Meeting Abstract
Hi everyone! My name is Burt. I’m a cichlid fish from the Maruska lab at LSU. Did you know that education outreach and public engagement helps scientists expand the reach of their work and make it more relevant to society? Most people do this through public talks and dialogue-focused forums in which scientists and the general public participate in interactive opportunities for exchange. Despite an increase in communication and accessibility to scientific knowledge, it is difficult to keep the public engaged when presented with traditional scientific literature. Those fancy papers you scientists all write are highly stylized, difficult to read even among experts, and intimidating for the general public. That’s where I come in! My friends – Toni, Tyrone, and Gilgamesh – and I have a public blog. The blog is written from our perspective, the fish, and explains basic fish science, neuroscience, and the research being done in the lab. Our research scientists are also in the process of creating a comic book based off the labs published literature. Their goal is changing the publics’ perception of their own ability to understand scientific literature while also educating them about how science is relevant to their lives. To test this, they are conducting a pilot study to assess understanding and perception of research presented in two different formats: (1) the original scientific article, and (2) a comic book based on the article. To facilitate and maintain scientific literacy, the same information in scientific articles should be presented in more accessible formats. Come check out our poster to meet me, Toni, and Gilgamesh, and to get a sneak peek at the comic book!
