BAR HARBOR – Some of the country’s top research scientists discussed the critical need to educate nonscientists about the importance of the work they are doing at Thursday’s annual meeting of the Mount Desert Island Biological Laboratory.

“Our future right now is hanging by a thread because we’ve lost key friends in Congress,” said Dr. Edward Benz of the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute in Boston.

Benz, who conducts research at the laboratory in the summertime, suggested to the group that the science and medicine community has failed to generate enthusiasm for research and development among young professionals who do not plan to enter the scientific field.

“I think, over the long haul, that will have an even bigger impact than the scientists we nurture,” he said.

The keynote speaker, Dr. Barbara Alving, acting director of the National Center for Research Resources, concurred. “We need to educate the public about science,” she said. “It can be fun, it can be entertaining.”

Alving pointed out that while most American politicians are lawyers, that is not always the case worldwide.

“If you look for politicians in China, they’re engineers,” she said. “It is a collective responsibility to educate … You’ve got to learn how to communicate with [lawyers].”

Alving described the nationwide networks of noncommercial Internet connections and scientific research groups that are being built by the government, research facilities and academic groups.

In all of the charts displayed to the crowd, none of the networks came farther north than New York, but Alving said that Northeastern isolation trend will change.

“There are all kinds of networks that are being built,” she said. “We should be extremely well-coordinated.”

After the speakers’ remarks, the crowd adjourned to watch as the ribbon was cut on the new co-op dining hall and gathering space.

The new building is twice as large as the original, built in 1962, and is an airy place of pine planking, board games and even a shark mosaic laid into the floor.

“We now have a balanced, year-round, fully operational Mount Desert Island Bio Lab Co-op,” MDIBL Director Dr. John Forrest said at the ribbon-cutting.