Roll up, roll up, see my laboratory

What is the most valued skill in our society? Is it to write beautiful poetry or create great art? I doubt it. Is it to discover new things or invent new machines? Nope, despite all the iPhones and laptops and Tamigotchis*. Is it to sing or kick an over-inflated pigbag around slightly better than everyone else? Getting warmer, but not quite.

Simon Cowell knows. I've only ever watched one episode of the X Factor, with mouth agape as obviously mentally-deficient people were ridiculed, but it was clear that the most valued skill of all is the capacity to entertain, in any form. X Factor isn't about discovering talent (clearly), it's about adding scorn, schadenfreude and a bit more schmaltz to the entertainment portfolio - talent has nothing to do with it. Not fine motives exactly, but entertaining enough to keep the dumb half of the population transfixed. We all like to be entertained, although some us prefer it to not involve an overweight mutant tunelessly wailing All By Myself.

Science as entertainment is on the telly and t'internet, in books and museums, but often only the best bits. Day-to-day science, we scientists assume, is not interesting to the public. Imagine though that you have never been into your lab full of weird shiny machines, strange smells and stuff spinning around. My Nan would have loved it. Her favourite day trip was to the Heinz factory because they had a machine that poked out all the beans with black bits on**.

I'm not suggesting that people want to watch us pootle around all day, but I do think some labs are inherently entertaining in a Wonka-esque way (and really not so hard to explain - is a mass spec really so different to The Great Heinz Bean Poker?)

This particularly struck me last week when I went to the best (and smallest) aquarium I've ever been to in Ucluelet, Canada. It was informative and entertaining, and could be a fine facility for marine molecular biology research. A similar story applies to the National Lobster Hatchery in Padstow, Cornwall, and the Poison Garden at Alnwick.

My dream lab would be an aquarium full of strange marine organisms, a garden growing medicinal plants (I do like a bit of folk medicine), and a screening facility where I could look for drugs in the corals and shellfish and plants. The whole thing would be open to the public to see what I'm up to (this transparency is also a good thing), and I would make it informative so people would pay to be entertained by my science.

*Technology at its finest.

**Correction, this is technology at its finest.