“I’m not a scientist” is a sentence CDLS Fellows Gabriel-Philip Santos and Randy Flores frequently hear during cosplay conventions when interacting with the general public at their science-themed booths. Visitors often lead with the assumption that since they don’t work in research or academic spaces, they can’t be a scientist. Cosplay for Science aims to challenge that narrative.

“We’re all in some small ways even throughout our daily lives applying what we’d consider the scientific method and people may just not appreciate that that’s what they’re doing,” Randy says. 

Cosplay for Science is a science communication project founded by Gabriel-Philip Santos, Brittney Stoneburg, Michelle Barboza-Ramirez and Isaac Magallanes. In 2017, Gabriel and Brittney attended a small convention in Pasadena, where they brought dinosaur fossils and cosplayed as Jurassic Park characters with the Raymond M. Alf Museum and Western Science Center. Audiences started flocking towards their booth. Gabriel had tabled with the Alf Museum before but had never seen this level of engagement. What’s the difference? he wondered. He quickly realized that since he and his colleague were in cosplay, people didn’t see them as scientists, they saw them as fellow nerds and thus, felt more comfortable asking questions rather than holding back out of fear of seeming uneducated.

These four friends—who had met at Cal State Fullerton—then officially started the Cosplay for Science Initiative. Over the next 8 years, Cosplay for Science regularly attended popular conventions such as San Diego Comic Con and Los Angeles Comic Con, blending science with franchises like Pokemon, Star Wars, and Dungeons and Dragons. Now titled the Cosplay for Science Alliance, they’ve got chapters (or “rebel cells,” Gabriel jokes) in Washington, Illinois, and along the East Coast. 

We get some of our understanding of science through the media we ingest—whether that be movies, TV shows, or videogames. Cosplay for Science leads with a goal of illustrating how science influences many of the stories we love. “Science and pop culture, they go hand in hand,” Gabriel shares. “If we can make [it] where everyone can see that, that would be amazing.”

Many face barriers to science which Cosplay for Science is trying to break down. Not everyone has access to a good education, and in turn, access to science. Through conventions and events at schools, museums, and aquariums, Cosplay for Science brings science to a wide reach of people, allowing folks to engage with subjects such as natural history and chemistry in, well, unconventional places.

Gabriel and Randy have met hundreds of people at conventions, many that find science unapproachable or unrelatable. Gabriel recalls a conversation he had with a teenager after a Cosplay for Science panel in 2019. The boy started with the usual disclaimer “I’m not a scientist,” asserting that he always had trouble with science, and that it wasn’t for him. Wanting to challenge this, Gabriel asked the boy to name something from pop culture that he was really into. The boy replied with Fullmetal Alchemist, the 2003 anime. When Gabriel asked the boy what the alchemical formula of a human was, he quickly listed off several different elements and percentages. “You have a chemist’s mind,” Gabriel told him. “You just have to look at it from that perspective.” 

Gabriel remembers the moment fondly. “Even if I only engage with one person at Comic Con truly, that’s still one more person [that’s learning about science],” he says.

Cosplay for Science hosts panels including “The Pokemon Ecology Academy” and “Natural History of Monster Hunter,” but a fan-favorite intersection between science and pop culture is “Star Wars: Critters.” Creatures in the Star Wars universe are inspired by real-life animals and feature adaptations that make sense for their environment. For example, Tautauns on the planet Hoth have big pelts of fur to help them survive the cold.   

On the topic of Star Wars creature design, Gabriel and Randy were particularly excited. “[We] can kinda just go on and on about stuff like this,” Randy says, laughing. “It drives so much creativity.” Hypothesizing about critters in the Star Wars universe parallels the way real-life paleontologists think about animals, emphasizing how science and art are interconnected, maybe more so than we think. Cosplay for Science continues to encourage this type of creative thinking, which like critical thinking, is not often a part of school curriculum.

Without science communication initiatives like Cosplay for Science, there’s so much information that isn’t being disseminated. 

“If the information that the scientists are uncovering, that they’re developing…if that’s not shared with people, there’s no point in what we did,” Gabriel emphasizes. “I don’t see science communication as something separate,” he continues. “Science communication needs to be the very end part of science….You do the research, you publish, but it has to also be shared.” In the case of climate science specifically, Randy explains how it’s essential for communities to have a chance to interface with the information being discovered so that they can recognize how climate change will affect them and build resilience. This is just one example of why it’s necessary to bridge the gap between academic bubbles and the general public. 

“Our duty as scientists isn’t just to do research,” Gabriel adds. “It’s to help people understand.”

People have a certain perception of what a scientist should be, and may not fit within that framework, but we all think scientifically much more often than we acknowledge. Cosplay for Science shows us that there’s no need to say “I’m not a scientist,” because really, we’re all scientists.

To learn more, visit https://www.cosplayforscience.com or @cosplayforscience on Instagram.

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Title image courtesy of Cosplay for Science. The image shows Cosplay for Science at the Fleet Science Center’s Genius in the House event. Gabriel-Philip Santos is located far right, and Randy Flores is in the back left, wearing the white hat.

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