What we've got here is a failure to communicate

     Because this blog was created as a component of a seminar course on effective communication of science to the public, it stands to reason that I should be reflecting on this topic regularly. Now, defining "the public" is not always easy, and I've used Joe T. Public as my all-encompassing stand in, but it seems that I often consider myself to be one of the public. If the public are simply people who are not experts (or nowhere near experts) on a subject, then when it comes to new-fangled CMSB (cellular, molecular, and structural biology), I consider myself one of the public. Sure, I've had a few introductory biology courses that do a brief survey of these fields, but I've never had an advanced course, and I certainly don't read the literature. So, when I go to see a talk by a professional scientist doing this kind of research, I take on the role of the public with whom the speaker should be effectively communicating.

     At the last CMSB talk I attended, I think I understood three of the presenter's slides. There were probably fifty or so presented in total. Included in the three I think I understood are the intro slide (Hi, this is my name and where I work) and the closing slide (Thanks for listening, here's the people who helped me). That leaves one actual slide that I think I understood. Isn't this a major problem?

     I've already prefaced this with my admitted ignorance on the entire field of biology in which this presentation fit, but does that mean that the speaker should avoid making any effort to communicate effectively with me? This talk was not given at a special gathering of experts in the field, but rather to an entire department that is (unfortunately) labeled "zoology". We've grappled in seminar about the importance of casting your talk at the right level for your audience, so why is it that this talk (and CMSB talks in general) fail to do so?

     My two guesses: 1) scientists trained in this field are never taught [i]how[/i] to communicate effectively with the public, and 2) the science in this field cannot be effectively communicated to the public. I've left out the cynical third guess that assumes the scientists just don't care, but this may be the case. If the problem is that there is no training for communication in this field, one has to wonder why that is the case. Surely all science deserves to be communicated to the public. Most of the CMSB talks I've been to relate fairly directly to human health in some way, so it would seem that these scientists would have much to gain from communicating with the public. They'll never have a hostile crowd at their lab door, wielding pitchforks and torches, demanding justification for the work being done there. Perhaps it is this very issue that makes them such poor communicators: their work relates so directly to human health, they only have to state as much to satisfy Joe T. Public. When that level of communication is the extent to which you flex your communication muscles, it's no wonder you fail so spectacularly when someone wants to know more than the superficial about your research.

     The second guess is obviously an exaggeration, but I think there is some truth to it. In my areas of interest (behavior and ecology), most concepts are fairly intuitive. Of course females will be more choosy than males when selecting mates, they (typically) invest far more in their offspring than the males. Is anyone confused about this? Doesn't it make sense that prey would change the kind of food they eat when predators are around? They should eat food that gives them more bang for their buck, since wasting time eating less nutritious food exposes them to risk of predation. Simple, right? Finally, a topic that ecologists often describe as "complex" is the trophic cascade. But here it is, plain and simple: If you eliminate bears, you get more deer, and more deer means fewer plants. Do I need to repeat that?

     I think one of the main challenges a CMSB scientist faces is that the concepts in their field do not clearly apply to intuitive relationships that the public can see in their daily lives. We pay zero attention to transcription, cell signaling, gene regulation, and ATP synthesis even though these things are going on inside the cells that compose our bodies all the time. The inner workings of the cell are more abstract that the inner workings of an ecosystem, though both can be complex. However, I do not think all complexity is created equal. Compare these diagrams:



On the top is a food web; each sphere represents an organism, and lines between spheres represent the fact that things eat each other. On the bottom is a diagram of signaling pathways within a cell, linking all the different molecules that interact with one another. Sure, both of these diagrams have a lot going on and would probably intimidate Joe T. Public. The point is that one of these can be effectively explained to anyone in a few sentences, and the other one takes an advanced degree to approach intellectually.

Naturally, my viewpoint is biased, but I have yet to attend a CMSB talk that effectively communicated with me (the public).

P.S. There is a curious lack of CMSB students in this seminar...

Stresses of being a working mother

While I don't actually have any insight into the topic of this post (as related to humans), I'd like to share some findings from the world of spiders.

     Daiqin Li and Robert Jackson published a paper a few years ago investigating the role of predation cues on parental care in a spider. The focal species, Scytodes pallida, is a spitting spider that ejects a mixture of silk and venom from its fangs. Scytodes females carry their egg sacs around in their chelicerae (the parts attached to the fangs) until the spiderlings hatch.

A female Scytodes carrying her egg sac in her chelicerae

     This is clearly awesome, but Scytodes has a problem: it is preyed upon by another spider called Portia labiata. Portia belongs to the jumping spider family, known for excellent vision and surprisingly sophisticated cognitive abilities. Portia has learned (over evolutionary time) to preferentially consume Scytodes that are carrying eggs. The benefits are two-fold: 1) Portia gets to eat the Scytodes mother and her eggs, and 2) Portia is more successful at capturing Scytodes, since the eggs must be dropped before defensive spitting can commence.

A menacing Portia, the spider that eats other spiders

     The question Li and Jackson were interested in is whether Scytodes has any way to resolve the conflict between needing to carry eggs and defend itself from Portia. The authors predict that Scytodes may change traits related to egg hatching in order to solve this problem.

     Egg-carrying Scytodes were presented with volatile chemical cues (basically, smells) left behind by Portia. These cues could come from silk, feces, or anything else the spider leaves behind. The authors measured the time until the eggs hatched, how big the spiderlings were, and the proportion of eggs that failed to develop. They found that eggs hatched sooner and produced smaller offspring when Portia cues were present (compared to a control without any Portia cues). What's even cooler is that this effect of shorter incubation and smaller offspring was even stronger if the Portia providing the cues had recently eaten Scytodes. Although there was no statistically significant effect on the proportion of eggs that failed to develop, the trend was the same as incubation time.

Eggs from females under risk of predation hatched sooner

     What this all means is that Scytodes can sense predator cues and respond by speeding up the development of its offspring. The benefit is that the sooner the egg sac is gone, the sooner Scytodes can defend itself from Portia. A potential cost is that the offspring will be smaller than usual, which may put them at a disadvantage later in life. Presumably, this is better than getting eaten before the spiderlings even get to hatch. What a tough world these spiders live in! If only they could invent spider day care.

     Just how Scytodes changes the incubation time is not known, but this just demonstrates how science works. An observation leads to a question, and the answer to that question creates more questions. Scientists never stop questioning, and it seems like we may never run out of mysteries to solve. How's that for job security?

Obviously, this is our future...

Sampling some of the attempts to communicate a very complex science (climate change) to non-scientists (the ever-present Joe Public) reveals fundamental challenges in trying to make a point.


A Newsweek article takes the informed approach by stating that "global warming" is more than just a uniform increase in temperature across the globe. Furthermore, the author argues that extreme weather events cannot be blamed on climate change, since these events are products of local phenomena (e.g., air masses colliding). The real evidence comes from long term trends, though the wealth of data going back hundreds of thousands of years is curiously never mentioned.


I can't help but feel like the reader is walking into a bait-and-switch situation here: climate change is real and happening, but nothing we observe on a daily basis can be attributed to it. This seems like a great way to disconnect human behavior from larger processes, which is exactly the opposite of what we should be trying to accomplish. The author tangles with some real science-type words by writing about “a high pressure system that has intensified an average of 0.9 geopotential meters every decade over the past 60 years”. Knowing that this kind of language would be lost on readers (why even use it?), the author translates into "layman terms". I wonder if this strategy is ineffective: layman is defined as someone lacking knowledge. What is the value in trying to communicate like this?


The conclusion of this article is especially terrible. Climate scientists at Duke are portrayed as having given u the search for a "natural" explanation for their data and then fallen back on the last remaining explanation of human-induced change. I sincerely doubt this is the method by which the scientists did their study. The author fails to end with any advice about what can be done, and instead seems to suggest that we should just strap in and enjoy the ride. Who knows what's coming next with all this wacky global weirding!?


Two articles from Time magazine, from 2006 and 2010, illustrate more issues in communicating this important message to Joseph T. Public. The first of these contradicts a main message from the Newsweek article by attributing a series of extreme weather events directly to global warming. Now Joe doesn't know what to think, because even the journalists can't decide how to interpret our world! While the analogy of earth as a living organism is childish and stupid, the author at least takes the time to highlight the nature of some of the changes going on: glacial melting, release of soil carbon, ocean conveyor belts, and drought. The author likely alienated a number of readers by overly politicizing the end of the article, in a section titled "What we can do" (which, incidentally, gives no advice about what we can do).


In 2006, it seemed that many skeptics had been convinced that climate change was real, but the story is very different in 2010. The author points out how scare tactics ("I have a nightmare" vs. "I have a dream"), may be responsible for the loss of public belief in climate change. This approach relates back (again) to the deficit model: Joe will not be convinced by all them crazy datas; scientists need to appeal to his values. There's some oddness in here about people who believe the world is a just place, but I'm not sure how that fits with the story being told here. Is there any hope in communicating a message to someone who believes the world is a just place? If it is, then why do anything? Justice will sort it out, right?


The author concludes that the public can't be won over by scare tactics, though active mis-information (i.e., lies) are incredibly effective. The solution for scientists is thus made entirely clear: stop scaring people with reality, and start lying to them about a fantasy land of musical rainbows and chocolate snowflakes. Hooray!

   

On becoming a more best writer

     Here I comment on two selections from a book called The Best Science Writing of 2010, both focused on the consequences of what we eat. Before I delve into each article, consider the initial approach of both. In All You Can Eat, Jim Carrier begins with, “The green dumpster behind Red Lobster was nearly empty when I lifted the lid”. In Graze Anatomy, Richard Manning begins, “Will Winter and Todd Churchill have a plan”. Unless you are borderline comatose, how do you put these articles down after reading the first sentence? What is this guy doing in the dumpster, and what are those two planning? Now consider the first sentence from one of the peer-reviewed scientific publications currently sitting on my desk. In an article titled “Interactions of multiple predators with different foraging modes in an aquatic food web”, Michael Carey & David Wahl begin with, “Predation is a key factor structuring communities and drives food web dynamics”. Are you holding your breath? Where could this gripping story lead? Obviously the selections from the book and the peer-reviewed paper have different goals and different audiences, but I wasn't surprised to see that the selections from the book were not peer-reviewed journal articles. The best science writing is apparently taking place outside of where most scientists do their writing, an eerie parallel to the issue of where the public does their learning about science (see my previous post titled Communicating ecological issues with the public).

All You Can Eat – Jim Carrier

     This article tackles issues surrounding the source of our food, namely shrimp. The sustainability of the (largely former) shrimp catching industry and the pitfalls of the (now dominant) shrimp farming industry are brought into the light. While I did not need to read this article to be convinced of the sorry state of the seafood industry (I already read the marvelous and depressing book, The Empty Ocean), Carrier likely converted a number of people to swearing off shrimp (or at least consuming them more responsibly). Take a moment to appreciate that he might not have had as many readers had he started his article with, “Shrimp are an essential component of the human diet and benthic marine community”.

     Some of the essential characteristics of Carrier's writing that likely got it included in this compendium are his use of story telling, character development, dialogue/quotations, scenery descriptions, pacing, approachable language, and interesting jumps in time and space. Now, I haven't taken a introduction to writing course or anything comparable, but these characteristics appear in most of the things I read (scientific articles excluded). A non-scientist friend of mine pointed out that people who are good at doing science writing are probably good writers in general, with an interest in science. I agreed, and it stands to reason that a grip on the essential elements of good writing in general will translate to good science writing.

     I'm not sure what criteria were used to label these selections as “best”, but I doubt they put much weight on the effectiveness with which the author communicates science. Yes, it is an entertaining read, but will readers come away understanding the science? I already feel myself slipping into deficit thinking, wherein communicating science requires nothing more than spouting facts and figures. Carrier gets the point across that the fisheries are in serious trouble, and even takes the time to give an overview of shrimp biology. Is this enough to get the public to understand the science? Where are the models for maximum sustainable yield that I had to program by hand during my course in population and community ecology? Coding and manipulating those models got me to understand the underlying science, but we can't really expect the public to take the same approach.

     Carrier excels by making the scientific issues relevant to the public by tying in other subjects (politics, history, economics) and making it clear how this relates to everyday life (choosing a restaurant, being a more responsible consumer). I hope that this mode of effectiveness (re: making people care) was an important criterion in choosing which articles would appear in this book.

     Richard Manning, author of Graze Anatomy, highlights the benefits and future of the grass-fed beef movement. I was also familiar with this topic from the various Pollan-related media I've come in contact with. A fellow graduate student, Tim Bankroff, works in this field, and we've shared a few discussions on the topic. The punchline of the story is similar to Carrier's: we can improve the quality of life on this planet if we change the way we produce our food. Manning is also effective at including just enough science to substantiate his claims without drowning the reader in the details. Economic tie-ins feature prominently in this piece, and the link to global warming is unavoidable. These issues engage the public in ways that an ANOVA table displaying a significant interaction between cow food and grazing area simply cannot. I felt that Manning fell short in terms of writing quality, as his piece lacked the upbeat pace and interesting characters found in All You Can Eat.

     Overall, it seems that being the best writer takes a grasp on the fundamentals of writing combined with insight into how to make your audience care about what you are writing. I think these are two different skill sets, and I'll echo my previous thought by suggesting that scientists recruit these authors to help the public understand the meaning and value of the science that we do.