I have noted before that communicating science to non-scientists can be, to put it technically, wicked hard. Some of this has to do with the current state of science journalism — journalists who don’t really understand scientific methodology or rules for engagement in disagreements between scientists get obsessed with “balance” rather than finding the center of gravity of the scientific community’s understanding of a given phenomenon. I’m optimisitic that science journalism can be improved, but it probably won’t be fixed by tomorrow.
You might think, though, that there are some good bets for getting a scientific point across to non-scientists. Say you’re given the opportunity to explain — at length — a scientific finding to a writer, and that writer works with you to make sure the story gets it right. Say you have a lay audience, but it’s a lay audience genuinely interested in the kind of scientific work you’re trying to communicate (because they work at the center where such work is done). You’ve worked out an explanation of the work that’s sufficiently non-technical for your audience (as confirmed by the writer who is working on the story). You are involved up until the story hits the research center newsletter. You’ve got it made in the shade, right?
Maybe not. Ask JoAnne Hewett.
JoAnne Hewett, a SLAC researcher and blogger at the mighty Cosmic Variance, relates the story of how painstaking efforts to communicate a piece of science clearly to interested non-scientists took an unexpected wrong turn. She writes:
The good folks in the SLAC publicity office are starting a feature where every few weeks a piece of work from the SLAC theory group will be highlighted. Great idea, I thought! I was the first guinea pig and was asked to do an interview for an article on a paper I wrote last Spring. The work was cute, has a catchy title, and is published in Physical Review Letters, but is not going to change life on earth as we know it. The article was to be for the internal SLAC newsletter TIP (The Interaction Point) and would also make a brief appearance on SLAC Today, the daily newsboard for the SLAC community. So, co-author Tom Rizzo and I spent an hour with the reporter, we saw a draft of the article and sent in revisions, and they took a few pictures of us at the blackboard. We could not get too technical, we were told, because the article was intended for the general, non-scientific, SLAC community.
Next thing I knew, the headlineSLAC Physicists Develop Test for String Theory
was emblazened on the main SLAC homepage! Then Peter Woit of Not Even Wrong lashed onto it. Then it was picked up by PhysOrg.com, which was subsequently featured by Slashdot. All with a smiling picture of yours truly, supposedly devising a definitive test for all of string theory. AARGH!!!!
The entire article was misrepresented, blown up out of proportion, and I could not have been more upset. Nothing against the good folks at the communications office at SLAC – we worked on this together and none of us saw this coming. Nonetheless, I did not have a good week.
The remedy? We posted comments on all the blogs and revised the article to include the scientific details which then put our work into proper context.
The revised title and first paragraph of the article, with the proper context, are:
SLAC Physicists Develop Framework-Dependent Test For Critical String Theory
String theory solves many of the questions wracking the minds of physicists, but it has one major flaw — there are currently no known methods to test it. SLAC scientists have found a way to test a particular version of this revolutionary theory. The test applies to a class of critical string theories which posit that there are 10 or 11 dimensions in our universe — no more, no less.
I can just hear other hardworking scientists going AARGH!!!! in solidarity with JoAnne. You do everything you can to make sure the story will be clear and engaging, and all of a sudden your intended audience gets the wrong idea about the scope of your achievement. And, thanks to the power of the internets, so does a much larger audience, at which point you have to put out all kinds of disclaimers.
It’s enough to make you not so anxious to explain what it is you do to those outside your little scientific tribe.
But, the situation isn’t (as I read it) actually that dire. JoAnne had a rough week, but it was rough because people actually read the story. That has to be a good thing. The initial article was comprehensible enough about a scary, technical area (string theory) that readers got interested — maybe even excited — about the research it described. The problem with the article wasn’t the content. Rather, it was that the context of the finding (it’s not a test of string theory full stop, but a test of a particular version of string theory under particular conditions) wasn’t clear — it was one of those technical details that was initially left out to make the story more accessible to the lay reader. Putting the context back in leaves an article that is still clear and reasonably accessible. Moreover, it give the reader more of a sense of the “so what?” of the research. What, really, has been accomplished here? And how does this achievement fit into the context of the larger problem physicists are wrestling with (no one knows yet how to test string theory full stop).
Maybe lay people can handle a few more scientific details — especially when they put a particular piece of research in better context — than the reporters think they can. Maybe lay people want a few more of these details (although they probably don’t want so many that their heads will explode).
And maybe after JoAnne Hewett’s trial by fire, the next round will go more smoothly.
It’s a problem. Most journalists don’t have the background (My own mantra is: journalists are the worst-educated of all professionals) to know where the thin ice is. A small (in journalistic terms) change to wording can have a large effect to people who actually know the subject. That is not going to change. The really discouraging thing is that it happened within the institution where the scientists work.
Most surprising about this case is that the offending message came from a writer from within the institution. We have no control over what gets published/reported from interviews we give to the outside; that’s journalism. But at every institution where I’ve given internal interviews, I’ve always been given the chance to read the copy before it was released. This practice is mostly because internal writers are more often part of the PR machine rather than “pure” journalists.
Janet, I believe that you posted on your old blogsite that PZ Myers or someone like him wrote awhile back that his biology students were appalled when he suggested that those interested might consider science journalism as a career. This is pretty common and, with a few notable exceptions like Joe Palca, most big-name science writers come from journalism programs and then learn about science. Therein lies one major problem.
My approach to doing my little part to improve science/medical reporting is to act locally: I’ve partnered with my local university school of journalism to teach writers how to review the scientific literature and read primary papers to evaluate the conclusions, not just relying on press releases. I also make myself available for interviews by the students (both at the BS and MS level) and participate in critiques of their resulting pieces. Gives me great insight as to how misrepresentations happen and it’s great to work with future science/medical journalists who are interested in doing it right.
Hi Janet –
I don’t know what the original title to the article said, but I’m sure more than one editor, if given the choice, would have deleted the words “Framework-Dependent” and “Critical” in order to shorten and simplify the headline, not realizing the scientific implications – or perhaps even if they did realize the implications, they would know that the shorter, punchier headline would attract more eyeballs, hence leaving it to the reader to read the article and sort out the “nuances.”
i can imagine that president bush, who is famous for disliking nuanced discussions in favor of black and white, would’ve similarly reduced the headline. now think of all the people in the heartland, as they say, who voted for bush, say, roughly 50% of the US population. assuming they share similar attitudes as bush, you’ve got a lot of people who don’t have the time or inclination to understand “nuances,” particularly in a remote field like string theory. perhaps it shouldn’t come as a surprise that the evolution debates have to reach a high court before they die out – the reason being that it takes someone like an judge who is schooled enough in legal logic and reasoning to sort out the scientific issues, unlike your typical schoolboard member.
i’d like to bring up another hurdle that scientists face, and that is anti-intellectualism and a not uncommon combination of envy and/or contempt for people with high-level degrees, particularly PhDs. I’ve personally faced this in conversations with groups of friends where I’ve occassionally been the only PhD in the room, and I’m treated as if I’m some kind of exotic bird. in other cases, particularly where people didn’t know i had a PhD, i’ve heard negative comments made about PhDs, such as that we are arrogant, snooty, high-minded, spoiled, intellectuals who look down on everyone who doesn’t have a PhD – the kind of comments i’ve only heard in discussions about racial relations! that’s a heavy burden when all the PhDs i know are just normal people who happen to really, really like some subject like string theory, and happened to do well enough in it that they could go to graduate school and become a professor one day.
my question is, how do scientists overcome anti-intellectualism and PhD-envy/contempt when it comes to winning people over on scientific issues, like evolution, the big bang, and stem cell research? this may border on an ethical as opposed to a purely scientific debate, so i’d be interested in hearing your thoughts on this.
my thinking is that we can try to “reason” with non-scientist/non-PhD citizens until we’re blue in the face, but if we come off as “snooty intellectuals” they’re not going to listen to what we’re saying. we need spokespeople, perhaps modern-day Feynmans, who deeply understand the science, yet can explain it in simple language without an air of intellectuallism that might turn off large segments of the country.
Joe Palca did his dissertation on sleep biology/medicine!
I always mention to my students that science journalism is an area they should consider as it badly needs people with scientific background. Nobody has done it, yet, though…but they are young, perhaps one of them will in the future…
Science education -> journalism. I went the other way. I got a J-degree, worked as a newspaper reporter and then went back to grad school for a PhD, not in journalism but in atmospheric science. Thus I think my opinion of journalists is at least reasonably, if cynically, justifiable. And, I might add, continuosly reinforced with a few notable exceptions, some of whom post here.
I’ve worked as a journalist, and I love science.
A few pieces of information.
1. It’s just as legitimate to blame scientists’ ignorance of, and apparent lack of desire to understand, the publication process, as it is the journalists/publication.
2 It matters not how much effort one puts into working with a reporter, though it’s important for accuracy, etc. The writer doesn’t have control over what actually appears in print! Come on guys! Editors control all that. Ask reporters. Also, large publications, like newspapers, have specific editors that mostly write headlines. It’s a scarce talent. They are given a width and a number of lines [decks], and usually a font size, which all ends up being a specific number of maximum characters per line and decks that must all be roughly full. On daily newspapers, they have time to read the story once, fairly well, usually under constant time pressure, then figure out how to fulfill all the requirements. You try that for a week! I witnessed a headline editor’s single headline turn into a nationally used, dismissive name for an emerging illness. But the editor took his, unintended, clue from the physician-advocate interviewed.
3. It’s important to be proactive. Just as I’m certain average people have no idea how hard scientists work, the same goes for journalists. Publishing, especially under tight deadlines, can be incredibly complex and almost improvisational. Scientists must insist on understanding what’s going to happen to the story they’re involved in. You can’t always expect to get consulted on all the changes, especially near deadlines, but you can ask to be told in advance if the material is going to appear anywhere else than you’ve been told. That allows the possibility you can contact those people.
4. I didn’t see any indication of who was responsible for the website headline. This could have been three of four people removed from the reporter. One tactic that might work with science, is to stress to the reporter, and even her editor if you can get to that person, how complex your subject matter is, and how many screwups the press has made in talking about it. Then offer instant access to yourself for proofing the content of the final version, over the phone. They have less time than you do.
5. Finally, dependent on your needs for and relationship to the publication, insist on as instructive postmortem as you can get. Obviously, a correction should be published. Even on a web site, even if they change the headline. While editors and publishers are generally very conscientious about correcting substantive mistakes in print, they hate doing so. Too much detracts from the authority of the publication. And remember, the most common request for correction that editors hear, or it used to be, is people complaining their name appeared misspelled. In the case cited here, it’s fair to expect to speak with a senior editor and be told in detail how the screwup happened.
Note. Everyday it becomes more important that science people communicate with society. I’d argue that if you decide to do so, you take it on as an ongoing, serious part of your life. Obviously not as important as, but similar to how your family is part of your life, and you make time for them. Perhaps treat figuring out public communication as you would trying to figure out a new, cutting-edge lab technique. Study it. Clearly somebody needs to be running seminars at conferences and through other venues where it’s easy to get groups of scientists together.
P.S. There’s a field I almost went into 20 years ago called high tech PR writing, which is essentially ghost-writing for technical people and their supervisors. Generally this done under a professional PR plan to get coverage of a company’s products/services in their technical trade press. But it’s published under the employees name. It paid very well, and one worked, or freelanced, for tech PR agencies. A writer must specialize in a field, or a few related fields, because they must be able to write at a professional’s technical level. It was a truism in the industry, learned through experience, that it was much easier to take a smart writer and teach them a technical field, than take a smart scientist or engineer and teach them to write. In fact, the latter was mostly impossible.
Needless to say I’m very impressed by the quality of writing of the science blogs I’ve been reading, that of both bloggers and their readers.
More comments every time I go to post this! Jackie, neither of your suggestions, taken simply, will work in our current and future environment. Americans, roughly, now live in an almost completely constructed and minipulated media-saturated environment. I posted to this blog about it a couple days ago here. If you follow the link there you’ll get to two, more detailed posts. And those will explain, generally, why the only way to influence this attitude about PhDs [and scientists] is the same way every other group in America must do it — with persuasion-based media campaigns. In fact, it’s imperative that science in general accept this and get in the ball game immediately.
re: Jackie
There’s some truth (well, more evidential anecdotes) to that. Headlines are not set by the writer, but by an editor (sometimes some middle-level editor). This is especially the case with the newswire services (AP, Reuters) where the exact same story can get different headlines over the course of a few hours without a single word changed in the main text.
In some cases, the headline can change from something innocuous to something extremely sided/partisan/distorted within a few hours, all without a line of the story changing.
My latest time studying this was when Pope Benedict XVI was first elected. Reuters’s headline got increasingly negative over time, using first “controversial”, then a few hours later “arch-conservative”, all with nothing in the story to hint that either of those words were appropriate, and not one word in the story changed from the very first release, where the headline didn’t even use the word “controversial” at all.
Increasingly biased, drama-driven, headlines meant to grab and read the same story over time, which never supported any of the biased words at all.
My sympathies to JoAnne and my gratitude to Janet for looking at the bright side of this embarassing mistake. But I gotta weigh in to defend my profession here… We’re becoming more hated than lawyers!
“Framework-Dependent,” “Critical,” and other words that make me go AARGH!
Those words are overly technical, unintelligible cliches and don’t belong in a good headline. If you opened your morning paper and read that (and you don’t naturally get excited by string theory), would you keep reading? Journalism 101: Avoid jargon at all costs. Readers can handle the details, but NOT in the headline.
How a newsroom works:
As SkookumPlanet and Joe pointed out, this headline looks like the victim of a sleep-deprived copy editor. Doubley shameful for an internal publication. Copy editors do grammar and layout and they’re great b/c they save your precious prose from split infinitives. But they can also screw up your copy beyond belief and write confusing headlines.
Reporters are responsible for content and ledes, which must be accurate and *concise.* We work under the guidance of editors, who assign and shape stories.
Who’s afraid of theoretical physics?
Me! When I got assigned a story about Einstein’s theory of general relativity and had to interview a couple of v imp theoretical physicists… But my job (more accurately, a first-time freelance gig – even higher stakes!) was on the line. I had no clue. But the PhDs were patient and good talkers. I relied on their wacky metaphors and detailed descriptions to shape my script.
So treat us like you would an overenthusiastic undergrad who needs a quick backgrounder, guidance, and some encouragement… Or maybe we’re like your curious relative who wants to understand what you do all day in the lab… Either way, we’re not dumb and most of us have the best intentions, despite endless deadline pressure.
Working with journalists:
Reporters have a name for this relationship some of you have described between a curious reporter and a scientist who wants in getting the word out about her research. It’s called “sourcing,” and it’s a concept that’s hammered into every green intern. Science reporters cultivate relationships with articulate scientists, just like political reporters schmooze with politicos, insiders, and aides.
Education:
Reporters are generalists. Our job is to translate techno-speak into plain English so that regular folks who haven’t studied science since they dissected frogs in middle school can understand.
Scientists may have lots of letters after their names, but in my experience translation is a challenge with many beats and sources: economists, policy wonks, lawyers, medical doctors (They’re the worst b/c when you ask lots of questions some treat you like an hypochondriac patient), etc.
That said, a little basic understanding of the scientific method, the scientific community, and peer review goes a long way. Reporters with science degrees get a lot of well-deserved respect from reporters. (I guess my BA in political science doesn’t count.) I like to think that General Assignment reporters are naturally curious and trained to be thorough and get the story right. The challenge is to reduce the error rate…
There’s a growing awareness in journalism education that reporters need to approach science stories carefully. UC Berkeley’s J-School offers several courses in science writing and UC Santa Cruz has a whole program: http://scicom.ucsc.edu/SciWriting.html
But I believe you don’t *need* a science degree to get things right. Think of ABC’s Robert Krulwich (a history major with a JD) who explains everything from science to economics to campaign finance reform so succinctly, it’s almost fun!
Being a freelance medical writer/editor who was recently interviewed by a mainstream newspaper reporter for a story (on medical writing), I know from firsthand experience how frustrating the process is from the interviewed person’s standpoint. The reporter was on a tight timeline, had already spoken to other writers about the topic, and was really looking for the hook that would make her article worth printing. Imagine her surprise when I couldn’t give her a scandalous item to lead the story! My interview was cut short after she asked the same question in several different ways in an attempt to catch me in a misstatement. Once the article was published, it turned out to be a mishmash of interview snippets and old news from other articles, all balled up and slapped onto the page. Yech…I know that reporters are working on deadline with their editors breathing down their necks for the “sexy” news, but PLEASE, report the real stuff, not the sensational stuff that isn’t real!
[My husband notes as an aside that journalism school is where everyone from his undergraduate school ended up if they failed at getting their teaching degrees. So much for quality?]
I think the moral of this story is: we need to think of the headline too! Because I don’t think anyone can deny that ‘SLAC Physicists Develop Test for String Theory’ is much more catchy than ‘SLAC Physicists Develop Framework-Dependent Test For Critical String Theory’, even if the latter is more accurate. The editors are doing their job, they just didn’t consider the change in scientific meaning. We have to give them a hand.
In this case, I probably would have suggested something like, ‘Can string theory be tested?’. Short, no turn-off jargon, and most importantly it doesn’t claim that we can.