Introduction

The value for history, science, and culture of Shen Kua's iconic 11th-century text Meng Hsi Pi T’an 梦溪笔谈 (Brush Talks from Dream Brook) has been explored by modern researchers since the 20th century. As the earliest notebook encyclopaedia to be produced in ancient China, Meng Hsi Pi T’an caught the interest of mid-century science historians when philologist Hu Tao-Ching produced several acclaimed versions of the work, including a simplified version for lay readers (Hu, 1957; Wang and Zhao, 2011). Science history pioneers Joseph Needham and Wang Ling described Meng Hsi Pi T’an as ‘a landmark in the history of science in China’ and included English translations of parts of it in their own influential text Science and Civilisation in China (Needham and Ling, 1954, p 135; 1959). Shen has sometimes been labelled ‘China's greatest scientist’ (Holzman, 1958, p 260) and is relatively well known in China. However, the significance of his work is still underappreciated elsewhere in the world, and perhaps in China too (Zuo, 2010).

In particular, Meng Hsi Pi T’an has generally been overlooked as a historical example of science communication. Even within China, only rarely have researchers characterised it as a popular science text or in other ways that might bring it under science communication's purview (for example Zeng and Guo, 2013). Zhang (2013, pp 366–7) is the notable exception: she argues that the book makes contributions to ‘democratizing scientific knowledge’, ‘preserving grassroots science’, and ‘communicating science and technology to the lay public’, considering it part of ‘technical communication's enduring tradition’. In line with Zhang's view and the evidence she presents, this chapter makes the case for Shen Kua and his Meng Hsi Pi T’an to be incorporated into histories of science communication.

The significance of global histories of science Communication

Published histories of science communication tend to focus on the West, particularly Britain and France, in the past 300 years (Orthia, 2020). This tends to be the case whether those histories are produced in Western or non-Western countries. They generally do not include communication cultures older than the so-called Scientific Revolution of the 16th and 17th centuries or cultures beyond Western Europe and its settler colonies, except when discussing the spread of Western science within them.

It seems appropriate that when we started to write the introduction for this book about queering science communication it was Mardi Gras season in Australia. Mardi Gras is an annual celebration of queer protest, liberation, and visibility that takes place in Australia's largest city, Sydney. Like many things queer, when Mardi Gras began life in 1978 it was with a long overdue burst of passionate outrage in the guise of fun, which resulted in police violence against queer people and many arrests. Since then, Mardi Gras has become a globally renowned tourist destination that injects millions of dollars into the economy, it is broadcast live on mainstream Australian television, and it has inspired many other queer events worldwide (Markwell, 2018).

As authors Alice Motion and Herve Sauquet describe in their contribution to this book, the Mardi Gras programme also now incorporates sciencethemed events, demonstrating that queer people are everywhere and science communication is relevant to everyone. Queer people face specific issues in the world of science and have unique contributions to make to science communication, so bringing ‘queer’ and ‘science communication’ together in dedicated events, products, and networks is an important part of queer protest, liberation, and visibility. We hope this book will serve those aims.

Yet an examination of the science communication research literature reveals that little has been published on the intersection between queerness and science communication over the past thirty years or more (Roberson and Orthia, 2021). This is despite the damage Western science has inflicted on queer people during its long history as self-appointed ‘expert’ on all things queer. Nor have queer people's protests against that damage made many academic headlines in science communication research. Even within the recent flurry of scholarly interest in equity, access, and diversity in science communication (Finlay et al, 2021), queer themes have thus far rarely rated a mention. Mardi Gras may have become mainstream, but there is still work to be done.

It is remarkable that it has taken until now for a book like this to exist. Anecdotal evidence points to a large number of lesbian, gay, bi+ , trans, gender diverse, non-binary, intersex, agender, asexual, aromatic, and queer (LGBTIQA+ ) people working in the science communication field and indeed being drawn to it from other fields of science and technology (Roberson and Orthia, 2021).

What would it take to queer science communication well? In the first instance, ‘well’ must mean responsible, morally good, and respectful engagement with LGBTIQA+ people and their lives. Queered science communication is about individuals and communities – recognizing their context, the history that informs current and future interactions with areas like STEM, and their needs, which could be met by well-designed science communication. Queer science communication also goes beyond localized cases and asks us to take seriously the question of who and what we represent in wide-spanning, public science communication work, and improving who is bestowed with agency – who speaks and is heard. Queered science communication requires that those with power become uncomfortable, acknowledge the structures and biases that support them, and challenge those structures to make room for others to reclaim the space that is rightfully theirs.

The collection of chapters and spotlights presented in this book represent a first attempt to create an authoritative text on queering science communication. We emphasize first attempt because what it means to queer science communication, to celebrate and explicitly centre LGBTIQA+ people, is still in its earliest stages. We anticipate contributions that build on and contest assertions put forward in this book.

To conclude the book, we here discuss the themes that emerged within it and then what gaps still need to be filled.

Queered science communication is all around

Contributions from our spotlight authors demonstrate that while queered science communication has yet to fully emerge in the research domain, practical queered science communication is starting to flourish in different forums. Drag is increasingly used to communicate scientific topics to broad audiences and platform queer people as described by drag performers Aznar-Alemany and Suciu and colleagues in their spotlights. Queer people are organizing stereotype-debunking events within queer networks, such as the Mardi Gras event detailed by Motion and Sauquet, and injecting queer concerns into science-related art collaborations such as Alifuoco and colleagues’ ‘Endosymbiotic Love Calendar’ and Kaplinsky and Krish's ‘GENDERS’ exhibition. And queer people are self-publishing and networking online via blogs and social media, as we see in Part II's spotlights Using #QueerInSTEM and Queer Science Blogs. LGBTIQA+ people are active in practical science communication.

Media representations of scientists have been a mainstay topic of science communication research for decades.

In addition to examining representations of scientists and other STEM professionals such as engineers and mathematicians in news media, science communicators have examined their representation in fiction texts such as films, television, theatre, novels, and comics. They have conducted this research for a range of reasons including to evaluate equality of representation among scientist characters by genders, ethnicities, and disciplines (for example, Long et al, 2010), and to investigate how characters in sciencethemed fiction promote particular ideologies such as scientism (for example, Orthia, 2011).

The ultimate rationale is often to understand what impact fictional representations of STEM professionals have on public discourse, for example on people's concepts of what scientists are like or who can be an engineer. Sometimes this is framed as investigations of fiction's role-modelling capacity for STEM careers (for example, Steinke et al, 2012). In other cases, the rationale is to sample fiction as a manifestation of existing public discourse, to find out what a particular society already thinks about science, its personnel, and the ‘others’ it contrasts itself to (for example, Haynes, 1994).

However, almost none of this work has attended to fictional representations of queerness. That is the case whether it refers to diversity in scientific characters’ sexual orientation, gender, and sex characteristics, or fiction's depictions of queer issues in science.

Indeed, diversity in gender and sex characteristics has been rendered still more invisible than usual by the field's analytical conventions. Most studies examining the gender or sex of scientist characters look only at differences between ‘women’ and ‘men’, implicitly assuming a cis-binary model of gender and sex that is not questioned or even mentioned. Such assumptions patently exclude gender diverse people and people with diverse sex characteristics who don't identify as female or male. Non-heterosexuals are also often overlooked by analysts who presume characters are heterosexual unless canonically proven otherwise. As well as perpetuating harm to queer people specifically, such analytical decisions do the field a general disservice by keeping discourse about inclusion at a superficial level.

What might queer perspectives offer science communication theory? In this chapter, inspired by queer theory's metaphorical potential, we challenge the science/public binary that underlies most of the science communication models at the centre of science communication theory. We focus on models because they constitute the most well developed area of science communication theory (Trench and Bucchi, 2010). We argue that queering science communication models offers liberatory possibilities for science communication by undermining the hegemonic authority of Western institutionalized science and by granting epistemic legitimacy to marginalized people, including LGBTIQA+ people.

In the spirit of queer pluralism, we take two simultaneous paths to arrive at that point. The left option takes a straighter academic path and examines two queer case studies that illustrate key problems with science communication models. The right option takes a queerer path, using an extended metaphor to explore the gendered and sexual dimensions of the relationship between science and science communication to show what is in desperate need of change. Choose whichever you prefer to read first, then read the other if you like. The paths come together at the chapter's end for conclusions applicable to both.

Queered science communication models and the role of trust

The participatory model has let us down by purporting to be the solution to disenfranchisement and marginalization, when in fact it polices and even protects those unequal power dynamics. Metaphorically speaking, and to an extent non-metaphorically, science communication is an airless, suburban bunker of oppressive, cisgendered heteronormativity. Like a controlling husband, Western institutionalized science prizes a fundamentalist scepticism characterized by routinely questioning everything. That very act of questioning removes power from marginalized people when they are rendered science's objects.

Dialogue and participation cannot reinstate that power. Rather, they force the marginalized to negotiate truth with an oppressive knowledge system whose adherents think they have something useful to contribute to every question. As far as current models are concerned, science communication's imperatives reinscribe Western institutionalized science's claim that it is the gold standard of authority.

This chapter equips readers with the knowledge to create effective health communication campaigns. It explores simple ways to ensure your audience understands your health message, including researching your audience, setting SMART aims, and reducing jargon.