Post-90s Xueba couple released popular science videos with references listed behind each work The
doctor turned into a UP master and wrote the thesis on the B station
"Fangstaff" is a transliteration of fun stuff, which means "interesting stuff", and the published content belongs to the field of paleontology.
At Station B, "Fangstaff" is known as the most rigorous science account for imparting knowledge - a long list of references will be listed behind each work published by this account.
In this niche and unpopular field, "Fangstaff" has released 143 videos, won 2.45 million fans, and gained over 100 million views.
The operators of "Fangstaff" are a couple of post-90s scholars: "Ghost Valley Hidden Dragon" Tang Cheng, who graduated with a Ph.D. from the Institute of Neuroscience, Chinese Academy of Sciences in May 2020, is the main force behind the creation of the video account; "Fang "Staff" Cai Chunlin works in an academic journal, focusing on operations.
With "Fangstaff", the two were selected as the "Top 100 UP Masters" at Station B for two consecutive years.
The road to popular science begins on a remote island
Tang Cheng's road to popular science began in 2014.
At the time, he was sent to a remote island to study monkeys.
The island is so desolate that "to buy food, you have to ride a battery car to a town three miles away to go to the market".
In order to adjust his life, Tang Cheng began to write two to three popular science articles for Guoke every month.
By 2016, he had written more than 100 popular science articles and joined the Shanghai Popular Science Writers Association.
In early 2018, China cloned the world's first pair of primates, Zhongzhong and Huahua.
This pair of babies was born on the monkey platform where Tang Cheng is located.
As a witness, Tang Cheng was almost the most suitable person in China to write popular science articles on cloning monkeys at that time, and he kept asking for manuscripts.
After writing a lot, Tang Cheng wanted to know what his readers wanted to see, so he did a more extensive survey.
The first thing Tang Cheng wants to know is what is everyone's attitude towards the first cloned monkey?
The feedback from readers shocked him - some questioned the strength of China's scientific research, and some felt that cloning was an evil technology.
"Why do we have been doing science popularization for so long, and the public's concept seems to have not been changed?" Tang Cheng couldn't figure it out.
Another thing contributed to his popular science road.
Once, Tang Cheng spent a lot of time preparing online course tutorials, wanting to teach children what genes are.
After speaking for an hour, the first question the students asked was: "Teacher, what is a cell?" At that moment, he suddenly realized that many people may have really not seriously studied the needs of the audience before doing science communication.
Science communication should be layered
A sample survey on the scientific literacy of Chinese citizens showed that in 2020, the proportion of citizens with scientific literacy was 10.56%.
"In other words, 90% of people are not scientifically literate. They may have no clue about some of the most basic concepts in scientific theories." Tang Cheng said, "If those of us who do science communication ignore the 90% , then rumors and anti-intellectual conspiracy theories will occupy them." Tang Cheng wanted to understand, this is something that is ignored in science communication.
"I think science communication should be layered: some people package some knowledge very well, very comprehensively, to those who have scientific knowledge; and some people need to find a way to push this kind of scientific literacy to those who need it most Science communication people, but these people were previously segregated by science communication in another group. For example, like a market, someone needs to sell shoes to people who wear shoes, but there are also people who need to find a way to get people who don't wear shoes. Put your shoes on. Science communication should have this different division of labor.”
Turn knowledge into entertainment products
It's just that it's not that simple to make people who don't wear shoes wear shoes.
In 2019, Tang Cheng decided to become an UP master.
At that time, Cai Chunlin, who was still Tang Cheng's girlfriend, often worked on localizing overseas popular science videos at station B, but these videos had less than 100 views in two or three months - equivalent to no one watching.
How can you attract the attention of fans?
Tang Cheng has repeatedly studied the secrets of the success of the top stream of station b.
A few months later, he and his girlfriend finally made their first video "Qi Shrimp" - about an ancient overlord named Qi Shrimp.
Why talk about paleontology?
Mainly because there is less need for a threshold in the understanding of paleontology.
When "Fantastic Shrimp" was uploaded, the number of fans of "Fangstaff" was about 700, and one video was viewed about 1,000 times a month.
The video of "Odd Shrimp" received more than 90,000 views within 24 hours of its release.
Followers rose to 21,000 in 24 hours, and then to 43,000 in 48 hours.
Within a month, the video also reached 880,000 views.
How did Tang Cheng do it?
This goes back to the question of popularizing science with 90% of the population.
Tang Cheng found that this group of people often have a characteristic that they are very busy.
In short, they are often busy office workers or busy students.
"I think the first spiritual need of such people is to get immediate and immediate entertainment. Therefore, I need to refine knowledge into exquisite entertainment products and delicious food so that these people can eat it."
Tang Cheng's dismantling secret is to "try to make the ancient creatures personified, dramatic and emotional".
Let those ancient creatures who are tens of millions or even hundreds of millions of years away from the present stage a moving story in the huge span of time and space.
For example, in the face of the first-generation overlord Qi Shrimp, those small prehistoric animals did everything they could to survive. Some of them evolved hard armor, some burrowed for poison, and some simply made themselves skinny and unpalatable. .
The verification process is at the same level as the doctoral dissertation
To be a popular science account, the most important thing is to ensure the rigor of knowledge transfer.
Therefore, in the production process of each video, the most time-consuming and laborious task is to find materials and research information.
Tang Cheng introduced that no matter the source and approach of the literature, or the depth and breadth of the verification, it is no different from the dissertation writing during his Ph.D.
At the most, he has read more than 50 related papers, and at least a dozen of them. "For a topic, it is basically normal to look at the literature for the past week. When encountering problems that are difficult to understand, I often have to check it up. A month or two."
Is it too grand to treat popular science with academic rigor?
Tang Cheng felt that this was necessary.
Different from the in-depth development of scientific research, popular science requires a breadth, which requires creators to quickly acquire relevant knowledge from literature and convert it into interesting oral expressions.
Even so, there are still mistakes in the video, and the errata after each video has become a "routine work".
Once Tang Cheng looked back at the video he posted about cartilaginous fish and found that someone pointed out that "in reality, killer whales have cultural diversity, and there are groups that are very afraid of sharks" without basis.
He did some research and put an errata comment on the top of the comment area.
Don't worry that they will be embarrassed by this, and sometimes read new conclusions from the paper and take the initiative to correct them.
"There are always new studies coming out that overturn old theories." "Fonstaff" said, "We try not to make mistakes, but if we make mistakes, we must correct them."
"It's worth taking the road of popular science"
Tang Cheng hopes to cooperate with more professional researchers to ensure the accuracy of the content.
Because many people have prejudice against science popularization, this has caused the shortage of professional science popularization talents in China to some extent.
Because of this, pseudoscientific marketing accounts have a lot of opportunities to "harvest leeks" and "bad money drives out good money".
Although he has "reduced" from a doctor who is engaged in scientific research to a full-time popular science UP master doing video content, and has become "not liked by his parents and elders", Tang Cheng feels that it is worthwhile to take the path of popular science, and "it must be Someone has to do this thing, and the threshold for doing this thing is very high, so it is more suitable for a person with scientific literacy in academia to do it. What's more, in foreign countries, it is normal for people from a scientific background to do science communication things." Tang Cheng felt, "There will be more and more people like me in the future."
Text / reporter Zu Weiwei
Coordinator/Liu Jianghua