Trinity College Dublin, Ecology and Evolution
For those of us with an interest in the natural world, Mute Swans (Cygnus olor) are a staple of urban wildlife in Dublin, present in many parks and along both canals. However, it has been 25 years since there has been any real assessment of the state of the Mute Swan population in the Dublin region (1). This has been a period of immense change in the urban landscape.
Mute Swan © Graham Prole
This May, 80 of Ireland’s leading scientists will bring their research to 8 pubs in 3 cities for 3 fun-filled nights of science! Part of the international festival, Pint of Science Ireland takes science out of the lab and mixes it into some of the most interesting, engaging and unusual evenings you will ever spend in a pub.
Whether you’re a researcher, student or science-newbie, the festival is a great opportunity to hear about the latest scientific research and chat with Ireland’s top scientists over a pint. Running in Galway, Limerick and Dublin from the 18th to 20th of May, come along to one of the 8 venues for fascinating talks within the themes of the beautiful mind (with an added bonus from illusionist Rua), the human body, technology and the physics of atoms to galaxies. Tickets are free but some evenings are already booked out so hurry to get your place!
Find out more on the Pint of Science website (www.pintofscience.ie) and follow @pintofscienceIE on twitter for all of the latest science shenanigans!
Author: Sive Finlay, @SiveFinlay
The Irish Academy of Public Relations recently hosted a free event, “Radio Skills – A Special Evening for the Science Community” at the FOCAS Research Institute in DIT. The points raised and ensuing discussions provided interesting insights into relationships between scientists and journalists.
Ellen Gunning, director of the Academy, chaired the evening. From her experience of teaching public relations and interview skills, she described how many scientists are like Guards (the police) in how they deal with the media. Both professions are trained to communicate in a very impartial, specific and direct way with an unhealthy dollop of jargon. However, the key to effective public communication is to cut the jargon and to identify a clear, straightforward message which will be interesting and understandable for non-specialist audiences.
Professor Hugh Byrne gave a scientist’s perspective of dealing with the media. He highlighted the increasing importance of public engagement and research dissemination beyond the ivory tower of academia. Researchers must engage with the media to create a sustainable scientific research culture in which scientists are accountable for how they spend tax payers’ money.
He also discussed the “dark side” of engaging with the media. Many scientists are wary of journalists because they are afraid of being misquoted or that their research will be sensationalised. The immediacy of a live radio interview is a scary prospect for scientists who are used to careful drafting and re-drafting of their words for academic publications. As Professor Byrne pointed out, many scientists are used to building their arguments backwards: weaving different strands of argument together to finally reach the main conclusion or take home message at the end. Journalists want the opposite: the hook for why your research is interesting or important needs to come first.
However, scientists need to get over their fear engaging with the media. Good journalists are not trying to catch you out: they want to get their facts right just as much as you don’t want to be misquoted. Good science communication stems from a feeling of trust and complicity between the scientist and journalist.
Sean Duke continued the discussion with a journalist’s perspective of working with scientists. He further underlined the importance of building good relationships and trust with researchers. He pointed out that, despite their concerns, scientists have more control of a news story or interview than journalists. Researchers are the experts in their own field, they are the ones who dictate the parameters of a story so it’s up to scientists to find the interesting nuggets of information or take home messages. To do this effectively, it’s a good idea to follow Duke’s checklist for how to deal with journalists.
Journalists want:
A good story: find a way to give it to them by explaining your science through reference to everyday life. What’s interesting about your research and why should people care?
Explanation, not patronisation: scientists need to explain their research clearly so that it’s understandable for a non-specialist audience but don’t slip into “dumbing down” your story.
Scientists who take control: remember that you’re the expert so you should lead the story. If you’re contacted by a researcher for a radio show then treat it as an audition for the live interview. Have an agenda for what you want to communicate, it’s up to you to dictate and take control of the story.
Journalists don’t want:
Jargon: scientists are brainwashed to use complex terms that might as well be a foreign language to most audiences. Think of yourself as a translator: don’t use acronyms or obscure terms that will alienate and confuse your audience.
Defensive interviews: treat an interview with a journalist as an opportunity, not a penance. Good journalists are not trying to catch you out but neither should you expect them to know every detail about your research field. If you are asked what you think is a strange or misguided question, give the journalist the benefit of the doubt instead of becoming defensive about your position.
To be lectured: scientists are used to giving lectures or presenting at conferences. These formal settings are very different to the informal, conversational style of most interviews. Don’t complicate an interview by slipping into lectorial mode.
The Irish Academy will explore some of these topics further and provide more in-depth radio and PR training for scientists during their one day training course, “Radio Interview Skills for Scientists” on the 11th of April. Places on the course are limited to six people and can be booked here. Details of the Academy’s other courses can be found on www.irishacademy.com.
Author: Sive Finlay, @SiveFinlay
Photo credit:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/schools/primaryhistory/world_war2/daily_life/
We’re delighted that one of our regular EcoEvo@TCD writers, Sarah Hearne (@SarahVHearne) has won a prize from the Association for British Science Writers. Sarah won first place in the new Good Thinking student science blog category for her piece, Sea Serpents off the Port Bow! published in November last year. These prestigious awards recognise excellence in scientific journalism and writing from both students and professionals and it’s a great achievement to have been singled out among such stiff competition.
Congratulations Sarah!
Between the 1st and 2nd of May several members of the Trinity Centre for Biodiversity Research got their game faces on for the inaugural Intervarsity BioBlitz Challenge. For the first time the Trinity fox and co were pitted against the best biodiversity on offer from the DCU, NUI Galway and UCC campuses.
The stakes were high but the goal was simple; identify more species on campus then any other college in a 24 hour period and become the first college biodiversity champion of Ireland!
Kicking off Trinity’s effort to win the championship the birdwatchers were up bright and early to catch the dawn course. With 19 species identified it was the Sparrow hawk that caught the eye (but evaded the camera lens) of our inner city campus birds.
While the birders were digesting their findings some early morning pond dipping was throwing up its own surprises with a three-spined stickleback found in what looked an inhospitable pool out the back of the Zoology Department.
Meanwhile in the more hospitable setting of Trinity’s own little secret garden some black ants were having a midday honeydew snack from their aphid herd during our plant identification walk.
Although many of the 32 species of invertebrates were found amongst the plants and pools, it was in the nooks and crannies of various building walls that Trinity’s diversity of arachnids, such as the snakes back spider, were found to reside.
While many volunteers were out rummaging in the leaf litter, Rachel Kavanagh was busy coordinating efforts at the central hub in the Science Gallery. There were also some inquisitive guests from St. Mary’s Boys school learning about pollinators with Green Bee Education.
As the day passed-by collecting and identifying specimens the deadline quickly approached and results were coming in. Galway won with a massive 581 species, with Cork on 451 leaving the race to avoid the wooden spoon between the Dublin Campuses. Unfortunately despite the heroic efforts of everyone, especially the botanists who identified 245 species of plants, Trinity could not avoid the dubious wooden spoon award, finishing with 346 and losing by just 27 species.
However while we didn’t win their was plenty of consolation prizes to be found as @EndangeredDAVE left some postcards and paintings of endangered Irish species in various spots around campus.
With an impressive 346 species recorded in an inner city campus and an incredible increase on previous years (16 species in 2012 and 126 species in 2013) TCD’s form is only on the up with the Trinity fox looking to be the top dog in next year’s event.
Look out for bioblitz events near you this weekend!
Author and Images: Kevin Healy, healyke[at]tcd.ie, @healyke
Off the back of our recent Postgraduate Symposium, I thought it would be useful to summarise some of the advice and criticism we received afterwards. These points are a mix of the feedback from our invited speakers, academic staff and fellow postgraduate students, as well as some of my own observations and preferences. While the majority of the information below is common knowledge and most people do their best to give a good talk, the reality is that there is no such thing as a perfect talk and there will always be room for improvement; that’s fine! Just do your best and afterwards take note of what areas you would like to improve.
1) Remember: slides are an aid to your talk, they are not the focus. Your voice should be the primary focus of the audience; the accompanying slides are to help you explain more complicated ideas and results, introduce a study system or area and generally keep your audience interested (hence the inclusion of many an interesting/pretty/grotesque picture). Therefore, in general, you do not need large sections of text on your slides. As much as you may think the text is necessary, it most likely isn’t so get rid of it! This removes any temptation to read off the slides and helps keep your audience focussed on you. Furthermore, you are more likely to give a better talk with a more natural flow if you stick to this. The most informative and enjoyable talks I have seen typically contain slides with almost no text, primarily using figures, photos, cartoons etc. Also, don’t go for overkill and try to say too much. Present a concise, clear and fluid story for your audience to follow, leaving out any gritty methodological and statistical details that are not central to your research.
2) Talk to the audience – all of it – and never to your slides. This means that you always face your audience, regularly changing the direction of your gaze, speaking loudly, slowly and clearly, therefore engaging as much of the audience as possible. Furthermore, when you are presenting to an international audience, remember that English (or whatever language you are speaking) may not be the first language of many attendees. This is when it is even more important to make an effort to speak loudly, clearly and slowly (and avoid using any slang).
3) Enjoy yourself! Do your best to smile, relax and be enthusiastic about your research. Unlike a typical manuscript, a presentation allows you to inject some passion for your work. If you are not engaged or enthused, how do you expect your audience to be?
4) Always remember to state the general importance of your research and what areas it applies to. Make your research and topic as relevant to as many people as possible (within sensible limits, of course). This is sadly overlooked by many postgraduate students and can be frustrating to watch. You can do this (i) at the beginning by starting with a broad introduction (this does not equate to five slides of background information, rather it could simply be a few sentences, just to provide your audience with a context) and (ii) at the very end, discussing the implications of your results to your field as a whole, addressing the scope of the symposium/conference/session if particularly appropriate.
5) If a particular aspect of your work is complex and difficult to explain, do your best to deconstruct it with the relevant figures and always repeat the main point/finding before proceeding.
6) Always handle questions in a polite, interested and engaging way. Be open, not defensive. A good tip is to repeat each question for the audience so that they all hear it. While this keeps all of the audience clued in, it also gives you time to formulate a response in your head. When you respond, remember to address all of the audience, not only the ‘questioner’, and always mention that you’re happy to discuss things further afterwards (I’d go as far as encouraging people to come chat to me afterwards, even if it is just to grill me; a grilling is always welcome as a postgrad!).
7) Dress for the occasion. Be comfortable but also mindful of why you are giving a talk and who you are giving it to.
8) If you are using a laser-pointer, avoid waving it around excessively on the screen. Use it sparingly, only when a particular detail needs highlighting.
9) Always check the compatibility of your files, allowing time to make amendments if needed, save in multiple formats and have back-ups, whether on another storage device or in your email inbox.
10) Learn from other presentations what aspects you particularly like and dislike. For example, I prefer when acknowledgements come at the start of start of a talk as this allows the speaker to finish with a focussed, ‘take-home’ message of the research. Also, you don’t need to read out every name in your acknowledgements; people will always do it themselves so just go for the major ones.
11) Practice your talk multiple times aloud (how it sounds inside your head does not equate to how it actually comes out).
12) Finally, don’t panic; be confident and do your best.
Author: Seán Kelly, kellys17[at]tcd.ie, @seankelly999
Image Source: phdcomics.com
Consider this scenario. You’ve recently published a new academic paper. It’s effectively your baby. The months or years of experiments, analysis, frustration, toil and troubles are now distilled into a stellar research article which, in your opinion at least, changes the face of science as we know it. Great! Now you need to get the word out beyond the Ivory Tower of academia and journal articles. Time to brush up on your public relations and communications skills.
Press releases are important tools for communicating scientific findings and informing the public about the importance of scientific research. From a researcher’s point of view they are also essential currency for enhancing your research profile and ticking the public outreach box on your next grant proposal. So, from all perspectives, it’s important to get press releases right.
We had an excellent NERD club session recently with Thomas Deane, press officer for the faculty of engineering, maths and science at TCD. His tips sparked a great group discussion about the dos and don’ts of writing good, interesting and hopefully popular press releases. Here are some of his useful guidelines which will come in handy next time you’re faced with writing a press release.
1) Simplify!
Remember that you’re writing for a non-specialist audience. Simplify your message as much as possible. Keep cutting things out of the article until it’s clear and succinct. Eliminate jargon but if you do need to use a particular specialised term then make sure that it’s explained properly.
2) Focus on the key parts
You already had to condense your months or years of work into a single paper. Now you need to do it again for the press release. Choose one or two of the key findings from the paper and explain them clearly and concisely. If possible ask someone without a science background to read your article. If they can understand it and identify importance of the findings that you’re trying to publicise then it’s a good indication that you’re on the right track.
3) Be active!
For reasons best known to the Department of Education, in school I was taught that you should only ever write about scientific research in a passive voice; “the animal was weighed” rather than “I weighed the animal”. This early training was reversed when I reached college but there are still some researchers who are stuck in their passive ways. Don’t fall into the trap! Writing in the active voice is easier to read, more interesting and will save on your word count. Press releases should be clear and engaging – this is infinitely easier to achieve if you write in the first person, active voice.
4) Find useful analogies
Good analogies should be engaging and clear. They’re particularly useful for attracting the attention of your audience and for explaining complex ideas. It’s a fun and beneficial exercise to come with an analogy to describe your own research. Here’s some of ours; territoriality behaviour in badgers is like the fall of the Berlin wall (they don’t respect boundaries) and ecosystem stability is like a Jenga tower (remove some key pieces and the whole ecosystem collapses).
5) Focus on the big picture
Research is inevitably piecemeal. Instead of the big bathtub Eureka moments, most new scientific findings represent small steps of progress in niche research areas. However, every tiny step contributes to an overall bigger picture. When communicating the importance of your work to the media it’s important to frame your research in a wider context. Think about why your research matters, where it could lead and why people should find it interesting. Remember that journalists and editors are short on time and probably patience. Your press release needs to include clear reasons why your work is interesting and deserving of their attention. However, one caveat to remember is that you shouldn’t artificially over-inflate the importance of your research. Don’t claim that your new findings about Drosophila are going to save polar bears from climate change!
6) Include quotes and images
A good press release is a sales pitch. You need to excite and enthuse people about your research. Striking, unusual pictures and engaging, personal quotes will help to sell your message. If you include direct quotes and captivating pictures with your press release then it’s more likely to attract the interest of the journalists and editors who take up the story. To supplement printed quotes it’s a good idea to give your contact details and state that you’re available for interviews. The media success of Kevin Healy and Andrew Jacksons’ paper about time perception in animals last year is testimony to the benefits of good images and engaging interviews for selling a story (even if people add images which slightly misrepresent the paper!)
If you keep these considerations in mind they will undoubtedly improve your skills when it comes to putting together your next press release.
Go forth science communicators!
Author: Sive Finlay, sfinlay[at]tcd.ie, @SiveFinlay
Image Source: myteltek.com
Adam raised the point of science communication in his last blog post of how science should be communicated to a mainly interested and receptive public. The main question when thinking about science communication is “how should we do it?” However a second question, arising from this one would be “who should do it?”
I believe having an interest in popular science is the first step for starting a career as a scientist. Personally, I was influenced by Jurassic Park, which gave me the idea that in a distant future I would (could) become a paleontologist. I believe this influence is shared by a vast majority of young paleontologists of this Bakker dinosaur’s revolution generation. So, to me, even if Jurassic Park bent some scientific rules (the most obvious one being bringing stones to life), the film created a renewed interest in its related field of palaeontology.
Ok, so that’s a good reason for popularizing science then? It’s not that easy. A fairly large amount of scientists will always look at such attempts to popularize science as a “bastard” child of the scientific adventure, a kind of side effect that makes scientists, in the best case, smile ironically. In the worst case though, they think it propagates massively erroneous ideas: like the one I pointed out above or -another that “makes me smile ironically” – that paleontologists are Indiana Jones-style adventurers that wander around the world and from time to time brush the sand and discover how velociraptors (read Deinonychus) were talking to each other.
Richard Whitley in his book, Expository Science: Forms and Functions of Popularisation, summarises the idea by writing that: “popularization is not viewed as part of the knowledge production and validation process but as something external to top research which can be left to non-scientists, failed scientists or ex-scientists as part of the general public relations effort of the research enterprise.”
This vision of popularizing science is linked to the idea that an increased output of popular science leads to a fatal decrease of legitimate and accurate scientific progress. This is known as the ‘Sagan Effect’ after Carl Sagan and the erroneous claim that his legitimate scientific output decreased after the initiation of his popular science TV series: Cosmos.
Can one popularize science and actively do science?
When one has a look at the actual numbers (scientific articles published vs. popular articles published), one expects that if popularizing science is reserved for “failed scientists”, people publishing more popular articles will publish fewer science articles. Michael Shermer, in his paper published in Social Studies of Science in 2002, brings down this popular belief by calculating the actual numbers of scientific papers published by these popular science writers.
Let’s take a look at the numbers.
As a base line, while the four PIs publishing on this blog all take part in extra curricular activities, they are primarily research scientists. Last year, they published all together 22 papers which gives a respectable average of nearly one paper per PI published every two months! In contrast, if you look at the great popular science writers of the end of the last century (say Carl Sagan or Steven Jay Gould), during their massive and influential popularization of their fields, they produced an average of one paper per month for Sagan and nearly two papers a month for Gould (and that for 35 consecutive years!). So they seem to have it all: “legitimate“ science output and successful careers as science communicators. Just looking at these figures, the myth of the trade-off between popular science writing and actual scientific production is just, as Shermer describes it, “a Chimera”!
Can one popularize science and actively do science?
Yes. And to go back to my first point, with Jurassic Park (which, in comparison to Gould or Sagans’ popular work can easily be classified as a “bad” way to do it), I believe that popularizing science is not a problem: in an altruistic world, scientists should focus on contributing to the advancement of their field by any means possible, not exclusively on their own amount of publications. Thankfully, most scientists manage to combine both popular communication and research output efficiently. I think that one important and still altruistic way to contribute to the advancement of a field is definitely science popularization. Richard Whitley says that “by successfully combining claims to universal validity and social utility through popularization, [Sagan and Gould] laid the foundation for the present domination and expansion of the sciences.” These contributions have a real long-term benefit to the advancement of the field. Firstly, the ideas of the authors of popular science become fixed in the public consciousness and secondly (most importantly to me), they inspire new generations of scientists that will, later on, personally contribute to the advancement of their field.
Is this bad for “legitimate” scientific production? Not at all! By popularizing evolution in a realistic (or perhaps not so realistic) way, Gould and Jurassic Park spark the interest and imaginations of the next generation of potential scientist who, through their research, will make direct contributions to scientific research!
It’s a positive feedback cycle: excellent scientists generate good science communicators; good scientific communication generates scientific interest and curiosity; scientific interest produces scientists and some of these scientists will go on to become good scientific communicators…
Author: Thomas Guillerme, guillert[at]tcd.ie, @TGuillerme
Image Source: wikimedia commons
The recent debate between Bill Nye, the Science Guy and Ken Ham, the Young Earth Creationist got me thinking about our methods of science communication such was the controversy it generated.
There is value in communicating science to the lay public when our society is so deeply ramified by its discoveries, its ideas and its risks. And sometimes it’s easy to do so. For instance, there are people who find certain areas of research fascinating but may not have the expertise or money to read journal articles. This ‘gee whiz ‘cohort is actively interested in learning about the next big thing and will devour blogs, popular articles and newspaper reports. It helps to avoid a condescending tone (like saying gee whiz) if you have an inclination to write an article to this audience. As Steven Pinker’s editor put it “You should assume your readers are as smart as you are, as curious as you are, but they don’t know what you know and you’re there to tell them what they don’t know.”
This sounds very like the deficit model of communication, which states that, the only barrier to public understanding and skepticism of science is their ignorance. Provide the information and this deficit will disappear. I think this probably works for most of the non-controversial areas of science when the target audience is interested. I’m thinking of myself learning about subjects in physics or geology that are explained by the legion of science communicators that inhabit every form of multimedia today.
But we have a multitude of issues where the science is not accepted by a significant number outside the scientific sphere, notably climate change and the efficacy of vaccines. This is very problematic because the impact of these controversies threatens everyone, expert and lay person alike. How best to engage with these ‘deniers’? I’d argue that the problem here is fundamentalism. And how do you change the mind of a fundamentalist? To paraphrase Eugenie Scott, some people find the idea that they’re related to animals abhorrent and all the evidence supporting this isn’t going to change their minds. In other words, you don’t. The best we can hope for is that most of us are reasonable people and the lunatic element is just being especially loud.
When it comes to the evolution-creationism debate, many profs advocate the silent treatment; their rationale is that by engaging in debate we somehow elevate the status of the deniers. Much better, they say, to keep on churning out the books and interviews where there’s no risk of some rhetorician running rings around your PowerPoint presentation. Richard Dawkins and Stephen Jay Gould both shared this sentiment. With Dawkins arguing we should deny them “the oxygen of respectability in the world of real science.” But Dawkins has spent half a lifetime engaging with Creationists on different forums, on TV, in his books, and latterly on Twitter. I don’t see much difference. And surely scientists can muster up an individual who can speak sense to an audience while holding their attention with a stentorian voice.
So what about those people who are not particularly interested in scientific discovery but are concerned about the impact that certain fields of research will have on them? Or those of us who do not take the time to read about the controversy and may be swayed by entities like anti-vax campaigns? We have to have an included middle.
Unfortunately to some, certain theories can become “evidence-resistant” and that: “… as climate scientists know all too well, simply relating the facts of science isn’t enough. No matter that the overwhelming weight of evidence shows that climate change is real, or that vaccines don’t cause autism. When scientists find themselves just one more voice in a sea of ‘‘opinions’’ about a complex scientific issue, misinformation takes on a life of its own.” (Jackson et al. 2005)
One way to prevent this is to create a space for scientists to engage with the public, where they can engage in a dialogue. This is in contrast to the one-way, hierarchical approach of the deficit model I spoke of earlier. Jackson, et al.(2005) point out that when the public are left out of any such dialogue it should come as no surprise that they are distrustful of the outcomes of the resulting applications. The arrival of genetically modified organisms (GMO) demonstrated what can happen when there is a lack of upstream public engagement regarding contested science. Frankenstein Food campaigns should come to mind!
It’s also vital to frame science so that it’s easily accessible to the widest range of people all with different biases, beliefs, and ideologies. The anti-vax campaign is successful because it is framed with ‘Think of the children!’ the climate change deniers point to uncertainty of prediction; this coupled with the difficulty in conveying the danger of something that will take decades to manifest helps their campaign tremendously.
Another idea is to teach how science works to people at an early age. This is advocated by Arons who writing in 1983 comes at the issue of science literacy from a paedagogical standpoint. He says that scientific literacy is in a “lamentable state” and crticises the idea that it could be achieved through “verbal inculcation”. According to the author this approach seems to be little more than rote learning.The central point of Arons is his repetition of the idea that scientifically literate individuals should be able to answer “”How do we know …?” and “Why do we believe …?” questions”. If the majority of people were able to give an answer to these questions on the controversies mentioned here I think we’d have much less to lament about.
One trend to be picked out of the evolution of science communication is the realization the public isn’t monolithic either. And to clump every non-scientist into one social unit is a simplification too far. With ancient rhetoric and 21st century technology we have the ability to frame our arguments to every audience who will listen, reflecting their interests, fears and concerns.
References
Arons, A.B. (1983). Achieving Wider Scientific Literacy. Daedalus. 112 (2), p. 91-122.
Jackson, R Barbagallo, F Haste, H. (2005). Strengths of Public Dialogue on Science-related Issues. Critical Review of International Social and Political Philosophy. 8 (3), p. 349–358.
Author: Adam Kane, kanead[at]tcd.ie, @P1zPalu
Image Source: davidakirby.com
Are you a woman in science? Are you passionate about sharing your research with the public and increasing the profile of female scientists generally? Do you let out a sigh when these events are always arranged in London? Well sigh no more, this year SoapBox Science is expanding to other parts of the UK and excitingly, across the Irish Sea to Dublin, Ireland. Continue reading “SoapBox Science Dublin!”