NINDS's Building Up the Nerve

S5E1: Composing Scientific Narratives

• NINDS • Season 5 • Episode 1

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In the fifth Season of the National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke’s Building Up the Nerve podcast, we help you strengthen your science communication skills with tools and advice to use throughout your career. We know that navigating your career can be daunting, but we're here to help—it's our job!

In the first episode of the season, we talk about Composing Scientific Narratives which focused on how to compose scientific narratives to communicate our findings and how to tell a scientific story in a way that is compelling, but also transparent and objective.

Featuring Sean Carroll, PhD, Balo-Simon Endowed Chair of Biology, University of Maryland; Investigator, Howard Hughes Medical Institute; Mónica Feliú Mójer, PhD, Director, Public Engagement with Science, Ciencia Puerto Rico; Director, Inclusive Science Communication & Engagement | Science Communication Lab; and Gina Poe, PhD, Director, UCLA Brain Research Institute; Lorre Scholars Faculty Chair; Professor, University of California, Los Angeles.

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Transcript available at http://ninds.buzzsprout.com/.

Lauren:

[intro music] Welcome to Season 5 of the National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke's Building Up the Nerve, where we help you strengthen your science communication skills with tools and advice to use throughout your career. We know that navigating your career can be daunting, but we're here to help— it's our job![music fades]

Lauren Ullrich:

Welcome to Season 5! To set the stage for this season, we're going to talk about composing scientific narratives, focusing on how to craft scientific narratives to communicate our findings and how to tell a scientific story in a way that is compelling, but also transparent and accurate. Hi, I'm Lauren Ullrich, Section Chief for Career Advancement in the Office of Programs to Enhance the Neuroscience Workforce, also known as OPEN, at NINDS.

Marguerite Matthews:

And I'm Marguerite Matthews, Section Chief for Career Preparation in OPEN, and we're your hosts today.[music]

Lauren Ullrich:

Joining us are Dr. Sean Carroll, Dr. Mónica Feliú Mójer, and Dr. Gina Poe. So let's start with introductions.

Sean Carroll:

So I'm Sean Carroll. I'm an investigator at the Howard Hughes Medical Institute. I'm also a university professor here at the University of Maryland, College Park. I was formerly vice president for science education at the Howard Hughes Medical Institute and head of its Tangled Bank Studios. I'm an evolutionary biologist, keenly interested in the origin of novelty. So that could be anything from a new body part. And currently we study things like the origin of snake venoms. As venoms have been invented all over the animal kingdom, they're great examples of new weapons that have evolved, especially to acquire food. I have a very keen interest in science communication, started a long time ago. As an author for the general public, as a collaborator on a lot of films, been involved in making probably 30 feature documentaries and about 50 more short films, I'm really interested in what makes the public interested in science and to react to our stories.

Lauren Ullrich:

And what three words describe your science communication style or philosophy?

Sean Carroll:

Tell a story.

Lauren Ullrich:

So we have the right person for this episode.

Mónica Feliú-Mójer:

Thank you so much for having me. I'm excited to be here. My name is Mónica Feliú Mójer.. I am the Director of Public Engagement with Science for the nonprofit Ciencia Puerto Rico. And I am also the Director of Inclusive Science Communication and Engagement for a different nonprofit called The Science Communication Lab. I'm a neurobiologist by training, but I've been doing science communication and public engagement for about 20 years. I wear multiple hats, but in a nutshell, my work centers around using science communication and public engagement to promote inclusion and equity. And I do that from working with media to working with community leaders, predominantly in Puerto Rico. I also produce films and then I train scientists to be more effective communicators. And three words that describe my science communication style or philosophy are community centered and culturally relevant.

Gina Poe:

Hi. My name is Gina Poe. I am a professor at UCLA and director of the Brain Research Institute. I am also the Lorre Scholars Chair. I am a neuroscientist, and I study why we sleep, why we spend a third of each day unconscious, unable to defend ourselves, forage for food, or reproduce. It seems like a huge waste of time, so there must be something essential for that. And I study specifically the function of sleep for learning and memory and development, the formation of new insights, making sense of our world, resolving our emotional issues, and readying ourselves for cognition and performance the next day. The diseases that are pertinent or most pertinent to the research that I'm doing right now are post traumatic stress disorder, drug use disorders, anxiety, and I'm also really interested in just the basics of why all animals sleep and why we have to sleep across our entire lifespan. My communication style is mostly interactive, engaging, and conversational. I feel like I'm talking to someone next to me on an airplane when I'm trying to talk to the public about what I do.[music]

Marguerite Matthews:

All right. I think we hear the term science communication a lot, but I'd love to hear from each of you how you would describe what science communication is and why people should engage in it.

Gina Poe:

Science communication is very simply trying to tell people about the things that you're discovering and the things that have been discovered by other people. It's trying to convey the awe and wonder of the thing that you're studying, that you're talking about. And I think we have to do it; it's for the good of the world. And I think part of our responsibility for engaging people via science communication is to let them know that science is not the activity of the elite or the well educated, but it's something that everyone can do, even in their own home or their own backyard. We are all born scientists, and when we're babies, we all test various things about the world like dropping our cup over our high chair just to see it fall and doing that over and over and over again. And we're learning about gravity and the surety of gravity when we're doing that. So we are all scientists. We're born scientists. And I think we need to let the public know that science is something for all of us and we come to our conclusions by testing things over and over again.

Mónica Feliú-Mójer:

Yeah. I mean, this idea of like conveying awe and wonder definitely resonates with me. I think one of the main ideas that drives the way I think about science communication, it's connection and relationship building. For a really long time, and still, there is an idea that still predominates in science communication, that it's just about sharing information. And we know from the science of science communication, science communication research, a field that is very interdisciplinary and draws from, like, social sciences, humanities, and in many other disciplines that science communication to be effective needs to go beyond just sharing information, sharing data. It's about connecting science to the things that people care about, to their daily lives, to their context, their beliefs and their values. Because all of those things change and shape how we understand the world. And so, for me, science communication is about building a relationship with an audience, which means it's multi directional and it's really about, how do I connect science, and not just science, but the process in which science is carried out, the tools that we use to do science, to who you are, your culture and the things that are important to you.

Sean Carroll:

Think there's a lot of points to pick up there, especially about culture and connecting with audiences. I think we're all talking about in the public context and in the public context, most engagement about science is voluntary. We can talk about the classroom maybe in the course of this conversation, but if it's the public volunteering to engage, and they have lots of competing stories and lots of competing things to pay attention to, how does science secure its place in our culture and sort of in hearts and minds, unless we kind of meet the audience where they are. And I probably would convict the scientific establishment of thinking that all we need to do is convey information."If the public just knew what we knew, life would be fine." Well, [laughs] sorry doesn't work that way. I think we have to kind of step out and join sort of the cultural conversation in the same way that, you know, musicians and artists and all sorts of other folks that engage the public at large, do. And so we have to use those tools and we have to be communicators that people want to engage with because we have something to offer that they value.

Gina Poe:

Yeah. Can I also pick up on that for a second

Lauren Ullrich:

mmhmm

Gina Poe:

and say that communication is a two way street, so that's what you are saying. And in order to communicate well, you also have to be able to listen and find out where they are by listening. So, finding out who your audience is, is really important and finding out what they're interested in because you will lose them in a second if you're not talking about anything they're interested in.

Sean Carroll:

I think the one aspect of this is the emotional side. It's the emotional side of the scientific experience. It's also the emotional side of what the concerns are of what the audience may be. And so when we talk about information, usually we're sort of giving that almost as though it's sort of neutral facts and figures. But connection is emotional and, you know, scientists have become scientists for usually strong emotional reasons. And we sustain our interest through strong emotional reasons. I think you just find that when you open up at that level, there's a lot more room for connection with people. They don't see us as just, you know, automatons that read encyclopedias.

Mónica Feliú-Mójer:

[laugh] Yeah. There are a couple of things that I want to pull from what you just shared, Sean, and Gina too, like one is most of my work is engaging with people who are not professional scientists. So I think a lot about the quote unquote general public, which is, you know, really a very diverse group of people. It's not general at all. But all of these things also apply when communicating science to other scientists, for example. You know, this idea of culture, for example, science, as like a "big S" as an institution, it has a culture. There are a set of expectations and norms and assumptions each discipline and group and so on have. So all of the ideas that we've talked about, mainly in the context of the public communication or public engagement with science, they also apply when we are communicating science in more technical settings. And one of my favorite things to challenge scientists on is this idea of neutrality and objectivity. You know, scientists we're trained to try to be objective and try to remove bias, but science is human and humans are biased by definition, by nature. We are biased human beings is the way that our brains work. So I've trained hundreds of scientists in how to communicate science and one thing that consistently blows their mind is often having to confront for the first time, this idea of the data doesn't speak for itself, or facts are all you need. So it's this idea of science is objective and because I am a scientist, I can be objective. I think a really, really important part of being an effective communicator of being able to listen, of having that humility is that recognition of I am human, science is done by humans, and therefore who we are, where we come from, our biases, our privileges, they inform what we do, how we interpret science, how we relate to others. And so having the ability to examine, to have the reflexivity of examining those things, and then thinking about how does that impact the way that I am communicating science and the way that people are relating to me in that space, that is something that is really, really critical.

Marguerite Matthews:

I really appreciate that you all have talked about this as being really an agreement between yourself and the audience, or the speaker and the audience, and respecting that they are capable of understanding what it is that you're saying, even if they don't have the same level of expertise or the same set of knowledge as you do. And I think that one of the things that hopefully will help anyone listening to this feel more confident about having this discussion. It's not to be this, "I know so much and I'm taking time out of my precious schedule to share a little bit with you," instead of, "I want us to have a share of information, and even if it's mostly one way, where you're mostly listening to me, this is meant to be a dual way conversation." Because you're right, Mónica, we're all human beings, but things resonate with us differently. We all have a certain interest in some things, and that doesn't mean that we can't also learn. We can be an expert and still learn more, from what someone has to share, especially if they're bringing more culturally relevant aspects to it or they have a different level of knowledge or something else to share. And so I really just appreciate the way in which you all have approached this because it feels so tangible. Like we all can engage in some level of science communication, if that's what we want to call it. The sharing of information that happens to be centered around perhaps some aspect of life, whether it's, you know, getting down to the molecules and proteins, or just trying to explain the world around us in more simple terms.

Gina Poe:

Yeah- I wanted to say one other thing, which is that instead of scientists being up in an ivory tower deigning to spill our secrets to those we decide to allow to listen. Instead, I feel the public as my boss, you know, I've been educated in public institutions. I've been teaching in public institutions. And as a teacher, if my students are failing, I feel like it's on me. If they don't understand, it's because I haven't done well to connect with them where they are and to teach them. It's my job as a teacher to teach, not to eliminate people from classrooms. So when I'm giving my science communication talks, I'm really feeling like I'm reporting to my boss, because they've paid for my research and I need to let them know the progress that we've made.

Sean Carroll:

I want to pick up a little bit on what we're actually sharing, because I think that what's being reflected in this conversation is this perception that scientists are all about facts and objectivity, and that emotions are subordinated to those sort of things. But we are storytelling and story craving creatures and every artist knows this, every author knows this, every musician knows this. And the reason why we tell stories or listen to stories, the reason why we watch a film or make a film, the reason why we sing a song or listen to a song is usually to experience or evoke emotion. Humans have for millennia and millennia shared through story, and science can't be any different. We organize information in our heads, and I don't want to go too far with a neuroscientist here because I'm going to step way outside my comfort zone, but the argument is, that story is a lot of ways how we come to understand the world and how we organize information in our heads. We need that connective tissue between individual bits of facts and stories, narrative is, what gives that to us. So, in all these settings that we're talking about, it's incumbent upon us to sort of communicate the way other people communicate, which is most often through narrative.

Lauren Ullrich:

So, if I could pull on that thread a little bit. I am hearing kind of more and more, this advice to scientists telling them, you know, your paper should have a story. But maybe we could break down kind of what that means? And how do you avoid some traps hidden in this advice and how do you avoid fitting your data to the story as opposed to having your story tell your data accurately?

Gina Poe:

I think that's a great question because if our primary objective is to tell a story, we do subject ourselves to the possibility of leaving out parts of the things that we've discovered that don't fit that story. And what do you do with those bits that might be really essential parts of someone else's story. And if we don't publicize them, then that other person who's trying to build this other story about this other thing will never be able to get that puzzle piece for their own puzzle. So I think that we should change the way that we publish actually. We should have articles that tell stories, but we should also have another venue for releasing the things that we're finding. And that should be simple, one panel figures that show the methods and the results, that are searchable; lots of keywords, you know, I used acetylcholine, I was looking in this part of the brain at this time of day, all of the parts of it that someone else can search and say, "Did anyone ever look at acetylcholine in this part of the brain at this time of the day?" And they can just find that panel and say, "Aha, look! In this animal at this age, at this part of the day, and this part of the brain with acetylcholine, this is what happens.". And that doesn't have to fit into a story. It could just be a little bit of information. Emily Marcus calls it Pub Lego. She would like to see publishing go to Pub Lego, which is like each little panel is just like one piece of a big Lego assembly. And in order to find that piece, you should have a very searchable term, kind of like Amazon does when you're looking for a watch on Amazon, when you type in watch, you're not going to get articles about watches or, you know, watches in the context of this and watches in the context of that. You'll just get pictures of watches and then you can sort of figure out what you want. So, I like that as a second important addition to the way that we publish science right now, which can be misleading, even if it's a story we firmly believe we have good evidence for. It still might be wrong and we have to leave ourselves open to that possibility by trying to be at least objective in the bits, the Lego bit.

Sean Carroll:

I'm going to push a little bit. I have no objection to some form that allows you to publish the Lego bits, but I think there are a couple of risks there and I want to also go back to story a little bit. I think there's a connotation to story that somehow it's a hedged version of whatever the scientific narrative is. I think the imperative of story is to put together a coherent account that why are you doing this? In what context is it being done? What did you expect to find? What did you find? What is it? What might it mean? All that. I don't think it means glossing over the things that don't fit or anything like that. And let's just forget about the formal communication of science for a second. I think if we sat down all the students we knew, everyone we've worked with as scientist and said "Tell me the most interesting thing that ever happened to you in your life?" there would be an entire spectrum of how that would turn out. People that would really struggle and people that would hand it back in an hour, right? So just communication ability varies across the spectrum immensely in science. And I think this is a concern. Because when we talk about science communication as though it's sort of some special skill or something like that. No, I think you want to come into science with enough experience in communication writ large, you know, whether that's from English literature or writing essays, to be comfortable communicating on paper and in stand up. And so the telling a story only really means to sort of put something together that is coherent and a faithful account. But also an engaging account. That means you got to use some tools that storytellers know about. So I'm just pushing a little bit that the story somehow is misleading or the story has intentional omissions or things like that. I think storytelling is a skill, it can be polished to the end of your days. There's always room to become a better storyteller. And the better story tellers I think you're just a more engaging lecturer, you're a more engaging teacher. You're more clear. So I think we should be encouraging communication skills among scientists.

Lauren Ullrich:

Yeah. I think there's this idea that if you're telling a story, it has to make sense, the results have to make sense. But the story could be, "Here's all the background, I designed my experiments in this way for these reasons, I thought I would find X, and then instead I found Y, C, and T. And I actually don't know what this means, here's some things it might mean, but there you go." And that's the story right there, it's like the story isn't necessarily that the results mean something, but the story is the series of experiments and what you expected to find and the surprise at what you didn't mean to find. And I think, maybe it's harder to get that kind of story published[laughter] in our current system.

Gina Poe:

It is.

Lauren Ullrich:

There might be some other issues that we need to tackle, but that's certainly like a form of storytelling that I think would fit with both what you, Gina and Sean, are saying about the importance of story, but also of being accurate and not leaving things out.

Mónica Feliú-Mójer:

Yeah. And I think one thing that I would add is that it depends on what your goal is, right? When you're communicating, you need to think about what is it that I want to achieve? And I absolutely agree with Sean, like telling a story sometimes is equated to putting flowers and things on what you did and just making it fluffy and it doesn't have to be that. But for some audiences, it may have to be that. You know, you want to communicate the excitement of what you're doing. And so the results maybe are not as important for that audience or for you to meet your goal with engaging with that specific audience. And so it's really important that when we think about storytelling as a framework for science communication and then different storytelling tactics that we can apply to science communication that we're always keeping in mind, what is it that we want to accomplish? Obviously we have to think about our audience because who they are, what they care about, that's going to determine, like, what are the devices that we are going to use. But, you know, there are examples of good papers and how storytelling can be used and peer reviewed. There was a special collection that was published in PLOS Biology in 2008. It's called Conservation Stories From the Front Lines. And it's all peer reviewed research papers about conservation science, but they applied a storytelling framework to how these papers are written. So they're rigorous, it's all about the data and how the work was done. But it's also about, I don't know, somebody found this like rare butterfly somewhere. And they're telling you about how they had to get muddy in the rainforest to find this butterfly. Cause that not just conveys the research, but what is the process of science? How does someone find out about a rare butterfly in a rainforest? It tells you about the human side of science, and those are the things like those emotions-- because there is emotion there, there's conflicts, there are changes-- those are the things that can connect with people rather than just a cut and dry, "Here was the problem, here's what I did, here are the results, here's what I think that means."

Marguerite Matthews:

Yeah, Mónica, I'd like actually to expand a little bit on that, like thinking about different ways to communicate, like how you might choose to communicate in one medium versus another, or maybe you're thinking about your audience and picking something for that audience. Like, are you going to take a storytelling approach if you're with this group? And by storytelling, I mean, like, are you going to craft it in such a way that it's more story-like versus the facts and figures? Obviously there are a bunch of different ways to do that. It could be giving a talk, a scientific talk in front of a scientific audience, or being on a podcast that has a very broad audience. Can you all just talk a little bit about how you're going to communicate science to specific types of audiences?

Mónica Feliú-Mójer:

Yeah. I have more common methods that I use, but I don't have a preferred method. I don't have like, this is my go to ' cause that's really going to depend on my goals and my audience. So I try to be really strategic about my communications and thinking about, what is it that I want to accomplish? What do I want to achieve? I'm a storyteller, so I think I always come from that approach. And so another way for me to think about my goals specifically is what do I want my audience to feel, think, or do when they hear this, see this, when they engage with this information, when they engage with me? And so, that's usually my starting point. Sometimes I start with the audience, but it's often like really iterative. And when I think about my audience, I try to go beyond the surface. They are 15 year old kids in rural Puerto Rico, attending high school. But I try to find out about what is their social, their cultural context. What's going on in their lives? In this case, like, what's going on in Puerto Rico beyond maybe what they're learning in school that may be affecting what they're learning. I try to learn as much about my audience as I can. And then, you know, obviously there are kind of more logistical things, like, how much time do I have? What's the context of the engagement? And then I decide what am I going to do? How am I going to tell this story? And so, if my main goal is to convey a specific type of research, I'm most likely going to be thinking about, is there a way that I can place this research in their immediate cultural context in their daily lives. I'm thinking also about my goal may be to have them connect with someone like me. Be able to see a kid who grew up in rural Puerto Rico can become a scientist and can become a communicator and do all these things. I grew up in a rural community and I didn't see science as part of my life, although I grew up surrounded by nature and animals, and I loved science, but it never connected with my realities. And so if my goal is to help them see themselves in the broader context of science, I may lean a little bit more into my own personal story so that they can connect with me and through my specific story. And so for me, while there are specific frameworks that I use, again, like storytelling, cultural relevance, thinking about identities. For me, it's always really, really important to start with like, what is it that I want to accomplish? What are my goals? And then who is my audience?

Gina Poe:

Yeah, for me, it's similar. You definitely have to take your audience into account. What Mónica said was absolutely right. Stories are the best way to convey the information and same as what Sean said, it's the best way we can absorb it and understand it. So what I like to do is I also like to include in that story all the things we don't know that it's not only what we found, but we still don't know this, that, or the other thing. And that, really, is the interesting part for me because we are all explorers together and you never know who in your audience might have an answer for you. And so, I think the question and answer period, which I always encourage people to ask the questions during the talk because I never know when I'm going to say something that will lose them, and I don't want to lose them, but also because they might have a comment that really sheds light on something that I have no idea about. And so respecting your audience in that sense, because everyone comes with some sort of expertise is an important thing to do. But I wanted to tell you guys a story. When I was a graduate student, I was using a new kind of technique, an optical reflectance imaging technique to figure out how active the hippocampus was across various sleep states. The hippocampus is really important for learning and memory, and it's also part of the emotional circuitry. My laboratory was interested in sudden infant death syndrome, also called crib death, which happens to babies who are sleeping. So we wanted to figure out if the emotional system, which often causes us to catch our breath when we're awake, also would cause babies to catch their breath while they're asleep. And then see whether or not it's a problem with not starting to breathe again because of the control of CO2 and all of that, which changes over our lifespan. So what I found is, yes, the hippocampus becomes super active, especially before every time we have a spontaneous apnea where we stop breathing. So I found these weird stripes in the hippocampus because I was using optical reflectance imaging, a coherent imaging system. And I saw these stripes of activation in the hippocampus that no one had ever described before because no one ever looked at like at a camera, at activity. And I didn't know what to make of it. I had good controls. I knew it wasn't just a problem with my system. But it was something that no one had ever described and I didn't know what to make of it and I didn't know what story to put around it. So I didn't publish it. And it took me seven years before someone else started talking about bands of theta and also started publishing about the anatomy of the hippocampus and how there's a pattern of inputs to the hippocampus that follows the same stripe patterns that I saw. That I could put a story around it and publish it. And I sort of wish that I had been able to publish the stripes with all of its controls beforehand, but, you know, I still don't know really what to make of it, but at least [laughter], you know, I do believe it more. And the same with optical reflectance imaging, somehow the brain becomes more translucent when it's more active, we get less reflectance when the brain is more active. And why would that be? It doesn't make any sense, but we looked back at the literature and we stumbled across a paper that had been published 20 years before that showed that whenever a neuron was active, it swells. When it brings sodium into the cell, it brings water with it, and so the cell swells. And so the membrane becomes less folded and more translucent. That was really a cool thing that someone else had published 20 years before, no one had paid any attention; the number of citations of that paper was like one, you know, but it was super important for me to be able to understand why this optical imaging reflectance, what is it actually measuring. And so I love the fact that we understand things in stories, but I think that there's a lot of room for publishing things without stories that someone else can find later.

Marguerite Matthews:

As a puzzler, someone who really loves putting puzzles together, I actually really liked that approach of story building where you just write something and then someone else writes something else and then the story builds just from other people's imagination just putting a bunch of things together. It's more iterative because they're already working from something else, but there's opportunity for collaboration. Even without it being purposeful collaboration, right? Like, I'm not necessarily trying to work with you, Gina, to figure out what these stripes mean, but I may have already been working sort of on my own thing, and I also stumbled across this really interesting finding, unexpected finding, but don't have any clue what it all means.

Sean Carroll:

I think what you're arguing for is a little more spirit of experimentation and in case of what, Gina, you're talking about, that's communication within the scientific community, obviously, for scientists about findings in science. And it seems like there's plenty of room to experiment with that, right? We've got thousands of journals. You don't have to wait for everyone to agree.[laughter] You can just go ahead and find some ways to explore that. I think the other thing just to listeners of the podcast that I'd want to say is that there's so many ways to tell a story, any individual story. There's actually fun in storytelling. And again, I mean, serious storytelling. I mean, where you're accountable for what you are communicating. But there's so many different ways to do it. And we've all been to so many lectures and we've all read so many papers and we realize there's a whole gradient of enjoyment and effectiveness across there, so you hope that over time you pick up on some of the more effective approaches or maybe some innovative approaches and perhaps dispense with those that are a little drier. Um, but I certainly try to encourage young people whether it's at a departmental retreat or in a lab meeting or whatever, is just go for it. Just to experiment. And the one thing I really ask for people, I want to know why they're doing what they're doing. Of all the things you could be doing in this world. If you're interested in science, why did you pick neuroscience? Why would you pick ecology or conservation or genetics or astronomy or nephrology, whatever it might be. I've been lucky enough to tell lots and lots of stories about other scientists. So that means interviewing scientists or digging into their archives or whatever, and really kind of mining out their process and their discoveries and even parts of their personal lives. And I just almost without exception that when you get people rolling about, why are you even doing what you're doing? How did you get into this? What were your formative experiences? It gets interesting. And I think that's interesting for our students to hear. They want to know who we are or whoever we're talking about, who are they? How did they get into this? That's just natural human curiosity and we should open it up. There's no rules here that you have to stick to some very narrow methodical script.

Lauren Ullrich:

And I'd like to go back to something that you briefly mentioned, Gina, about persuasion and what do you all feel is the role of persuasion in science communication? You know, does it depend on your audience? And then how might competition that's in our system, like for funding, for publications, for status, et cetera, affect how science is communicated and the role of persuasion within our system?

Mónica Feliú-Mójer:

I think we have to be honest with ourselves. When we're doing science communication, we're often trying to persuade people of become interested in something, do something, be curious about something. I think scientists, particularly in my experience, at least, they're often very uncomfortable with this idea of persuading folks of doing something or changing their mind or believing their data is good or not good. Like that's what we're trying to do. Obviously, I think we have to be very careful and think about the ethics and the equity of science communication and what we're trying to accomplish with that persuasion. But I think we have to become comfortable with the idea that often that's what we're doing. We're trying to persuade our colleagues,"This is what my data means and this is what this is contributing to the field." You're trying to persuade someone that getting vaccinated is good for them. You're trying to persuade a funder that this is a good idea and you should give me money for it. So I think we have to become comfortable with the idea of we're often trying to persuade people when we're communicating science. But I think we also have to be really, really careful in thinking about what are the consequences, what's the impact of our science communication, especially thinking about what are the ethical implications or the unintended consequences or impact of our science communication. But I think we shouldn't shy away from trying to persuade people and persuasion is not always bad. We have to distinguish between persuasion and manipulation.

Gina Poe:

I think it's really important that we reveal our conflict of interests. You know, conflict of interest in the sense that you need to tell the story that's persuasive in order to get that money to find the truth. So we have to figure out, why are we doing this? Am I doing this to get a salary? Am I doing this because I want the fame or some sort of fortune, or am I doing it because I really want to know the answers to these questions? And for me, another reason to be honest about everything is that I really don't want the embarrassment of having someone else try and replicate my study and find that it's all wrong. I really need to just put it all out there so that when they try and replicate it, they will be able to either find the same thing or not, but at least it's all out there on the table. So fear of embarrassment is another reason to be honest [laughter]. And another reason to be honest is because if you really want to get to the truth, you don't want to try and pound two puzzle pieces together that don't fit, right? And so if you really want to know the truth, you just have to be honest about what fits and what doesn't fit, and say "This is the story so far as we see it, but there's still lots of things that don't fit." And maybe there'll be another puzzle piece that goes between them that we find in the future. But we do need to persuade. If you want someone to read your article, you have to write in the first three sentences why this is important for them to even spend their time doing it. And then you just say why it's important to you. For sleep, it's important because all animals do it and it seems evolutionarily like it would be nonsense to participate in this. So, there must be important. We need to find the reason. That to me is the compelling evidence. For other people it'd be like, no, that still doesn't convince me. I don't want to study sleep. But you know, there'll be an audience for it.

Sean Carroll:

I think just the persuasive factor is built in, as Mónica was saying. And I think this is why we have peer review. This is why we have all these systems. The reason why this works as a knowledge building system, the reason why science works is the truth isn't necessarily up to me. I'm going to put out something that I think might be a reasonable interpretation of the evidence. And I have to do my best to incorporate all the available evidence or else I'm going to get undermined by something that doesn't fit. But then our peers are weighing in on this in a continuous process. It evolves from what might be early days findings to the way things look a decade later or something like that, because it's all this give and take between scientists, new experiments, other lines of inquiry, maybe independent lines of inquiry converging on a similar interpretation, et cetera. I mean, how do we get traction and feel that we have gained understanding and it's not a solo enterprise, right? It's a whole bunch of us all contributing and we're each other's sort of checks and balances. And so I'm a little less worried about the persuasive side because that's part of the way you engage. Almost like you are giving some alternative takes on the evidence or just pushing and pulling back and forth to saying "Well, could it mean that, could it mean that?". Cause that leads you to further experiments that help you then weigh these things out better. It's part of the creative process of putting forth your interpretation, putting it out there to be tested, getting some of that pushback, et cetera, and that generally will lead yourself and others to dig deeper and to increase the confidence of any particular interpretation. So I think persuasion, it sort of has that negative connotation, but it's kind of part of constructive and creative process. You can't be neutral the whole time, then you don't really formulate an idea. You have to somehow say, "I think it means this;" You might say, "I strongly think it means this;" But you're always going to be checked by others and by subsequent work.

Marguerite Matthews:

Yeah I think each of you have touched on in some way, this idea of objectivity and what it means to sort of remove some bias, but is that really possible? I mean, I think we can try to approach things as best we can, but even to ask specific questions requires some level of bias, right? Of what you think is going to happen, whether it's based on your experiences or how you've been taught to think about certain things. And so I think objectivity towards understanding certain things is one thing, but when it comes to being persuasive and trying to get your audience to buy what you're selling in terms of the science, how do you grapple with this idea of being objective specifically when you're communicating your science? Be it in a journal article or in a grant where you're begging people to give you some money to continue your work or just sharing with the general public?

Mónica Feliú-Mójer:

I think it comes back to what Gina said earlier. You have to be honest. And again, I think that's where being reflexive, having the ability to examine, like, what are your motivations? What are your biases? What are your privileges? How do your identities and experiences, how is that influencing what you're doing, what you're saying? I think that is something that's really, really important. And I know that reflexivity as a practice is very common in spaces like social sciences and humanities and public health. But I think in the natural sciences is still very uncommon. This idea of "I'm objective." I think it's still predominates. You know, if I had a dollar for every time that I've heard "It's about the science. It's about the ideas. It doesn't matter who you are!" Well, that is not true. That's false. Who you are matters. Whether you want to admit it or not, it influences what you're asking, what you're interested in, how you're doing it, how people perceive it. So I think having that honesty with ourselves and with our audiences of this is where I'm coming from it's something that's really, really important to vanish that idea of objectivity rules and to have a more honest conversation about persuasion in science communication. And, you know, I think persuasion it manifests differently depending on like the context of science communication. You know, we've talked a little bit about persuasion when you're writing a a paper or giving a talk or writing a grant. But I think in public discussions, its a little bit more fraught because of the social and cultural implications of any given science topic. There are a lot of really important and critical challenges when it comes to persuasion and science communications in those arenas.

Sean Carroll:

I second something that Mónica said. Some of those thoughts we're sharing, we're bringing up some different audiences. And I think we were for a little while, the context was scientist to scientist communication and how our research findings or our thoughts or our ideas compete out in the marketplace for papers and promotions and funding and all that sort of stuff. I think the rules of engagement there have been around for a while and as you become a more experienced scientist it becomes somewhat clear. But absolutely what Mónica was saying about engaging the public and persuasion. Not only do we have to be careful, I think we need to step back and do some learning. So I'll bring up an example. We could all go to vaccines, but I'm an evolutionary biologist. So you can imagine the interactions that I've had over a career in evolutionary science. But to learn more constructive ways to engage audiences that are not comfortable with evolutionary science. It's taken a while and I'm not saying that I'm either good at it or effective at it. But most of our first instincts are probably wrong and counterproductive. So it's often surprising, humbling to find out that scientists, you know, we live in this world where we think we know and we act on those instincts, but those instincts are counterproductive and whether it's climate change or evolution or vaccines or whatever, we often engage in counterproductive ways. So if you're going to step into that arena, it takes some schooling and perhaps some hard knocks.

Gina Poe:

I think it's super important to recognize that we all have bias and because each of us have bias based on our experiences, that's why diversity is so important; that we all look at the same question from different backgrounds. And then we see different things out of the same studies. If anybody's been fooled by a magic trick, we know that we see what we expect to see and the searchlight of our attention is what directs us to see what we see and those who aren't fooled by magic tricks are usually neurodiverse people who don't have this schema of expectation and can see things. I don't know if you ever saw that video of some performers in the foreground, there's kind of a crowd around and there's somebody in a gorilla suit that passes behind the performers. And most people don't see that gorilla suit. But there are people who see the person in the gorilla suit right away. And so that's why we need a diversity in science. We need everybody to be looking at the same thing and seeing it from different perspectives to really see the whole thing, the way it is.

Lauren Ullrich:

Yeah. And do you all have any thoughts about, when you step into the public realm, are there either frameworks or, um, ways of communicating where scientists can help combat the misinformation that might be around their chosen area of research?

Sean Carroll:

I think that's exactly the area to be careful about, that scientists are in the position to combat. Because often when there is controversy, especially in areas where we think the science is settled, right? And I think we can argue that a lot of the science we're talking about, climate change, evolution, vaccinology is settled science. It's not settled in the audience's minds and we're not seen as a neutral messenger. So it's no surprise, what's going to come out of my mouth when I started talking about evolutionary biology. It is a surprise when I'm sharing the podium with someone wearing a clerical collar. That can often be really surprising to people and they lean forward and listen. So part of this is learning when you're into these things that become culturally sensitive, divisive issues, things like that is: Who's the messenger? And even in our altruistic and honest frame of mind, we're not necessarily perceived as a neutral messenger or a trusted messenger. You need a trusted messenger from those communities you're talking about, somebody that's going to come at this from a different perspective. And so we want to lean in because we know so much![laughter] But a lot of this is not an issue of what we know.

Lauren Ullrich:

Mmm.

Sean Carroll:

It's people's discomfort or resistance or whatever, however you want to characterize it to some of these things. It's often coming from very deep places that we don't have the keys to that depth. Uh, and I think we've got to learn that.

Marguerite Matthews:

I really like that idea of the way we're communicating our science is not neutral. And that's okay, right? We don't have to hide behind this idea that everything is objective. So thank you for giving me new words in which to think about the way in which I'm communicating my science.

Gina Poe:

We've seen too often in our own lives, how facts change with new information. How what we thought was a settled fact in everyone's mind completely gets upended with new information. So I think we all have to be humble all the way along and realize we don't know everything. That we have evidence of some things that we interpret certain ways, but we weren't here at the beginning of the universe. We can't say how it happened. And I think if we maintain our humility, we'll be in a better spot to talk to everybody. And, you know, I was just at a consciousness conference. And some people at this conference have a viewpoint about what consciousness is and how it works that doesn't at all fit with my neuroscience knowledge. But I cannot write them off. I can't, because they might be tapping into something that I can't see. That I can't feel. That I can't sense.

Mónica Feliú-Mójer:

Yeah, I think one thing that I want to acknowledge is that when it comes to misinformation, disinformation, polarization and the injection of partisanship to scientific issues, like this is something that is very frustrating and sometimes anguishing for scientists. So I want to recognize that probably our listeners are thinking about,"but what do I do about it??" And so there are a few things that I will highlight. One, I absolutely agree with, with Sean. Sometimes our first instinct of how we respond, or even how we react, because we're not even thinking, we're just reacting emotionally to somebody said that, you know, evolution is not real and I'm an evolutionary biologist. And I'm like [woah!] that triggers an emotional reaction. And I'm just reacting. I'm not responding. I'm not stopping to think about, all right, why is this person saying this? Why does this person believe this? Who are they? What are their values? What are their beliefs? So as best as we can, we're human after all, to try to recognize that we also have emotional reactions to these things, and our reactions can be sometimes counterproductive. And I think we saw this a lot, especially at the beginning of the pandemic, a lot of scientists, the way that we channeled, perhaps our frustration was like "I'm a scientist. I understand the science. I'm just going to communicate it. I'm just going to share facts and data and it's going to make it all better." And in some cases it did. But in a lot, it didn't because people were going with their gut feeling what they thought was right. And so one thing that I want to point out is that there is an entire field of research called the science of science communication. Again, it draws from many different disciplines. And so we actually have a lot of evidence of what things are more effective to engage people with science based on who they are, where they come from, because not one size fit all. Yes, there are different strategies and tactics that may work in many different contexts, but we always have to think about the context of the interaction. And there's just a lot of research. So I would encourage people just search science of science communication. There are many papers, there many initiatives that are trying to make that research more accessible and more translatable to the practice. Because, ironically, there's a lot of science communication research that even I, as somebody who's in that space, don't understand because it's just not accessible to me. And then something else that I think it's important when confronted with misinformation is going back to something that Sean said is, like, are you the right person? As frustrating as it may be, to know that somebody is saying something that is factually wrong or that they are framing something in a way that feels perhaps manipulative or it's flat out a lie. As much as you have the urge to be like "I must counter that," you have to ask yourself, am I the right person? Is this the right context? Is this the right moment to have that conversation? Because if the person that you're talking to is, like, really emotional at that moment. And you're like "Well, no, you're wrong!" When has a dialogue started with "You're wrong, you're right, you're dumb?" It's never worked. And so I think we have to go back again to the honesty, that humility, and kind of recognize, what is it that I can really do? And then the last thing I'll say is in my case, again, I rely a lot on those connections and those relationships. There's a quote that I love and I apply to many aspects of my life, from Arthur Ashe. He was an African American tennis player. And he said, "Start where you are, use what you have, and do what you can." And so we can all have conversations with family, with neighbors, with the person who sits next to us on the airplane, if they want to chat with us. So we can start with the relationships that we have, and that is often a great space to address misconceptions or things like misinformation.[music]

Marguerite Matthews:

Thank you all for sharing your wisdom with us today. Can I ask each of you for one last piece of parting advice for our audience?

Gina Poe:

I would say no one starts out an expert speaker, that you need to practice, practice, practice, practice, practice. And that everyone can be a great communicator to at least some audiences. The very first time I ever gave a talk in public was to my entire high school and I hadn't practiced. And I got up there without notes thinking, " I can do this. It's about a subject I know a lot about." But my mind went absolutely blank. And even though I had 20 minutes to speak, I said not one single word [ laughter]. And I sat down and I said, okay, well, I guess I'm not going to be a public speaker. But thankfully, my teacher, who was in the audience, uh, the next semester made speaking in public part of the curriculum. So I had to practice 10 minute talks and figure out how to build one and all of that. So I give many kudos to that teacher who incorporated public speaking into the curriculum because I learned that that's what you needed to do. And so if you feel like you're terrible at public speaking, don't worry about it, just practice. Find a good audience and practice.

Sean Carroll:

I think Gina's advice is so spot on that I'm not going to try to complicate that. I think we know that people need a variety of things, you know, they need to laugh, they need to feel love, they need music, they need nature. So what do they need from science, and what can science offer? What can science give to people to enrich their lives? How do we do that? So I'm just going to leave that as just an open question to listeners. Mónica Feliú-Mójer: One piece of advice the science of science communication. There's a lot we don't know about how to address polarization and misinformation, but there is a lot of that we do know about how to tackle some of the biggest challenges that science faces and where science communication can make a difference and offers many opportunities. But I'll go back to something that Gina said earlier in our conversation and it's listening. If I were to say it succinctly,"Just shut up and listen" would be my piece of advice. Um, I think listening is the most underrated and critical science communication skill. There are many ways in which we can listen. When I say listen, I mean that broadly, not just like sit down with someone and talk to them and just shut up and absorb, like get to know them. Ask them questions. Be curious. I have a colleague, Tabari Coleman. He told me a few months ago,"be curious, not furious." And I really appreciated that. So that same curiosity that you're applying to your research and the science that you're interested in, apply that to having conversations with people, but to also like reading and observing, especially across differences. I think one of the most important things that we can do as science communicators and just generally as humans is to listen.

Marguerite Matthews:

And Lauren, what's your advice?

Lauren Ullrich:

I'll build on what Mónica was saying and maybe even broaden it to encourage our listeners to really try to understand and interrogate the systems that you find yourself in, and your role in those systems. As scientists, we have beliefs as a field that we have internalized about our own profession that is maybe not necessarily true [laughter], and thinking about the ways in which the system is encouraging us to act in certain ways and how we can actively acknowledge and ensure that those things, those pressures, are not influencing the integrity of our science or our science communication, I think is really crucial. If we just blindly accept the story that we've been told about science, scientists, and what it is, then there are a lot of minefields there that we could easily just wander into without bringing that scientific lens to the profession itself. So Marguerite, what's your advice?

Marguerite Matthews:

I have so many notes from you all, so thank you all[laughs] for sharing your wisdom. One thing that's resonating with me after hearing all of your final pieces of advice is what Gina said at the very beginning: science isn't the activity of the elites or the best educated; we are all scientists. And I think if you respect your audience, regardless of who they are, whether they're peers or complete strangers who may or may not have had the level of training or education that you had, people deserve your respect and to deserve to be talked to about things as if they are capable of consuming that information and making their own decisions. Maybe you persuaded them, maybe you didn't, but to not get into this trap that this has to be a us versus them. And I think that can bring your defenses down. It can be something as simple as having a one way conversation with someone, but respecting that they are capable of hearing and understanding what it is that you're saying to them so that you're just sharing more information. It's a learning opportunity for everyone.[outro music]

Lauren Ullrich:

That's all we have time for today on Building Up the Nerve. Thank you so much to our guests this week for sharing their expertise. Thank you to Ana Ebrahimi, Mariah Hoye, Jimmy Liu, Joe Sanchez, and Tam Vo for production help. And thank you to Bob Riddle for our theme song and music. We'll see you next time when we tackle Thriving in Team Science. You can find past episodes of this podcast and many more grant application resources on the web at ninds.nih.gov.

Marguerite Matthews:

Be sure to follow us on X @NINDSDiversity. You can email us with questions at NINDSNervepod@nih.gov. Make sure you subscribe to the podcast on Apple podcasts or your favorite podcast app so you don't miss an episode. We'll see you next time.