Context
The ERC Synergy NanoBubbles project studies how, when and why science fails to correct itself. Drawing on cases from nanobiology, it examines claims that keep circulating despite well-documented refutations, the “bubbles”. The team organised two meetings: a roundtable at the EASST-4S conference (June 2024) and a symposium on decontaminating the scientific literature (Paris, September 2024). The podcast was created to carry this research beyond the academic world.
Stakes
- The podcast is produced as part of a European project, ERC Synergy NanoBubbles, with contributors from several countries, to take its research beyond the academic world.
- In nanobiology, certain promises, notably new ways of delivering drugs, continue to circulate despite well-documented refutations, and those who challenge them struggle to be heard. In a publishing landscape where universities and industry intermingle, the podcast gives a voice to those who doubt: researchers, historians of science, scientific detectives.
- NanoBubbles looks for strategies to detect scientific errors and correct them. The podcast, for its part, explores error as a deliberate source of creation, in its music and its visual identity.
Approach
We invented Madeleine, a fictional narrator who is neither a scientist nor a journalist. Her voice acts as a critical publication apparatus: she introduces references, creates distance, and shifts the sound space.
The visual identity draws on Op Art and kineticism, which produce perceptual instability through repetition and geometric precision. Jesús Rafael Soto sees repetition as a way of generating movement. Illusion thus becomes a fertile “error”. David Lynch (Twin Peaks) contributes the idea of unsettling details in familiar settings. Guillaume François’s music follows the same logic, drawing on Brian Eno and Peter Schmidt’s Oblique Strategies: “Honour thy error as a hidden intention”.
Achievements
- Season 1: four episodes of 15 to 20 minutes, eight researchers (science and technology studies, history of science, nanobiosciences).
- Season 2: three episodes of about 20 minutes, interviews with seventeen “scientific detectives”.
- Visual identity of the podcast.
- Bilingual press kit.
- Distribution on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, Amazon Music and Deezer.
Timeline
- June 2024: roundtable at EASST-4S;
- September 2024: symposium in Paris and recording of the interviews;
- 1 June 2025: official launch of both seasons.
