A dentist appointment this morning made it easiest for me to travel by car, and also meant I was coming to work after 9.30. So I happened to hear a very nice, short programme on Radio 4. It is probably not the first time that an anthropologist has looked at a group of scientists, but it's the first time I've come across such a thing away from academic literature. So the programme mixed little snippets of Diamond Light Source science with words from the staff scientists: how they worked together and interacted, both among themselves and with visitors using the facility, how they felt about their role of service (as opposed to leading and driving scientific projects), their dress code: a "tribe of science". Perhaps he viewed them from a vantage point similar to Margaret Mead in Samoa - and I wonder how far they told him what they thought he wanted to hear, or should hear. No sex though, at least on the radio.
So I very much appreciated a scientific story humanised by the voices of the scientists themselves, and the agenda of an outside view. Just the sort of thing you also get in a forum where scientists themselves will tell their stories, where you can inquisite them, change the agenda, ask them how they feel as humans about geeky and abstract pre-occupations; in university adult education in fact. Good thing the brochure will be out soon.
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