"Any business that has any connection whatsoever to science and technology should recognize that there's a problem in the way it's being communicated now," says Jay Ingram, the well-known science journalist and host of the Discovery Channel's Daily Planet program.

Ingram was in Banff recently to launch the Banff Centre's new professional development program in science communications. In a coup for the centre, it snagged Ingram as chair of the program and he's certainly putting his heart and considerable prestige into the effort.

"It would be unthinkable for a cultured person in today's society to say: 'I know nothing about Shakespeare,' " Ingram told a packed audience at the program's launch event. "But there are people who happily say they know nothing about physics."

Ingram ascribes this to a perception that science is so complicated that only scientists can discuss it. He argues that if this view is allowed to prevail, important issues from climate change and Kyoto to bovine spongiform encephalopathy (BSE, or mad cow) and genetically modified foods will be decided without an adequate level of public discussion.

Jay Ingram

Mary Ann Moser is the sparkplug who pushed for this program to be created. She says she got the idea at a session with BBC broadcaster Simon Singh, who has made topics as arcane as advanced cryptography accessible to the public.

"We need more of that in Canada," she told herself, and went on to convince the Banff Centre to create a two-week intensive program that will see its first participants in August, 2006.

Initially, there was some thought of making it a course for journalists, but Moser and her colleagues quickly perceived a broader audience. They realized there are many people working in corporations, research organizations and government departments who need to explain how scientific research affects the world.

"Any company that does research can benefit by explaining it to the public," she says, "and frankly, I don't think we're doing a very good job of communicating science right now."

Moser did a worldwide search for science communication programs and found "you can take a degree or a diploma, but then you have to take a year out of your life. There's nothing out there for people who work in this field and want a focused, intensive experience."

Banff Centre president and CEO Mary Hofstetter checked this by asking the audience at the launch to raise their hands if they knew of a similar program anywhere in the world. She was relieved to see no hands go up. "So we're claiming a 'unique' in the world," she laughed.

Although the energy industry snaps to mind as one that could use greater public awareness around issues such as climate change and the environment, and also the beef industry with regard to BSE, Ingram cited telecommunications as an example of a business that could benefit from better science communication.

"Although communications technologies are ubiquitous, nobody's really been given even the fundamentals about how they work," she says. "I'm not saying that it's necessarily the job of Telus or BCE to educate people about this, but it is in the interest of companies to help people appreciate the reach and extent of the telecommunications network."

It's worth noting that Telus has stepped up to the plate recently on science awareness with multimillion dollar support for the science centres in Calgary, Edmonton, Vancouver, Toronto and Montreal, which are now branded as the Telus World of Science.

Evidence of outside support for the Science Communications program was visible at the launch, with representatives from iCore (Informatics Circle of Research Excellence), the Canadian Foundation for Innovation, the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council, Alberta Ingenuity and the Alberta Heritage Foundation for Medical Research (AHFMR) in attendance.

AHFMR president Kevin Keough lauded the program's goals, and noted that the budget of his organization, which supports medical research in Alberta, is larger than that of the Calgary Flames or the Edmonton Oilers, yet "they get a lot more space in the newspaper than science does."

Moser, who works at Alberta Ingenuity, echoed this sentiment. "You don't need to be a linebacker to discuss football, and you shouldn't need to be a scientist to talk intelligently about science."

Participants will be selected based on their ability to communicate science in new and interesting ways. Moser says each will only have to pay around $800, including room and board, because the Banff Centre is working on fund-raising to cover most of the program costs. The 18 selected participants will learn from six visiting faculty members, and a high-profile guest speaker, as well as Ingram and Moser, who are themselves high energy science communicators.

To provide examples of superbly-explained science, the launch event audience was treated to three short talks on topics - including a rare fish with a mysterious cavern in its head; surprising news about vision in the aging brain; and the physics of a drop of water. The latter presentation was by University of Chicago physicist Sidney Nagel, who had the audience holding their collective breath as he showed high-speed photos of water and glycerin drops breaking away. He noted that the physics and mathematics of this is challenging as well as beautiful, since "as the radius of curvature gets smaller, the force goes to infinity."

In a conversation after the session, Ingram and Nagel explored the common ground between science and religion. Nagel pointed out that he has to "take the word of other physicists about the Big Bang because that's not really my area of specialty.”

So, in a way, he added, science is a lot like religion because "somebody tells somebody who tells me that things are the way they are."

With topics such as this on the agenda, it's clear that this will not be a nuts-and-bolts writing course for science communicators. Ingram says you'll be able to recognize graduates of the program because their writing will take unexpected twists and turns in what seems like a straight-line story, and because they'll communicate a real love of science.

"You don't have to be a superscientist to be admitted to this program," he says, "but you have to show that you can approach these things in a whole new way."

Companies that want the public to better understand and appreciate the science behind their industry would do well to tap into this considerable pool of expertise.

Web Watch: www.banffcentre.ca/programs/program.aspx?id=344 (Tom Keenan is a professor at the University of Calgary and an expert on technology and its social implications. He can be reached at keenan@businessedge.ca)