WANTED: “Nounours,” a formidable source of comfort at UM
There are nine of them, and they are biologists, ecologists, psychologists, computer scientists, and science mediators at the University of Montpellier. They were chosen by the Researchers' Night jury to lead the Great Participatory Experiment (GEP), which took place on September 27, 2019.
Their mission: to create a composite sketch of the most comforting teddy bear in France.
The individual is a teddy bear. He could be present in one of the twelve cities participating in Researchers' Night on September 27. The public is advised to exercise extreme caution: the suspect could be dangerously comforting. Since last April, nine scientists at the University of Montpellier have been working in the utmost secrecy to develop a foolproof plan to identify and convict the alleged culprit with the help of the general public.
Elite researchers mobilized
At the heart of it all is Thierry Brassac. A science communicator at the University of Montpellier, he put together his first exhibition on biodiversity in 2010, featuring stuffed animals. Fascinated by these little creatures, he never looked back, even going so far as to teach this gentle science in the science communication master's program at the University of Montpellier. "People either love peluchology or don't understand it, but what is certain is that, scientifically speaking, it only works if you take it very seriously," he warns. Now an expert in the art of classifying teddy bears, he is the coordinator of this project.
To track down the stuffed animal, Thierry Brassac assembled a multidisciplinary team. "At the time, Nicolas Mouquet was working on the aesthetics of fish, and when I told him about the composite sketch, he suggested classifying teddy bears according to morphological characteristics, based on the model used in the natural sciences," explains the mediator. Renowned for his work on the mechanisms of the emergence and maintenance of diversity, Nicolas Mouquet is also scientific director of the Center for Synthesis and Analysis of Biodiversity in Montpellier (CESAB). Working alongside him, Anne-Sophie Tribot, an ecologist and biologist, oversaw the development of the protocol. Their goal: to identify the suspect's morphological profile and his power to comfort.
The third pillar of this elite team is Nathalie Blanc. Deputy director of the EPSYLON cognitive psychology laboratory, her in-depth knowledge of the development of emotional awareness in children will help us better understand how the teddy bear operates to seduce its victims. They are joined by Michel Raymond, an evolutionary biologist atthe Institute of Evolutionary Sciences in Montpellier (ISEM), François Guilhaumon, a research fellow atIRD, Nicolas Casajus, an eco-computer scientist at CESAB, Moad Essabbar, a PhD student in electronics, and Christopher Sevin, a student in scientific mediation at the University of Montpellier.
The Great Participatory Experiment
Selected last April by a jury composed of science communicators and researchers, this research project will be at the heart of the Grande Expérience Participative (GEP) participatory experiment, which will take place on September 27 as part of the 15th Researchers' Night. The public in the 12 participating cities is invited to collaborate by bringing along their favorite teddy bear. During the evening, researchers will photograph the small specimens and subject them to a series of tests to establish a precise descriptive file. Participants need not worry about their precious stuffed animals: "They will be returned to their owners after the tests. No harm will come to them," says Thierry Brassac.
Next, it will be their owners' turn to answer a short series of questions developed by Nathalie Blanc. The aim is to study the subjective relationship we build with these objects, particularly the notion of comfort. "We ask participants to compare their teddy bear with eight other stuffed animals and tell us whether they find it more or less pleasant to look at, more or less soft, etc.," explains the mediator.
A protocol that is not "childish"
Although seemingly simple, setting up such an experimental protocol required meticulous preparation. This began with choosing the relevant criteria: head, body, and eye size; roundness; teddy bear posture; clothing accessories; internal mechanisms (lights, sound devices, etc.); fur length and softness... Everything was taken into account! Other criteria, such as softness, had to be abandoned because they were too complicated to measure.
Another challenge was ensuring that observations would be reproduced everywhere under the same conditions. For color, for example, it was difficult to settle for a simple black, beige, or yellow comment, which could leave too much room for subjectivity. To quantify the shade as accurately as possible, Anne-Sophie Tribot approached Montpellier-based biophysicist Frédéric Geniet to develop a colorimetric chart. "It took a huge amount of work to produce it, but also to print it, because we had to ensure that every city would be working with the same colors," explains Thierry Brassac.
Putting together the control sample also posed a challenge for the team, which had to deal with purely practical constraints this time around: "We had to find a supplier who could deliver twelve copies of each teddy bear so that every participating city would have the same sample." After numerous unsuccessful attempts with large retailers, it was finally Montpellier's historic toy store, Pomme de reinette et pomme d'Api, that was able to meet the researchers' request.
The bear, a totem animal
This major participatory experience is a continuation of the work carried out by the Scientific Culture Department at the University of Montpellier for many years, notably the exhibition "From cave bears to teddy bears." "What interests us is the whole imaginary aspect of bears, how they are represented in our unconscious. Bears have had very strong symbolic significance since prehistoric times; they are the quintessential totem animal in Western societies," concludes Thierry Brassac.
Researchers still have a lot of work to do to get everything ready by September 27. A website accessible to the public will then be dedicated to data processing and analysis. The result will be a carefully collected dataset that can be analyzed using bioinformatics tools to create a composite sketch of France's most comforting teddy bear and... perhaps a scientific publication?
Researchers' Night, September 27, 2019
In Toulouse-Albi, Marseille, Bordeaux, Limoges, St-Etienne, Angers, Le Mans, Brest, Dijon, Besançon, Paris, St-Denis de la Réunion