Thought I'd weigh in on the is "Is Science a Form of Dance" discussion by turning it on its head. Dance may well be a form of art as well as science - but what about the scientists themselves? Can they express their work through the art form of dance?

This contest started by John Bohannon, the Gonzo Scientist (http://gonzolabs.org/) working with AAAS. The point is to challenge graduate students and their professors to dance their
PhDs.

PhDs can be endless documents that take exhaustive research, hours to explain and drive both the writer and his or her spouse (I lived through one fortunately, not mine) crazy. Marriages are destroyed over PhDs, friendships destroyed, relationships with advisors can be either helpful or hostile. Earning a PhD is a long and painful process that few come out of unscathed.

PhDs start with a germ of an idea – in my ex-husband’s case the role of NGOs in international political negotiations. He wrote his thesis (Yes there are other kinds of sciences at MIT) at the beginning of the Internet, when the NGOs like Greenpeace, Save the Whales, and the World Wildlife Fund – were just figuring out how to use this new form of mass communication. 

It took 900 pages and ten years to complete (including time out for getting a career and family started). The degree was worth it and the dissertation was thrown into a box in the attic where it remains today. A classmate destroyed his at a Burn Your PhD party. At 900 pages we weren’t
burning anything.

I’m describing this process so you can understand just howhard it is for graduate students to transform their research into somethingthat everyone can understand. In its third year, the Dance Your PhD contest lets graduate students and their professors create short videos that are representative of their PhD theses, acting and dancing them out for all to see.

The winners get put up on YouTube, feted at the AAAS annual meeting and see their dance performed by a professional company. 

As a marketer I love this idea – and so did the media. The first year, Dance Your PhD was on the network news, featured in the New York Times, on NPR and although it hasn’t happened yet – with a bit more pushing will probably end up viral. Call it what you want – Revenge of the Geeks, Geeks Gone Wild – it’s just plain smart marketing.Here are a couple of media coverage links:

http://tierneylab.blogs.nytimes.com/tag/dance/

http://abcnews.go.com/Technology/Science/story?id=6299587&page=1

http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=97356050

This type of effort to connect science with the rest of us in an art form we all can all appreciate is what informal science education is all about. Here are a few of the 2009 and 2010 entries.

The role of Vitamin D in beta-cell function, f from graduate student, Sue Lynn Lau. An interpretive dance that takes you from Vitamin D production by the sun all the way through how it helps our bodies. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6OxQNh6y79M



We tend to believe what we see with our eyes is real and accurate. What we often do not realize is that our eyes register only a reflection of the outside world. To reconstruct reality from this reflection we have to rely on inferences and assumptions. It is like putting together the pieces of a puzzle without any knowledge about the whole picture. Our brain does this without our conscious awareness. In a split second it organizes and interprets incoming visual information to form a stable and meaningful image of the world around us. Maartje C. de Jong - How does your brain analyze incoming visual information? http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EnG-6HNgIlg



Use of autologuous adipose and bone marrow derived from cells in a point of care goal non-instrumental posterolateral spinal. Daria Neidre, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=24LLN9m_A8g

Dance Your Ph.D. 2010 Video: "DNA Structural Selectivity of Binding by the Pol I DNA Polymerases from Escherichia coli and Thermus aquaticus", Andy J. Wowor, 2009, Louisiana State University. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EnG-6HNgIlg



For more information on next year’s contest go to their Facebook page at http://bit.ly/ccHTEv and here are some examples of the 2009 competition. http://gonzolabs.org/dance/2009/contestants/.