Getting Creative

Plant cell biologist Anne Osterrieder from Oxford Brookes University in the UK recently wrote a column in the Guardian saying that researchers have to get creative if they want to make their work accessible to the public. Researchers at Imperial College London have answered Osterrieder's call. Also writing in the Guardian, researchers Anna Perman, Ben Good, David Robertson, and Lizzie Crouch say they created a short video of themselves using their lab instruments to recreate the White Stripes song Seven Nation Army. "We did this to communicate science. And it seems to have worked," they write. "For us (after the initial ego-boost), the most rewarding thing about the widespread enthusiasm for our video has been seeing bloggers using it as an opportunity to tell readers about the lab's research. And that was kind of the point of the whole thing."