Scientific disclosure
The importance of science today is not questioned by anyone. Formerly advances in science were based on the support and work of concrete people. In general, the results of these works hardly reached society. Now, on the contrary, working teams and well-equipped laboratories are the most current expression of science.
All this cannot be maintained without a broad grant and, in most cases, public institutions are behind this aid. If this is so, society has another right to know the news about science, and scientists and researchers have not denied that reality. In order to receive the grant, the scientist must communicate to society (and therefore to politicians) the importance and necessity of his research work. Therefore, what is done on a scientific level more than ever must be transmitted to society.
The best system for disseminating the latest discoveries of science is that of scientific journals. In such journals, in almost all cases the language is English and the topics are very specific and superior. Therefore, information is disseminated among scientists and researchers and practically never reaches the rest of society. Consequently, we have to look for other ways to spread the news of science “to the street”, taking into account two characteristics: the degree of difficulty of the subject and the language.
In our case, the language to be used (or that we should use) is Basque, which would be the language of other peoples. However, the situation in which our language lives makes the difficulties greater than in the usual cases, such as Spanish, French and German. Therefore, to address these difficulties, it is necessary to seek and adapt specific ways for scientific news to reach Basque society. In the case of Basques, as in other societies, two conditions are met: the satisfaction of hunger and the knowledge of how tax money has been used in scientific and technological projects.
A few months ago, two new roads were opened almost in one. One of them is “CAF-Elhuyar Scientific Outreach Awards” and the other “Karlos Santamaría Research Award”. In the first case, the prizes were awarded last December and have been released in this magazine. As for the Karlos Santamaría prize, the organization is the Municipal Board of the Basque Country of Donostia and the award ceremony will be held at the end of the year.
As has been said before, in addition to language, another feature to consider for disseminating scientific innovations is the difficulty of the topics. From this point of view, both awards are totally complementary. In the case of the CAF-Elhuyar awards, the objective has been the dissemination of science and technology. In the case of the Karlos Santamaría Prize, the works written in Basque in the field of science, science or human technology will have the opportunity to be awarded, that is, in the writings the research topics will be analyzed from a profound perspective.
These two new ways will significantly increase the possibilities of disseminating in Basque the results and advances achieved in scientific research at this time. If these awards are repeated year after year, certainly in our Basque society, both in research and dissemination, important advances will be made in the use of Basque as a communication tool.
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