Tag Archives: Matt Shipman

Reaching Out: Science has a PR Problem

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Science Online New York (SoNYC) encourages audience participation in the discussion of how science is carried out and communicated online. To tie in with June’s event which will discuss how scientists can reach out of the ivory tower, we’re hosting a series of guest posts on Soapbox Science. We will hear from a range of contributors: scientists, writers, enthusiasts, communicators, events organizers, policy makers and teachers, each sharing details about how they reach out to engage with the public. 

First up, scientist Kate Pratt, opens the discussion by explaining how science is often miscommunicated in the press and how this can sometimes lead to public misunderstandings. She raises the question of how scientists can reach everyone, making some suggestions for how to use successful PR strategies.  

Kaite Pratt is a graduate student in molecular biology at Brown University who will be defending her thesis at the end of June. She is leaving the bench to pursue a career in science communications and PR. She blogs regularly at https://www.katiephd.com, www.benchfly.com, and is co-founder of https://www.lookslikescience.tumblr.com.   Continue reading →

Scientists and journalists need different things from science – Response 1: To Read, or Not To Read a Paper (and Can You Understand It)?

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Matt Shipman is a public information officer at North Carolina State University, where he writes about everything from forensic entomology to computer malware. He previously worked as a reporter and editor in the Washington, D.C. area for Inside EPA, Water Policy Report and Risk Policy Report, where he covered the nexus of science, politics and policy. He blogs about NC State research at The Abstract, and you can follow him on Twitter where he is @ShipLives. 

On March 13, the Royal Institution held a debate about the coverage of science in the media, asking whether scientists and journalists need different things from science. You can read the nature.com Communities team write-up and Storify of the tweets about the event here. While the event took place in London, it was followed online by a large (and vocal) group of scientists, science writers and others interested in how science is communicated. One of the questions that came up was whether reporters should read the scientific papers related to the story that they are covering.

The vast majority of responses can be summed up thus: “Yes.”

I agree that it would be great if reporters read all the papers they wrote about. However, I also think it is both wildly optimistic and very unrealistic to expect most journalists to do so. After all, the odds are excellent that the journalist would not be able to understand what they’re reading anyway.

To be clear: I’m not writing this to defend the practice of not reading papers. I am also not advocating that reporters should avoid reading papers. Rather, I’m hoping to explain why many reporters will either not read a paper, or will read a paper but not understand it (or worse, misunderstand it).

There are some reporters who are able to make a living writing about a specific field of study, whether it’s astrophysics or paleontology. But for most reporters, making a living means writing about whatever subject your editor assigns to you. Or, for freelancers, whatever story you can sell. That could mean writing about astrophysics and paleontology. And materials science. And entomology. And that’s just this week.

 

Researchers spend years learning the ins and outs of their fields, mastering a jargon that is beyond the ken of those outside their specific fields of study. Most reporters do not have that luxury.

This is where most scientists – and many science writers – chime in: “Stop!” you say. “We didn’t say it was easy. But how can you write about a paper you haven’t even read? That makes no sense. You’d just be making stuff up! You MUST rely on the primary literature.”

To which I say: Yes, it would be better if all journalists could read and understand every paper they write about. But, since they can’t, should we give up hope?

I don’t think so.

Full disclosure (and this will not shock you): I am not a scientist, I was not a science major, and while I try to read journal articles, I often don’t understand what I’m reading. It may be clear prose to you, but it’s a shibboleth to me (and if you don’t know what a shibboleth is, you’ll know how I feel when I read phrases like “rectification using multiheterojunction”).

Still, somehow, I’ve made a living writing about science (directly or indirectly) for 14 years. And I’ve never had to run a correction related to the scientific content I’ve written about. How is that possible, if I don’t understand the papers? Easy. I ask questions. A lot of questions. “What questions were you trying to answer with this research? Why? What was your methodology? What were the key findings? What new questions did this research this raise?” And every time I don’t understand the answer, I ask them to explain it.

In a sense, the researchers act as translators, walking me through the paper step by step. This sort of dialogue is essential for any non-expert (like me) who wants to write about a paper. It allows me to understand the content and context of the research in the paper, even though I don’t understand the lexicon used in the paper itself.

All that said, I do think reporters should try to read the papers they’re writing about. Once in a while, they’re actually written in prose that is accessible to the lay reader (or at least the abstract is). This is true for institutional science writers/public information officers (PIOs) too.

For example, a friend of mine is a PIO at a well-regarded university who writes research-oriented news releases (and, no, this is not a thinly-veiled reference to myself). A while back he was reading a paper and noticed that at least one of the statements in the “discussion” section of a paper was at odds with the data itself. When he mentioned it to the researchers, he found that he was right – and the mistake had somehow been missed by the authors, reviewers and journal editors.

When he was telling me this, he said, “This is another reason why [PIOs] should always read – and make sure they understand – studies” that they write about. I’ll meet him halfway. I think science writers – reporters and PIOs – should always understand the studies they write about. I just don’t think reading the paper always helps that much.

If you’ve enjoyed this post from Matt, you may like to read his 3-part mini-series on Soapbox Science about The Promise and Pitfalls of Public Outreach.

The Promise & Pitfalls of Public Outreach Part 3: Social Media: Taking Science To The People

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Matt Shipman is a public information officer at North Carolina State University, where he writes about everything from forensic entomology to computer malware. He previously worked as a reporter and editor in the Washington, D.C. area for Inside EPA, Water Policy Report and Risk Policy Report, where he covered the nexus of science, politics and policy. He blogs about NC State research at The Abstract, and you can follow him on Twitter where he is @ShipLives. 

Explaining the nuances of scientific research to a lay audience has never been easy. Changes in the news media landscape over the past 20 years have created new challenges. The 24-hour news cycle, for example, offers little opportunity for reflective reporting on complex issues. However, there are still steps that scientists can take to communicate effectively about their work.  In my previous two posts I talked about how scientists can work with reporters, public information officers and others to disseminate information about their research to a non-expert audience and about being a science journalist with no scientific background, offering advice for all parties.  In my last post, I look at how the advent of blogs and social media has given researchers the ability to cut out the middle man entirely and speak directly to the public. Sounds great, right? It can be. But it poses its own challenges.

Social Media

There are a lot of social media platforms that allow us to share our thoughts with anyone who cares to listen. Twitter, Facebook and Google+ are clearly at the top of that list. If you set up a Twitter account, for example, you can say whatever you want, 140 characters at a time. But who’s reading it?

Just because you set up a social media account doesn’t mean that anyone will know about it. You’ll need to take the time to cultivate a following. You can start by figuring out your desired audience. Who do you want to be following you? Other scientists? Relevant science writers? Potential grad students? If you try to talk to everyone at once, you’ll end up pleasing no one.

Once you’ve defined your target audience (or audiences), you can begin reaching out to friends and colleagues who are already online. They can help point people to your Twitter account, Facebook page, etc. But if you really want people to pay attention, you need to have something to offer. Content is king, and you need to contribute something to the online conversation. In other words, why should people be listening to you?

For scientists, this could mean disseminating interesting articles you run across. It could also mean providing insight into new findings or news stories where you happen to have relevant expertise. Lastly, it is an opportunity to talk about your work. And here’s where things get tricky.

Social media platforms can be very limiting. For example, can you define genotype and phenotype in 140 characters or less? And even if you write a captivating treatise about the subject on Google+, which gives you far more space to work with, how many people want to read an essay on a social media platform? (Answer: very few.)

If you want to use social media to communicate effectively, you need to drive readers somewhere. This means writing an introductory line that gives readers an idea of what you want to talk about, then including a link which drives them to a site where you’re able to discuss the issue in greater detail. Which brings us to blogs.

Blogging

Clearly there are things that are best confined to peer-reviewed scholarly publications. E.g., you don’t want to scoop yourself. But blogging allows you to dig into the nuance, context and detail of a subject. It also gives you the opportunity to explore facets of news stories that have been ignored in other outlets, discuss papers that may have gone overlooked, or simply share anecdotes that highlight what you love (and loathe) about your field of study.

The one cardinal rule for scientists who blog is (or should be) this: do not regurgitate your papers as blog posts. If you’re simply going to paste your abstract into your blog, what’s the point? You need to bring something new to the table. And there are a lot of ways to do that.

If you want to reach the broadest possible audience, it’s always good to write for your blog in conversational language. Write as if you are writing for your mom (assuming your mom is not also a biochemist). A casual writing style can make even the most arcane subjects seem approachable. If you dive right into a subject using professional jargon, a lay audience will have no idea what you’re talking about – and you’ve lost them.

When you do use terms that may be unfamiliar to your readers, take the time to explain them. Remember, most people aren’t familiar with terms like proteomics, inviscid flow or parameter estimation. And be sure to clarify terms that have different meanings in different contexts. The word “significant,” for example, has a very specific definition when referring to statistics. But if you don’t make the distinction, readers will likely read it as meaning “important” – which may not be the case.

A blog can also be a great place to explain entire concepts. When writing journal articles, researchers can assume a certain amount of expertise on the part of readers. Huge chunks of existing knowledge are addressed with a few cursory sentences and journal citations. For everyone outside of that field, however, the research may appear to exist in a vacuum.

Blogs allow scientists to delve more deeply into the history of a subject, laying out the historical challenges and incremental achievements that brought us to this point. You can say: “Here’s what came before. Here’s why we had these questions. Here’s what we did, what we learned and why it matters.”

Reporters rarely have the time, opportunity or expertise to provide this level of background. But it can be a very effective way of helping people understand the importance of new research findings, without sensationalizing or misrepresenting the work.

Conclusion

Writing a blog gives substance to your social media presence. You have the opportunity to talk about science in a meaningful way, which ultimately helps people better understand the world around them. Answering those questions is probably why you got into science in the first place. Don’t be afraid to share what you’ve discovered.

PS: A final, cautionary note: it is important to remember that anyone could end up seeing what you write on social media. Privacy controls are helpful in some formats, but they aren’t necessarily foolproof. Don’t say anything online that could come back to haunt you.

The Promise & Pitfalls of Public Outreach Part 2: Writing About Science, When You’re Not A Scientist

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Matt Shipman is a public information officer at North Carolina State University, where he writes about everything from forensic entomology to computer malware. He previously worked as a reporter and editor in the Washington, D.C. area for Inside EPA, Water Policy Report and Risk Policy Report, where he covered the nexus of science, politics and policy. He blogs about NC State research at The Abstract, and you can follow him on Twitter where he is @ShipLives. 

Explaining the nuances of scientific research to a lay audience has never been easy. Changes in the news media landscape over the past 20 years have created new challenges. The 24-hour news cycle, for example, offers little opportunity for reflective reporting on complex issues. However, there are still steps that scientists can take to communicate effectively about their work. Matt, in his Soapbox Science series, The Promise & Pitfalls of Public Outreach, has already discussed what Scientists, Science Writers and PIOs Should Expect From Each Other . In his next instalment Matt talks about being a science journalist with no scientific background, offering advice for all parties. Do stay tuned for Matt’s final post published next month. 

Many scientists find it frustrating to work with science writers who have little or no background in their specific fields of expertise. It can be slow going, explaining every little thing – and there is always the fear that the writer will get it completely wrong. But working with a non-expert can have its advantages. Here’s why scientists should give non-experts a chance – and what non-experts should consider when writing about science.

Full disclosure: I am a science writer who is not a scientist. I’ve been interested in science since I was a kid (I wanted to be a marine biologist). But thanks to a seemingly irredeemable conflict with chemistry, I ended up an English major. I went on to work as a reporter covering federal environmental policy issues, and often had to explain the research behind regulatory decisions. Much of this research was done by chemists. To my surprise, I found out that I was really good at describing their research to non-chemists and explaining why it was relevant. Chemistry was my bête noire, so how could this be?

I had two things going for me, which all non-experts have when writing about science. First, I made no assumptions about the work or about what my readers would already know about the subject. Second, I did not use jargon – because I didn’t understand it. I’m often surprised by how much scientists think the general public knows about their fields of study. For example, a researcher I was interviewing recently said “Surely most people know what tissue engineering is?” Actually, I think most people probably have no idea what tissue engineering is. We have to explain it to them.

When writing about research findings, I usually start by asking what question or challenge the researchers were setting out to address. This can take a while. If the relevant scientists phrase things in technical language, I’ll ask them to define the terms. Then I ask them why they found this problem interesting. Sometimes it is pure intellectual curiosity. But usually the research question is one element of a much broader scientific question. Science is an iterative process, and the findings from a single research project may move us incrementally closer to understanding the genetic basis for a disease, how we can boost the efficacy of antibiotics, etc.

If I can get researchers to place their work in context, it becomes much easier to explain the relevance of their work to a lay audience. No, you don’t say, for example, “They have developed a cure for Alzheimer’s.” But it is fair, and important, to tell people if a team’s work is part of the overarching effort to help us understand Alzheimer’s disease.”  Once people understand why something is important, they’re more likely to keep reading as you explain exactly what the researchers did.

Here’s another key point for science writers who aren’t experts in the subject they’re covering: when you’re interviewing the researchers, you can’t be afraid to sound stupid. If you don’t understand something they said, and you think you can “write around it,” you are going to screw up. If a researcher uses a term you don’t understand, ask him or her to explain it. I didn’t know what a TEM was until I asked someone about it when writing a piece on materials science. Why would I? (Incidentally, it’s a transmission electron microscope.) Remember: it’s better to ask now, and possibly feel a bit dim, than make a mistake when you’re writing and definitely look foolish.

Once you’ve explained the work, you get one more chance to place the findings in context. As I said, science is an iterative process. The findings you just wrote about are not the end of the line. The researchers may have answered one question, but it likely raises several more. What are those questions? Where does this work fit into the broader research field it is part of? Placing something in context means not only addressing what led up to a research project, but discussing what may come next. Exploring future research directions helps readers appreciate where findings fit into the continuum of a specific field of research.

Being a non-expert will not make someone a good science writer. But it’s not the kiss of death either. If you pay attention to detail, ask good questions, and aren’t afraid to admit how little you know, you can actually turn your ignorance to your advantage. I’ve found that if  I can get an expert to explain something to the point where I can understand it, then I’ll be able to explain it to anyone else.


The Promise & Pitfalls of Public Outreach Part 1: What Scientists, Science Writers and PIOs Should Expect From Each Other

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Matt Shipman is a public information officer at North Carolina State University, where he writes about everything from forensic entomology to computer malware. He previously worked as a reporter and editor in the Washington, D.C. area for Inside EPA, Water Policy Report and Risk Policy Report, where he covered the nexus of science, politics and policy. He blogs about NC State research at The Abstract, and you can follow him on Twitter where he is @ShipLives. 

Make sure you check the other posts in the series, Writing About Science, When You’re Not A Scientist and Social Media: Taking Science To The People.

Whether you’re a scientist or a science reporter, at some point you’ll probably have to deal with a public information officer (PIO). A good PIO, or flack, can make your job easier. A bad PIO can make you want to pull your hair out. So, what makes a good science PIO?

PIOs have been the subject of some discussion recently in the science community. It started earlier this month, during the ScienceOnline2012 conference at North Carolina State University in Raleigh (where I work). During discussions about the relationship between scientists and reporters, it came to light that many PIOs who write news releases about research findings do not run those releases by the relevant researchers to ensure their accuracy. This blew the minds of some reporters, and at least one flack (me).

In the days following the conference, the revelation that PIOs are not vetting news releases led to several prominent blog posts and related conversations through social media. Even science writers who were former PIOs wanted to know what was going on.

To advance the conversation, I want to lay out some guidelines for what I think scientists, science writers and PIOs should expect from each other.

Researchers, you should expect a good PIO to give you an opportunity to review any news releases about your research. I am a flack at a large university. I write about everything from forensic anthropology to chemical engineering. It would be foolish of me to presume I could write about such a variety of topics without making a mistake. Even PIOs who focus on specific research areas make mistakes, as humans are wont to do.

As a result, I always vet my release copy with the relevant researchers. In fact, everyone in my office does. Sometimes that means we have to significantly re-write releases, and sometimes it means we go through several iterations before everyone is happy. We are, after all, writing for a lay audience. So be it. If we botch something out of carelessness, it reflects poorly on the researchers, the research and the institution. From a selfish perspective, it also hurts our reputations with researchers and reporters. We can’t afford that.

What do PIOs need from researchers? Time. Ideally, researchers will tell a PIO about forthcoming papers or conference presentations at least a week or two in advance. This gives us the opportunity to pull together a good release and issue it in a timely way. A six-week-old paper is brand new in academic terms – it hasn’t even had time to penetrate the intellectual marketplace – but if you tell most reporters that a news item is six weeks old, their eyes will glaze over and you will have trouble waking them up. This may not be true for some science beat writers, but most science news stories these days are written by general assignment reporters, and they like their news to be new.

Researchers should also remember that a news release is not an abstract. It is not being written for an audience of your peers. News releases should be written in language that is accessible to a non-expert audience. And, when reviewing a draft release, please respond to your PIO as quickly as possible. If you don’t get around to reviewing a release for a few weeks, odds are good the release will never go out – it’s no longer timely.

In addition, researchers should know that, at some point, they may have to actually talk to a reporter. A good PIO will make sure the researcher is aware of this ahead of time, and will check to see who on the research team is most comfortable serving as a spokesperson. It’s usually the lead author, but that is not always the case. If you’re a researcher, and you do not want to talk to the press, tell your PIO before the release goes out. A news release is not a news story. It’s a summary that reporters can use to determine whether they want to write a news story. If the researcher won’t answer the phone, there’s no point in issuing the release in the first place.

What should reporters expect from a good PIO? Honesty. Don’t say something is the cure for cancer, unless it is actually the cure for cancer. Science is an iterative process, and even baby steps forward can be exciting and important. Exaggerating research findings is a surefire way to annoy reporters (and researchers).

What else should a good PIO do? Be responsive. If a reporter calls you, he or she is probably on deadline. Respond to media requests quickly. And if you can’t get the reporter what he or she wants, explain that as soon as possible so the reporter can begin figuring out how to move forward.

PIOs should also know who they’re pitching. If you pitch a story about beetles to a writer who covers astrophysics, you’re wasting everyone’s time. That said, every PIO makes an off-target pitch from time to time. If that happens, reporters, please tell the PIO you don’t care about that subject  – but also tell the PIO what areas you do cover. If the PIO is any good, you will stop getting irrelevant pitches – and may even get a heads up about something you’re actually interested in.

Why do I care what people at other institutions do? One reason is because it is already difficult to get journalists and researchers to take PIOs seriously. We don’t need irresponsible behavior contributing to the problem. Another reason is that I care about science, and about communicating ideas (and context) accurately. It’s why I’m in this business (it sure isn’t for the money).

PIOs, and their employers, need to know that it is not okay to leave scientists out of the loop when we’re promoting their work. It undermines our credibility. It tells researchers we don’t care about their concerns. And it increases the likelihood that the very work we are trying to highlight will be misrepresented.