Real Scientists Tweet

Hi Julie,

I hope you have an awesome time at Science Online Teen tomorrow! I hope you get asked lots of questions about your presentation, Dogs: Science in Your Living Room. It's so true that dogs make for a sensational gateway to scientific enquiry - and they're right there, in front of us!

If anyone happens to ask you "What's it like being a scientific canine behavioural researcher?", be sure to tell them to tune in to the @realscientists Twitter project from Sunday (or Saturday evening, USA time). 

They can follow you and I for a whole week as we tweet from the @realscientists account, giving insight into our every day activities as canine scientists. 

Will our tweets sound like woofs? (source)

If anyone out there isn't already on Twitter and/or hasn't been following @realscientists, you really should! It's a super fun insight into the world of science, science communication, writers, clinicians and more. Each week features a different flavour of scientific endeavour and I like to think we'll be bringing the real lab science into the spotlight! 

So far, I've seen wild jaguars while canoeing down a river in the Amazon with Phil Torres; learned about mosquito-borne disease management from Cameron Webb and whisked along for the ride of a week in the life of futurist, with Kristin Alford. 

Hypnotised by the eyes (source)

It's so much fun and really important, because some people genuinely believe that scientists look like this and that conducting science looks like this. 

Scary stuff! 

I'm hoping that while we might not be in particularly exotic locations, we can make up for that with our enthusiasm for all things dog and science. Plus, between the two of us, being here in Australia and there New York, we're always here. 

The-blog-that-never-sleeps can now be be the scientists-who-always-tweet!

If anyone out there wants to know how to find out how we spend our week, you can:

• Follow our introductions at the Real Scientists blog here
• Keep track of our tweets on Twitter here
• Participate in our live TweetUp session, being held for one hour from 10.30am Thu 18 April Melbourne time / 8.30pm Wed 17 April New York time (convert to your local time here), using the hashtag #realsci - we'll be taking questions and asking some of our own.

(source)

Here's hoping we can drum up some more interesting scientific questions about dogs during the week!

See you in the twittersphere,

Mia

Further reading:

Real Scientists: blog / @realscientists: twitter

Brossard D. & Scheufele D.A. (2012). Social science. Science, new media, and the public., Science (New York, N.Y.), 339 (6115) 40-41. PMID: 23288529

Wilcox C.  (2013) Guest Editorial: It's Time To e-Volve: Taking Responsibility for Science Communication in a Digital Age, The Biological Bulletin, 222 (2) 85-87. PMID: 22589398

© 2013 Mia Cobb