NINDS's Building Up the Nerve

S5E7: Engaging with Non-Scientists

• NINDS • Season 5 • Episode 7

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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 seventh episode of the season, we talk about Engaging with Non-Scientists focusing on interactive strategies to promote public awareness of and participation in science, and spoke to the importance of being able to effectively communicate your work to multiple audiences.

Featuring Jennifer Buckley, PhD, Professor in Mechanical Engineering at the University of Delaware and Co-Founder & President of The Perry Initiative; Sadhana Jackson, MD, Investigator in the Surgical Neurology Branch in the NIH National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke; and Michael Wells, PhD, Assistant Professor of Human Genetics at the University of California, Los Angeles.

Resources

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

Lauren Ullrich:

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] 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.

Lauren Ullrich:

Last episode, we discussed writing impactful publications. Today, we're going to talk about engaging with non-scientists, including discussing interactive strategies to promote public awareness of and participation in science, and speak to the importance of being able to effectively communicate your work to multiple audiences.[music] Joining us for this conversation are Dr. Jenni Buckley, Dr. Sadhana Jackson, and Dr. Michael Wells. So let's start with introductions.

Jenni Buckley:

Hi, I'm Jenni Buckley. I'm a mechanical engineer by training with a focus on orthopedic device development and safety testing. I'm a Professor of Mechanical Engineering at the University of Delaware, where I teach a whole range of courses from freshman year through senior year. At University of Delaware, I'm the founding co-director of The Design Studio, which is one of the premier academic maker spaces in the country. I'm also the co-founder of The Perry Initiative, which is a nonprofit that's been around now for 15 years. We're dedicated to gender and racial diversity of the talent pipeline in orthopedics and biomedical engineering. I live in Newark, Delaware with my wife, two kids, and, uh, a whole bunch of pets. Probably far too many pets! I think that my teaching philosophy can be summed up as accessible, scalable, and engaging.

Sadhana Jackson:

Hello, my name is Sadhana Jackson, I am a Pediatric Neuro-oncologist. I work at the National Institutes of Health. And I am a clinician-scientist, and I have the pleasure of caring for patients as well as conducting research. And our research on the clinical side, as well as on the laboratory side, it's all about something called the blood brain barrier. And for children and young adults with really high grade glioma, which is a type of aggressive brain tumor, there's a collection of cells called the blood brain barrier that prevents our therapy from getting to these really aggressive tumors. And so those patients do not have very great survival rates. So our research is really focused on how we can increase the drug delivery across the blood brain barrier so we can improve that there's more therapy to the tumor and less toxicity or side effects to the rest of the body. So, I enjoy what I do, and in order to do that, I have to communicate my science effectively. And so you may laugh, but the 3 words that would encompass me being able to have good communication style and the philosophy around that is pictures, pictures, pictures. So I love to be able to explain to people my science and to be able to explain to my patients and patient families. And so I draw and I utilize pictures to be able to do that.

Michael Wells:

My name is Michael Wells. I'm an Assistant Professor in the Human Genetics department at UCLA. My lab is interested in understanding why some people are more vulnerable than others to disorders of the brain that are either genetic or environmental in origin. And we do this by taking stem cells, human stem cells, and converting them to brain cells in a dish. And in fact we specialize in a technique that I co-developed known as a "cell village", in which we can take cells from a bunch of different people and culture them all into the same dish, which means they have the same environment which allows us to control for many different factors that can influence some of our results. So I think what's really exciting is if we're successful in these endeavors, we could identify biological risk factors underlying disorders like autism and schizophrenia, as well as a range of different environmental stressors like neurotoxins and viruses. And if we can identify those risk factors, ideally we could then find ways of preventing these disorders or treating them if we don't catch them in time. I've also been quite active in social communication throughout my career. As many others have mentioned in order to do this work, we have to be able to communicate it well. I've done a lot of work on Capitol Hill communicating with members of Congress as well as engaging with the public in social media. Throughout those efforts I have adopted the KISS principle. So I'm going to cheat a little bit here. I don't have three words I have four words. The KISS principle is-'Keep It Simple, Stupid'. Or as I say to my two year old 'Keep It Simple, Silly' [laughter] because I don't like them to use the word stupid. I just try to keep things as simple as possible when i'm trying to explain my work. Um, this is somewhat innate to me, I think because I come from a very humble background. Neither of my parents graduated from college; my dad didn't even graduate from high school. And so I was surrounded growing up by people who did not necessarily speak in complete paragraphs like some of my colleagues do. Trying to speak like a scientist is not innate to me, that's always been the thing that's been harder for me to do, harder for me to emulate. So I think speaking in the way that I've learned growing up has been a superpower for me when trying to communicate with the general public.

Marguerite Matthews:

I'd just like to point out, Michael, you could have kept it to three words if you kept it simple... and didn't name call![laughter] See, your kid can teach you a lot of things [laughter] in addition to substituting. Just lop off that last word all together.

Michael Wells:

I'll do my best! I'll do my best next time.[laughs] [music]

Marguerite Matthews:

All right. So we've heard you all's elevator pitches about your science, but let's get an elevator pitch on why should scientists do scientific outreach and engagement?

Sadhana Jackson:

So I'm currently at a conference and about two hours ago, I was engaging with people, I was in between meetings and someone came up to me and she said "Are you Dr. Sadhana Jackson?" And I said "Yeah." She's like "I follow you on Twitter!" Or X or whatever it is. And she was like "I love your post! We talk about you often in our group chat! And that, while that warms my soul, it also allows me to answer this question is had I not shared and continue to share my science on the social media platforms, she wouldn't have known who I was or what my research was about, or didn't know to even come up to me. So, I think it's just so important for us to be able to share on various platforms about our science, about our research, about our achievements, about our open positions so that we can engage with people and they can engage with us. Jenni Buckley: Yeah, building on in outreach because, sort of selfishly for my own profession, I want the best and brightest people. So I am very focused on building the talent pipeline and using my own story and the stories of others like me in these professions to recruit more people. So those folks right now in my professions, we are not very diverse, right? Gender and racial diversity are pretty low. And because of that, the fields suffer. I mean, just take medicine. Half of med students are women, and right now we're at 20 percent go into orthopedic surgery. So that means that there's a full 30 percent of talent that we're not accessing that could be help people in that field. So I am engaged in outreach to build the pipeline. That's like my number one thing that I'm doing.

Michael Wells:

I would say, uh, also to piggyback on that a bit, that sentiment. I think inspiring the next generation of scientists is, I mean, it's critical, right? We won't have science 30 years from now if we don't get the best and brightest to engage now, primarily at a young age. And so I will say personally, I wouldn't be here were it not for science communicators that I was exposed to as a child. I didn't really have access to scientists growing up, didn't meet my first scientist until I was in college. But children's books focusing on science, you know, PBS, Bill Nye the Science Guy, all these people were the only exposure I had to science growing up. And I think being able to tell our stories and inspire the next generation is key. I think the other thing that is instrumental to science and should be one of our key goals as science communicators is public health, public safety. I think the pandemic, if anything, taught us that people don't really trust scientists. And if there was any doubt that science communication is important leading up to the pandemic, those doubts should be gone by now. Because we see what happens when people don't trust us. And people don't trust us if they don't know what we're doing or if they don't understand what we're doing. Often, you will meet people in public, who have certain opinions about science that might not be that informed. But that doesn't mean that they are close- minded that they're not willing to listen to a scientist and learn from them. And you will find as you have these conversations, you can see it in their eyes. You can see their brain working and you can see that you are changing their opinion based on fact, compared to, say, something they heard from somebody online. And if we could all collectively do that one by one, that I think could sort of shift the tide in terms of how scientists are viewed publicly. Because right now it's not good, and we need to continue to work on it or else it'll get progressively worse as we combat misinformation on the internet, for example. You know, we just had this pandemic, there's nothing to stop us from having another one. And if we don't address this issue prior to something else like this happening, I think we can be in a lot of trouble.

Lauren Ullrich:

So we've mentioned a couple of different audiences, uh, in terms of like the next generation and maybe the general public. Are there other audiences that scientists should be thinking about? And are there any benefits to the scientists themselves when they're effective at this kind of communication?

Jenni Buckley:

So I find it really interesting that we focus a lot on communicating directly with K-12 students for improving scientific literacy, for recruiting them into the pipeline. But in that process, sometimes we miss that we have a really big opportunity with K-12 educators. So I like to think about, you know, I come in, I talk to a group of students, they're going to see me for a half hour, hour, 90 minutes. And that's generally a one time thing, right? To hear my pitch, rah rah, go into mechanical engineering. If I could empower a teacher to do that, to be able to say what the benefits of this particular profession are, to give authentic examples of it in practice, then that message gets amplified, right? It's not only that 30 kids, it's 30 kids times 5 classes times every year. So I'd like to see more thoughtful curriculum, and this is actually something that I actively work on all the time, is curriculum that helps teachers improve scientific literacy and sort of build that pipeline again.

Michael Wells:

I think another group that we should really focus on engaging with would be lawmakers. Whether it be the local, state, federal level, whatever it may be. We can scream our lungs off about the importance of our work. But, it really doesn't matter, if the people who are making these decisions do not hear us or do not understand us. That's also key. But for the most part, I think many of them are interested. Many offices at the Senate level, for example, have PhD scientists on staff who do have the ear of that lawmaker. And so I think engaging with that audience is incredibly important.

Sadhana Jackson:

I want to expand on that and say community members and service providers, specifically during the COVID-19 pandemic. It was the hairdressers and the barbers and the mail people. It was the people you would see and not know that they were so much a pivotal person in your life that were frontline and were helping people in their day-to-day that really had the power to provide information about make sure you get vaccinated, make sure you wear your mask, make sure you're washing your hands. And so it's those people that provide additional support in our lives and sometimes are forgotten. In the context of advocacy and activism for health for each other. And so just ensuring that those people who, like, I stated a lot of times that are frontline, can be affected in terms of various health conditions and also could serve as advocates for preventative health.

Lauren Ullrich:

Great point.

Marguerite Matthews:

Great points. Yeah. I know each of you have talked a little bit about the different forms and avenues with which you communicate, but I'd love to hear a little bit more in depth of is there a means of communication that you prefer one over the other in terms of broadcasting what you have to say? Like different communication styles. I mean, Sadhana, you mentioned using visual aids to describe some things that you're talking about, but you've also been on the Karen Hunter show, which is a satellite show that touches on a bunch of different topics, it's obviously mostly audio. So, you know, can you also talk a little bit more about not just your preference, but also how you choose which type of way you're going to communicate a certain message?

Sadhana Jackson:

Yeah, I'm not discriminatory. When people ask to say "You want to come on my podcast or you want to come on my radio show?" I'm like, "Of course!"

Marguerite Matthews:

Oh, so you're saying we're not special?![laughter]

Sadhana Jackson:

That's not what I said! I said I'm not discriminatory![laughter] So I love to be able to communicate my science. I love to be able to communicate it to any and everyone who wants to hear it because I'm excited about it. So, maybe you're not so, so excited about the blood brain barrier, but you can hear my passion and enthusiasm about why we should be healthy individuals on this earth. And so, to be able to take this passion and say "Well, my interest is in another field." And so how do we help people in that regard? So I'm not discriminatory in the ability to be able to communicate about what I love to talk about.

Jenni Buckley:

I do discriminate a bit. So I tend to communicate in ways that fill my bucket. I am a bit of a Luddite and I am not on social media at all. Unless you count LinkedIn, which I don't think anybody counts. Um, this is my first podcast ever.

Marguerite Matthews:

Woo! Welcome!

Jenni Buckley:

Thank you! Thank you! Starting it off really great. So I prefer to communicate through my teaching, and I'm really fortunate that I have a pretty big platform for that at University of Delaware. So, I have taught over 5000 students in 15 years here. And that's, that's really beautiful, right? You get to form relationships with those people. It's not a one off. And then through my nonprofit, we have about 18,000 alums of our program, and another 150,000 students per year who see our curriculum through their classrooms. So that's kind of where I put my energy, just because the teaching component, the curriculum design component, is just something that I love. And then we also have scientific communications, right? My research is in engineering education. So for me, that's about getting other people excited about doing this kind of work, right? Passionate about their teaching, passionate about curriculum design, and outreach and that sort of thing. So yeah, I think for me, social media is just not my thing [laughter] and if it does fill your bucket, by all means, we need more people doing that. But for me, I've sort of chosen that these are going to be the avenues from which I'm going to communicate my message.

Marguerite Matthews:

And Jenni, can I ask, do you use like videos or within the teaching realm, like what kinds of things do you use in your curriculum?

Jenni Buckley:

Well, during COVID, I was obviously confined to videos, which I found really, really sad. I tried to make them as entertaining as possible. So I am a big proponent of active learning. My students here at Delaware, we do a lot of hands on learning in our studio. And the Perry Initiative, our in-person programs have, in a six hour program, four hours of hands on surgical simulation and biomechanics experiments. So that's my preferred medium, is getting like materials into kids hands,

Marguerite Matthews:

Yeah

Jenni Buckley:

so they can feel what this feels like to do it. And then when I do have to talk, I try to crack as many mom jokes as possible.[laughter]

Michael Wells:

I think I have some, uh, good news for you, Jenni. I think we are starting to enter the era of the Luddites, if you will. And by that, I mean, I feel like social media is dying. I think in the past 12 months, we've started to see the death of social media. Twitter is quickly becoming a ghost town. Facebook hasn't really been an avenue for science communication in quite a while. TikTok might be able to fill in some of this gap, but I think that's well beyond our age group in order to engage with members on TikTok; I have some grad students who are starting to get a bit of a following there. And so I do think that if you are someone who is looking to build an audience, Twitter might not really be the place to do that. We might have to go back to, you know, what Jenni does. A sort of being able to engage either one-on-one or in a classroom setting with people. I've actually quickly become a believer in the dead internet theory, which is this idea that we're not that far away from most of the internet just being bots talking to each other. So AI talking to AI. And you're already starting to see that. And so I do think it's going to be a challenge for a lot of people who have spent the past decade relying on Twitter to get their messages out there. I don't know the answer to this. I just think that either something else pops up, or again, we have to go to the old school way of talking to people, or you know, engaging in classrooms.

Marguerite Matthews:

Talking to people, eww![laughter] Just kidding. Anybody who knows me knows I love talking to people. But yeah, I mean, I agree, Michael. Those are some great points that what may have worked and been a great place to interact and to share may not be something that's as popular or sustainable as it once was. And it's going to be important for us to tap into other opportunities to engage folks.

Lauren Ullrich:

Yeah. I mean, even within social media, it's just a constant challenge of trying to break through the noise, I think.

Marguerite Matthews:

Yeah

Lauren Ullrich:

But Michael, since you've done some outreach with Congress in particular, I was wondering if you could talk a little bit about what that looks like, since I feel like to probably most of our audience, that feels like a huge black box.

Michael Wells:

Yeah, and I will say it feels like a huge black box when you are going into it. I would say it wasn't until I had my first meeting that those sort of nerves of the mystery just very quickly went away because within a few minutes you realize you're just talking to someone. And also within a few minutes if you're a constituent of theirs, you realize that you are their boss, and so they're more deferential to you than you are to them. Um, a few notes, I mean there's many different organizations that offer training for engaging with members of Congress. So I actually learned a lot through the Society for Neuroscience. They trained me on how to do this; I'm now at the point where I train their people on how to have these meetings and how to properly communicate with members of Congress. A lot of universities have programs or student groups for science policy. I actually learned a lot through my work at the MIT Science Policy Initiative when I was a visiting graduate student there. So there's a lot of people out there to help you with this because most universities recognize the importance of this type of work and most organizations in the science realm understand the importance of this work. So yeah, I don't think it should be something you fear. I think once you get a little training, it makes it a lot easier. And I will also say there's two major things going into those meetings that people often forget. One, keep it simple. I will keep off the last word of that principle.[laughter] They are not scientists. Most of them are not scientists that you're talking to. So keep it quick. Keep it to the point. The other thing I will say is make it very clear what your ask is. These are people that meet every single day with constituents that are asking for something. They have 15, 20 minute meetings, nine hours a day. So if you go in there and you just talk about your work and you leave without asking anything, that's the easiest meeting of their day. Do not let them have an easy meeting with you. You need to ask for something very specific so that there's follow up and there's accountability. Often that's forgotten and then you realize a week later like "Oh, I never asked them anything, and so they're not going to do anything for me. They're not gonna make sure that that vote on the NIH budget gets approved. They're not going to do whatever." So always keep those two things in mind. Keep it simple and make sure you ask for something.

Marguerite Matthews:

Yeah. And I wanted to underscore, especially those who are at universities, I believe all universities have a government relations office. And so, if you are interested in becoming more involved in advocacy, especially around science education, research, they can help you. They not only can provide you with contacts, but give you some pointers, some tips, work with you. When I was a graduate student at the University of Pittsburgh, we had both an opportunity to go to our state capital, but also go to the nation's capital to advocate on behalf of funding for research since we were an R1. And so there may also be pre-planned opportunities for you to just sort of insert yourself into a meeting with representatives.

Lauren Ullrich:

Yeah, and I think Society for Neuroscience, for example, they're very focused on the federal level. But I think state level governments are going to become increasingly more important. I just think across the board, we're seeing a lot more, maybe, opportunities for scientists to make their voices heard.

Jenni Buckley:

You know, listening to Michael talk about what effective communication looks like in the political realm, it strikes me that those are also the same principles that make for effective teaching or effective outreach in other realms, right? I think from a psychological perspective, people aren't all that different. Like, I'm competing for students time and their attention span, and unfortunately right now we're in a phase, as a society, where we all have the attention span of a gnat. So being able to make your point quickly, make it in a way that people can see themselves in it and then also asking for something. So the whole principle behind active learning is making an ask of the student to participate, to apply what they just learned or to activate prior knowledge, so it becomes less of a passive experience and more of an active experience. So yeah, I don't think it's all that different the ways that we're communicating. You have to be very efficient and very accessible.

Lauren Ullrich:

Great points. And that was actually our next question![laughter] Do you have any tips for how to ensure that your message can be understood by who you're talking to, or even know whether who you're talking to is understanding your message?

Sadhana Jackson:

For me, I always like to know who is in my audience. Who am I speaking to? I have to give my elevator pitch and research discussions at various conferences and meetings. It's a different presentation that I give to a room full of other Pediatric Neuro-oncologists versus trainees versus third graders. And kind of overall, I tried to keep it so that my vocabulary is less than 6th grade knowledge. Just because overall that's best to be able to have everybody understand what you have to say. And I know that I can't be super technical if I'm talking to a 3rd grader or even a graduate student, because they're not going to know all the nuances of clinical care. So, it's just very important to know who your audience is and definitely how much time you have to speak with that audience because you really will lose people. Because like we stated earlier, people have these really short attention spans, so you can catch them with pretty pictures plus or minus an animation, and maybe a funny joke along the way, then you've got them. But you don't want to be droning and droning and droning on and on.

Lauren Ullrich:

Yeah, that's something that we learned very quickly. We were doing outreach with bringing in all these Program Directors to local libraries and engaging with sometimes very young students. And we started off with these like 20 minute presentations [laughs] and within like 60 seconds you could tell that these kids were not having it. But even when we started doing more interactive stuff, there was a real learning curve. Like I remember we would be talking to like, you know, six, seven, eight year olds and ask them like "How much do you think a brain weighs?" And they'd be like, "A hundred pounds!" And [laughs] like, they don't know what a pound is! And there was just like a fundamental disconnect between the kinds of things that we were designing and what would actually be helpful for them. What we ended up doing was getting water bottles that were filled with various amounts of water and then asking them like which one physically do you think weighs the same as the brain so that they could actually kind of experience that without having to resort to this abstract concept of pounds. But yes, that lesson was driven home very, very quickly and very forcefully.

Michael Wells:

I'm glad you brought up children because I feel like the way we communicate with children should kind of be the guiding principle for how we communicate with everybody. And I'm not saying that in a way that's demeaning or anything like that. I just mean, again, keeping things simple. I think this is featured in one of Malcolm Gladwell's books, some of the research that the producers of Sesame Street were doing back in like the seventies or eighties. They found that children don't stop paying attention to their episodes because they're bored. They stop paying attention when they don't understand what's going on. And again, you will see that with any engagement you have with not just non-scientists, but also scientists. When their eyes glaze over, it's often not because they are bored. It's because they don't know what you're talking about. And I think that's something to keep in mind. I think it's also one way to make sure you don't lose your confidence when you're talking to people about your work. And what I mean by that is if they're glazing over, it's not necessarily because your work is boring. Again, it's because you're not finding a way to communicate it to them in a way that's simple and understandable.

Jenni Buckley:

I think there's really an opportunity here for partnership, right? So, it's almost as if sometimes the scientific community needs a producer uh, or a PR firm Lord knows I have seen some presentations even at my own outreach events that we produce through the Perry Initiative, where a very well meaning engineer will get up there and absolutely undo an entire three hours worth of work, saying"this is the most engaging thing ever." And you're sitting there and you're like "Oh, no, no, no, no!" So some people need help doing that, right? Or a partner. I mean, certainly for some audiences, like right now I'm working on some curriculum that is conveying orthopedic concepts to grades three through five. I'm not an expert in that. So I'm talking to my colleagues in education and trying to make sure that's appropriately scaled. So there's nothing wrong with getting some help to get your message across. Or maybe you're not the best person to deliver it. Maybe, you know, Bill Nye the Science Guy in today's day and age might want to have a partner that is younger and comes from a different background, right? And that's, again, totally fine. So I do think a PR firm and a producer would be very good for the whole scientific community.

Marguerite Matthews:

Sort of along those lines, what are some other challenges about communicating your work? Like specifically around maybe someone who they don't believe you or they're very critical in a way that may cause some tension, especially if it's within an audience that may feel like it's coming a bit more aggressive than you would hope or people are purposely or accidentally misinterpreting what you're trying to say. Like how do you all deal with those sorts of challenges, barriers, roadblocks when you're communicating your messages?

Sadhana Jackson:

I, again, am non-discriminatory in the context of I'll speak with you with my pictures and my flowery words, but not too flowery that you can't understand. And if you don't get it, it's okay that you don't get it right this second, maybe you'll get it later. Maybe you'll never get it. And I go to the next person and the next group to ensure that they get it. And so then maybe they can communicate it to that very first person, or maybe not at all. So I think it really takes a village and a community to really understand the best ways to get your message across. And so you may not get through that one person or that one group at one period of time, but maybe when you go back around, they've heard it from various different avenues, they do get it. And I'm okay with that.

Michael Wells:

I would say to not feed the trolls. I feel like part of your question is what if they're intentionally misunderstanding if then maybe they themselves are trying to spread misinformation. You know, if it's a one-on-one situation I don't think there's a lot of harm in them bringing up those points. You can recognize when someone is not willing to listen. There's really nothing you can do about that in my opinion. Nor should we spend too much time engaging with someone who is actively trying to misunderstand you or actively trying to spread misinformation. When it's in a group setting or in a public setting, I think most people can recognize when someone's trolling you or when someone's trying to be this way. And so I think the best thing you can do is just keep calm. Stick to the facts. Don't try to get so engaged that you get visibly upset; I think that can have negative repercussions for the message you're trying to spread. And I think again, most people are reasonable. So if you stick to your facts, you stick to what you know, you don't try to say things that you're not certain of, because that could be your own way of spreading misinformation, if in trying to argue with this person, you start potentially making things up or speculating and kind of muddying the waters, I think that's something you should be very mindful of. But in general, it's not an easy situation. I have been in situations where people were essentially trolling. Luckily, they are in small groups and the other people with me could kind of recognize what was going on. And so I didn't have to put in too much active work in combating that. But it is something to be very, very mindful of.

Jenni Buckley:

I'm going to take a slightly different approach to this, mainly because I think that the source of misinformation or the force that's working against your message, for me, a lot of times, that is the broader cultural context around STEM and who does STEM. And that's everything from, you know, media, to people's influencers in terms of their teachers, right? And what their parents are saying and that sort of thing. So what I try to do is combat that head on. So for example, there has been a lot of really interesting work around why women who are STEM inclined tend to go into biology and chemistry versus physics and engineering. There's a huge gap there. And a lot of times it's not the things that we have been trained to think of that are having people make those choices. So math ability is one that gets thrown out a lot of times. So I'm very direct in saying "No, it is not a difference in your math abilities!" Talking to a room full of women saying that's not what this cause is. The cause is actually the culture. So you may be perfectly capable of doing this work in engineering, but you look over there and you're like, wow, that's a whole bunch of Sheldons [character from The Big Bang Theory] sitting in that room. By the way, he's a physicist and not an engineer, but it's the same kind of deal. So saying to them "Look, it's not a matter of ability. It's a matter of the culture." And as somebody who's gone through this myself, even in a time when there were fewer women who were represented, I can tell you that you can make your own culture. That piece I'd like to help you with. So being able to say like "Nope. This is the reality. These are the facts on the ground and this is how you address it." With the right audience, I think is the best way to go.

Michael Wells:

I want to also add to that. I think the platform really matters where we're having these conversations. Everything Jenni just described, if that was say taking place in a one-to-one or a small group, or even in a personalized setting, even if it's written like in a blog post or in the perspective in a journal, I think those are all great places to have those conversations. What I would warn people against is trying to have these sort of nuanced and important conversations on Twitter. Because again, dead internet. It's being overpopulated with bots and you have people who are creating these bots in order to have these opinions that are counter to your narrative. And so I've seen people waste a lot of time on Twitter, trying to fight the trolls. And it never really gets anywhere. In fact, often I think it makes things worse for them and potentially for the field. So I think the platform is incredibly important for us to think about these things. There is no nuance on Twitter. So be very, very careful when trying to talk about things like this on those platforms.

Lauren Ullrich:

When you are preparing for an event or some kind of outreach that you're going to do, how do you approach those things? Are there certain things that you want to know about your audience or about the venue? Are there any kind of, like, techniques that you prepare? For example, do you kind of prepare how you're going to deal with certain topics if they're kind of controversial? Like, what are you doing in the lead up to putting on some kind of event or participating in an outreach event?

Sadhana Jackson:

I definitely do my research about who's going to be in the audience. What people have done in the past in terms of engagement with that similar type of audience at that location. I kind of know the whereabouts. And I practice visualization of myself being up on the stage, or being in the audience, seeing what the audience will. And so then that kind of calms my nerves ahead of time of what I expect, and what I am manifesting to happen in terms of positivity before and after the engagement. And in the context of me being able to give a talk to undergrads or trainees in the graduate space or otherwise, I make sure that in the very beginning I have some type of engagement where I ask them to raise their hand or stand up. Something to kind of get them moving because likely before I spoke and after I speak, there's going to be more a lull of time where they're sitting down. And so I want them to get involved. Maybe start to have a little bit of light patter during the beginning parts of my talk, just so they're like "Oh, okay, she's, you know, involving us. Like, we're here. We're part of this experience." So I'd say just research mostly about the space and about the people and of course the timing.

Jenni Buckley:

I agree with everything that Sadhana said and I would just like to add that even people who seem really natural up there presenting or teaching, there's a lot of work that happens in the background. I do not wing any of my lectures, even though I've been doing this for years. If anything, I probably prepare more for my teaching, which requires a different kind of engagement than I do for, you know, uh, scientific talk. Just because you have to be more nimble and to do that you have to know the material inside and out. And I was really fortunate there was actually something that happened when I was a graduate student that made me realize how much effort goes into good teaching and good communication. The best instructor I ever had, Panos Papadopoulos at UC Berkeley, who taught me solid mechanics. The man was so graceful up there. And one time I was walking by his office before class, and I heard him talking to himself in his office, even though he'd been teaching this course for two decades, and it made me think"Oh my God, this guy, I thought it was just he could walk in there five seconds before class and do this." No, he is practicing each and every time to give this. And that gave me the power, right? I felt empowered to do this myself.

Michael Wells:

I feel like all the prep work I do has one goal in mind, which is to alleviate my own anxiety going into a presentation. So, and I think a lot of people feel that way. My guess is that professor was doing that to alleviate his own anxiety. I agree with everything that's been said. Practice everything. Know the audience. Especially when you're working with the general public. I think they are looking for some authoritative presence when you're talking about science and talking about the work. Not in the way that is unapproachable, but if you're going up there and you have no confidence in what you're saying, what makes you think they're going to have confidence in what you're saying? So whatever you need to do to get to that stage, to get to that mentality, I think will be really important for you having an effective conversation with that audience.

Lauren Ullrich:

Yeah, that's a great point. I definitely am one of those talking to myself people. I feel like I have all these ideas in my head, but they don't always come out fluently unless I have practiced the actual words that I'm going to say, even if I know the concepts, and so yeah, I'm one of those that's just sitting there, like, saying things aloud to myself several times until I have it down.

Marguerite Matthews:

Yeah, it's interesting, Michael, that you pointed that out because I think so much of our prep is really about us. Like, are we comfortable saying what it is that we're saying? I think we don't often need to convince ourselves that we know what the heck we're talking about. But we want to sound like we know what we're talking about, right? And that we want to convince others that what we know to be true or what we know to be foundational is really that. And so I weirdly appreciate that revelation, because that makes it very much in my control. I can control how I'm providing this message to others.

Michael Wells:

Yeah

Marguerite Matthews:

And I'm just making sure that I'm clearly able to communicate what it is I want people to know and making sure that I feel confident enough, especially if I were to run into a troll, and I can maybe on the fly figure out, okay, how do I help make sure that this one person or this small group of people are still with me after a while.

Michael Wells:

Yeah, I hope it's inspirational to people to know that this is not toot my own horn, but I'm often complimented for my speaking ability publicly or complimented for seeming like I'm so confident and calm on stage. But the truth is I am terrified. I am terrified before I go on to any platform, whether it be a five minute talk to fifth graders, actually, they're probably the more terrifying of all the groups to talk to.

Marguerite Matthews:

They are, absolutely!

Lauren Ullrich:

Oh yes.

Michael Wells:

Whether it can be talking to them or to a room of my colleagues, it's not until I get up there that I actually calm down. And it's usually I'm able to calm down because I am prepared. But leading up to that it's a disaster for me.

Sadhana Jackson:

I think that's an open secret amongst great performers, science and non-science, to have that level of nervousness, a little bit of anxiousness, and then those nerves are what then allow for you to perform so well on the stage. So I also am a person who likes to be very prepared for the various situations. And so I know that I have done a good job if I come back down from that stage or have finished giving that presentation and I recall how many people laugh at my various jokes that[laughter] that I've made along the way. Oh, I had a good talk today. Yeah, people got my science, but they really got my joke![laughter] And it's okay, because sometimes I'll just laugh at my own joke and then that just makes it much better. And I think we've all seen where people have not done well with communicating their science. And it's been somebody who's been in the field for a long period of time and you're like "how are they still doing the same presentation?" or "why is it so boring?" And I don't know that person personally, but it likely is they don't have that level of jitters like you've explained, and in terms of them wanting to perform or needing to perform so well.

Michael Wells:

I think you nailed it there when you mentioned that this is not a scientist- specific issue. So I don't know if this is because I'm in Los Angeles, but I have been around people, comedians, actors, musicians, before they go on stage, before they do their job, and I thought I was a nervous wreck before going on stage. I had no idea how much worse it could be. And these are people who, again, go on stage in front of 2000 people and wow this crowd. And you're in the crowd, you would never know how anxious these people were going on stage, but this is a human thing. This is something that everybody has to deal with. And so that is a superpower. Knowing that you're not alone, having these anxieties before you go meet with a member of Congress, before you go and talk to fifth graders, before you give your scientific talk to your colleagues. Everybody experiences this, and again, I think it's part of the process. It's something that, in my opinion, is necessary in order to do a good job.

Jenni Buckley:

I'm sitting here feeling a little guilty, because I don't get nervous. I still prepare. I prepare a lot. But I'm like "Give me the microphone, I'm ready!" I can't wait for the first day of classes to get going. And I do think it might be because I'm a real extrovert, and going out and doing that gives me energy. And I taught for a long time with a dear friend of mine who is amazingly introverted. Like this guy goes back and is like a hermit. But he was just as effective in the classroom. You would never know it when he gets out there. I just know from behind the scenes, he would just go into his office and collapse. And I would go out there and I'm like ready to run laps and do it again, right? So I want to reassure all the extroverts out there. It's okay to want to grab the microphone and run into the nearest audience. There's different types of people and both can be very effective at communicating.

Michael Wells:

Yeah, so that's a huge caveat.[laughter] Huge caveat.

Marguerite Matthews:

I am an extrovert, Jenni, and I still get very nervous when I'm about to talk. More because I just completely go into my own orbit [laughter] because I'm so excited about the subject matter versus am I going to have enough time to, like, be taking in what's happening around me before I then go into my orbit once I know that I've got them with my jokes, with my knowledge, and my bubbling personality.[laughter]

Lauren Ullrich:

Yeah and I feel like I'm more on the introverted side and I don't really get nervous anymore; if it's something that I've given many times then I don't really get nervous, but I also am not energized at the end of it.[laughter]

Jenni Buckley:

Could I comment on what a few people have been saying here about humor? I think it's something that we don't encourage people to do enough. One of the stereotypes that we're all trying to combat as science folks is the boring scientist who is the butt of everybody's jokes, but isn't the one who has the wherewithal and the social ability to actually tell them, right? So I think the more that we can bring a little bit of appropriate lightheartedness to our work it's essential. Like it's going to help us connect with people. Which brings us back to that comment about like a producer in a PR firm. Like having a little bit of humor and being able to give that ourselves I think is really important.

Michael Wells:

I think that the younger generation of scientists are clamoring for something like this, Jenni. This idea that the talks don't need to be this sort of boring regurgitation of publications or what have you. Not to be ageist in any way, but I feel like there is this sort of old guard where there's this idea that, no, you have to come give me the facts and I don't want any personality. I don't think that's the case anymore with younger scientists. I do think one way to reach more people, to maybe establish a brand for yourself within academia, would be to start interjecting some of your personality, whether it be humorous or not, into the narrative of your science. Because our personalities, our backgrounds do influence our science. And I think when people see that, they appreciate it. They remember it, you know, years down the line, they might not remember the paper, but they remember the story behind the paper. And I think that also translates to when we're engaging with non-scientists, it's even more important. They need to know you as a person, I think, in order to really trust you or to become engaged with your story. So I try to introduce this as much as I can. If I am about to tell a joke, I try to put it at the end so that if it bombs, I don't have it in the back of my mind for the next hour of my talk. And then if it does well, then maybe I bring that joke to the beginning to kind of ease the tension as things go along in my talks.

Marguerite Matthews:

See, I love a call back, Michael. Okay so I'm giving you every joke I can whenever I can and might bring it back if I get a laugh. Now, if I don't get a laugh, I'll move on. But I feel like a stand up. You gotta bomb to know what works, what doesn't work, which audience it works with, which don't. I'm also learning that I'm becoming more mature and so some of my classic references do not resonate with younger populations [laughter] because they have no idea what I'm talking about. But I think the point is being made that it's okay to bring you, your personality, the things that kind of make you, you to these presentations. It doesn't have to be so rigid in a way that I have to give a talk like my mentor gave this talk, or I have to give a talk like all my colleagues give a talk because you're not your colleagues. I know Sadhana really well. We like to laugh just generally, like whether it's at ourselves, other people . And so it makes sense to be able to interject humor because that's what resonates with us just generally. And I hope that our audience listening to this episode feels comfortable enough to bring whoever they are. One thing I love is when people who say that they're really shy and awkward, just acknowledge it. Like, it sort of sets this expectation, gives them some comfort that like, I am who I am, I've accepted that I'm not trying to be who I'm not. And there's probably tons of people in the audience who also can recognize what it's like to maybe be more on the introverted side, maybe you're not a jokester and you make a joke about not being funny or whatever the case may be. But I think that's what helps build these connections where we are able to talk to each other because you're talking to a human. You're not talking to a bot or someone who thinks they're a bot, and they're just regurgitating rehearsed lines that are just words and not really any level of person behind it.

Michael Wells:

I also think, you know, kind of piggyback on what others have said, this is a performance like we've mentioned, right? And so if you want to become a better performer, you need to study performers.[mmhmm] So I have been engaged in the stand up comedy world since the first year of my graduate school program. Not that I myself am a comedian. I don't have the courage to go up there and tell jokes, but I've watched people go from open mics to hosting their own shows on HBO. And watching that progression, watching how they react to audiences and tweak their jokes and try to find their voice, these are all things that we could also be doing in order to become better performers and in doing so become better communicators with scientists and non-scientists alike.

Sadhana Jackson:

I agree. Just to think about and talk about how to sharpen your craft to be able to communicate science. I engage with improv groups and attend comedy shows to see how other performers outside of my field are doing it and how they're excelling and what I can take away from them. And it makes me think about the quote from Maya Angelou of how people are not going to remember what you said, people are not going to remember what you did, but they're going to remember how you made them feel. And if they came away from the encounter with you a feeling warm and fuzzy and they were like "she's a joy to be around" or "that science was communicated so well, I'm interested in looking at that same exact pathway." And that's how you want people to come away from the engagement with you or with your science or think about how they can take away what you told them to believe that to then take that to the community to make a difference in the world. So, super, super important for us to remember that it's not just about us, of course, it's about where we are in our community and how best can we sharpen our skills so that we can then further enhance the disadvantaged population, those who are unaware. But then have come back to us [laughter] to benefit us and our family members and those that we know and love.

Michael Wells:

I think about that Maya Angelou quote daily. I think about that when I'm mentoring my students, when I'm engaging the public, when I'm giving presentations, I think about it all the time. If anybody in the audience had attended Society for Neuroscience, I believe it was in 2022, Gina Poe, who is a professor here at UCLA, she's now the director of the Brain Research Institute, gave this talk, gave this presentation that people are still talking about because about halfway through she started singing. She actually had a song she created to help you remember the take home message for her work. And she made people stand up, she made people clap. A lot of people were feeling very awkward, but by the third time she made you sing this song, people were really having a lot of fun and they were really feeling something. And it takes a certain person to be able to pull that off. I couldn't pull that off. Gina can. But I think just also her understanding that this was our first SfN in person since the pandemic had started, kind of knowing that the audience needed this sort of supercharge to feel excited again about science, to feel excited again about all being at a conference together. It was all this insight that kind of culminated in a couple little songs that she made that I think people will be talking about for years. And not that she wasn't known prior to that, but now everybody knows Gina because of that 40 minute talk she gave where she made people dance.

Lauren Ullrich:

For our last question, was wondering if you all had any thoughts about how folks can get into and get started with science communication if they're not doing it already?

Jenni Buckley:

I would suggest that they teach. One of the best ways to get a lot of practice is to teach. It is also one of the most rewarding things that I've ever done in my career. So yeah, I would say thats number one is finding that opportunity. If you're not at a university with an undergraduate population, then teaching as part of a residency program or going to your local community college and teaching Intro Bio. The bigger the class, the more elementary the class, the better. That's how you're going to push yourself, actually.

Michael Wells:

I would say beyond teaching, again, keeping it simple. Starting with maybe your family. Starting maybe with your Uber driver, just people you kind of run into on a day-to-day basis or these sort of chance random interactions in which you're in a car with someone for 20 minutes and they strike up a conversation. I think doing these sort of simpler one-on-one interactions to practice your science communication, you might find yourself in a better position to speak to many different audiences. In your family, there's people with different levels of education, different age groups, different interests in the type of work that you do. So starting there, and then maybe progressing to something that's either larger or if you're lucky enough to be at a university that has a science communication student group, we have one of those at UCLA, I know a lot of major universities have those, finding like minded people with shared interests I think it could also be another way to jumpstart your endeavors into science communication.

Sadhana Jackson:

I'm going to go back to my very first comment of pictures, pictures, pictures, and say, pictures are worth a 1000 words. Maybe you can draw, maybe you can't, if you're able to draw it out, practice, drawing it out, sitting with somebody in the science field, and then someone not in the science field, communicating your science. And then if you can't draw it out, because it's really complex, being able to use images, stock photos offline to then paste together. This, and this, this is why it makes sense. This is why we're interested in it. This is the overall take home message. So pictures, pictures, pictures. And a little bit of words along the way.

Marguerite Matthews:

Well, thank you all for sharing your wisdom with us today. Can I ask each of you to share one last piece of parting advice for our audience?

Michael Wells:

My last piece of advice is if you're still not convinced after hearing this conversation that engaging with the public is important, let's maybe focus it on you for a second, and say how can this actually benefit your work and your career. I can truthfully say that several experiments that I've performed, different questions that I've tried to address, have been motivated by talking to someone who is not a scientist. Often the questions they ask really drill down to the core of the questions you're trying to address. You know, we get so focused on the specifics of this work and that, and we sometimes lose focus on the bigger picture. I think talking to people who are non-scientists is a way to re-center that, to remind you what exactly you're trying to do. And again, often you will get some ideas about how exactly to address these questions in your own laboratory.

Sadhana Jackson:

I had a recent conversation with my lab members and my question to them was "When did you fall in love with science?" And each and every one of them had a great unique story, but it all started with some form of teacher, counselor, somebody who was older than them that exposed them to an experiment or some kind of lifestyle in the science field that they were just like "ah, that's it!" But to be able to have that one spark that then leads them down the road to where they're doing clinical research and laboratory research or other things in the science field, is a pivotal point. So, to know that there is one person or a group of people that then spark that curiosity and their love for science is so important. So in that same context, we are a conduit for people to fall in love with science and appreciate the science around them. And to not have so much pressure around that idea, but to know that you can therefore be the catalyst to someone having this fruitful understanding of the beauty of science.

Jenni Buckley:

So my take home message is really to kind of respect what's going on in the teaching and the outreach space. If you're somebody out there who's at a typical R1 and the way that you are being evaluated and what's prioritized at your institution is research, service, teaching, right?[laughter] There is a lot of work and good practice that's happening in those other two areas. So respecting that involves either partnering with somebody who that's their primary activity, that would be somebody like me. Or putting enough of your own self and enough effort to really do that work with the same level of energy and commitment and thoughtfulness that you conduct your own research. So I'm not saying don't dabble, don't go into something because you're passionate about it. By all means, come on, jump on into the pool. But be thoughtful about it. Because what you're doing can have a lot of positive impact. But it can also kind of harm the enterprise if not done well. So respect what's happening in the teaching and the outreach space. Come on in. Join us. But, put the effort in.

Marguerite Matthews:

Lauren, what's your advice?

Lauren Ullrich:

Yeah, I'll build off what Jenni said. I think there's this do no harm, first. But I also really liked what Jenni said about that the activities you choose really are the ones that fill your bucket and that make you want to do more. And there's so many different ways and so many different audiences that you can do outreach and science communication that if something isn't clicking, or you feel like you're not really good at it, you can find something else or someone else to partner with. And to really think about, like, why are you doing it and what are the things that you want to accomplish with this communication can also help you decide where's the best place for you to invest your time and your energy. So Marguerite, what's your advice?

Marguerite Matthews:

So in the same vein as Michael and one of my favorite hip hop artists, I'm going to say, KIM, 'Keep It Meaningful.' I think talking about science with non-scientists or having conversations with the broader public, it has to be something meaningful to you. And I think some of these other things like being thoughtful and intentional, as Jenni mentioned, also helps you craft a beautiful picture. To what Sadhana has been saying, whether it's with your words or it's with actual pictures, it has to be something that's meaningful to you, but also making sure that the message can be meaningful to the audience as intended. And that I think will help build upon this idea of being a responsible scientist, especially those of us who are doing science with taxpayer dollars. And so, yeah, I will say KIM, 'Keep It Meaningful'.

, Lauren Ullrich:

That's all we have time for today on Building Up the Nerve. So thank you 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 establishing your professional identity. You can find past episodes of this podcast and many more grant application resources on the web at ninds.nih.gov.

Marguerite Matthews:

You can email us with questions at NINDSNervePod@nih.gov. And be sure to 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.