­­­­There is a great deal of stigma attached to scientific teaching; people often have particularly strong views on the subject. Science is far more than school laboratory benches and battered textbooks. It is certainly not memorising the colours of various solutions simply to write them down in an exam or building the same electrical circuit in physics year after year. If those are your preconceptions of the muddied scientific waters, the perspective of Dr Sam Gregson can be refreshing. 

His show – which is entitled Ministry of Sense: Hunting the Higgs and set to hit the Cambridge Junction on the 25th January – has it origins at CERN: “I was doing a PhD at the Large Hadron Collider three years ago and an email went around the lab about a science comedy evening called Bright Club with the task being to explain your research in a stand-up format. I decided to do one of these a couple of years ago, and Ministry of Sense sprung off the back of that.” It is a show aiming to develop the audience’s intuitions, with Gregson noting that while “you get a bit of science from it… more importantly, it asks why science matters”.

Gregson takes this further, though: “you have to present the scientists themselves in a good light”, he suggests, noting that this is something which is often neglected. In this case, the vehicle is stand-up, in a similar vein to Bright Club. Unlike Bright Club, however, Ministry of Sense focusses on the scientific method, something that Gregson feels is “far more applicable to a complete range of backgrounds and experiences”.

The premise behind the show brings up an interesting point – it asks what is the scientific method really for and invites audiences to question what exactly science means to them. For me, science is everything from a day-to-day activity at home and university, to a way of life and a thought process that genuinely shapes how I make decisions and carry out tasks. The scientific method, then, does not only feature in the context of a laboratory but far beyond.

“One of the best things a scientist can do is have something they truly believe in be proved false”

Dr Sam Gregson

Gregson’s perspective is different, a combination of nuance and pure logic. To him, science is “the best framework so far that we’ve devised to determine fact from fiction. If I want to know whether something is more likely to be true than false, the best framework to apply that is the scientific method. I want to believe as many true things as I can in my life. If you ask me whether I am 100 per cent certain of something, the answer is no, however, you have to operate on a day-to-day basis as if this uncertainty doesn’t exist. You have to keep reapplying the method as this goes along.”

What comes out of this, then, is not simply a laboratory practice, but a lifestyle choice – something that moulds political, ethical, and emotional decisions. Indeed, Gregson notes that “one of the best things a scientist can do is have something they truly believe in be proved false. Indeed, the problem we’ve seen this year with Brexit etc. is that people don’t accept that being wrong isn’t necessarily a bad thing.”

So how does one go about teaching the scientific method? In his show, Gregson encourages the audience to “get real data from CERN using an app, and then learn to analyse, model, and conclude based on the observations”. But this is just a drop in the ocean; the real challenge lies on a much wider scale. He recalls the view that prevailed during his PhD that “when you work in science, no time or credit is given to go and speak to the public. In fact, it’s actually negatively viewed by supervisors.” The example of Brian Cox springs to mind, whose lectures usually sell out in Manchester, a rarity in the field. And yet, his contribution to science is still somewhat questioned.

Science and art go hand in hand. We must teach our children this

This brings us full circle back to the role of the scientist in educating laymen and potential students about scientific methods. If communicators are viewed as being unapproachable and unenthused, then can we expect the students to generate their own enthusiasm? Gregson suggests the answer is no, and that we have to remove this so-called “ivory tower”.

Within the current system, the path towards this understanding is admittedly not an easy one. Gregson spoke at the TEDx Conference in 2014 about the role of science in society, acknowledging that this way of thinking “isn’t taught at school, and it takes a big jump to get over that knowledge gap. People have a very tough time thinking against their natural bias.”

Bringing the discussion to a close, I’m reminded of a quote by Albert Einstein: “education is what remains after one has forgotten what one has learned in school.” It certainly applies here, prompting thought about what we prioritise in our life. For Gregson, science and its methodology provide the platform and inspiration to “tune out what is wrong or inefficient, gradually refining my view”. For me, the real question is this: what really matters – learning what to think, or learning how to think about it?

Dr Sam Gregson will be performing his show, Ministry of Sense: Hunting the Higgs, at 8pm on Wednesday 25th January 2017 at The Cambridge Junction. Student tickets cost £8 and are available here.