From scientific researchers to "Internet celebrities", is popular science easy? Yuan Lanfeng said that he has been working hard
There should be a bridge to science in the "flow world"
Our reporter Gong Chiping and Chen Shuyi
"How long do you spend online every day?" Hearing this question, Yuan Lanfeng scratched his sparse hair and gave the answer: "Almost all the time." After thinking about it, he added: "Not in class, preparing for class , to be interviewed, that is to go online."
It's hard to imagine this answer coming from a researcher.
Yuan Lanfeng is an associate researcher at the Hefei National Laboratory for Microscale Matter Science, University of Science and Technology of China. From the appearance, Yuan Lanfeng fits people's imagination of some scientific researchers who are sloppy. When interviewed by reporters at home, Yuan Lanfeng was wearing a pair of pajamas and his hair was as messy as ever. of.
However, Yuan Lanfeng's study exposed another side of him.
The tripods stacked on the balcony are for the convenience of interviews and filming by the video team; there are a large number of history, social science and natural science books on the bookshelf, a set of beautifully packaged "The Complete Translation of Twenty-Four Histories", and the bookshelf is also He often appears in the video background; another optional video background is the "honor wall". In addition to the China Association for Science and Technology and other institutions, many trophies and awards come from platforms such as Weibo and Xigua Video. Various honorary titles It's a compliment for his fans and network influence - this study is also a workshop he specially decorated for shooting popular science videos.
Another identity of Yuan Lanfeng is the so-called "Internet celebrity", to be precise, a well-known science communication worker on the Internet.
Up to now, he has nearly 10 million followers on the entire network. Last year, he posted 110 long videos and 377 short videos online. On average, he posted at least one short video every day.
In 2021, his popular science monograph "A Brief Talk on Quantum Information" will be officially published. It will be published by the University of Science and Technology of China Press. It has been printed three times in less than a year. 5000 copies were printed.
Similar professional academic books rarely sell 1,000 copies, and such a print number is very rare.
Regarding Yuan Lanfeng's personal affairs, there is another school of opinion on the Internet.
Some people think that he is neither a scientific researcher involved in quantum science experiments, nor does he work for these companies specializing in quantum technology. As a scientific researcher, he is devoted to popular science.
If it is matched with his genius growth experience - he completed elementary school and the first year of junior high school in two years, entered the Department of Chemical Physics of the University of Science and Technology of China at the age of 14, and obtained a doctorate in chemistry at the age of 23, many people will inevitably sigh "suffering Zhongyong".
From a scientific researcher to an internet celebrity, what has Yuan Lanfeng experienced?
Why make such a choice?
From research to science
At the end of last year, Yuan Lanfeng moved into a new home in Hefei High-tech Zone.
Along the subway, near his home are the Quantum Science Center Station and the Advanced Research Institute of the University of Science and Technology.
Even the billboards at the roadside bus station are also showing the "ambition" of this area: to actively create a source of quantum innovation technology around quantum communication, quantum computing, quantum precision measurement and other fields.
The back door of his community is close to Yunfei Road. This road has another name - Quantum Avenue, because more than 20 masters such as Guodun Quantum, Guoyi Quantum, Yuanyuan Quantum, and Zhongchuangwei Quantum are densely arranged on this road. Companies operating quantum technology and affiliated companies.
It takes about an hour to drive here from the East China University of Science and Technology, where Yuan Lanfeng works, but it is very close to the "quantum information" that he has been concerned about for a long time.
Last semester, Yuan Lanfeng didn't have many classes at school. The places that made him exhausted the most were Weibo, Zhihu, Douyin, Xigua Video, Toutiao and other online platforms.
Today, Yuan Lanfeng has a long-term video team, including five or six people, including director, camera, business and so on.
The basic process of work is that Yuan Lanfeng sees a piece of science and technology news, writes it down, checks the information, asks experts, does research, writes a popular science article, and posts it on his personal social platform; after a period of time, he accumulates a few topics, A special video shooting team went to his home to shoot the material; the material was packaged and sent to the post-production team, and the production was completed and sent to the short video platform.
The story of how Yuan Lanfeng embarked on the road of popular science begins in 2015.
This year, there was a big sensation in the field of quantum information. The research group of Pan Jianwei of the Chinese University of Science and Technology made a major breakthrough in quantum instantaneous transmission technology.
Many reports describe the effect of this technology as being like the teleportation in the movie "Star Trek".
"The most common comment from readers is 'I don't know what to do'." Yuan Lanfeng had the idea of letting more people "understand".
However, his field of expertise is not quantum information, but theoretical and computational chemistry, but the theoretical basis of this field is quantum mechanics, and he is familiar with quantum information.
So, he found some information, chatted with colleagues from Pan Jianwei's research group on the phone for half an hour, and wrote an article that he felt was very "titled", called "Science Quantum Instantaneous Transmission Technology, including you understand." !
, posted on personal Weibo.
After the article was published, the response was unexpected. At that time, Yuan Lanfeng only had more than 8,000 fans, but the retweets and comments were so overwhelming that he could not keep up with the speed of forwarding.
Friends around him encouraged him to continue writing, and even someone asked him to talk about quantum information right away.
"What are you asking me to do? I'm not specializing in this." Yuan Lanfeng felt strange.
Later, I found out after inquiring that the professional has already been hired, and the biggest problem is that the audience does not understand it well.
He believes that he only knows about quantum information. In order to give lectures, he has to study it systematically and read the classic textbook "Quantum Computing and Quantum Information" in this field within one month.
Yuan Lanfeng soon discovered that he was much more interested in popular science than scientific research.
He was a wide-ranging man.
He likes literature, and the enlightening reading is "Journey to the West"; in social science, the people who have the greatest influence on him are Confucius, Russell, Lu Xun and others; when he was admitted to university, he liked mathematics, physics and chemistry at the same time, so he chose chemistry at USTC The Department of Physics was the only department in the country that emphasized both mathematics, physics and chemistry.
A British philosopher said: There are two types of scholars, "fox" type and "hedgehog" type, the fox knows many things, the hedgehog knows one big thing.
"In hindsight, I was a super big fox." Yuan Lanfeng said.
On August 16, 2016, China launched the world's first quantum science experimental satellite "Mozi".
This made the public more interested in quantum information, and many reporters approached him for interviews, and he became a quantum information expert in the eyes of the media.
Knowledge in the scientific field often forms misunderstandings in social communication.
Yuan Lanfeng realized this after the launch of the "Mozi".
According to media reports, quantum cryptography is achieved through quantum entanglement, but Yuan Lanfeng discovered after communicating with the front-line researchers of quantum information that this is not the case. Quantum cryptography can be completely free from quantum entanglement, and only one photon is sent at a time.
"A lot of popular science content on the Internet is wrong. If you don't correct it and tell everyone what is right, the impact may be very large." Yuan Lanfeng said, "But popular science is very difficult to do. First of all, science popularizers must have scientific research level, know what the truth is, and then have the language level to spread the truth." There should be a bridge between real science and the public, but often the situation is that scientists may lack the knowledge in simple language. Expressed that public-facing communicators may lack accurate and deep understanding, leading to this bridge, which often breaks there.
He wants to be the bridge.
Anxiety about traffic
To be this bridge, Yuan Lanfeng is gifted.
In the interview, he relayed the evaluation of him by the video cooperation team: "A rare scientist with a sense of the Internet." "Although I don't know what the sense of Internet is." Yuan Lanfeng laughed at himself.
Yuan Lanfeng's Internet experience can be traced back to 1997, when he logged into the Hanhai Nebula BBS of China University of Science and Technology, and registered the account "Hu Bugui" - "When I return, I will never return to the countryside." The net name comes from Tao Yuanming's "Return". Come and Come and Say Goodbye."
Because of his frequent and high-quality posts, and his impartiality while "controversial" with others, he was selected as the deputy webmaster.
He likes to share his views. On his personal social platform, he still maintains at least 3 posts per day. The basic format is related comments with links to science and technology news.
He also likes to read the comments of netizens. "As long as I have time, I will read a few more comments, so that I know what they are thinking, so I can answer them in the future." Yuan Lanfeng explained.
Even so, the contradiction between scientific research work and network traffic naturally exists.
One of Yuan Lanfeng's videos has been viewed more than 20 million times, but the video is only 48 seconds long and is not carefully crafted.
It was a webcast he gave on a popular science day, and he talked about a short piece of "why do solids exist in the world". The cooperating video production unit intercepted it and put it on the Internet. Unexpectedly, it became a "popular".
Yuan Lanfeng knew that his speech rate was 300 words per minute. "The content of this video is less than 300 words. What can you say?" He asked back.
He is more used to producing long content, whether video or text, sometimes speaking in front of the camera for half an hour or more.
"A reporter used to say that I was a short video maker. I asked him, have you seen a half-hour short video?" In 2018, British mathematician Michael Attia proposed a "simple idea" to prove Riemann's conjecture, shocking In the mathematical world, this conjecture was put forward by the German mathematician Riemann in 1859, and it has puzzled the world for a century and a half.
Yuan Lanfeng put a lot of effort into research, read a lot of materials, wrote down what he could understand and was worth spreading to the public, shot 6 episodes of long videos, and wrote more than 30,000 words of manuscripts prepared in advance.
So well-made, but the playback volume is not high.
However, Yuan Lanfeng found that some people still benefited from it.
After the 6 videos about Riemann's conjecture went online, one of his junior sisters, who was an assistant professor at Shanghai University of Science and Technology, "came to me and told me that I didn't understand Riemann's conjecture at all before, but after watching my video, I now understand the level of understanding. more than 99 percent of the population."
Yuan Lanfeng was very happy. He thought about it carefully, and then tacitly assumed that his subjects of popular science were professionals who had a certain grasp and interest in science-related fields.
In the fast-paced era, fewer people read long articles and watch long videos, and even fewer are willing to buy books to read.
However, Yuan Lanfeng still published a book.
The reason he gave is that quantum information is a very large field, and each article and video can only say a little bit.
When the editor came to ask for a manuscript, he was in a hurry. The deadline was only 2 weeks away. The other party suggested that Yuan Lanfeng should sort out the articles he had written in the past few years, and then make a few revisions before publishing.
Yuan Lanfeng thought for a while, and then wrote a new one.
"The book can tell you what each chapter is about according to the system, and there is a logical relationship between each other. How to arrange the knowledge in the book is very technical." Yuan Lanfeng said.
In the preface of this "Quantum Information Brief", Yuan Lanfeng has given reading suggestions: If you don't understand, please don't be discouraged, skipping it completely will not affect your understanding of the context.
From the sequence of chapters, we can see Yuan Lanfeng's intentions.
Ordinary textbooks usually first talk about the principles of quantum mechanics, but Yuan Lanfeng mentioned the relatively easy-to-understand quantum precision measurement first, and then talked about the principles, quantum computing and quantum communication.
The book also sets up optional reading content, which is highly professional.
Who is watching his popular science works, he can't predict this, and sometimes the effect is unexpected.
A few days ago, he had an experience that he described as "very miraculous" - when participating in a youth science and technology activity, a fifth-grade child asked him questions, asking a lot of questions about quantum information, and asking Very professional, the child said that he had read and understood "A Brief Introduction to Quantum Information".
If there is no audience, it will definitely not be good for science popularization.
In order to match the law of communication, Yuan Lanfeng is also trying to change.
The language style of the article is different. From the original formal content of the paper, it has become more and more colloquial; the video material shot has not only shortened the length of time, but also often uses the most popular "stalks" on the Internet.
However, he sometimes deliberately avoids some "hype" editing methods, requiring a gentle and polite attitude in the video; he also often advises the production team on punctuation, such as the use of full-width symbols, and each mathematical operator before and after it. blank.
In the traffic world, Yuan Lanfeng still maintains the rigor of scientific researchers and high requirements for quality.
Fortunately, he has found a way to survive - the short video platform signed a three-year agreement with him, and set aside fixed funds every year to buy out the publishing rights of his popular science videos - which makes him not too anxious about traffic.
Science becomes a profession
Putting all energy into the cause of popular science means that scientific research has to be completely stagnant.
If you check the records of Yuan Lanfeng's papers, you will find that the most recent one was published in 2019. It was a paper published by a doctoral student he tutored after graduation. He is one of several co-authors.
To this day, Yuan Lanfeng's title remains "Associate Researcher".
There are many people discussing this on the Internet, and some people question Yuan Lanfeng's scientific research ability.
To this end, he personally answered a question on Zhihu: "How do you think about Yuan Lanfeng, the former 'genius prodigy' who is only doing simple popular science work now?"
How should we view "simple popular science work"?
As far as the general environment is concerned, people's recognition of the contribution of popular science work is not high.
Some people in scientific research units want to do science popularization, but the leaders do not support them, so they assign a lot of work unrelated to science popularization; some doctors working in hospitals are ranked last in the year-end performance evaluation because they are enthusiastic about doing science popularization; Popular science, being talked about behind the back of colleagues is not doing the right thing.
In addition, in the market competition, science popularization work is relatively incapable of attracting money.
Wang Jie, a professional science popularizer, quit his job as a programmer and started a company with a friend. He used his knowledge to pay for writing popular science works and doing radio shows. However, because the audience for popular science is relatively small, Wang Jie's best-selling paid programs are only 25,000 copies were sold, while similar programs in economics and psychology often sold hundreds of thousands of copies.
Yuan Lanfeng was relatively calm about this.
The China University of Science and Technology has a very positive attitude towards him doing science popularization.
The article he wrote, the leader saw it and said it was good, but he didn't think he was not doing his job properly.
He opened a WeChat public account and wrote popular science articles on it. The school also helped recruit students to be editors and work as part-time students.
The biggest support is that the school has a relatively loose assessment system for him.
Yuan Lanfeng thought this was very reasonable, "There are thousands of people in our school who publish papers, do I need this one?"
In the matter of popular science, USTC has certain advantages.
Founded in 2001, the Department of Science and Technology Communication of USTC is the first such department in the country.
It may be due to Yuan Lanfeng's "achievements" in related aspects. In 2021, he served as the deputy director of the Department of Science and Technology Communication.
The newly established Science Communication Research Center of the Chinese Academy of Sciences is located in the University of Science and Technology of China, and Yuan Lanfeng is the deputy director.
Although he became the deputy director, Yuan Lanfeng still failed to "regularize" in terms of professional title.
In the current system, neither scientific research institutions nor colleges and universities have full-time jobs for science popularization.
"We need to maintain the seriousness of professional title qualifications. According to the current standards, whether we want to evaluate professors or researchers, it mainly depends on scientific research achievements. I have spent most of my time on popular science these years, and it is really not necessary to solve problems through this channel." Yuan Lanfeng explained. .
However, the dawn has appeared. Last year, Beijing took the lead in launching the senior title of science communication, and many areas are also researching and advancing.
"There is a little girl who just graduated from the Department of Science and Technology Communication. She transferred from the Department of Chemistry. In 2020, she made a popular science video and won awards from the Chinese Academy of Sciences and the Ministry of Science and Technology. She wants to become a popular science writer in the future." Yuan Lanfeng Rao You Interested in talking to reporters about his students.
He established a very important goal for this year: in the past, he was only fighting alone, but now, he hopes to cultivate more science talents and build up the entire career of science.
Although the Department of Science and Technology Communication is classified under the category of Communication Studies when enrolling graduate students, most of the students are liberal arts students of undergraduate communication studies, and it takes great effort to learn the hard knowledge of science and technology.
Yuan Lanfeng mentioned that his mentor at Cornell University, Professor Roald Hoffman, is a Nobel Prize winner and a popular science writer.
His popular science TV film "Chemistry World" and popular science book "Same and Different" are quite influential.
Yuan Lanfeng remembered that at a group meeting, Professor Hoffman took out a slide with a certain chemical formula and told everyone that someone came to ask what the properties of this thing were.
From the point of view of ordinary researchers, Yuan Lanfeng was surprised. Why should I ask this question, why would I ask such a question, and why should I answer it?
Later, he saw Professor Hoffman draw and reason on the blackboard, and abruptly deduced the properties of this substance based on a chemical formula.
"No matter how difficult the scientific truth is, it can be explained clearly to ordinary people." Yuan Lanfeng said.