Institute Blog

Alan Alda, it turns out.

The Scientist (registration required) ran a story last week on Alan Alda's push to get scientists to engage with the public in a language they'll understand.  Alda explains that he recognized this need after 12 years of interviewing scientists for the show Scientific American Frontiers.

"Emotion is so important. In scientific communication emotion is probably trained out of us, but there's no reason why it can't be included. Science is a great detective story, especially when you're talking to the public. You want them to get involved in this interesting, emotional tangle."

The article in The Scientist also highlights the disconnect between society's view of scientists and the science they produce, citing a poll from the Pew Research Center.

Though the public ranks scientists third after military personnel and teachers in their contribution to society, only half of Americans believe in global warming and a mere 32 percent believe in evolution.

A lot of us here at Burness are big fans of Hans Rosling, the professor of global health at Sweden's Karolinska Institute, whose Ted talks are always remarkably engaging.  He shows his passion for his work that most researchers and doctors share, but are too often afraid show.

He’s also notable for his incredibly creative use of visuals to convey his work (look at the first few minutes of his first Ted talk for an example) and his willingness to share the technology and tools for free.  In fact, you can create your own graphics using his data and software at www.gapminder.org.

His latest Ted talk, however, demonstrates that you don’t need to be a statistician or even computer savvy to put together a presentation that will engage your audience.  It simply requires a bit of creativity and, in this case, a few storage containers and toys.  It’s worth watching the full 10 minutes and spending a few minutes thinking about ways to make your work as visual as possible.  

David Pogue, the technology writer at The New York Times, used last month's announcement from the Times' standards editor that reporters shouldn't use the word "tweet," to provide a basic primer on Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, Foursquare, and Yelp.

Pogue writes (and his point on "jargon" applies beyond techies to every field--especially health and science):

That the Internet’s reaction was so swift and harsh only proves the point: the techno-savvy population can’t even conceive of the existence of a less savvy crowd. If you use jargon every day, you can’t imagine that millions of people have no idea what you’re talking about.

A post on the blog World Mysteries slideshow in Men's Health last month caught my attention: It is the perfect illustration of a picture being worth a thousand words.  They take 20 of the most unhealthy drinks in the U.S. and compare them to their more obviously harmful equivalents.  Here is my favorite:

Chris Blattman, whose blog is a favorite of several of my colleagues, has a post up today on why he tweets (aptly named, “Why I Tweet”).

A year ago I considered Twitter silly. Why would I want to know your breakfast this morning? Who cares about your random thought on the bus? Not me.

Nothing has changed there. But I found tweeters who do something different: send me to places I would not otherwise have gone.

As of this morning, I’m following six dozen people. The common thread: they link to articles and stories I find consistently interesting. Some are bloggers, but most are not, so I wouldn’t otherwise see what they say. And most important: they are forced to sell me on their wares in 140 characters or less, so there’s no blathering. Presumably they appreciate the same from me.

The concept of going somewhere online that you otherwise would not is exactly what I like about social media.  We don’t have time to scour the internet, so why not rely on other people who have similar interests to direct us to interesting news we would otherwise miss.  Plus, tweeting is a great exercise in communicating in soundbites—you can’t tell the whole story, you just need to make me want to know more.

You’ll never read every tweet, but why not have a place where you can check in when you have a free second?  Best case scenario: You find something you would have otherwise missed.  Worst case scenario: You’ve lost the amount of time it took to read the first three sentences of Blattman’s post.

One thing about the transformed world of news and information that is quite different from the past:  you now have more opportunity than ever to get your story out.  This is good news, and all it takes is a brief blog post—ideally with some photos or video.  Check this out: The New York Times has started a blog, Scientists at Work allowing you to report about your own research in the field. 

They describe it this way:

This type of writing shows the public what science is all about.   It sheds light on the mystery of science, and takes the scientist out of the proverbial “ivory tower.”   And as you know, the more the public understands and appreciates science, the more champions we’ll have to support research funding  and the future generations of scientists.  Take advantage of this opportunity!

One of the toughest questions you will ever get is, "So what do you do for a living?"  Inevitably, we are all asked it and the folks we work with usually struggle to answer with both brevity and clarity.  However, in the clip below Dr. Francis Collins, the  National Institutes of Health Director, manages to show you can do just that without even being asked directly.  Next time you’re at a cocktail party and someone asks you “where do you work?” make sure you have a great answer – a memorable message about what your work means to me. 

The New York Times today had a front page, above the fold, story today about what must be the most commonly abused communications tools: PowerPoint.  

In a cleverly named piece ("We Have Met the Enemy and He Is PowerPoint"), Elisabeth Bumiller looks at the now infamous PowerPoint diagram of the United States' strategy in Afghanistan and the strong feelings about PowerPoint among the officers leading efforts abroad.  One adviser recalls General McChrystal reacting to this chart by saying, "When we understand that slide, we’ll have won the war."

If you watch virtually any news show, you've seen that reporters are constantly trying to stay on the cutting edge of the latest social media trends.  Reporters often check in on Twitter to see what their viewers are thinking.  That's why when I saw this commercial from AT&T, I had to laugh.  

We're not there yet (and hopefully we never will be), but you can get a sense of the latest trends in media by checking out the latest "State of the News Media" report from Pew Research Center's Project for Excellence in Journalism.

Make Facebook, Not War…

The other night I attended the middle school PTA meeting. The new “technology library aide” was speaking (I didn’t know we had a technology library aide!). She wanted to educate us about something our children knew far more about than we did: Social media. She paused at the beginning to show us a short YouTube video entitled “Social Media Revolution.”

I’d already seen this video, and while I think it overstates its case at points, the trends it describes are very real. Burness Communications is currently working with many of the tools the video highlights to build targeted communities and distribute information for our clients. So instead of watching the screen, I watched parents’ faces. They were stunned and surprised as each new slide appeared. At the end they exclaimed, what’s a Wiki? What’s Digg, Flickr, Bebo? One parent said, “My son doesn’t know about all this!” The librarian disagreed.