Scientists' public engagement work should be generously funded | Clare Matterson, Wellcome Trust

Public engagement should be an integral part of research, not an unpaid hobby, which is why the Wellcome Trust has decided to invest £4.5m a year in itThere's an app that you might have seen, or even played – The Great Brain Experiment. It's cute, quirky and pretty addictive. Every time I turn on my iPad I find my children have been having a go (perhaps making me look far more mentally agile than I am). So far, over 40,000 people have downloaded and played the app. Among its deceptively simple games is one in which you have to grab apples as they fall from a tree – but beware the apples that turn rotten as they fall.To look at, you'd imagine this app was created entirely by professionals whose jobs are to produce the likes of Angry Birds or Plants vs Zombies. In fact, although the Great Brain Experiment was built by a professional app developer, it was led by a team of neuroscientists at the Wellcome Trust Centre for Neuroimaging at University College London. The games mirror those that subjects play while having their brains scanned. The apples game, for example, measure how impulsive you are (excessive impulsivity is connected to disorders such as ADHD). So, besides being fun to play, the app is actually collecting data about you – you are contributing to genuine scientific research.This app is just one example among myriad activities aimed at engaging audiences with research. "Public engagement" takes many forms – for example a public debate about the ethics of so...
Source: Guardian Unlimited Science - Category: Science Authors: Tags: theguardian.com Blogposts Science policy Medical research Higher education Source Type: news