Tag Archives: science communication

Communicating Science Through Storytelling: A Double-Edged Sword?

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wastebook_screenshotIn this series of posts, I’m talking about pitfalls in framing a science message for a non-specialist audience. In the last post, I described a study that showed an association between university press releases that make exaggerated claims about biomedical research and related news stories that also misrepresented the science. I also discussed why workshops designed to teach scientists to “sell their research” should include caveats regarding exaggeration of research findings. In this post, I want to explore one unintended outcome of having one’s research described in the popular press.

When research is described by the media with eye-catching titles, it may attract the attention of anti-science political groups. In the US, scientific research is a popular target of politicians seeking to highlight wasteful government spending. Scientific research projects funded by U.S. Federal grants and described as “Mountain Lions on a Treadmill”, “Synchronized Swimming for Sea Monkeys” or “Watching Grass Grow” sound like a joke at best and a waste of taxpayer money at worst. The latter is what U.S. Senator, Tom Coburn, M.D. (R-Oklahoma), would like Americans to believe. Coburn publishes an annual Wastebook, which purports to reveal wasteful spending by government officials (e.g., “Bureaucrats Gone Wild”), programs (e.g., “State Department Tweets @ Terrorists”), and scientific researchers (e.g., see titles above).

I heard about Coburn’s Wastebook recently in podcasts produced by Science Friday, which talked about attacks on science and scientists and why scientists should push back when it happens.

Science Gone Wrong?

The 2014 Wastebook highlights several research projects funded by Federal agencies such as the National Science Foundation (NSF) and gives them funny-sounding titles designed to bamboozle the taxpayer into believing that these studies are worthless wastes of time and money. Those of you who remember Senator William Proxmire and his Golden Fleece awards (1975-1988) will recognize the simplistic and often incorrect or incomplete characterizations of research projects that are targeted for ridicule. The research singled out by waste-busting efforts like this usually turn out to be far from wasteful. If you read the descriptions of scientific research in the Wastebook report and then google the research grant for the bigger picture, it quickly becomes clear that these awards misrepresent the science and offer no legitimate reason why they should not have been funded:

Mountain_lion

Image Credit: U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service (Public Domain)

1. The so-called “Mountain Lions on a Treadmill” project is actually aimed at promoting conservation of large predators by developing a new tool to track them. The NSF awarded $855,758 for the four-year, multi-investigator study that investigated energy use, hunting behavior, and spatial movements of mountain lions. For part of the study, the lions were indeed trained to use a treadmill so that researchers could test and calibrate a new wildlife collar to track predator movements in the wild (contrary to the Wastebook claim, however, the NSF funds were apparently not used for the treadmill work, according to one Principal Investigator (PI)). Why is the research important? Better tracking data could lead, for example, to better ways to predict and therefore avoid contacts between wild predators and human communities—saving people, pets, livestock, and the predators themselves.

The Wastebook questioned the expenditure, saying that “…scarce resources should be used to pay down the debt or on higher priorities, such as emerging biological threats that could pounce on anyone of us.” On the surface, this statement sounds reasonable—if the choice were really between the mountain lion study and the suggested alternatives. However, this argument is based on a false dichotomy and plays on the ignorance of the taxpayer about how research funds are allocated.

You can hear what one of the lead investigators, Terrie Williams, has to say about attacks on her project and on science in general in this podcast at Science Friday. Read her op-ed in the LA Times.

2. Another research project that made Coburn’s 2014 Wastebook list was entitled

Image Credit: © Hans Hillewaert / , via Wikimedia Commons

Image Credit: © Hans Hillewaert / , via Wikimedia Commons

“Synchronized Swimming for Sea Monkeys”, a name that conjures up frivolous images unrelated to the actual purpose of the 4-year study, funded by NSF, Office of Naval Research, and US-Israel Binational Science Foundation ($307,524). The principal investigator is John Dabiri, a Caltech professor of aeronautics and bioengineering. The objective of the project is to investigate the role of swimming zooplankton in affecting ocean circulation. Forces influencing ocean mixing and circulation are important to understand because they are used in model simulations to study climate change. The scientists used lasers to simulate ocean conditions in an experimental tank, tricking brine shrimp (commonly called sea monkeys) into swimming; they were then able to measure how much water was moved by the swirling shrimp. They chose this laboratory approach to avoid the exorbitant costs of an ocean-going study, something the Wastebook failed to mention. Instead, the Wastebook description trivialized the research by suggesting to the reader: “With kits available online and many toy stores, you can try to train your own team of synchronized swimming Sea Monkeys for as little as $12”.

You can hear a podcast by Dabiri giving his response to the Wastebook claim that his research is wasteful spending of government funds at Science Friday.

3. “Watching Grass Grow” targets a research project designed to determine how best toFLspart harvest a salt marsh plant (Spartina alterniflora) used widely in coastal restoration projects so that the donor marsh is not damaged in the process. This one caught my eye because I’ve conducted research on this plant myself. The Wastebook refers to this cordgrass study as “just another weed of government waste” and fails to mention the important role this plant plays in our nation’s coastal zone. Salt marshes dominated by this species are important stabilizers of shorelines, buffers against storms, and nursery grounds supporting fisheries, to name a few values. The plant is being removed from its natural habitat for transplantation to other areas to reduce erosion or to create or restore marsh, but this activity may damage the donor marsh in the process, which is obviously counterproductive. The investigators will determine what percentage of the donor marsh can be removed and still recover. The $10,000 provided by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service is an extremely modest expenditure to figure out how to avoid damage to an important natural resource.

Those are just three examples of research projects featured in Coburn’s report, but they serve to illustrate the nature of this type of attack on science. These false claims of waste were propagated by the media…many news outlets repeated the material in the Wastebook without bothering to determine if these were truly examples of wasteful government spending. There may be legitimate reasons not to fund a particular research project, but such reasons are not offered in the Wastebook. Instead, the research is caricatured and compared to more worthy-sounding, but totally unrelated, causes. And without an explanation of the vetting process that research projects go through, the taxpayer is left to assume that these funding decisions were wrong-headed, based on esoteric rather than meritorious criteria, or made carelessly. Of course, most of the research targeted by the Wastebook went through a rigorous review process in which scientific peers and expert panelists scrutinized the proposed project and the  PI’s qualifications. Given the intense scrutiny that research proposals are put through and the low percentage that end up being funded, it’s unlikely that a truly unworthy study would be funded—and certainly not the number listed in the Wastebook.

How to Avoid Having Your Research Featured in the 2015 Wastebook

You may wonder, as I did, how did Coburn and staff become aware of these research projects and why were they selected for inclusion in the 2014 Wastebook? Well, they may have started with the list of Federally-funded projects at www.grants.gov. You can search all awards and find the names of the PIs and other information. But it’s more likely that Coburn’s office became aware of these particular research projects because they were mentioned in online media. The descriptions in the Wastebook contain information, particularly quotes from specific sources, that are identical to those found in online news articles and press releases. And particularly telling is how these news items are titled.

For example, the “Synchronized Swimming for Sea Monkeys” description in the Wastebook contains several quotes originally published in the following online articles or press releases:

Williams-Hedges, Deborah. “Swimming Sea-Monkeys Reveal How Zooplankton May Help Drive Ocean Circulation | Caltech” The California Institute of Technology. Press Release. 30 Sept. 2014. Web. 16 Oct. 2014.

Boyle, Alan. “Laser-Guided Sea-Monkeys Reveal How Critters Boost Ocean’s Waves.” NBCnews.com. NBC News. 30 September 2014.

Lee, Jane J. “Laser-Guided Sea-Monkeys Show That Tiny Animals Can Move Mountains of Seawater.” Nationalgeographic.com. National Geographic Society. 30 September 2014.

Geggel, Laura. “Tiny Sea Monkeys Create Giant Ocean Currents.” Livescience.com. Purch. 30 September 2014.

So there’s no mystery to how Coburn’s staff came to use the term, sea monkey, or where they got some of the verbiage used in preparing the 2014 Wastebook. For example, the Wastebook repeated critical comments made by another researcher about Dabiri’s project in the National Geographic article —which helped to call into question the validity of the research: “Christian Noss, an environmental physicist at the University of Koblenz-Landau in Germany, says that he’s not convinced the effect would scale up from the laboratory to the ocean.” That was a legitimate comment in the original article, but it was used out of context in the Wastebook description. The Wastbook further trivialized the research by suggesting that taxpayers could grow and train their own sea monkeys. Where did they get that idea? The Caltech press release said, “Brine shrimp (specifically Artemia salina) can be found in toy stores, as part of kits that allow you to raise a colony at home.”

“Mountain Lions on a Treadmill” opens with this quote: ““People just didn’t believe you could get a mountain lion on a treadmill, and it took me three years to find a facility that was willing to try,” exclaimed Terrie Williams, a University of California-Santa Cruz professor.” This quote can also be found in a news story prepared by the scientist’s university press office: Tim Stephens, “Study of mountain lion energetics shows the power of the pounce,” University of California-Santa Cruz News Center, October 2, 2014.

The “Watching Grass Grow” title and main message can also be traced to an article in an online newspaper (Patterson, Steve. “In Guana Marsh, Research Sheds New Light On Old Florida Environment.”Jacksonville.com. The Florida Times-Union. 11 August 2014.). The news article’s first sentence states: “To some folks, watching grass grow could seem sort of tedious, especially if they just planted it.” The first sentence in the Wastebook description states: “The Federal government is literally paying people to watch grass grow.”

Ouch.

What this all boils down to, it seems to me, is that how these research projects were characterized in press releases and later by popular press articles provided fodder for Coburn’s Wastebook—and may have put it on the senator’s radar in the first place.

In an attempt to make the research palatable to the general public, the authors of these press releases and news articles used terminology that unfortunately handed Coburn a weapon that could be turned against the science and its funders. John Dabiri, in his podcast for Science Friday said that explaining science is a “two-edged sword”. On the one hand, it’s important to show that research is not an esoteric endeavor conducted in an ivory tower. To do this requires describing research in easy-to-understand terms. However, in making the research understandable, it’s easy to create caricatures that can be later misused by people with political agendas.

The lesson for scientists is to get involved in sharing your research with the public so that you have some control over how it is described in the popular media. Think carefully about how to characterize your research before an interview by a news outlet or your institution’s press office. Although anyone’s words can be twisted and used against them, some preparation can help you avoid saying something you later regret. If you don’t feel comfortable with a particular interview question, politely decline to answer or offer something else more relevant: “That’s really outside my area of expertise; however, I can describe how that works in my field of study.”

If your institutional press office is planning to write a press release about your work, insist that you be involved in the writing or at least to see a copy prior to release. Too few scientists bother to do this, perhaps thinking it’s not their job. My view is that it is the scientist’s job to ensure that their research is described accurately to the public and not exaggerated in an attempt to make it sound more interesting or relevant. Let me hasten to add here that I’ve not always been successful in controlling the message in such interactions—so I realize that the scientist is not always to blame for what ends up in a press release or news story. However, most press officers and journalists are interested in accuracy and will appreciate the scientist’s input.

The best way to control the message is to take the lead in explaining your research to the general public. You might write a popular article, prepare a fact sheet, or shoot a video. In doing so, of course, you want to take care in characterizing your topic and methods and in explaining why your research is important to society. Avoid making any unsubstantiated or exaggerated claims about your research. Especially avoid using titillating, lascivious, or silly words to describe your research in an attempt to attract more attention to your topic. You might get more than you bargained for.

Communicating Science Through Storytelling: Beware Exaggeration

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nasainterview_Valley_fever_1

Image Credit: NASA, www.nasa.gov

Scientists are being encouraged to develop better communication skills and engage the public by finding the story in their research and tailoring it for a wider audience. I’ve certainly encouraged readers to design their science videos so that they tell a compelling story: The Stories We Tell; Silver Linings, Kurt Vonnegut, and Telling Science Stories; I’m Not Interesting, But My Research Is; Can Scientists Be Taught To Talk and Act Like Normal People? However, there’s a downside to reframing one’s research to be more interesting to a broader audience.

Three recent events have made me ponder the dangers inherent in designing science messages that appeal to non-scientific audiences. I’ll describe the first two events in this post and the third in a follow-up post.

Press Releases That Exaggerate the Science

The first event that got me going on this topic was publication of a paper in the British Medical Journal (BMJ), which reported an association between exaggerated news stories about biomedical or health-related research findings and press releases that inflated or extrapolated the research findings beyond what was reported in the original paper. Of 462 press releases issued by 20 leading universities in the UK, 40% contained exaggerated advice, 33% contained exaggerated causal claims, and 36% contained unsupported inference from animal research subjects to humans. 58, 81, and 86% of related news stories written by journalists expressed similar exaggerations in those three ways, respectively. By comparison, news stories related to more accurate press releases had exaggeration rates of 17, 18, and 10%, respectively. The results pointed to a previously unrecognized source of inaccurate news stories about medical research findings: Press releases prepared by the scientists’ own institutions.

Of course, this is only one study, which was based on a correlative approach. That is, the correlation between press releases and news stories may not indicate a cause and effect relationship, and the exaggeration may not be the fault of press officers or journalists but could instead reflect a third factor—scientists who themselves exaggerated their work in interviews, for example. This paper did not address these points. Also, this study focused on biomedical research in the UK; we don’t know whether these findings are representative of science in general.

Whatever the reason for the results, though, this BMJ paper definitely raises important issues about how research is described in the news media, who is designing the message, and how exaggeration gets propagated.

Workshops That (Inadvertently) Teach Scientists to Exaggerate

The second event that caught my attention was a post on the British Ecological Society’s blog: Maximising the reach of your research paper. The post described a workshop at a recent BES meeting that provided some “practical tips on how to sell your research”. The workshop participants designed tweet-length messages for six research papers to be distributed to three hypothetical audiences: the general public, interested non-specialists such as policy makers, and other scientists.

As I was reading this, I was nodding and thinking that this workshop was a worthy effort and a nice way to teach researchers to share their work more broadly. But then I got to the examples of messages that the workshop participants designed and saw a problem.

Here are the workshop-generated examples of messages about a paper reporting that foraging by bumblebees is affected by pesticides:

 Public: “Chemical cocktails intoxicate bumblebees and may lead to increasing food prices”

Policy: “Pesticides make bees worse at foraging for food: may affect bee survival and pollination rates”

Scientists: “New study of bumblebee foraging uses RFID tags to highlight the importance of looking at long-term, realistic exposure to sub-lethal effects of pesticides”

The messages written for policy makers and scientists appear to be accurate reflections of the original paper. However, I can’t say the same for the public message. That message replaced scientific terms with words that are more familiar to the average person (cocktail, intoxicate) and that would presumably attract more attention than the technical terms (pesticides, impaired foraging behavior). The public message also suggests that cocktail-imbibing bumblebees will somehow lead to higher food prices—included presumably to show how the research might affect the average consumer. There are three problems that I see with this message. One is that it lacks a key word—pesticide—which was the focus of the research; instead, the message uses the term “chemical cocktail”. The second problem is that the message uses “titillating” terms (cocktails and intoxicate) that are either inaccurate or confusing. Cocktail gives no hint that this is a pesticide and, along with “intoxicate”, implies that alcohol is one of the ingredients and downplays its potential toxicity. Third, the message makes an exaggerated claim regarding effects on food prices—exaggerated because the researchers did not examine impacts of impaired bumblebee foraging on costs of food.

In other words, the public message not only fails to accurately convey what the researchers studied and found, it makes an unsubstantiated causal claim, similar to the problems noted in exaggerated press releases and news stories.

Now, I’m not saying that these workshop organizers set out to teach participants how to exaggerate their research. Nor am I bashing the idea of teaching scientists how to communicate their research to the public. I realize that the questionable bumblebee message was the result of a workshop exercise by participants with limited experience. Maybe the workshop organizers critiqued all the messages, including this one, and pointed out where they needed improvement. I don’t know. I wasn’t there. All I know is that this example shows how easy it is to exaggerate research findings, especially in a tweet-length message.

My intent here is not to discourage such workshops or to criticize this particular workshop, but to make people aware of some of the pitfalls in designing such messages. Clearly, making exaggerated claims in a press release or tweet is not the way to “sell” your research. I’m all for using everyday terms in place of scientific jargon, but not at the expense of accuracy or clarity. Also, I think the public recognizes hyped verbiage and is getting tired of it.

Had I not first read the BMJ paper about exaggerated press releases and news stories, I probably would not have noticed anything wrong with the bumblebee message or started thinking about why we need to take more care in designing our stories to convey a science message. Fortunately, I did, because I think the problem is likely to get worse as more scientists try to “sell their research” through storytelling and social media.

There is clearly an art to designing short messages that are both accurate and appealing to the general public. You may be wondering, as I did, how was this bumblebee research described in real press releases and in the popular press? Did they use titillating terms or make exaggerated claims? You decide. Here are links to the research institutions’ press releases and several online news stories about the study:

Radio tags reveal how pesticides are impairing bumblebees’ ability to forage (Imperial College London)

Bee foraging chronically impaired by pesticide exposure: Study (University of Guelph)

Bee foraging chronically impaired by pesticide exposure: Study (Science Daily)

Environment: Bumblebees lose foraging skills after exposure to systemic neonicotinoid pesticides (Summit County Citizens Voice)

Commonly Used Pesticide Has Detrimental Consequences On Bumblebee Foraging (IFLScience)

Bee foraging skills impaired by neonicotinoid pesticides (CBC News)

As you can see, the two press releases and subsequent news stories (I’ve included only those on the first search page in Google) about the bumblebee research all used titles that accurately conveyed the research findings. The news stories repeated or slightly rephrased the titles put out by the researchers’ institutions. They did not substitute more flamboyant terms for “pesticide” or “bee foraging” and did not make unsubstantiated claims as to how impaired bumblebee foraging might affect humans. I could not find any other news stories that took major liberties with the message or that used questionable words to describe the research. I did see one news story that had this title: Cocktail of pesticides increases bee deaths, says study (Farmers Weekly). Unlike the workshop message, however, this title makes it clear what the cocktail refers to.

In our haste to jump on the science communication bandwagon, we may be making some mistakes (I certainly have). It’s important for scientists to participate in science communication and engage the public; however, we should not get carried away in making our research more palatable to non-specialists and compromise our scientific ideals. Those of us who are encouraging and training students to be better communicators have an obligation to point out pitfalls. We especially need to reiterate the idea that all of our communications, both technical and non-technical, should be held to a high standard. Otherwise, we risk losing the trust of the public.

This article by Virginia Hughes is an excellent summary of this issue and contains some good advice for scientists and science communicators on how to avoid misrepresenting science.

That’s not all…

There is another danger in putting out inflated research stories, especially with titillating or lascivious titles: Such research may get noticed by anti-science political groups. And those “catchy” titles? They become weapons that are turned against the scientists who conducted the research. In the next post, I’ll describe the third event that has made me rethink how we design our science messages for public consumption.

Why Researchers Should Interact With The Public

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Scientists usually have a strong opinion about directly sharing their work with the public. Some think it is not only a good idea but essential for scientists to explain their research in everyday language to a broad audience. Others think such efforts are a waste of time—time they could be spending on their research. I’m in the former camp, but once thought that I did not have time for outreach and that it had little or no benefit for me. I knew there were science communicators whose job it was to translate my science for public consumption; so why should I waste my valuable time?

I changed my mind when a “communication specialist” attempted to write about one of my research projects. As the expert, I was asked to review and revise the piece before it was published. Well, I was horrified to see that the article was terrible and would have conveyed an inaccurate picture of my research and, by extension, of me. I spent a lot of time trying to “fix” the article. I kept going back and forth with the author trying to explain why what she said was confusing and not totally accurate. Finally, I threw up my hands and said (to myself), “It would have been easier if I had written this myself.”  That piece was never published, but I went on to write a non-technical fact sheet on the topic, which was published. That was the beginning. I went on to write several more fact sheets and non-technical articles and, eventually, to make videos about my research. I discovered that I enjoyed creating these information products and that they were very popular, especially with students.

Don’t get me wrong. There are a lot of great science communicators out there who do a wonderful job describing scientific discoveries and the underlying research. If you are lucky enough to work with one of them, you should. My point in describing my experience is to show what it took to change my mind about interacting with the public and to also suggest that as scientific researchers, we have a unique perspective on the topic that the public wants to hear.

I was reminded of my experience when I came across a brief video on the National Science Foundation’s website by Lawrence Krauss, well-known physicist and recipient of the 2012 Public Service Award. In it, he makes the case for scientists to share their work with the general public. Take a look, and then I’ll have a few more words to say about the topic and my experiences along these lines. In case you can’t see the player window, here is the direct link: http://bcove.me/lt4ojvh7 [bc]http://bcove.me/lt4ojvh7[/bc]

Why Is Interacting with the Public Important?

I’ve discussed the various reasons why scientists should explain their work to the public in previous blog posts. Dr. Krauss mentions a few. One reason is that our research is paid for by public funds (in one way or another), which means the average person on the street has a right to know what we are doing. Not all researchers would agree with this. However, long gone are the days when a scientist could stay sequestered in their ivory tower. We may be called upon to explain our work on camera or to comment on a disaster. I and my colleagues are often contacted by journalists, by scientific journals (for a comment on a recent publication), and by local TV stations; a few colleagues have even been asked to testify before Congress. Having good communication skills are increasingly essential for researchers. Being a good communicator, however, like anything else, takes practice. And talking to the public or to the media is not the same as interacting with your colleagues. By being proactive and interacting with the public (e.g., giving a public lecture or inviting a school group to your lab), we gain valuable experience that may come in handy in the future.

There is a more important reason than the public’s right to know, however. It is in our own best interests to keep the public informed and interested in scientific research. Science funding is influenced by public opinion, and we should be concerned about what the public thinks of science and scientists. There are a number of anti-science and pseudoscience groups that are well-funded and technologically savvy. Their rhetoric may misinform the public and sway opinions unless scientists step up and provide credible and accurate information to counter outlandish claims. This, for me, is a strong motivation….much more so than simply wanting to explain my work because it’s important or interesting.

I liked the point made in the video that the ideas and discoveries in science are part of our culture like art or music or literature and should be more broadly shared. Although it is satisfying to contribute to scientific knowledge, it is doubly rewarding to know that you’ve also made a contribution to the cultural landscape by broadly sharing your insights about the Earth or the universe. By communicating our research directly, we can share our scholarly pursuits with people who otherwise may never have the experience. What motivated us to study viruses or how we managed to collect our samples from an active volcano is information that reveals us to be human and is what people can relate to.

I think many researchers are hesitant to share their work with the public because of the perception that the public doesn’t care about science. However, the public is most definitely interested in science, in new ideas, and in exciting discoveries. One only need look at the millions of viewers attracted by TED videos to be convinced of this. As Dr. Lawrence suggests, give it a try…you might be pleasantly surprised at the reaction. Yes, there are concerns about attracting negative attention by going public, especially if you work in a “controversial” field such as climate science. However, for most researchers, this is not a major concern.

Unexpected Bonus of Public Interaction

Dr. Krauss made an excellent point right at the beginning: a good way to understand things is to explain them. For early-career researchers, experience explaining your work to broader audiences will build confidence and may also have a feedback effect on your research. A deeper understanding (and appreciation) of my subject has been for me an unexpected and useful outcome of developing information products for a general audience. For one thing, the process has helped me see things through my audience’s eyes—which has improved my technical presentations and writing.

Explaining complex science topics so that the general public can understand also makes you really think about the broader aspects of your research. Why is my work important to society? What would the average person find interesting about it? How will it advance knowledge in my field? What are the broader implications of my work? What new questions does my research raise? A number of funding agencies (e.g., the U.S. National Science Foundation or the National Institutes of Health) expect researchers to be able to articulate the “broader impacts” of their proposed project in grant proposals. An ability to explain your work to a broader audience will put you at an advantage over those colleagues who lack those skills or who choose to remain in their ivory tower.

Encourage, Don’t Discourage Researchers to Interact with the Public

Not every scientist should interact with the public. As Dr. Krauss points out, there are some researchers who should be kept in the ivory tower—you can probably think of a few colleagues who belong in this category. It would be a mistake for an administrator, for example, to force all researchers in their organization to interact with the public. Instead, we should encourage those scientists who have good teaching (or other interpersonal) skills to explain their work more widely. In any scientific discipline there are thousands of members; if only a small percentage give public lectures, start science blogs, or make science videos, there will be a significant impact.

We also should be encouraging and training the next generation of scientists to be better communicators—something that a few schools are implementing in their science curricula. I find that many more students these days express an interest in science communication, and this may have a snowball effect as they become teachers and mentors to future generations of scientists.

In summary, there are many ways for scientists to interact with the public and a number of benefits for the individual scientist as well as for the science community as a whole. Also, there are various ways for a scientist to interact with the public. Since this is a blog about science videography, I have to say that video is a very effective and efficient way to share your research with the public. When I think back to the time when I thought public engagement was a waste of time, I cringe. But I do understand the mindset of those researchers who avoid interacting with the public. As Dr. Krauss suggests, if you feel really uncomfortable, then perhaps you shouldn’t. However, it’s worth trying at least once. Who knows? Like me, you may discover a whole new way of communicating.

The Stories We Tell

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Scientists are often reluctant, if not downright obstinate, about using storytelling in science communication. I think we feel this way because we somehow believe that science information should not need any ‘dressing up’ to make it palatable to an audience. I felt this way at one time but changed my mind when I saw the power of storytelling. As I explained in the last post, a story can overcome extreme distaste about a particular topic and even change the viewer’s overall perception of the subject.

But there is more that stories can do for those of us in science.

We can use stories to not only make our science more palatable to others, we can change stereotypes about science and scientists by telling our unique stories—especially through video. I’ve been pondering stereotypes in science for some time now, especially as it relates to women in science. Despite much effort by many organizations, negative stereotypes persist in the public’s mind, which can dissuade students from going into science. The old-fashioned image of an old, white male with frizzy white hair in a wrinkled lab coat is what the average person thinks of, even though there are exceptions on TV and the Internet (Neil DeGrasse Tyson, Brian Cox). Women in particular suffer from negative stereotyping, which has prompted numerous reports about why so few women choose science as a career (there are many reports, but here’s one and here is a series of articles in Nature); recognition of the problem has led to various efforts to attract more girls to science fields (here’s an example).

I think the efforts to attract girls and minorities to science are laudable but that they will not be effective unless we can overturn those negative stereotypes that dissuade students from considering a career in science in the first place. Those of us in science, particularly women and other minorities, can help overturn stereotypes by telling our stories and showing those outside (and inside) science fields that scientists are a diverse group, that science is an exciting and rewarding career, and that anyone can do science.

I connected the two topics, stereotypes in science and storytelling, when I watched a video: The Danger of a Single Story by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie. She describes how we develop inaccurate and narrow views about other people or countries when we hear only a single story about them. Essentially, she’s describing how stereotypes arise and persist. Take a look and then we’ll discuss these ideas in relation to stereotypes in science:

Ms. Adichie describes how her perceptions of the world were molded by the literature she read—literature that she found fascinating and memorable. She describes how as a budding writer, she began writing stories that were about the characters she had read about—white, living in temperate climates, and preferring ginger beer—even though she was Nigerian and had quite different experiences. Even after she realized how that narrow view had delayed discovery of her authentic cultural voice, she found herself succumbing to other stereotypes.

I thought about the examples Ms. Adichie used in her TED talk, which reminded me of the mad scientist stereotype that persists probably because of a single memorable story—told over and over again—which can be traced back to Mary Shelley’s novel, Frankenstein (1818). One could argue that there were precursors to the ‘mad scientist’ in Shelley’s novel; however, the average person on the street likely only knows the story of Frankenstein, which has been repeated in multiple movies since the original 1931 version. Moreover, the ‘mad scientist’ stereotype crops up repeatedly in popular film—from Dr. Strangelove to Dr. Curt Connors (The Lizard) in The Amazing Spiderman. Stories about mad scientists apparently resonate with people and have created an indelible image in the public’s mind. The average person, who has never met a scientist, has only such stereotypes to guide their perceptions about what type of people become scientists or what it is like to be a scientist. Even students who are interested in science may be unclear about what life in a scientific field is like.

A few educators are recognizing the need for storytelling—that is, telling stories that fire up students’ imaginations—to attract more students to STEM fields, especially girls. We scientists can also help by showing what it’s like to do science. And using video is a very effective means for showing what scientists look like and how they go about doing science (however, see this post for how not to do it). Used correctly, video can be an effective recruitment tool by showing real scientists at work:

This video is ostensibly about an expedition to study the Agulhas Current, but it really is about how women can be successful in a field like oceanography. The video makes it clear that women are not only capable of being oceanographers, they find it exciting and fulfilling. This message is driven home by not only showing a female in the chief scientist role leading the research cruise but by featuring numerous other women working in various positions such as graduate students, data analysts, oceanographic technologists, and ship’s mates and technicians. The interview with the captain reiterated the key role that female scientists and crew play in the success of the cruise and that their presence is now commonplace on such research cruises. The video also makes an important point about female role models who are needed to show younger women that it is possible to make it in a field that may be dominated by men or that involves intimidating work. The video’s message is summed up by the chief scientist who says, “Why should men have all the fun?”

I can’t imagine a girl watching this video and not being impressed with the idea of a career in oceanography. In fact, a video very much like this one that I saw in high school motivated me to want to study marine science. Even though I was discouraged from going into science by almost everyone (this was the 1950-60s), the vision I got of a life in science from that film kept me going. Any scientist, especially if you are a female or other minority, can make a difference by creating videos that show what real scientists look like and how someone can have an amazing career in science.

Perhaps if enough of us tell our stories, the public’s image of the mad (white, male) scientist will fade and be replaced with a more accurate one.

Do Video Abstracts Increase the Impact of Scholarly Articles?

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A recent paper published in the Journal of Librarianship and Scholarly Communication by Scott Spicer attempts to get at this question. I’ve been waiting for someone to conduct just such an analysis.

Most scientists hope that their scholarly publications will be read and cited by others. The more citations, the greater the purported impact on the field of study. At least, that’s the thinking of people who use such metrics to gauge a scientist’s impact. Often, however, a paper does not begin to accrue citations for a couple of years after publication—mainly due to the lag time between the cited and citing publications.

In the meantime, your paper could be making an impact on colleagues and students who read, download, discuss, and share it. That can only happen, however, if your paper gets noticed early and is readily discoverable by those seeking information on your paper’s topic. Higher visibility may lead to a wider readership and potentially more citations. Although other factors play into whether a paper is cited or not, it definitely will not be cited if people are not aware of it.

One way to make a scholarly article more visible online is to create a visual or video abstract, which essentially acts like an advertisement leading people to the technical paper. For those of you who are unfamiliar with what a video abstract is, Scott provides a definition:

“a video presentation corresponding to a specific science research article, which typically communicates the background of a study, methods used, study results and potential implications through the use of images, audio, video clips, and text.”

So basically, a video abstract is a summary of a paper but instead of text, audio-visual media are used to deliver the information.

What are the Potential Benefits of a Video Abstract?

Video abstracts may have a number of benefits for the author and for the journal. Greater visibility for the paper and the authors is usually the reason journals have implemented this approach and why authors bother to make video abstracts. Authors who produce video abstracts also find that the video-development process helps them in their research by giving them a new perspective or by raising new questions. I’ve personally found this to be the case. A third benefit is that video abstracts can be claimed as a project deliverable or a way to meet the “broader impacts” criterion required by some funding agencies (e.g., the U.S. National Science Foundation)—thus enhancing a PI’s ability to acquire grant funding.

Do Video Abstracts Affect Usage of an Article?

I’ve suggested previously in this blog that video abstracts (and other visual media) can help to raise the visibility of a scholarly article. There are few data, however, to support or refute the claim that a video abstract will influence use of the corresponding article, evidenced by more views, downloads, and perhaps citations. Scott’s study provides a review of the use of video abstracts by science journals and uses one journal—New Journal of Physics (NJP)—to address two questions:

  1. Are views of a video abstract on a mass communication platform (YouTube) similar to views on the journal’s platform?
  2. Is there a relationship between views of a video abstract and views/downloads of the corresponding scholarly article?

The results showed a positive correlation between video abstract views on NJP’s YouTube channel and those on the journal’s website (r = 0.56, p < 0.001, n = 56) as well as a positive correlation between video views and article readership activity (views/downloads) (YouTube: r = 0.49, p < 0.001, n = 56; NJP platform: r = 0.76, p < 0.001, n = 56). Although there was a positive correlation between the two variables in all cases, it was not possible to say with certainty which factor was the cause and which the effect.

Most of the video abstract views occurred on the NJP website (51,476 total views) compared to YouTube (8,715 views), which likely means that the majority of users of video abstracts were scientists and students. I find the >50,000 video views of 56 video abstracts on the NJP website to be pretty impressive; it showed that a lot of people were interested enough to watch them (but I wonder how this compares to views of the text abstract—did people look at both text and video abstracts or did they mostly view the video?) Also, the additional views on the YouTube channel suggested that the video abstracts were reaching an audience that might otherwise not be aware of the research.

The article was unable to determine if posting video abstracts to YouTube raises the impact of a scholarly article. For example, although only 5% of papers published in NJP had a video abstract, a higher percentage (36%) of the 25 top articles (based on reader usage) had an associated video abstract. This result could be due to an effect of video abstracts on article visibility or could simply reflect the greater likelihood of an author of a top-ranked article to produce a video abstract. Popular authors may be more creative or may have a larger budget to support video production compared to other authors.

Are Video Abstracts Worthwhile?

In the end, we are still left with uncertainty about the effect of video abstracts on article visibility and its overall impact. I’m not disappointed, however. That effect, in my view, is not the most important motivation for creating a video abstract. I’ve found that video/visual abstracts allow me to present complex topics in ways that are not possible with text (or with static images) alone. Personally, the use of audio-visual media has allowed me to combine science information in new and interesting ways, which I find personally fun and satisfying.

Some physical and biological phenomena can only be fully appreciated by watching it; video provides an opportunity for a scientist to share their observations directly with a reader/viewer. Methods involving difficult or complicated protocols or instruments may not be accurately repeated without a video to show exactly how the technique is done. By producing a video showing the methods, a scientist can better ensure that other scientists can replicate their study (and hopefully confirm their findings) (see opinion piece by JoVE CEO, Moshe Pritsker).

In other words, video abstracts allow the author a greater flexibility in presenting scientific information and the reader an opportunity to explore a topic in a way they cannot with a text-based article.

Although authors are often concerned about citations, these only track impact of a paper on the scientific field. Citations cannot gauge the broader impact of a study on society and public understanding of science, which is also important. Freely accessible video abstracts are discoverable by search engines and thus reach far beyond the scientific peers of the author—to inform colleagues in other fields as well as important end-users of the information (e.g., resource managers, health-care workers, and the general public).

A video abstract can count as an information product separate from the article and may be an acceptable deliverable for a research project. As I mentioned above, such informative and accessible communications are not only appreciated by funding agencies (NSF), they can be used to document a PI’s past contributions to broader science communication in grant proposals.

For students and young scientists just starting out, video abstracts can serve to show off communication skills to potential employers as well as to raise their visibility within a scientific field and beyond.

Are Video Abstracts Credible?

In closing, I would like to address a common criticism of video abstracts—and that is that they are substandard versions of a peer-reviewed article. I have colleagues who question the usefulness or credibility of such videos because they are not peer reviewed. Others say that a video cannot possibly present scientific information in the same rigorous way that a text-based article can. I often get some variation of these comments during talks about science communication. Here is how I address these critics:

First of all, video abstracts are not meant to duplicate or replace scholarly articles. They are designed to augment and enhance the understanding of a technical article and to raise its online visibility. People usually read the text abstract to determine whether to download and read the full paper; that excerpt simply provides a preview of what the reader will find. The same is true of a video abstract, except that it provides content in the form of images and sounds that are not necessarily found in the text article.

Second, video abstracts usually are based on information that has already been peer-reviewed and do not necessarily need to undergo a second peer-review (although it is advisable to have the video reviewed for accuracy and other features specific to audio-visual media). In addition, there are videos and video abstracts that are peer-reviewed (see JoVE). Videos produced by government science agencies also typically go through some type of review, usually quite rigorous. For example, most of the science videos I’ve published were put through an extensive peer and policy review by the science agency I worked for before they were released to the public.

In summary, video abstracts serve a specific purpose and can be as credible as a text-based abstract.

Even so, video abstracts are still a relatively new feature in the scientific publishing world. Understanding how they affect visibility and impact of a scholarly article will require more time and research.

The bottom line for me is that video abstracts are a creative and useful way to add value to my research products.

References

JLSCMedia. 2014. Exploring video abstracts in science journals: an overview and case study. YouTube video: http://youtu.be/7t1pLfedLRY

Pritsker, M. 2013. The Scientist. News and Opinion. http://www.the-scientist.com/?articles.view/articleNo/38082/title/Opinion–Video-Saved-the-Scientific-Publication/

Spicer, S. (2014). Exploring Video Abstracts in Science Journals: An Overview and Case Study. Journal of Librarianship and Scholarly Communication 2(2):eP1110. http://dx.doi.org/10.7710/2162-3309.1110