Academia and the general public: why should we try to close the gap?

I guess it has taken me a while, but only recently I have really been hit by the gap that exists between Academia and the general public (maybe I should have been warned by the silence of my parents following their polite so-what-is-that-you-are-studying-son questions).

I was at a mineral expo in Torino, talking to this really passionate guy that routinely spends his weekends looking for cool interesting minerals in dismissed quarries and we had a long conversation spanning from minerals to existence. As usual. After 1 hour he felt like he could finally throw at me all the hopelesness he feels when trying to read scientific publications, even when they are meant for the general public. So he pulled out the book that changed his life. Not the bible, no. A booklet describing the minerals of Piemonte (the region of Torino). The book that drew him to his hobby. A tiny old book with pictures and clear explanations of what those minerals are and where they can be found. No rocket science, that's for sure. He held the book in his hands, above the pile of papers we had on our desk and that's when the j'accuse started, with him almost crying whispering talking of his past shitting on all our papers no-one can read. He was damn right. Well, that's how I felt on that Sunday. On Monday I was busy writing my own scientific papers , what the hell.

But really, what is Academia doing to pass all the advances to the general public? It simply occured to me that one of the reasons why research is way down in the political agenda in Italy is that people do not know what the word 'research' means. This is partly due to fact that the scientific community has failed (in this country, at least) to justify its own existence to the taxpayers. Why should we expect them to protest for yet another cut to the funds destined to our Universities, then? And the funny thing is that this lack of communication is partly a result of a conscious choice of academics that 'do not waste their precious time' and pride themselves of living outside the real world. This complacent behaviour has to come to an end, if we are still to maintain some research in this country. Otherwise natural selection will do the job. That easy.

So, this is a somewhat lengthy explanation of why I started this section of my website: to promote communication between scientists and the general public. Here I will post my scientific publications as well as some easy-to-read articles where I try to explain the same results to people without a scientific background. Enjoy the read