Was contacted by our PR office last week regarding the work my trainees are doing as my school wants to publicize our work in the hopes of attracting potential donors for scholarships and the like. My lab uses various animal and cell models to study Common Disease and as soon as I mentioned the animals, the PR person said he wasn't interested in publicizing our work because that would attract the wrong kind of attention.
Hmmm ... while I can understand not wanting to attract attention from animal rights extremist groups, the work we're doing could have very important implications for the way in which Common Disease is treated in both humans and animals. Surely that would be a big plus in terms of publicizing the work that we do in order to boost donations, not to mention the potential benefits of getting our name out there a bit more in the local scientific community.
Grrrr.
The PR office will certainly be singing a different tune when I win the Nobel Prize for this work.*
* It's a long shot but stranger things have happened to stranger people.
If you have nothing good to say...
5 hours ago
I definitely empathize with your frustration on this. My work involves animal experiments as well as embryonic stem cell work so we are often deemed much too controversial to discuss with the public.
ReplyDeleteUltimatley, I can't blame the PR folks though. I'm sure most labs in you school/department are doing very cool science and if I was the PR folk who needed to showcase some science and had the choice between "lab doing cool science" and "lab doing cool science that may be deemed controversial to some", it's pretty obvious which to go with.
Fun how publicity is needed in everything.....
ReplyDeleteAB
No patients. No cosy photo op. No marketablity. Until you win the Nobel prize.
ReplyDelete-antipodean
What a shame - a lost opportunity in so many ways.
ReplyDelete