Let Me Be Clear: Science Journalism in the Age of the Genome & Twitter

"Let Me Be Clear: Science Journalism in the Age of the Genome and Twitter" was held May 11, 2011, at the Holeman Lounge at the National Press Club in Washington, DC. More photos.

Last Wednesday, I got to help out at a really exciting program at the National Press Club: Let Me Be Clear: Science Journalism in the Age of the Genome and Twitter.

Anything that has to do with science and talking about science automatically has me interested, but the line-up for this event was especially awesome. Also, I had the pleasure of working on the accompanying public opinion poll which shed some light on the perception of scientists and journalists in Missouri.  Some of the top line results were covered in the press release, but listen to the program to hear Research!America President Mary Woolley lay out the findings.
 

Final Thoughts from Christian

Incredibly, it’s already been three months, and my time at Research!America has come to an end. I would say that the time has flown by, but I can’t help thinking that those three months had the feel of a year’s worth of challenges and lessons.

If you’ve seen the news these past few months, or read this blog, you probably know why: February through April was an interesting time for Research!America. The fiscal year 2011 (and 2012) budget dominated the discussion in DC, and this organization was once again on the front line of protecting funding for health and medical research. We kept tabs on the potential and final cuts; we had meetings with representatives; and we encouraged our grassroots network to contact their elected officials and push for research funding.

Put simply, the federal budget was at the center of Research!America’s past three months, and it was at the center of my three months, too. I, in particular, took on the topic with my internship project, “Understanding the Federal Budget” (now available on the Research!America website). This new section provides an introduction to the federal budget process, an FAQ, and more. Most importantly, it gives you a picture of how federal research agencies like the NIH and CDC are faring in the budget, along with the cuts they face, and how those cuts might affect the agencies.

My goal in creating this site was to give people much the same education I received these past few months at Research!America. I spent a lot of time digging through spreadsheets, PDFs, and other reports, trying to get a better picture of the budget and what the current debate means for health and medical research. What I found was that this is as crucial a time as ever for research funding, as well as for advocacy. When you take a look at “Understanding the Federal Budget,” I hope you find the same. These past few months were challenging, but if the current political climate is any indication, there are many more challenges to come, and we only can tackle them if we understand them.

That was my ultimate lesson at Research!America: educating ourselves on the issues helps us to care (even more) about the issues. I came here with a slight understanding of the budget, and now I leave with a treasure trove of information. I came here with a deep appreciation for research, and now I leave with a great sense of responsibility for its future. It’s been three months, but if DC has shown me anything, it’s that things can move and change quickly, as can people.


New Voices has been proud to publish Christian Torres' posts during his time here, and we thank him for his innovative ideas, solid prose, and ability to come up with a post in an hour or less when necessary. We look forward to reading more as he continues his science journalism education with an internship in the health and science section of The Washington Post.  Good luck Christian!

Communication Baseball: First Base

Today, New Voices welcomes Brian Hunsicker to guest post about communication.

My specialty at Research!America is communications. With that in mind, I'll be presenting the four bases for successful communication – with the public, with media, with anyone who doesn’t have a science background. Why four bases? Touch all four, and it’s a home run. (I can’t believe I wrote that.)

For the sake of Sports Cliché Week (July 11 to 17), I'm reversing everything I’ve taught myself since 1997. In a 12-year career as a sportswriter, I groaned at the sight of “gridders” and “cagers.” I shook my head at stories that began with, “What a difference a year makes.” I became visibly agitated at clichés of construction (overbearing parallel structure (right column)), thought (cursory opinions with no insight) and, of course, verbiage (Player X stepped up! Armchair quarterbacks! Any catchphrase from a SportsCenter anchor after the Craig Kilborn era!).

So, with great mental anguish and a healthy sense of humor, we press on.

It's a single up the middle – a worm-burner, a Texas leaguer, whatever; a hit’s a hit – and Jimmy Hitsalot makes the big turn around…

First base: Show, don’t tell.
This is the first rule of any communication. Think of it like this: If you were speaking to a group of middle schoolers, you’d certainly have demonstrations and examples to drive home the point you’re talking about. Are kids of that age going to listen to a lecture? Of course not.

Just because you’re excited about a certain subject doesn’t mean that others are. But the good news is that you can get them excited.

When you’re speaking, think about your audience beforehand and figure out ways to engage them in what you’re talking about. Different audiences will have different interests (though I think we can all agree that explosions would be cool for any audience). It’s your job, then, to connect the dots between what you’re trying to say and how you’re going to show this to the audience.

When you’re writing, think about word pictures and details. Which sounds more interesting?

Choice A: “A chemical reaction happens, and the liquid rises out of the beaker and spills over the side.”
Choice B: “At the instant the two liquids meet, something begins to happen. Bubbles form. Smoke rises. The reaction grows - quickly - beyond the capabilities of its container. This angry combination of chemicals boils over like an unwatched pot.”

Choice B is significantly more enthralling. You build suspense, and supplement that with words that can put a visual into your readers’ minds.

The beauty of the English language is the flavors of words: blue, aqua, turquoise and teal all mean roughly the same thing – but each is slightly different than the other. Challenge yourself to find unique ways to describe a certain event or action.

Be wary of overwriting, however. Make sure your details are relevant to what you’re talking about, and don’t meander. It’s easy to get caught up in creating this beautiful prose, but it will be for naught if your reader gets bogged down in all of the details.

Jimmy's not getting bogged down, though. The stone-handed left fielder bobbles the ball. So he's heading, full steam, for ...

Check back or subscribe now to see Jimmy Hitsalot's progress around the bases.


Brian Hunsicker is the communications specialist at Research!America. He has a Bachelors of Arts from Moravian College in English. This is his first guest post for New Voices.

March News Round-Up

My inbox has been flooded with great news pieces today, so here are a couple I think you should take a look at:

From The Scientist, Anthony Cognato shares his encounter with FOX news and details how he was able to express the value of his ARRA funding to science, his community, and America's economy. (Free registration required to read the piece, but the full interview is on video above.)

Kathy Mitchell tells her tale of surviving tuberculosis in a New Jersey suburb on the New Jersey Voices Blog.

NIH Director Francis Collins talks to the Washington Post about health reform, genetic testing, and what effect specialty groups and his religion have on science priorities at the NIH.

Three short reads, but all valuable examples of research advocacy in action.

A New Voice at ScienceOnline 2010

Allison sporting her map of the human genome t-shirt (courtesy of AAAS) after returning from ScienceOnline 2010.

For months, I had watched the Facebook event, the #scio10 hashtag on Twitter, and the Wiki. I had my hotel roommate and a Google map of directions to each conference location. But it was a couple days before leaving for ScienceOnline 2010, and I was nervous. I had experienced blogger star-strucked-ness before, and I didn’t want to clam up during such a great opportunity to learn from some of the best science communicators out there.

Fortunately, I had nothing to worry about. ScienceOnline retained the “dinner party” feel you often get on Twitter, where the person sitting next to you, shaking your hand, or leading your session could be a book author, a trained scientist, or someone from one of the many institutions and organizations in the Research Triangle Park area. All forms of participation were welcomed and rewarded, and I left feeling more connected to a community of science bloggers than I had before.

As a communication fellow at Research!America, I look through discussions about science communication through an advocacy lens. During the session “Rebooting Science Journalism in the Age of the Web,” Ed Yong of Not Exactly Rocket Science (I could listen to him talk, er, blog all day) asked whether the publication where science-related content even mattered anymore. “If it’s on the internet, people can find it,” he said.

For me, this raises issues of access: how can we create new advocates for research if the communicators aren’t pushing content to new audiences and instead pull them into a specialized community through blogs and other channels (thanks for BoraZ for this distinction)? I thought this question was answered constructively in David Kroll and Damond Nollan’s session on engaging underrepresented groups in online science media, where the discussion turned to using mobile phones and Facebook at historically black colleges and universities.

Who will be the next voice for research? There was so much potential among the ScienceOnline participants. I thought Anil Dash made a convincing case for Expert Labs, a new initiative supported by the American Association for the Advancement of Science which would serve as a filter for policymakers who seek answers from scientists and other experts, but may not know the right questions to ask.

Additionally, Michael Specter, Friday’s keynote speaker and author of Denialism: How Irrational Thinking Hinders Scientific Progress, Harms the Planet, and Threatens Our Lives, ignited the conference with his impatience for misleading information about science, but reminded us throughout the weekend that he was dedicated to promoting scientific interest through his journalism. “Science is much bigger than special interest stories,” he responded to Ed Yong’s question above.

The diversity of the body of ScienceOnline made for lively sessions and informal conversations, and there are many themes not considered here. Based on the amount of content created during ScienceOnline--video, Twitter, blogs, images and Slideshare--I think you could spend a couple days sifting through it and feel as if you experienced the conference firsthand. All content should be marked with the #scio10 hashtag, so keep that in mind in your searching and posting.

Next up: ScienceOnline 2011!


Allison Bland is a communications fellow at Research!America and a graduate of McGill University with degrees in English and history of science. She has previously contributed to New Voices with posts on science education and how-to effectively use Twitter.

He Said, She Said

I love quotes. Historical quotes, movie quotes, random things my friends blurt out, basically anything. I have collections of them in different places, most obviously in my daily movie quote "away" message and on the post-its stuck to the map above the desk in my office.

I collect quotes, because they come in handy for so many things in writing.

1. Quotes can say the thing you want to say but in a way you maybe never would have thought to say it; and isn't that nice, easy to read thing way the heck better than all my rambling to get to the same basic point?

2. Quotes from leaders (in your field or historically) can bolster a message.

3. Quotes can serve as a piece of evidence.

My library of quotes is pretty large at this point, and I do have quite a few favorites from Thomas Edison's "ways not to make a light bulb" to Star Wars' "Let the wookie win." But instead of just sharing those with you, I want to hear from you!

What are your favorite quotes? What do you find yourself using fairly regularly?

And as a bonus for today's post, the trailer for He Said, She Said.

Darwinius Revisited

An interesting post on Not Exactly Rocket Science caught our attention earlier this week: apparently Ida - our Darwinius ancestor or missing link - is no such thing. This is shocking because it was only a few months ago when the media storm took over and wrote over some of what we thought we knew about human evolution and knocked Lucy from her place in history.

This poses an interesting question for those of us interested in science communication: Should new scientific findings be immediately publicized or should there be some sort of process for releasing scientific data - especially revolutionary research - so that the general public doesn't get mixed messages about scientific "facts"?

A PR Perspective
by: Heather

The scientific community potentially has the worst public relations system around; meaning there doesn't seem to be one at all. So much of the exciting research going on in science never gets explained to people outside of a specific field, better yet to the public.

When a chance comes along to really publicize something that people can sink their teeth into, building up a media storm is a great idea. First, because it engages the public. That increased interest may help build public support and perhaps funding for future research. Plus, if celebrities and politicians can vacillate on positions in the news, why shouldn't scientists do the same? Science is a fluid field where things change, so it just makes sense.

However, as a PR professional, it would be irresponsible to not mention the other side of that argument: not all press is good press. Look at the Large Hadron Collider. Everyone knew about it, everyone was watching, and it didn't work. Most of the public (and the media for that matter) will never check back in and see that the whole project wasn't a waste.

The American school system teaches science as a series of facts or rules that everything works in. Now, if you pursue science beyond the basics, you learn that those rules can bent, but the majority of the public thinks of science as something hard, fast, and sure. Which is why when a group of astronomers decides that Pluto is no longer a planet, there's a loss of faith in the whole system.

No wonder people question the value of vaccines when they're told, "This'll work" and then it doesn't - or worse. Unless the scientific community can pull their communications together and develop a crisis plan for when things don't pan out, it should be a fact before it gets out there.

Or, you can just hope for good press.

The View from the Bench
by: Jackie

My gut response to this is to shrug it off with the understanding that this is how science works. Science is a dynamic process. It’s about discovery, and the ability to build on this discovery. In some cases, this means supporting and expanding the initial hypothesis; in others, it means challenging your finding and modifying your hypothesis. It’s this constant irony of science that makes it both exciting and frustrating at any given moment.

My next response is to ask why the story was handled so irresponsibly. And it’s not just this. There are a number of examples of findings that are pushed out the door and stated as fact from the get-go. That’s not how the scientific process works! Think back to some of the big names in science---Charles Darwin, Gregor Mendel, Francesco Redi. They were responsible for the theory of evolution, genetic inheritance, and germ theory, respectively. It took the scientific community years to accept their hypotheses as theories. The initial experiments that they performed paved the way for more experiments that eventually led to this. There was no mass media frenzy the day after Mendel did his first pea-experiment saying, “Hey look, we now know inheritance happens---it’s a known fact.” It was through long-term evidence-based discovery that this happened.

My point is that in the case of Darwinius, the finding was certainly valid in terms of how the researchers interpreted the data, but it should not have been presented as fact. It was and is the responsibility of the scientists, science journals, and media to make sure that scientific findings are presented at face value. As a scientist, it is exciting to, after years of work, finally experience an “AHA” moment, but we need to stay true to the scientific process, and accept it for what it is---not an overnight phenomenon, but rather an extended process.

From the Eyes of an Educated Public
by: Ilse

There are many reasons why major scientific findings should be reported to the public soon after the results are published, but the coverage of such discoveries must be responsible.

Reporting landmark discoveries is important because it generates greater enthusiasm and support for scientific research, and members of the public often have a direct stake in research that entitles them to such knowledge. Many member of the public may be directly impacted by such findings at some point. For instance, research on heart disease may lead to new treatment options in the future. The public is furthermore entitled to know about such work because a significant portion of research is funded by taxpayer dollars.

Announcing findings too soon however—without reasonable verification of the results and without giving journalists time to do adequate research prior to writing their article—is irresponsible and misleading. Premature or incomplete reports can be confusing: if one study suggests that a certain food is beneficial to health and another suggests that the same thing is harmful, the public will be left unsure about what is “true.” Sensationalizing research can also create a false sense of progress and unrealistic expectations which may lead to disappointment.

The best approach is to encourage the best science possible, reasonable verification of results to the extent allowed by funding and time restraints, and journalism that contextualizes discoveries in prior findings, allowing readers to better understand the progress being made without creating a disproportionate sense of progress.

Your thoughts?

High School Chemistry: More than Science

Allison Bland remembers:

Mr. Seth Klein
AP Chemistry teacher
Shoreham Wading River High School
Shoreham, New York

When I was a junior in high school, I took Advanced Placement Chemistry with Mr. Klein. Despite my lifelong love of writing, I entered his class with a new consideration for a college major in science after a great experience in AP Biology the year before. I didn’t know until later, but Mr. Klein’s influence would help guide the career path I have worked to follow ever since.

A year of AP Chemistry covers a huge amount of information that is needed to pass the AP exam, but Mr. Klein drove us through the material without leaving anyone behind. He was efficient enough to leave room for the fun stuff: explosions, homemade ice cream (a chemical process!), and a science-related book reports. For the report, I read The Mismeasure of Man by Stephen Jay Gould, which opened up a new world of ways that science can be written about and explained.

Mr. Klein also connected me to a summer internship in a pharmacology lab, a job that made me realize that I wasn’t interested in a research career. I started to think about other ways I could connect science to my love of writing.

What made Mr. Klein such an effective teacher was his obvious love of the subject and his students and his efforts to show us how science was present in all aspects of our lives. He gave me opportunities to learn science outside of a textbook or classroom and guided me toward my interest in the history of science and science writing.

Allison Bland is a communications fellow at Research!America and a graduate of McGill University with degrees in English and history of science.

This tribute is part of our spotlight on science educators series.
Part 1 - Introduction
To share your story about a science educator who helped shape your path, leave a comment, or send your story to hbenson at researchamerica.org.

Sensationalizing Science Journalism

Say it with me people… “Correlation is NOT causation”

Frequent Moves Increase Suicide Risk in Teens

This was from the New York Times health section on June 1st and I can’t tell if it offends me more from a scientific or a journalistic standpoint. The article details a Danish study examining the links between teenage suicide and moving. A fine study that could yield some interesting results with the potential to give us an indicator of when parents should be concerned. But, given the research on suicide to date, it would be somewhat ridiculous to suggest that moving has clear, causal links to suicide.

To her credit the author of the study Dr. Ping Qin of the Centre for Register-Based Research at Aarhus University in Denmark points at that nothing in the study suggests whether moving is a causal risk factor or an intermediate variable, but the article then drops this quote from a professor not involved with the study….

“The evidence is becoming quite compelling that there is a causal effect of children’s residential mobility on a variety of negative behavioral outcomes…”

Now, it’s possible that there is some link between moving and teenage suicide, but the evidence in this study doesn’t suggest it. This quote is particularly problematic because the study did not control for poverty, family instability or distance moved. So an impoverished child who has to move across the country following the divorce of his parents is treated the same as a wealthy child whose whole family moves across town. I cannot speak for everyone, but that strikes me as a serious problem with anyone claiming that there is a causal link between suicide and moving.

Suicide is an incredibly serious problem in this country with 1.3 million deaths annually. It’s the third leading cause of death among Americans age 15-24. Articles like this is they continue to promote magic bullet theories to teen suicide instead of a thorough examination of all the causes of suicide. When you see that 90% of people who die by suicide have a treatable mental illness or a substance abuse disorder and then imagine the claim that it’s really about moving, you can understand why this article upset me.

It’s Dr. Qin's fault that her study was used in this manner (although the adjustment failures within it are), and I hope that science journalists will keep their focus on the details rather than sensationalism (which isn't selling papers anyway). Perhaps I’m overreacting, but I find it frustrating when things like this are promoted in the stead of research into depression and social anxiety disorder that actually helps save lives.

For some real details about suicide check out the following resources:

• National Institute of Mental Health
• Suicide fact sheet