Category: Science writing

Thoughts On Science Writing In The Age of Denial

Science, Science writing, ,

This week I was lucky enough to be among the attendees at a conference called Science Writing in the Age of Denial, hosted here at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. What a great experience. Truly I couldn’t say enough to thank all of the organizers, speakers, panelists, and other attendees for all of the thoughtful discussion. For those of you who aren’t as familiar with the concept of science denial, it is simply the idea that despite scientific evidence that certain things are true (evolution, climate change, there is no autism/vaccine link, etc.) people will still claim (sometimes with serious vitriol) that science is wrong. This happens because the scientific evidence questions their world view or the mental model they have in place for understanding an issue.

I just wanted to share a few of the thoughts and ideas from the conference that I’m walking away with:

Respect is key. Our job as communicators is not to slap people around, name call, or put them down for thinking a certain way. Calling someone an idiot isn’t a good way to get them to take your point of view seriously. It is our job to communicate facts and evidence in a way that is compelling and approachable. I thought Dan Fagin from NYU’s SHERP program put it brilliantly when he said that as science writers we can’t stay walled off in our castle, acting like we’re on the defensive from the attacking hoard. We need to come down and really open up a dialogue if we want to make any progress.

We can not change minds with facts alone. It is our job to tell our audience a good story. A good story has the power to change minds. Telling scientific stories in a narrative way is one of the best ways we can go about trying to communicate about these controversial issues. Narrative is what will hook people, and hopefully get them thinking critically about issues and avoid them shutting down from the start simply based on the topic.

As science writers we have a tremendous ability to do harm. It could not be more important that we do our homework, and tell stories with all the nuance and shades of grey required to tell them accurately. For me this point was really driven home by Ivan Oransky, co-founder of the blog Retraction Watch, when he said that a all science/medical writers should have a biostatistician in their back pocket. It is unacceptable to spread misinformation because you as the writer didn’t understand it in the first place. We need to be reading the papers (including the graphs and methods) and asking questions of the researchers or qualified third party sources if we are unclear about something.

One of the most important things we can do for our audience is help educate those who are unfamiliar with the scientific process about how it all works. Deborah Blum raised this point, and pointed out that the problem with claiming a scientific consensus about a topic is that over the course of history scientific consensus about any number of issues has been revised. This is inherent in the nature of science, a constant search for new information is bound to result in new information. Sometimes this new information will confirm the previous conclusions, sometimes it will contradict and present more questions. This isn’t a reason to distrust what all scientists say, or to distrust conclusions for which there may be unanswered questions but for which there is very little contradictory evidence. We need to help the public understand that uncertainty is inherent in scientific research. Uncertainty doesn’t mean that scientists are liars, because unsure is not the same as false. The more we can do to help make the public comfortable with the scientific process, the more likely we are to help them learn to trust it.

We need to try to understand our audience. Knowing where your audience is coming from and what is driving their perspective is critical to being able to communicate ideas to them. You won’t change minds if you don’t establish an ongoing dialogue that addresses their point of view.

Another point I thought was really important was that the best way to help dispel misinformation is to stop repeating it. Articles like, “the top five misconceptions about climate change” just help keep the misinformation in the public eye. We need to focus on truth. I thought this was perfectly captured with the example of asking the audience who originally said the quote “I can see Russia from my house” I was among the people who thought Sarah Palin, but the real answer is Tina Fey. Palin made a comment about having foreign policy experience due to the proximity of Alaska to Russia, and Fey made fun of it by saying the above quote in a skit on Saturday Night Live. Palin never actually said it, but it has been repeated so much that it has taken on a life of its own. Thus, the misinformation lives on.

Those are just a few of the ideas I’ll be taking away from Science Writing in the Age of Denial. There were so many great sessions and panel discussions that I couldn’t possibly list every great idea and point here. If you are interested in what went on at the conference I seriously recommend checking out the twitter activity on the hashtags #denialconf and #sciencedenial. A lot of people were tweeting, myself included, and you will get a really great summary of what was said and went on. If you do check out the hashtags though, don’t be surprised to see some spam. We experienced several spam attacks throughout the conference.

I’ll close this post by just repeating my thanks to everyone who participated. I met some seriously fabulous writers (and only had one moment where I was freaking out in my brain trying to figure out what to say to someone so smart and famous). I had a great experience and I’m looking forward to hopefully meeting them, or at the very least reading more of their work, in the future. In the meantime I’ll be trying to incorporate the ideas and suggestions that came out of the conference into my own work.

A Science Writer’s Mistakes

Blogging, Good Writing, Grad School, My Personal Life, Science writing

Do as I say my friends, not as I have done. Recently I read this post by Genomic Repairman (@genomicrepairman) in which he provides 10 basic tips for grad student science bloggers, which are really just good tips for any novice blogger. I also read this post about whether or not science writers should always read the academic paper they are writing about, something I try my best to do but haven’t always done. These two posts inspired me to assemble some of my own tips and thoughts about science writing. I’ve made the executive decision to frame this post around the stupid things that I’ve done, in the hopes of helping writers new to the blogging scene avoid my mistakes (so that they can make their own, of course). Also because it is always more interesting to know how someone has messed up than to hear them talk about how great they are. So I’ve decided at the risk of public embarrassment, to bare my little science writing soul and share three of the things that make me shake my head at my own silliness.

Not me, but fairly standard. via Wikimedia Commons

Not me, but fairly standard. via Wikimedia Commons

1. Comment on other people’s blogs. I read between 5 and 10 blog posts a day, yet I am terrified of adding comments for fear that I will sound like a moron. I have written more than 200 posts here, but leaving a sentence in the presence of the likes of Carl Zimmer scares the hell out of me. I can’t tell you how many times I have written a comment, stressed out about it, re-written it, stressed out about it some more and then deleted it completely. I’ve heard over and over that you shouldn’t leave comments unless they serve a purpose, otherwise you aren’t adding to the discussion. However, most of the time I feel like I just want to say “I like you” “I like this” “This is really smart” and thus I end up saying nothing. This is problematic for two reasons, the first being that people I admire put themselves out there in a way that allows me to tell them I admire them and I never do. The second reason is that I can’t very well expect people to leave me comments if I never comment on anyone else’s site. I have a new resolve to get involved in the conversations, but new bloggers should train themselves to comment before they become comfortably silent. Make a habit of it, so that you don’t have to break a cycle of complacency later on.

2. Put an RSS feed and subscription options on your blog. Simple enough. People want an easy way to filter through all the blogs out there, and if they can’t subscribe there by RSS or email the odds of them obsessively checking your site everyday to see if you have a new post (especially if you post sporadically like I do) is slim to none. Why did it take me a year and seven months to put these things on Science Decoded? Hell if I know. I guess I figured, well I have all the share buttons so that’s good enough right? No. No, it is not. I should have had RSS and email subscriptions from day one, and I’m kicking myself that posts that did fairly well from being RT’d on Twitter probably didn’t get me any actual followers because I didn’t have an easy way for people to keep reading posts after they found my blog. Face palm on that one.

3. Read the study, link to the study. If you are going to talk about a paper, you need to link to that paper, even better you should look at it. I mentioned in the beginning of this that I was inspired to write based in part on a discussion about whether science journalists should always read the academic paper. In general, I agree with what I believe is the more popular view that you should always read the paper if you intend to talk about it. However, I also agree with the fact that journalists aren’t always going to understand the methods and technical terms. I think the rule I go by is that I have to feel like I understand the study, either by reading the paper, talking to the researcher, or talking to another researcher in the same field to back up what the study author said. Any combination of these things could make for a well written science article, but you can’t just regurgitate a press release. Just don’t do that. No one likes it when you do that, and all those people you admire from afar because you’re afraid of the comment section? They aren’t going to respect you doing that either. Have I done it? Yes. Is that the work I’m proudest of? Not in the slightest.

Bonus tip: If you want to be a science writer, you should hold yourself to a higher standard than that of EurekAlert. Hold yourself to that standard. For me, one of my biggest mistakes was allowing others to put priority on how quickly I could get a story out rather than the quality. Don’t put yourself in the position where you see your name on a piece that you know you could have done so much better. Don’t settle for easy. If it is easy to do, who is going to be impressed and want to talk to you? You need to offer something to your readers that they aren’t going to get from a press release. This might be an interview, it might be your own analysis, or maybe it is added context but you still need to give something. Leaving a story exactly as you found it, or perhaps just going so far as to rearranging the words isn’t why we’re all here. I for one am here to learn, here to listen, and here to talk. But, how much of those things can you really do if you aren’t actually interacting? Unless you start saying something of value, you’re just going to be talking to yourself.

So there you have it, three of my mistakes. I sincerely hope they won’t be held against me. I also sincerely hope that they will help some other poor soul just getting started as a writer. This isn’t an easy field to break into, and we all stumble sometimes. But if you are open, honest and sincere in your desire to produce good science writing I think you will find that there are people out there willing to give you a chance.