First 10bn Reflection Session

Today, Dr. Tom Anderson and I facilitated the first reflection session after the 10bn Festival week. Students from the Biological Sciences were invited to give their views on the Festival events and to develop a discussion around any issues that they felt important in achieving the goal of the "programme". Below Tom and I have provided a summary of the session, by way of the questions and issues raised; all of which we tried to capture on the blackboard. The aim of this post is to remind us all of just how vibrant the session was! As you can see from the bicycle design, this is a "work in progress" post!

Any initial thoughts on the concept? Was followed swiftly with a debate around whether the whole idea of mankind considering its population problems in an anthropocentric way? Or, are we doing enough to conserve the planet and all of its inhabitants? This immediately brought to the forefront the role of "evidence" as an essential pre-requisite for the development of any solutions. Indeed, was there a problem? In considering "10bn" as a fixed number, Tom introduced us to perception of such quantities, reassuring the group that numbers in the billions were relatively easy to accommodate. However, we did feel that maybe the number shouldn't be too rigid and perhaps we need to challenge the robustness of the evidence that population growth is on such a trajectory and whether it is in fact a problem at all?

Having put down a marker for firming up the numbers and the predictions, we moved onto a discussion about what measures might have a significant impact on stemming the growth rate (if this turns out to be problematic). How big an impact will the successes of medical sciences be in  extending life expectancy, and on the other side of the coin, how much of an impact will birth control exert on population expansion?  There was a clear need for evidence, possibly in the form of a set of FAQs, to persuade the "public" that the rate at which we are heading for a global population of 10bn is too fast. On the other hand, should we try and slow population growth or develop better ways of managing such numbers? There were divided opinions on this and especially on the self-management of life-span. Should individuals be empowered to decide when their quality of life is at such a low ebb, that some form of way out is provided? I think these discussions, and the "burden of ethics" emphasised the difficulty of the challenge and the need for a multi-disciplinary approach.

Why don't the public trust scientists?  If we are to make any headway with solving a "looming population crisis", we must be better able to communicate the facts and the risks to or fellow humans (notwithstanding the anthropocentric stance, this implies). There was an important discussion on the difficulties in communicating Science to the public. Even young scientists struggle with the vocabulary and language of professional scientists. It isn't too surprising then that key messages such as those relating to infant vaccination (eg MMR)and the need for GM food can be easily dismissed by the public. And in some cases, followers of the "Flat Earth Society" can even gain ground.  This topic also introduced the differences in language between the disciplines and we spent some time discussing the use of vocabulary in Social Sciences compared with Science, for example. AM presents a great opportunity for breaking down such language barriers!

In summary the main themes for progressing the project include:

• Building a robust evidence base
• Establishing the validity of the numbers and forecasts
• Developing better channels of communication
• Capturing the problem with simple, high impact narratives

Finally, thanks to all who contributed and I hope this provided food for thought (if not for the world!)