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.
As we know, explaining complicated science concepts and implications of research findings in a way that is understandable, interesting, and entertaining to diverse audiences is not easy. One of the important science issues of the day, which decision-makers and the general public need to understand, is climate change. Several organizations, such as RealClimate, have attempted to communicate climate science via their websites, blogs, and other media.
This past spring (2012), the World Resources Institute (WRI), supported by google.org, ran a survey to find out which type of video format (“webcam”, “conversation”, and “whiteboard”) worked best for scientists to get across some complex information about climate change. Three scientists, Paul Higgins (American Meteorological Society), Brian Helmuth (University of South Carolina), and Andy Dessler (Texas A&M), were recruited for the project. For the “webcam” version, all three scientists filmed their own videos. The “conversation” version was composed of a slideshow with the scientists’ voiceover. The “whiteboard” videos were filmed at the WRI’s offices, where each scientist conducted their talk using a whiteboard to illustrate their points.
You can see all the videos here, but I’ve inserted three below (by Paul Higgins) so you can see how well (or not) they worked. Then, about 1500 people voted on which ones that most effectively communicated the science topic.
As you can see, none is very effective at communicating the science of climate change. And that’s not just my opinion. If you read the review comments, you see that a number of viewers thought the videos failed to engage. One commenter suggested, tongue-in-cheek, that the bad videos were a ploy to get donations to make more professional videos about climate change (give us money or we’ll use these videos to communicate climate science to the public!). I actually had similar thoughts upon viewing these awkward and very dull presentations.
Also like the above commenter, I am not trying to disparage the scientists who participated in this project. They were given poor options of bad, bad, and worse, so no wonder they did not do well. Few of us could do better, given these three choices. The videos done by Dr. Helmuth were marginally better because he seems to be a bit less “stuck in his head” than Dr. Higgins; also, his topic (climate change effects on sea stars) is a bit more accessible to the average person than the carbon cycle. If you are a scientist and your topic deals with more abstract concepts, then you will have to work harder than someone who studies charismatic organisms or ecosystems, e.g., the Giant Panda or coral reefs.
Much better videos about climate change have been produced by Peter Sinclair (Climate Crock of the Week), which are usually well-done, include data from peer-reviewed publications as well as interviews with real scientists explaining their work and clips from the media and movies that add some humor and entertainment to the topic. Even the ones he’s done that are mostly composed of interviews with scientists are more engaging than the WRI videos. The most recent such video shot at the 2012 American Geophysical Union conference, even features one of the WRI scientists, Dr. Andrew Dressler, who comes across much better in this off-the-cuff interview than in the WRI videos.
Note how Sinclair inter-cuts footage, images, and graphics to supplement and support what the interviewees are saying. Not as well done as some of his other videos but the video has a spontaneous, unrehearsed feel to it, and most of the scientists sound sincere and natural in their comments.
I was additionally annoyed by the fact that the scientists selected for the WRI exercise were all older white males. I mean, really, couldn’t they find one female or minority to record a set of videos? If you are trying to reach a diverse audience, you need to show scientists to whom viewers can relate. A perfect example is the video of Katharine Hayhoe (a real climate scientist) answering 10 questions about her work and her religious beliefs:
Now, Dr. Hayhoe’s video was not designed to explain climate science or research findings and is not directly comparable to the WRI videos in that aspect. My point in showing it, however, is to emphasize how important it is for the scientist to be engaging and believable (as opposed to being preachy or appearing to have an agenda)….if you are going to do a “talking heads” type of video. Also, having a scientist with whom your target audience can relate (young or religious people, for example) is key to effectively communicating your message.
The intended audience of Dr. Hayhoe’s video was clearly people with strong religious beliefs and who’ve been targeted by the climate science misinformation campaign. The WRI videos are less clear about their target audience and appear to suffer from the common problem of the scientist failing to understand their audience (or expecting the audience to educate themselves so that they can understand the video topic). Most scientists think that facts, facts, and more facts are what is convincing to non-scientists, when the reverse is more often the case. Note how the video with Dr. Hayhoe focused on her beliefs, emotions, and humor….all effective in reaching the viewer at more than just an intellectual level. The scientists in the WRI videos appear to be robotic by comparison. Only after the viewer has come to “know” and “like” Dr. Hayhoe does the video ask and have her answer the key question: Is climate change real and are humans causing it?
If you must have a senior scientist explaining the main points, then have segments showing younger scientists or students working in the lab or field or, better yet, explaining their interest in the topic and why they’ve chosen to work on it. This approach will at least have some person with whom the younger or non-scientist viewer can relate. Unless you’re a TED-worthy speaker, capable of entrancing an audience by talking about incredible ideas or innovations, then you can’t do a video with just you talking.
The WRI videos followed few of the guidelines we’ve been discussing on this site, whereas the one with Katharine Hayhoe did, especially in terms of reaching an audience at an emotional level. In future posts, I’ll do a more in-depth assessment of these videos and why they did or did not work well.
Finally, it seemed that the idea for the WRI videos was to survey formats that scientists, with their apparent lack of videography skills, might use. Well, if these are the only options, scientists just shouldn’t bother and leave the filmmaking to professionals. However, as I’ve tried to demonstrate with this blog, most scientists can learn enough basics about filming and editing to create very effective videos.
As I’ve been trying to emphasize in past posts, visual story-telling using a good dramatic question can be a powerful way to spread sound science ideas to a diverse audience. Here’s a video that is highly effective in getting across the concept of the “domino effect in nature”. It was made by graduate student, Megan Callahan, who used simple props (dominoes) to create a compelling video:
The video was made during a workshop held by Randy Olson, scientist turned filmmaker (more about the workshop here). Let’s apply my features of a good video and see how this one does:
1. The video is short. Imagine a scientist getting across an abstract concept….by talking. This video does it in one minute, with minimal talking.
2. The information is presented visually as well as verbally. Yes. Even without the beginning dialog between the two women, the point of the video is clear.
3. The video keeps adding information at a steady but rapid pace. Yes. In this case, the video uses falling dominoes in different habitats to move the story forward.
4. There is constant motion going on throughout the video. Yes, the falling dominoes and cuts from one scene to the next create the impression of constant motion.
5. Colors are intense and dramatic. Not so obvious because the colors are those of nature. The video could have used a few close-ups of the images on the dominoes with dramatic colors (of a butterfly or flower, for example).
6. The text is minimal; only what is essential to understanding the message. Yes, a brief text segment at the end poses the key questions.
7. There is a dream-like quality about the video. No.
8. The video elicits an emotional reaction in the viewer, largely driven by the music, which is compelling and carefully keyed to the visual shifts. The music (mostly bongos) adds to the feeling of movement or motion, which along with the sounds of the falling dominoes, creates a mood.
9. All visual and audio components are rendered to the highest quality possible. Yes.
10. The video has people, animals, or cartoon characters that are doing something interesting, unusual, or surprising. In this case, the falling dominoes with attached images representing species are a surprising element.
11. There is an element of suspense. Yes. Where will the dominoes end up?
12. There is no traditional beginning, middle, and end. In this case, there is: the opening scene with the two women, the falling dominoes, the ending text sequence. However, it’s not really that obvious.
So this video clearly adheres to most of the elements I’ve identified as being important to creating an effective message. Let me hasten to add that these are not the only features that characterize an effective video. There may be some that break the rules (and these, I’m guessing, will be highly effective). The point is that there are some common attributes that the scientist videographer can keep in mind when planning a video project.
Use your imagination, as Megan did, and create something memorable. In this case, she took the name of the scientific idea (domino effect) and used it to develop a visual aid that reinforced the concept. She went a step further and attached pictures of organisms to the dominoes, which drove home the point that each domino represented a species. By putting the questioning woman’s picture on the last domino, Megan emphasized that humans are part of nature’s interconnectedness.
Many other scientific concepts lend themselves to such visual storytelling. We just have to be creative in finding ways to tell those stories.
A final point about Megan’s video: it did not require an expensive film crew, elaborate stage settings, exotic shooting locations, or a huge budget to create. The students had NO prior experience with film making. I’m not sure what equipment they used to capture the footage, but it would have been possible to shoot it with a smartphone. The students did their own acting. The only prop was a package of dominoes. Their “shooting locations” for nature scenes were different habitats in their region, apparently close by and easily accessible. This is a great example of how someone using minimal equipment and visual aids can create a compelling audiovisual message.
In recent posts, I’ve been providing reasons why scientists might want to use videography to draw attention to their scholarly articles and to meet funding requirements.
I pointed out how the National Science Foundation and other science funding agencies expect scientists to develop outreach products and activities that inform a wider audience about the value of their science and to generally increase the public’s understanding of science (the Broader Impacts criterion). I also showed how videos and images can put your scholarly article at the top of a Google search page, when your text-based document is buried on page 43.
Journals are also increasingly using video to illustrate methods or to visually show the results of a study they’ve published. Such videos, which are often included in the supplementary online material, are linked to your published article on the journal webpage where specialists in your field will see it. Videos can also make your article and work more visible to students and others who may be searching for information on the topic using Google or other search engines. If you have the only video on the Web on your topic, it is going to be ranked high on the Google search page (see this post for an example of how this works).
In the current post, I provide an example of a recent paper published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences that was accompanied by supplemental online material, including three videos illustrating their results. The paper is titled, “3D Imaging and Mechanical Modeling of Helical Buckling in Medicago truncatula Plant Roots“. The authors conducted a study of how the roots of the plant behave when they encounter a layer that is more resistant to penetration, a common occurrence in some soils. They were able to view the change in root growth pattern by using a clear gel as a growth medium. Two gel layers were created, the lower one being of a stiffer consistency than the upper one. The roots grew normally, that is, straight down, when in the upper layer. However, when the plant roots encountered the more resistant gel layer, they began to curl and form into a helical shape. This “helical buckling” provided more force at the root tip, which helped it penetrate the more resistant material. Their modeling of the mechanics of root growth patterns predicted this greater force when roots grew in this helical manner.
This work showing how plant roots manage to grow through tough layers of material was illustrated using 3D imaging. Below is a 3D, time-lapse video of the growth of a root through the upper, less resistant layer and then through the lower layer that caused the root to buckle and curl into a helical shape.
And here’s another example of a video done to accompany a paper published in the journal, Coral Reefs:
The paper that the above video illustrates is titled “The Use of Tools by Wrasses (Labridae)“. The video shows a fish cracking open a bivalve by throwing it against a large coral head. Although the video needed some close-up views of the action, it does get across the idea in a short visual clip (2 minutes). On YouTube, the video has been viewed over 40,000 times.
Both of these examples illustrate how you can use video to augment your journal articles as supplementary online material on the journal website or on your own website.
Some journal publishers are now able to accept video embedded into the online article in a similar manner as photos, graphs, or tables. Here is a link to an article in the journal, Cell, that has embedded video in the online version of the paper.
Having a video available to illustrate your research can often get your paper highlighted in the news section of the online journal. For example, here is a link to a video reconstruction of the skull of Australopithecus sebida. There is also a podcast with the author on the same webpage.
By having audio-visual components associated with your print or online articles, your work will be more visible to search engines, and journals are more likely to select your article to highlight on their webpage.
References:
Bernardi, G. 2012. The use of tools by wrasses (Labridae). Coral Reefs 31 (1): 39. DOI: 10.1007/s00338-011-0823-6
Nonaka, S. et al. 1998. Randomization of lef-right asymmetry due to loss of nodal cilia generating leftward flow of extraembryonic fluid in mice lacking KIF3B motor protein. Cell 95 (6): 829-837. http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/S0092-8674(00)81705-5
Silverberg, J.L. et al. 2012. 3D imaging and mechanical modeling of helical buckling in Medicago truncatula plant roots. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences Online (before print). DOI: 10.1073/pnas.1209287109
