Category Archives: Reviews of Science Videos

I analyze my own and others’ science videos in order to better understand what makes a good (and bad) science video. We improve by constantly assessing our work and that of other practitioners. By identifying key criteria in science videos, I develop protocols that, if followed, will improve your science videography.

World’s Most Embarrassing Dad (and Climate Change Denier)

Posted on by

Humor can be an effective way to get across a message about an important science topic—and reach the viewer on more than an intellectual level. In the following video created by the League of Conservation Voters, the creators have used humor to poke fun at climate change deniers (and some filmmakers). One might nitpick certain aspects of this video (as some of the video comments indicate); however, my purpose is to use it to illustrate and analyze how humor (and storytelling) might be used in a science video. First, take a look at the video:

Most scientists tend to cringe at the idea of using humor or storytelling in a science communication product. If we are funny, silly, or imaginative, people might think less of us, or—horrors—even decide that we are not “serious scientists”.

In science, we are trained not only to be serious but to communicate with facts and data. When we try to make videos about a science topic, our impulse is to present just the bare facts because we think that everyone else will be as impressed with data as we are—and any emotional injection will diminish credibility. That impulse can be wrong, especially if we are trying to reach a broader audience—one that needs to be reached on a more emotional or “gut” level.

As you saw in the video, Science Fair Nightmare, there are multiple messages presented. The main message is that climate change is a real problem—one that even children recognize as something needing attention (or at least reasoned discussion). Another message is that even the most die-hard climate change deniers (e.g., some members of Congress) can change, once they get their facts straight. These messages are delivered through a series of hilarious skits (science fair fiasco, makeover montage) and satirical dialog between an actor/activist and a climate scientist (Dr. Jason Willis, who actually works for NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory).

Not only does the video use humor to poke fun at climate change deniers and some of their outdated and/or wrongheaded ideas, it tells a story. The storyline is the classic “Hero’s Journey” (see previous post about storytelling). The hero (protagonist) is Jason Sherman, a fictional Congressman and climate change denier played by actor Ken Fitzgerald. Sherman embarrasses his daughter at the science fair but then redeems himself by learning the facts about climate change and eventually gets on board with the movement, even installing solar panels on his house. Given the recent childish antics by some lawmakers, this fictional character should ring true for many viewers.

Does this humorous approach work? Well, judging by the viewer voting on this video, the answer is yes. So far, the “likes” to “dislikes” are running 10 to 1. The comments (279 so far) have attracted the usual climate change trolls (and I don’t have the patience to wade through them). The video was posted on October 9, 2013 and has had over 139,000 viewers in about a month. So it appears to be attracting attention, and of those viewers who bothered to vote, the majority liked it. If that voting ratio is indicative of the entire viewer population, then it would seem that most people reacted positively to it. Whether their views on climate change were altered by this video is unclear, but at least they heard the message.

Humor can perhaps be most effective for “controversial” science topics—ones that cause rancorous debate such as climate change. When everyone gets so worked up and angry, people tire of the same old rants (on both sides) and turn off. Humor or an interesting story can be a welcome respite and draw in otherwise jaded viewers. Also, climate scientists, environmental activists, and climate change denialists provide a lot of fodder for satire. This video not only satirizes certain lawmakers and climate change deniers, it also mildly mocks those in the opposing camp and makes the scientist the “straight man” in the piece.

Another point is that humor or satire may be most effective at reaching those audiences who are unwilling to listen to a fact-filled lecture by a boring scientist. Such people are simply not going to spend time watching (or seek out) a video that is likely to bore them. I’m not arguing here that all of your science videos need to be infotainment. My point is that you might reach a broader audience by injecting some humor into some of your videos or by telling a more interesting story about your science topic.

What can we learn from all this? I think humor and/or storytelling can work well to send a serious message, as I’ve discussed in numerous posts. I think humor and storytelling together can be a particularly powerful combination. However, using these techniques effectively is not easy and requires some skill and definitely a lot of planning and practice. Otherwise, it’s going to fall flat. When it works, though, your video will be memorable—and just as important—will prompt people to recommend it to others. That appears to be the case with Science Fair Nightmare.

If you have some favorite science videos that are either humorous or tell a story, please share them.

How to Create a Science Video That Does Not Confuse Your Viewers

Posted on by

As I’ve explained in previous posts, scientists sometimes have a difficult time explaining science to non-scientists. The reason is that how we’ve been trained to convey information (technical descriptions) is not necessarily how our audience can understand it. Taking out the technical jargon helps but often is not enough. The solution is to step back from the data, the complicated graphs, the myriad details, and the boring caveats; then find the key message in all that mess and present it in a way that anyone, regardless of training, can understand and, most importantly, can relate to.

The following video created by Norwegian TV does precisely that. It is a brilliant depiction of the difference between trend and variation and subtly makes the connection to climate change data.

Take a look (select HD version and full-screen for best viewing):

The average person, lacking training in statistics, is often unclear about the difference between trend and variation (something that climate change deniers have exploited). However, a lack of training does not mean that the average person cannot understand these concepts, if explained clearly and in a way they can comprehend.

As a scientist videographer, it’s essential that you look at the information you wish to convey from the viewpoint of your target audience, not from your viewpoint. If you do that, I predict that your video will not only be more easily understood but will be more memorable.

A Storymaking App for Your Science Videos

Posted on by

As I’ve discussed in this blog previously, scientists are often hampered in getting their science message across because they fail to tell a compelling story that will appeal to others. Instead, we bombard the reader/viewer/listener with facts, facts, and more facts, in the mistaken idea that most people are as impressed with data as we are. If that were true, there would not be so many climate change skeptics or intelligent design enthusiasts.

We scientists may be fascinated with the bare facts, but our audience is likely not so enamored. It’s a paradox. How we are trained to communicate in science (by stating facts and figures in an unemotional, rational manner) is not necessarily the way our audience prefers to hear the message.

One approach that clearly works for many types of messages is to frame the information in the form of a story. Most people love stories and will stick around to find out how it all turns out. Hollywood knows this principle quite well and has been very successful at selling stories to millions of people (even while getting the science wrong). Scientists, however, tend to shy away from the idea of “storytelling” possibly because they think it involves an exaggeration or a twisting of the facts. This is a misinterpretation (or narrow interpretation) of the term, storytelling. Although storytelling can involve embellishment or even complete fantasy, it can also be a means of conveying accurate information about a scientific topic.

In an effort to bring the storytelling method to science, Randy Olson and coauthors Dorie Barton and Brian Palermo, have written a book called “Connection: Hollywood Storytelling Meets Critical Thinking” and created an app called “Connection Storymaker” (currently free in the App Store) to assist in structuring a story. In this post, I’m going to focus on the app and leave the review of the book until later (after I’ve read it…of course; I’m waiting for the Kindle version). Olson’s previous book, “Don’t Be Such a Scientist” takes us to task for being too cerebral, too literal minded, poor storytellers, and generally unlikeable (see my previous post on this topic). This new book offers guidance about how to be better storytellers, and the app is a tool designed to help that process along.

So I decided to give the app a whirl. In the video below, I use the app to construct a science story. As you will see, the app is designed around two basic models. The first is the WSP model, which stands for Word, Sentence, Paragraph. The Word helps you organize your story around a central theme (hope, perseverance, dignity). The sentence is based on another model, the ABT (And, But, Therefore) model, which is a template to begin structuring your story. The Paragraph is based on something called a Logline template, which is more complex and consists of 9 parts taken from Joseph Campbell’s storyline, “The Hero’s Journey” (aka, monomyth):

1. In an ordinary world….

2. A flawed protagonist…

3. A catalytic event happens…

4. After taking stock…

5. The hero commits to action…

6. The stakes get raised…

7. The hero must learn a lesson…

8. To stop the antagonist…

9. To achieve their goal…

The app is easy to understand and use. It will be helpful for those scientists who are poor storytellers to structure their message into the form of a story. The main shortcoming is that The Hero’s Journey Logline is the only one built into the app–so far. More Loglines based on other plots may be added in the future (and you’ll probably have to pay for the upgrade). The hero Logline does not necessarily fit all science stories. If the centerpiece of your story will be a scientist, then the app will work for you. If, on the other hand, you’ve got a different focus (like the science topic), then you’ll have to wait for more Loglines.

In the meantime, you can read more about applying storytelling methods to convey science information (especially in giving oral presentations) and see some other storylines in this blog post. A nice article on how to use storytelling in scientific writing can be found here.

In the video below, I show how I used the Storymaker app to create a story about the theory of continental drift (select the HD version and full-screen for best viewing).

Blood-Sucking Creatures

Posted on by

As I’ve discussed previously, video is being increasingly used by scientists to complement and enhance journal publications. I came across a paper published in PLOS One by Choumet et al. called “Visualizing Non Infectious and Infectious Anopheles gambiae Blood Feedings in Naive and Saliva-Immunized Mice”. They provide several videos that show how mosquitoes probe in the skin of hosts for blood vessels. One of the videos amazingly shows the mosquito’s proboscis puncturing a blood vessel ; the vessel clearly blanches as the vessel contents are sucked out. You can see that video here:

The authors of this paper included twelve other downloadable videos as well as a slide show (on figshare) that contains still images and more videos. You can access the entire paper here.

Although the authors could have submitted a paper without video and relied on a word-based description to make their points, the videos provided visual evidence supporting their descriptions of mosquito feeding. Not only can video be useful in providing visual details of a behavior or other activity (that no text description can provide), it can be essential to convincing others about a new or controversial phenomenon. I can think of several occasions in the past when I submitted a paper describing an observation that was challenged by a reviewer. The jist of their objection was that I was mistaken in my observation or that they simply did not believe what I said. If I had had a video showing what I had observed, then the reviewer would at least have had to accept the fact that the phenomenon had occurred (although they could still disagree with my interpretation).

In any case, this is a good example of how to use video to enhance a journal article. We’ll be seeing a lot more examples of this in the future.

Some Guidelines for Science Video Reviewers

Posted on by

Constructive criticism helps us improve our individual communication products as well as our overall communication skills. If you plan to publish your video, either on a video-sharing site or as online supplementary material with a journal article, it’s a good idea to first get some feedback from potential viewers.

Many of my science videos have gone through a formal peer review process, which involved comments from at least two colleagues, followed by review and approval by officials at several levels in my agency. You don’t have to go to this extreme, and, in any case, there are few mechanisms currently in existence that offer peer review of videos comparable to that of scientific journals. And, not all videos require peer review. You certainly don’t need a formal, collegial review of a video tour of your laboratory facilities to put on your website. However, you do want to know if your tour video is likely to attract prospective students and postdocs, for example. In that case, you might want to show it to a few students and ask them what they think. If their response is not what you expected, then you’ve gotten some useful feedback and perhaps need to rethink your video.

Similarly, if your video is to be submitted to an online journal, it would be wise to show it to a couple of colleagues first. Or, if your target audience is the general public or some other non-specialist group, you might want to ask members of that group to preview your video before you publish it. Your goal is to determine if the content is understandable and interesting to your target audience. You (and your colleagues) probably are not the best judges of whether your video is engaging and whether the content is presented in a way that is easily understood by a non-specialist. The only way to determine this is to solicit feedback from your target audience.

If after viewing your video, a target viewer expresses confusion over a key concept, then you know you’ve still got some work to do. Or, your student reviewer might say, “I really liked the part with the students collecting samples; I wish there had been more of that instead of the scientist talking about the carbon cycle.” Again, this would be very good feedback. In response, you might want to change your video by intercutting more footage of students working while the scientist’s voice is heard explaining how what they are doing relates to the carbon cycle. That would be an easy editing job, and the change will likely make your video more appealing to its target audience.

However, I find that some of my colleagues are uncertain about how to review a science video and, consequently, fail to provide useful feedback. They either try to review it like a journal article or want me to change it to something that will not appeal to my target audience (usually by adding citations or data). Because this is such a new area, there is virtually no guidance available to aid reviews of science videos. To help potential reviewers out, I’ve compiled a list of questions to help guide the review of a science video.

Here are twenty questions designed to provide useful feedback (and perhaps stimulate other comments) for your science videos:

1. Are all visual media (e.g., video footage, photographs, animations) of high quality (i.e., in focus, well-composed)?
2. Is the audio clear throughout and not obscured by extraneous noises?
3. Is all text legible and easily read within the timeframe provided?
4. Are all graphs, diagrams, or other illustrations of good resolution (not pixelated) and clearly labeled?
5. Are interviews (with scientists, students, others) professionally done?
6. If music or sound effects are used, are they appropriate and effective?
7. Are there any additional media that might improve the video?
8. Are sources of all external media (e.g, historical footage/images, music) clearly acknowledged?
9. Are proper safety procedures followed throughout the video (e.g., are laboratory personnel wearing lab coats and appropriate footwear, safety glasses, etc.)?
10. Does the video address an important issue or interesting topic or provide useful instruction?
11. Does the title of the video accurately reflect the content?
12. Is the scientific content accurate and appropriately attributed?
13. Is the length of the video appropriate? If not, where might it be cut or expanded?
14. Does the video clearly identify a central question, objective, or concept?
15. Does the video capture the viewer’s attention early and hold it throughout?
16. Does the video have a clear storyline or logical path that is easy for the viewer to follow?
17. Will the video be understood by the target audience? If not, which parts need to be revised?
18. If for a non-specialist audience, is scientific jargon minimized and are all essential technical terms defined or explained?
19. Does the video achieve its stated or implied purpose (inform, instruct, engage)?
20. Do you have any other suggestions for improvement?