientists are permanently based outside the UK.

Live chats

The live chat calendar is here.

A few minutes before the chat booking you should go to the CHAT page in your zone and the chatroom will open.

Live chats are text only, a bit like MSN or google chat. You don’t need any special software or anything, just your computer and access to the internet.

Schools will sometimes take a few minutes to turn up, as the teacher is briefing the students, handing out cards, etc. Occasionally the school will not show up at all. Usually this is an IT issue. We’ll try not to make you wait around, if it looks like a class are going to be a no show, we’ll let you get on. We can text you if they return and it’s easy to pop back if you’re at a computer and not in the middle of something else by then.

Chats are are booked by the teacher, to coincide with their science lesson, so the time is fixed, but we don’t expect all the scientists to make each one as we know you all have other commitments. We do explain this to teachers and students. As long as a couple of scientists attend each chat the students will get a lot out of it.

Although, be warned, students are most likely to vote for scientists they have chatted to. It’s our semi-scientific opinion that this is the biggest factor in determining who students vote for (based on student survey responses and ethnographic observation in classrooms). Maybe you think it’s the taking part and not the winning that counts, but you might change your mind when the first eviction is looming:-).

How do I embed videos from YouTube in my profile?

To embed a video from YouTube, or individual photos from a Flikr account, you’ll need to use the embed shortcode around the link URL:
1. Paste in the URL of the video;
2. Make sure the URL is not a link. It should not be underlined. If it is, click the link once to make it active then click the break link icon in the toolbar (it looks like a broken chain);
3. Put (embed) before the link and (/embed) after it but use [square brackets] in place of the brackets.

Do I need to do any IT checks?

No, not really. The site’s very simple. It uses HTML and some JavaScript. We may use Java to run the chat page, but no Flash and no plug ins.

It uses cookies.

It has been tested on all major browsers (even, shudder, IE6) and should be fine on machines running Windows, MacOS or Linux.

If you can access the site, edit your profile and answer questions (and I think all but one of you has) then everything is working fine.

If you can, come to one of the drop in chat sessions to say hi, and just check that you can use the chatroom. Rarely a corporate firewall or similar may block the chatroom. This is more common with school firewalls, and far less common since we got better chatroom technology. But best to find out in advance of the first chat booking!

What do I need to know about the £500 prize money?

What is the money for?

The £500 is to be spent on a science communication project, to publicise or communicate your research or research area.

This could mean lots of things – visiting schools, arranging class visits to a laboratory, creating a website, taking an exhibit to a festival, printing leaflets, making a video or podcasts, commissioning a poem, painting a mural – any form of science communication.

Some previous examples include:

Buying equipment to allow a research oceanography vessel to communicate with school students
Funding a community open day for mothers and children involved in a medical research project to find out about the research and get health advice
Giving the money to a school in Uganda to pay for science kits and a projector to watch science films on
Funding scientist visits to schools, or school visits to labs
Buying a touchscreen for a local zoo, to help show visitors more about the primate research done there

How do I tell I’m a Scientist how I’ve spent the money?

The £500 prize is, effectively, a small grant for communicating science. But unlike other grants we don’t expect a big evaluation report or detailed receipts for your spending.

We just ask for you let us know how you’ve used your prize winnings to communicate your work. We would love you to write a brief report (less than one page/one or two paragraphs) including photos or other media to accompany it. We will post this on the site blog (www.imascientist.org.uk/news) to update the students on how you’ve spent your winnings.

Some examples of winners reports are Martin Coath, Katy Milne and Andrew Maynard.

Please also include a basic breakdown of how you spent the money, such as:

£200 Buying video equipment
£50 Travel expenses
£250 Editing the video
Please email your (brief!) reports to Rosie (rosie@gallomanor.com).

When do I have to spend the money?

There’s no deadline for when you must have spent the money, but please keep us informed of your plans.

But most of all, enjoy using the money for science communication!

How do I keep in contact/Get in touch?

We strongly recommend twitter as a way to keep in touch with us, and with your fellow contestants. Last year there was a lot of online camaraderie with scientists giving each other tips, sharing fears and joking around. The I’m a Scientist team will also be passing on the latest event news and so on.

Twitter is also a useful way to contact us directly. I’m saying this for our benefit, as much as for yours, as it means we hear of any issue immediately. On one occasion last year this was a lifesaver when we’d completely forgotten to open a chatroom. Thanks to our tweeting scientists we opened only a minute or two late.

Do bear in mind though that twitter is a public medium and students taking part in the event may read what you say.

The I’m a Scientist twitter feed
Combined feed of twitter users taking part in March IAS 2011
Search for things said about the event recently on twitter, (i.e. with the #IAS2011 hashtag )
Archive of all things ever said about this year’s event, on twitter (i.e. with the #IAS2011 hashtag)
Archive of all things said about last year’s event, on twitter (i.e. with the #IAS2010 hashtag)

Please get in touch if you’ve got any questions not covered here, or you need help with anything. You can do this on twitter, to @imascientist, by email on admin@imascientist.org.uk, or on 01225 869413. We’re here to help!

FAQ

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