Scientific dissemination is a fundamental pillar in the construction of a critical and informed citizenry. For this reason, the role of the disseminator transcends that of a simple messenger or transmitter/translator of information. This he knows perfectly Yorley Ruiz M., journalist, social communicator and student of the Official Master’s Degree in Communication of Scientific Research at VIU. Passionate regarding communication and science, at the age of 27, Yorley has developed an intense and fruitful professional career that counts among her recent milestones the creation of the popular science podcast Boiling: light science for your ears.
Knowing that no one can tell her own story better than she herself, we contacted her and asked her to share it with us.
Can you tell us a bit regarding yourself? How did your interest in science and popularization come regarding?
It is difficult to define oneself, but I might say that I am Yorley Ruiz M., a 27-year-old, sensitive and curious young woman who is always constantly reflecting on the context she inhabits. By profession I am a social communicator-journalist, with a professional experience of around five years.
Her interest in science was born as a child, when she was little she said she wanted to be an astronomer or a microbiologist, she wanted to know either the vastness of the universe or the vastness of the tiny world. Finally, the taste for telling stories led me to journalism and those girlish thoughts were hidden under the accumulation of years.
But, in this context of professional practice, initially as a research assistant, then as a journalist in the newspaper El Espectador, then as a communicator for the Exploratorio del Parque Explora, later as a young researcher for the Ministry of Science, Technology and Innovation of Colombia, and finally As a scientific communicator in the Valle de Aburrá Metropolitan Area, I have finally been able, in this present, to recognize that the processes of public communication of science is the path I want to continue following. This is how I have also been exploring those thoughts as a child and I have been resignifying them. In each step I try to see an opportunity to learn regarding technical and scientific aspects, regarding the philosophy of science, regarding the discussions, discourses and approaches that the contemporary world poses regarding science and technology in the social context, as well as the questions by knowledge production processes, among others.
All of this has also allowed me to think regarding my presence in the world with greater humility, recognizing that although as humans we can create things that can be more durable than our own lives, the context in which we create them cannot always be controlled and we have not yet succeeded. fully understand it, that we are part of a all greater than we are scratching and discovering and I think that precisely those gaps are what give meaning to those constant searches of Science and other disciplines such as Art. And it’s worth being there to tell it.
Yorley Ruiz, fPhotograph by: Javier Gámez (@quantimun)
You have created the ‘Ebullición’ podcast dedicated to scientific dissemination, how did the idea come regarding and what are you looking for with it?
During the pandemic, I gave podcasts the opportunity to accompany me while I made analog collages and notebooks, a venture that arose in the midst of that time in quarantine, in this way I discovered the value of this format.
Then, one followingnoon in 2022, speaking with some friends that I had not seen for some time, I told them that for a long time I wanted to do a podcast in which, more than disseminating the discoveries of science and those wonderful ways in which said knowledge brings us closer to reality. , focused on telling the process behind investigations that were related to it. That was how Jose Eljach, a designer, and Javier Gámez, a photographer, ended up actively joining the proposal.
The name and the slogan also arose between conversations, giving way to Boiling: light science for your ears. During those first reflections I came across the text by Miguel Delibes de Castro in the newspaper El País, titled Science, wizards and bumblebees: the importance of narrating the scientific processHere is one of the sections that inspired the focus of this project:
“Umberto Eco explained the risk that scientific news, and the research activity itself, would be assimilated by the bulk of society with magic, which offers faster and equally surprising responses, when not incomprehensible (…) This should show that Investigation is a meticulous task, guided by a precise logic, but in any case a genuinely human activity, in the antipodes of the supernatural”.
This first season is dedicated to research-creation processes, art and science processes; The idea is then to do other seasons on other branches of science and to be able to disseminate local research from Colombia and, why not, from different parts of the world. In the future, the idea is that it can be a venture since we all participate voluntarily.
Recording of the Boiling podcast, fPhotograph by: Javier Gámez (@quantimun)
The pandemic has created an increase in the interest of the general public in news from the scientific sector, causing the irruption of informative media such as The Conversation and a greater presence of this type of news in general media. Do you think this is a trend that will last? How do you think this interest in dissemination should be ‘taken advantage of’ by the scientific sector?
I would say that this interest will last and that it might even continue to increase and not necessarily because people are hungry for knowledge, but because there are problems such as climate change that no longer only reaches them by hearsay, but now it is time for door of our houses, that is why I think that the general public has begun to perceive science and technology not as something that has nothing to do with them, beyond their use, but rather that it can have implications, whether they are beneficial or not. in their daily lives, and that opens up questions regarding the political participation of citizens in science, the question of the need to invest more or not in science in democratic countries and how people can take advantage of this knowledge for the collective well-being.
That is why I do not see the role of the disseminator as a passive actor who “takes and brings” some data, but rather as an actor who is more aware of the context in which he is immersed and who reflects on the purposes of this communication process. that will happen, because as the philosopher of science Jorge Manuel Escobar Ortíz says in his book Science, values and power: a look at the discourses of scientific dissemination in Colombia, “scientific dissemination is never neutral”, and I think that in all this boom it might be used to reflect on the importance of these mediators, who are not necessarily scientific, but who are essential to seek collective reflections and appropriations of where we are taking the knowledge provided by science in our societies.
Along the same lines, what do you think is the importance of scientific dissemination? How do you think this field can contribute to the progress of our societies?
It is complex to talk regarding progress because under this premise many atrocities have been justified in our societies that have had irremediable consequences in many contexts —with this question you have put me in the middle of a debate regarding which perhaps I am not very informed to comment—, but I think that this is precisely why dissemination processes are valuable because this technical knowledge is shedding light on where efforts might be focused in favor of the dignity and well-being of our societies, which in this case I include scientific journalists, because it is not only to see the dissemination in a single way from the scientist to the disseminator and from the disseminator to society, but to ask what conversations arise from what is disseminated, what new creations and reflections can be born, that can even feed back into researchers, politicians and decision makers, and thus perhaps talk and think regarding projects for societies that resignify in what we would understand, according to the contexts, by progress.
fPhotograph by: Javier Gámez (@quantimun)
Why did you choose to study the Official Master’s Degree in Scientific Research Communication at VIU?
Above all, for the search to have contact with other contexts that had searches similar to mine, and thus be able to expand my network of contacts and my perspective on these issues. In addition, in Colombia the academic offer in terms of this training is not very wide, and I reached a point in my professional practice in which I felt the need to acquire new knowledge, to refresh the perspectives and to have new debates on these processes of popular science, as well as greater practical skills. It was in the middle of that search that I found the VIU and here we are learning more and more.
How is your experience being? What would you highlight most regarding the degree and the University?
I am barely approaching the middle of the program and it has been a very good experience, especially due to the flexibility that distance study allows, in the midst of the hectic context of daily tasks; The quality of the teachers is very good and I also highlight my classmates because little by little we have been creating a kind of community, it is cool to know the points of view they contribute from all the expertise they bring and from the countries they inhabit. Hoping, too, that these efforts will later bring their reward.
You can listen and subscribe to Boiling: light science for your ears here
Photographs by: Javier Gámez (@quantimun)
