Alan Barker

Don't Be Such A Scientist #5: Be the Voice of Science

Be the voice of science.

Scientists who communicate well can often be unpopular with other scientists.  Olson tells the tale of Carl Sagan and his failure to be admitted to the National Academy of
Sciences.  In fact, Olson suggests that about one third of scientists will express dislike of anyone who tries to communicate directly with the general public.

I think that this dislike may be a symptom of a deeper set of assumptions about the nature of science: assumptions about science in its relationship to truth, about truth in its relationship to certainty, and truth as a single objective reality. 

But I cannot help feeling that there is a sometimes a good dose of jealousy involved.  That jealousy may be simple, no-nonsense jealousy of success and fame and royalties and media attention.  If it exists, it would be entirely understandable.  But a scientist’s jealousy may also derive from an insecurity about their own inability to communicate well.  And it may on occasions derive from a certain immaturity in managing human relationships that is the understandable consequence of being holed up in a laboratory for a third of your life.

I have no evidence to support any of these speculations.  If you are a scientist, I invite to you to consider them in relation to your own experience.

Anyway, Olson believes fervently that the only real distinction between competent communicators and incompetent ones – and he means communicators with non-scientists – is that the competent ones simply believe in the power of communication.  So, if you are looking for a scientist who will communicate well with non-scientists, find someone who appreciates the importance of communication.

In my limited experience (in a large, world-class museum in London), scientists tend to fall into three groups.

 

The believers

As described above, they believe that communicating well is important, and so they tend to be good communicators – even if they are not brilliant presenters.

 

The non-believers

They decry the very idea of speaking to the great unwashed.  In my experience at the museum in London, I have met perhaps two such people.  But even they are probably just extreme versions of:

 

The potential converts

These scientists want to communicate with ordinary people but are nervous about doing so.  They may throw up smokescreens of hostility or cynicism, though they often do not.  They are keen to improve their skills but are very hesitant about having a go.  As a result, they may come across as distant, shy, withdrawn, extremely quiet.

So how do you cultivate ‘the voice of science’?

 

Liberate yourself from an addiction to the truth

Well, the first step – according to Olson – is to try to liberate yourself from an addiction to the truth.  Truth, for scientists as for all of us, stands uncomfortably somewhere between data, facts and certainty.  We have seen recently just how perilous is the scientist’s reputation with society when it comes to fudging the facts: Climategate, with all its distortions of what may or may not have happened in a senior scientist’s email account, demonstrates that any scientist found tampering with facts will be consigned to outer darkness.  But there is a risk also of embracing certainty about the facts, so that they provide evidence for some idea that we come to call – for want of a better word – the truth.  Addiction to the truth becomes an addiction to certainty.  (Maybe all science is a quest for certainty rather than truth.)

In a trailer for a forthcoming series about scientists on BBC TV, Jocelyn Bell – the discoverer of pulsars – says words to the effect that no scientist should ever say that anything is absolutely true.  In another interview, she is quoted directly to the same effect:

 

… scientists must not treat the public as stupid. We must help them to understand what science is saying and what science is not saying. To be in charge and to say that something is absolutely sure is a nonsense, and also giving doubts is giving information.

 

 

What is the difference between being untruthful and being inaccurate?  Somewhere in the space between those two words, perhaps, lies the voice of science that a general audience needs.

 

 

Find your voice

That voice will be individual. It will be yours alone.  It will be most convincing when it sounds like you, rather than a machine (with the deepest respect to Professor Hawking, who miraculously manages to make a mechanical voice sound entertaining and individual).  It will speak in the first person.  “There is nothing more powerful than the first-person narrative.” (Olson) 

It will use the active voice:  ‘I/We collected samples’ rather than ‘samples were collected’.

Your voice will also need to be bilingual.  Scientists have two audiences: other scientists, and the general public.  Olson summarizes these audiences in a table. (I’ve altered some of the language here.)

 

 

	Broad audience	Academic audience
Information channel Structure Mode of response Humour? Sincerity? Sex appeal? Prearoused for science?	Visual Narrative (story-based) Visceral Definitely helps All the time If at all possible No	Audio and visual Explanation/argument Cerebral Not necessary Treats with suspicion Potentially disastrous Yes

But perhaps the most important task for scientists – for any experts in any field – is to learn that truths are multiple, that human beings experience truth in different ways, and that the most important objective for any public presentation of science is to promote more responsible human activity.

Don't Be Such A Scientist #4: Be More Likeable

Be more likeable.

 

Somewhere in his book, Randy Olson muses on whether science naturally selects for antisocial traits in scientists, or merely serves to reinforce them.  It can seem that some scientists go into the profession so that they can spend all their time locked away in a laboratory, as far away from people as possible.

 

Communicating with others, as a result, can become something of a challenge.

 

Communicating with peers can be less problematic.  Scientists' addiction to truth, to information, and to accuracy, is so great, that they will cheerfully ignore personal characteristics that, to any other audience, would be an insuperable barrier. 

 

Olson describes a well respected scientist who dresses like a tramp, never shaves his beard and picks his nose continuously while presenting.  His conference audiences – pre-aroused and alert only to his ideas – simply accept him as he is. 

 

Members of the general public would probably never get past the initial disgust.

 

Because of their preference for information rather than people, scientists can sometimes display interpersonal behaviour that would leave the average moody adolescent gasping with horror.  Olson gives examples, ranging from his reading of science blogs – where scientists can use “the foulest, crudest, and most hate-filled language imaginable” with little fear of the consequences – to a party he filmed for Flock of Dodos, in which a game of gentlemanly poker among a group of his friends descends into a bitch session about intelligent design. Abuse in blogs and bitching at parties are examples of what Olson calls ‘rising above’.  So the first step in being more likeable is:

 

Don’t ‘rise above’.

 

The urge to correct errors can be almost overwhelming.  This is especially the case with scientists, because inaccuracy is probably the greatest sin any scientist can commit, and because the scientific method is built on the principle of negation. 

 

Olson: "Science is a process not of affirming ideas but of attempting to falsify ideas in the search for truth.  This is what a hypothesis is - an idea that can be tested and possibly falsified and rejected."

 

(Incidentally, that's why intelligent design is not science.  The idea that organisms are so complicated that they must have been intelligently designed doesn't count as a scientific hypothesis.  We could never prove that an eye, for example, could not have been designed.  The hypothesis cannot be disproved.)

 

The problem is that correcting someone, or criticizing something they have said or done, very easily becomes rising above them.

 

To ‘rise above’ is to condescend, talk down to, be arrogant, act superior. I would relate this behaviour to the idea of raising or lowering status. 

 

Status is always relative. Raising my status in relation to you will inevitably mean lowering your status.  Lowering my status inevitably raises yours.  (And vice versa in both cases: raising your status lowers mine, and lowering yours raises mine.)  So raising your status in relation to another person inevitably means lowering their status.

 

It’s very easy to do.  And sometimes very hard to resist.  I know.  I rose above someone only the other day:  a complete stranger sitting next to me in a cinema.  I knew I had done it because I could sense her anger at being put down. And I promptly hated myself for doing it.

 

The good news is that status has another key characteristic: it is always temporary.  We can change the status relationship.  So, if it goes wrong, we can work to put it right.

Unfortunately, it's easier to do status damage than to repair it.

 

So resist doing the damage if you possibly can. 

 

Nobody likes to be put down.  And because nobody likes being put down, we tend to find it unpleasant to watch another person being put down. An audience is highly sensitive to insulting behaviour; one moment of it may alienate them permanently.

 

Do nothing to rise above the other person in an interview or a disagreement. 

 

How can we stop ourselves from rising above?  Well, before we open our mouths to speak, we could:

 

Listen.

The ability to listen is the central element to improv acting. And it is often remarked as one of the most important problems facing scientists in conversation.  They simply do not pick up on what the other person is saying and respond to it.  (Their intellects are far too busy dealing with all the stuff they know and want to say.)

 

How to listen better?

• Pay attention to the other person.  Look at them. Stop thinking your own thoughts.
• Treat the other person as an equal.
• Cultivate ease.  Relax and try to get the other person to relax.
• Encourage the other person to say what they want to say.
• Ask questions.
• Ration information.
  
• Give positive feedback.

If you do only a few of these things when being interviewed or asked a question by a member of the public, you will be able to engage in the conversation more effectively.

 

Avoid both ends of the spectrum.

Olson suggests that two particular qualities tend to militate against likeability: sloppiness and cynicism. Both tendencies that experts are vulnerable to.

Science, like any other endeavour, is a mix of creativity and discipline.  Intuition and rationality. Idea generation and critical thinking. These two qualities lie on a spectrum. At either end, says Olson, lies darkness.

At the creativity end of the spectrum lies the darkness of sloppiness, incoherence and ineptitude.  At this end of the spectrum lives the absent-minded professor.  His office looks like this.

His presentation slides look like this.

It's funny for a while.  But when he tries to communicate, he becomes sad, depressing and dysfunctional.

At the other end of the spectrum lives the nay-sayer.  Critical thinking becomes cynicism, the state of mind that finds fault with everything and sees the potential in nothing.  This force of negativity, says Olson, is the handicap that dogs the world of science when it comes to mass communication.

The trick is to find a place that sits more or less comfortably between these two extremes.  We do enjoy absent-mindedness; we can find bitchy criticism amusing. But both are dangerous, and we should avoid projecting either of them too much.

 

And what else?

Well, likablility is of course subjective.  But Olson suggests that it "is inextricably linked to ... humour, emotion, passion."

To a great extent, your passion for your subject will do a lot to make you likeable. Fun helps.  If you can create a sense of fun, people will certainly like you.  (What's the difference between fun and humour? Discuss.) 

 

 

Work at being more likeable.

Liking someone probably does more to influence how we respond to them than anything else.  If we like someone, we believe what they say.  We trust them.  We buy from them.  We vote for them.

 

And the main reason is that, if we like someone, we feel that they are like us.  So we accept them into our ‘mental tribe’.  And then, whatever they say or do, we are more likely to accept.

 

(Liking is one of Robert Cialdini's six patterns of influence. You can find out more here.  Cialdini's own site is here.)

 

I think that scientists sometimes feel an instinctive desire to be unlikeable.  Perhaps being unlikeable is a kind of protection from the stupidities of mere human beings.  You may have to work at trying to be likeable.  But it’s worth it.

 

Some notes on status and rapport

Status is a measure of where we are in the ‘pecking order’ in any social situation.

Status can be low or high.  Nothing else. 

Status is therefore assessed on a simple sliding scale: low status through to high status. 

Status has three key characteristics.

1.      Our status is entirely social.  Our status does not exist except in relation to other people.  It has nothing directly to do with wealth, social class or authority – although all three can, of course, affect our status in a social situation.  But a person could pretend to have wealth, a classy background, a good job or a position of authority and achieve instant high status, if their pretence is good enough. 

2.     Status is always relative.  We measure our status in comparison to the other person or people in a group.  It is never absolute.  Whatever we do to alter our status will affect the status of the other person or people.  And whatever we do to alter their status will alter our status in their eyes.

3.     As a result, our status is always temporary.  Our status can change over time, within the same group; and we can have a different status with different people. Status exists in the moment; it can shift in a second. 

Because of these three characteristics, our status is always at risk.  And thus, status carries a powerful emotional charge. 

Our main goal in managing the status of any interaction is to become secure. The success of any social interaction depends – at least initially – on how comfortable we are with the status relationship.  We need to know ‘where we stand’ in relation to the other person; clear knowledge of the status relationship gives us security.

If our status relationship is uncertain, or liable to alter without warning, we become emotionally aroused: on our guard, wary – perhaps frightened.  All our attention will focus on protecting ourselves.

Because status is so closely related to a basic sense of security, we are highly sensitive to our status in an interaction.  We develop a super-sophisticated
awareness of all the signals that indicate our status relationship to the other person: posture, positioning, gesture, vocal inflections, eye movements, the way we use language and so on.

Above all, we feel an urgent need to clarify our status in an interaction.  We feel intensely uncomfortable if our status relationship is uncertain, and will do almost anything to make it more unambiguous.

In fact, we are probably more concerned to be clear about our status in a given situation than to protect it.

We can seek to alter our status in two ways.

We can seek to alter our status in relation to the other person.

We can seek to alter their status in relation to us.

 

And we can alter our status only by raising or lowering it.

So there are essentially four ways to alter status in a social interaction.  They come in pairs.

 

·        We can raise our status.       In other words:      We can lower the

other person’s status.

 

·        We can lower our status.     In other words:      We can raise the other

                                                                                                person’s status.

 

 

We use a host of different means to alter the status relationship between ourselves and others.  We use status symbols, for example: objects that signal our status in relation to others, either high or low.  A businessman may seek to
display his high status by driving a Porsche; an adolescent may seek to display their low status aggressively in relation to their elders by being scruffy.

And we engage in different kinds of status behaviour.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

	Lowering our status   Raising their status	Raising our status   Lowering their status
Verbal: Words Language, the use of phrases and sentences	Putting self down Apologising Justifications Dismissing own needs Beating around the bush, rambling. Complaining. Say nothing.	Putting other people down Over-emphasising own need Boasting Threats Ordering others Blaming others
Verbal: Tone	Whining Sing-song Overly pleasant	Sarcastic Can be monotone Hard
Verbal: Pitch	Overly quiet Tails away at the end of sentence	Usually loud Strong emphasis on particular words Shouting
Verbal: Pace	Can be too slow or too fast (if nervous) Hesitant Sense of breathlessness	Usually quite fast Impatient Abrupt
Non-Verbal: Facial expression	Nervous smiles Nervous 'twitches' Smiling when not appropriate	Jaw and chin jutting forward Sarcastic smile Angry expression Raising eyebrows in disbelief/disgust
Non-Verbal: Eye Contact	Looking down avoiding eye contact Erratic eye movements	Excessive eye contact Staring, which is intimidating
Non-Verbal: Body language	Head looking down Hunched shoulders Frequent 'twitchiness' Erratic or rapid movements, or very few movements Protective postures such as arms folded over chest Sitting/standing sideways rather than face-to-face`	'Puffed up' especially in the chest/front of body Clenched fists 'Strutting' Invades other people's personal space Pointing and other gestures May grab/touch others' belongings without permission

 

Levelling status

 

Levelling status is the process of adjusting our status so that we feel we are equals with the other person.  Levelling may happen unconsciously, and it can also occur as a result of conscious behavioural negotiation: we try different behaviours on each other, carefully observing our responses, and adjusting our behaviour until we feel that we have a status relationship we are comfortable with.

 

	Levelling status
Verbal: Words (words used, comments & the like)	Statements with "I…". Direct, clear and brief Clearly stating own opinions without justifying or apologising Expressing emotion Solution-focussed Looking for win:win Respectful of others Criticising behaviour not self worth
Verbal: Tone	Warm Objective Varied
Verbal: Pitch	Not overly loud/quiet Underlying calmness
Verbal: Pace	Even paced Steady Enthusiastic
Non-Verbal: Facial expression	Facial expression reveals real emotion: happy when appropriate, angry when appropriate
Non-Verbal: Eye Contact	Direct eye contact, but not invasive
Non-Verbal: Body language	Open posture Relaxed Flowing and co-ordinated Aware of others' personal boundaries and space Aware of others' body language and responding to it

Creating rapport

Rapport is the result of levelling status.

People who have gained rapport will tend to mirror each other’s behaviour.

Effective communication depends critically on establishing rapport.  The function of rapport is to lower the emotional arousal generated by a new encounter. 

Rapport emerges naturally between people when they are at ease with each other and are genuinely interested in what they have to say. 

It follows that, to create that ease and interest, it helps to be able to build rapport consciously.  To engage in rapport, try out the techniques of levelling behaviour.  You could also try this simple exercise at any social occasion.

Creating rapport: the conversational gambit

1.        Copy the other person’s body language.

2.       Make no more than two statements before you ask a question.

3.       Ask three questions – but no more till you have done the next two things.

4.       Find something from what you have just learnt to pay a subtle and relevant compliment about.

5.       Find something in what you have found out to agree with.

6.       Repeat steps 1-5 until the conversation takes on a life of its own.

Don't Be Such A Scientist #3: Tell stories

Storytelling extends the 'arouse and fulfil' principle explored in the last posting. 

Randy Olson: "With good storytelling you end up both arousing and fulfilling at the same time, which allows you to sustain interest over much larger amounts of material."

Olson suggests that successful stories rely on two elements:

• the structure of the story (objectively analysable); and
• the characters in the story (more subjective, but also deeper, more memorable).

Although character is powerful and memorable, the true magic of a story is in its structure.

So, here are three ideas for transforming your material into a story.

1. Explore the structure.
2. Find the myth.
3. Focus on specifics.

 

1.  Explore the structure.

The core of a good story is the source of tension or conflict.  Every story follows the same basic dynamic structure (it’s a structure because it has a shape; it’s dynamic because that shape can alter to adapt to different circumstances).

1. Set up the situation.
   
2. Create a problem within the situation: something that complicates the situation interestingly – it creates tension or the potential for conflict.
   
3. Explore ways of releasing the tension/resolving the conflict/removing or solving the problem.  Make success uncertain.
4. Present the solution to release the tension, resolve the conflict and solve the problem.

I use the old Roman motto, SPQR, as a mnemonic for this structure.

1. Situation
2. Problem
3. Question
4. Response or Resolution

This structure is also known as Freytag's Triangle.

 

 

And you can find out more (including who Freytag was)  hereor here.

A scientific example of this structure might go like this:

1. Situation: set up the subject.
2. Problem: give the situation a twist.
3. Question: explore ways to untwist it and reveal a possible solution.
4. Response: weave it all together to show that the solution works.

Olson's own example goes like this.

"[Situation]I study a starfish on the California coast: [Problem]the only species that spawns in the dead of winter.  [Question]I thought it might be due to predators of the eggs being less common at that time of year, then |I thought it was due to the best timing for the spring algae bloom, but now it looks like [Response] it probably has something to do with a seasonal migration of the starfish, which is what I now study - the way that spawning season might be related to adult movements of starfish."

 

2.  Find the myth

The most effective stories are mythic.  They simplify action into a structure that resonates with the audience because it touches something deeply shared within us.  Part of the skill in telling scientific stories is finding some core structure that resonates with the audience.

Olson: "Audiences have a set number of stories that they like to hear and that they want storytellers to tell.  If you can lock onto one of those set stories, all of a sudden everyone can really start to have fun."

According to Christopher Booker, there are Seven Basic Plots:

• overcoming the monster;
• rags to riches;
• the quest;
• voyage and return;
• comedy;
• tragedy; and
• rebirth.

Maybe.  I don't know Booker's book, but I'll happily start with those seven.  Find out more about the seven plots here.

Try turning the material into one of those plots and see what happens.

 

Focus on specifics

The power of good storytelling rests in the specifics. Everything you say should be tied to specific, concrete instances.  Use concrete nouns and good, simple, strong, vivid verbs.

No generalizations, no nominalizations, no abstractions. (No words ending in -ion!)

 

A digression

Tying storytelling back to arousing attention, I read a letter in New Scientist while I was writing this posting, which relates stories - and indeed all art - to the idea of seeking attention.  The letter refers to Brian Boyd's book, On the Origin of Stories.

 

From the Harvard University Press page about the book: "The need to hold an audience’s attention, Boyd underscores, is the fundamental problem facing all storytellers."

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Being accurate and being boring

The two great dangers of storytelling are becoming inaccurate, and becoming boring.  To a scientist, nothing is worse than inaccuracy. The problem is that too much accuracy becomes boring.  And to an audience, nothing is worse than boredom.

So every act of scientific storytelling has to balance the conflicting imperatives of being accurate and interesting. Ideally, of course, your story will be both. But being accurate doesn't have to mean being exhaustively and exhaustingly comprehensive; and being interesting doesn't have to mean 'dumbing down' or becoming simplistic.

'Dumbing down' means watering down or removing information on the assumption that your audience is too stupid to understand it. It's closely related to the arch-sin of 'rising above', which means condescending to the audience and results from the same assumption. (I actually saw a scientist at a recent public presentation put up a slide and say: "Now, you're not going to understand this.")  We'll look at 'rising above' in more detail in the next posting.

'Being concise', in contrast, means conveying your information in the fewest possible steps or elements, on the assumption that less detail will result in a thing of elegance and beauty.

Olson:  "It is a basic conversational skill to be able to listen while talking so you can recognize when you're boring your audience. A lot of intellectuals, once again preconditioned for too many years of lecturing to prearoused students, have lost this ability to self-edit."

PS Olson mentions in his storytelling chapter an interesting paper by Peter Medawar called 'Is the scientific paper a fraud?'  It relates only tangentially to Olson's theme in the chapter, but Medawar's thesis is entertaining and provocative.  Medawar: "The scientific paper in its orthodox form does embody a totally mistaken conception, even a travesty, of the nature of scientific thought."

Don't Be Such A Scientist #2: Be more imaginative

Be more imaginative.

Randy Olson suggests that scientists tend to harbour three unhelpful dreams about communicating with a non-scientific audience.

 

Dream #1: Just say it.

Communicating with a mass audience is as easy as “blurting out what you have to say”.  Put together a message; say it; and the audience will immediately get it.

Maybe this dream derives from the myth that all information is objective.  No need to worry about how the communicator encodes it, or how an audience decodes it.

In fact, says Olson, “there is a spectrum for any given piece of information, stretching from the boringly blunt to the incomprehensibly elusive.”

To wake from this dream, he says, find a way to present information that is “intriguing and familiar.”

 

Dream #2: Just argue louder. 

If they don’t get it the first time, just up the volume. Repeat and repeat.  Go for the jugular.

But, says Olson, “there is no jugular to go for.  If there were, someone would have managed to sever it long ago.”

To wake from this dream, he says, think about the different ways in which you can engage your audience other than explaining or arguing.  Where is the appeal to the heart, the gut and – the naughty bits?

 

Dream #3: Information will make change happen. 

The facts speak for themselves.  Once people know the facts, they will change their behaviour. 

But, says Olson, people may not see the facts.  We all suffer from information overload; every fact needs PR to help it get seen.

To wake from this dream, says  Olson, we need to find a way of selling an idea.

 

All very good stuff. 

What do these three dreams have in common?  A blind faith in information. All three dreams ignore the key to any act of communication: what happens between people when we communicate.

In particular, the dreams ignore the need to imagine how other people view information of different kinds.

Information is never objective. (This is a profound heresy for some scientists.)

Information is the shape of our thinking.  We view reality through mental models: representations of reality that we use to understand it.  If a piece of information fails to fit into one of our mental models, we will reject it – or simply fail to see it.

(More on mental models here and here.  The phrase became particularly popular through the work of Peter Senge: take a look here for more.)

 

 

 

Many of our mental models operate on the level of intuition, which Jung called ‘perception using the unconscious’.  

 

 

 

We accept as facts mainly what our intuition tells us to accept. 

It’s intuitive that the earth is flat.

It’s intuitive to many people that the Apollo moon landings must have been faked.

It’s intuitive to some that the human eye is too complex an organ to have evolved incrementally.  (This is the ‘irreducible complexity’ hypothesis.)

So, if you want to communicate some information or an idea, you have to consider the mental models that your audience will be using to understand it.

One of the most powerful of Olson’s principles appears at this point: he calls it:

 

Arouse and fulfil

 

We notice only what we notice.  So the first thing to do is get your audience to take notice.

First, arouse attention. 

What attracts our attention?  At the most basic level, gestures attract our attention. A gesture is a single, isolated, unusual or surprising movement.  It might be physical – like pointing; vocal – like suddenly shouting; or verbal – like uttering a proverb or breaking into rhyming verse.

There is probably a good evolutionary reason for being interested in gestures: whatever is surprising and sudden is probably dangerous. (‘Dangerous’ here could mean ‘uncertain, incomplete, unfinished’ as well as ‘threatening, unpleasant, risky’.) 

Many animals gesture to each other, physically and vocally.  But humans are the only animals to gesture to each other about something else.  It’s called ‘declarative pointing’: arousing someone’s interest in something external to either of us because it is of common interest.

Attracting your audience’s attention means doing something like declarative pointing.  ‘Look at this!  This is interesting!’

Some ways of doing that, all based on the idea of making a gesture:

 

·         Tease. 

·         Withhold information. 

·         Ask a question. 

·         Make an outrageous claim. 

·         Promise something down the line. 

·         Make an accusation. 

·         Raise the emotional temperature. 

·         Change direction.

 

Arousing attention creates expectations in the audience.  Your next task is to fulfil those expectations.

 

“When it comes to mass communication, it’s as simple as two things: arouse and fulfil.  You need to first arouse your audience and get them interested in what you have to say; then you need to fulfil their expectations.”

Tom Hollihan

 

Arouse and fulfil.  The two go together. 

An audience will feel terrible if you arouse them and then fail to fulfil.  (It’s what a bad Hollywood movie does: all arousal, no substantial payoff.)

But audiences will also feel uncomfortable if you fulfil without arousing.  And that is what many scientists do (and academics, and experts of different kinds).  They cut straight to the fulfilment: facts and details, details and facts.  No arousal; no expectations in the audience’s mind.  Result: confusion; boredom; hostility.

We can play out the ‘arouse and fulfil’ principle in lots of different ways. For example:

 

Ask a question and seek to find an answer.

Set up a problem and try to solve it.

Present a contradiction and try to resolve it.

Make a promise and try to keep it.  (The more challenging the promise, the greater the expectations.)

Make a claim and promise to convince your audience by the end. (Again, the more outrageous the better.)

 

One of the important points, I think, about ‘arouse and fulfil’ is that you should arouse expectations about one thing at a time.  Think of it as a strictly linear process.  Don’t set up more than one quest at a time; and don’t let your audience lose sight of the goal.

Look at the way science documentaries on television seek to arouse the audience’s attention – and then re-arouse it.  The first few minutes of a film may set up a mystery, or a conundrum. 

Recent examples from the BBC series 'Horizon' include:

 

What on earth is wrong with gravity?

How long is a piece of string?

Is infinity a number?

Why do we sleep?

 

 

 

 

The success of the film as entertainment often depends on how tightly focused the question is.  The more specific the question, the more likely that you will arouse adn maintain attention.  And the more specific the question, the easier to maintain a single line from beginning to end of the film.

Maintaining attention is as important as capturing it at the start.  The documentary maker will often structure the material into a number of ‘movements’ or segments.  The connections between segments will often be signaled by lines in the script such as:

“… but what they found was completely surprising.”

“… and with one experiment, he changed the way we think for ever.”

“… and the consequences for this discovery were more extraordinary than anyone could have imagined.”

 

Using analogies and metaphors

Another approach to being more imaginative is to explain your information or idea in terms of something else.  What is the internal structure of a star like? Is a heart like a pump? Is the brain like a computer, or a computer like a brain?  The urge, when an explanation becomes sticky, to reach for a metaphor, is a key sign that we can only understand new information in terms of something already familiar. 

Scientists can sometimes feel embarrassed about using metaphors.  They may feel that a metaphor misrepresents what they are trying to explain. (Here’s an interesting article on that subject.)

 

So:

If a metaphor increases your audience’s understanding of something, is it not valuable?

Which is more important: being accurate, or arousing your audience’s interest?

Or, as Randy Olson puts it:

Which is worse: communicating inaccurately, or not communicating at all?

 

Don't Be Such A Scientist #1: Appeal to more than the head

Appeal to more than the head.

Olson: "When it comes to connecting with the entire audience, you have four bodily organs that are important: your head, your heart, your gut and your sex organs.  The object is to move the process down out of your head, into your heart with sincerity, into your gut with humour, and, ideally, if you're sexy enough, into your lower organs with sex appeal."

Into the heart with sincerity

How can you be more sincere? Surely trying to be more sincere is a contradiction in terms.

Of course. But concentrating on the information - rather than the audience - will seem insincere to any audience that is not pre-aroused.  They simply won't connect with you.  The material will get in the way. 

So the key to sincerity is to concentrate on talking with the audience - or the interviewer - rather than talking at them.

And that means giving up some control of the conversation.

A simple way to give up control in a presentation is to invite a question. In my current work with scientists, the most interesting parts of public presentations are usually the moments when people ask the scientist a question. I have never seen anyone ask a bad question. Every single question is a good one, from the young child asking what insects have got inside them to an informed enthusiast asking about the oxygen content of a marine micro-environment. Questions force the scientist to think on the spot - and improvise.

Olson recommends classes in improvisation as a way to help become less controlling.

Improv training develops our ability to contribute to a situation as it unfolds, rather than pinning it down.  Improvisation is based on what Olson calls 'affirmation and positivity': rather grand words meaning that, when we are improvising, we have to respect the other person and accept whatever happens as real.

 

You cannot prepare when you are improvising.  You have to listen, observe, and trust that something will come to you.

 

A fundamental rule of improvisation is that you must make your partner look good.  Anything you do that makes them look foolish will destroy the improvisation – and the audience’s goodwill towards you.

Look at this list of nine tips for media interviewees, offered by The Union of Concerned Scientists (this is quoted by Olson in the book, and I am quoting him here).

 

1.         Do your homework.  Before every interview, ask the reporter what the topic of the story is, where it will appear, and when and where the interview will take place.

2.         Interview when you are ready.  Even if the reporter is on a deadline, ask

            if you can talk in ten minutes so you can prepare your main messages

            and sound bites.

3.         Repeat, repeat, repeat. Unless you are on live radio or television, every interview is edited.  Take control of how you are edited by driving home your main points.

4.         If you stray off course, bridge back to your main message.

5.         End the interview on your terms.

6.         Never speak off the record.

7.         Never guess.

8.         Emphasize qualifications (meaning if you have to make a point that has

            limitations to it).

9.         Never get angry.

 

It's good advice. But every single one of these tips is based on the same idea: control the situation as much as possible.  And the whole point about an interview is that it is dynamic and impossible completely to control.  So following these tips slavishly means you risk coming out of the interview losing the audience’s goodwill.

 

Improv tells you that, in any conversation with a non-expert, you must:

 

·         respect the other person (interviewer or member of the audience); and

·         accept whatever happens in the conversation (or interview), and build on it.

 

Result: you may not get everything across that you want to get across; and you may not turn out to be 100% accurate in what you say. 

 

On the other hand:

 

The audience will like and respect you more.  They will believe that you are knowledgeable and relaxed in your expertise.  “I didn’t understand everything she said, but the fact that they seemed relaxed and worried/enthusiastic/passionate makes me think that maybe the issue is important.”

Into the gut with humour

Humour is a tricky tool to use.  What you find funny, I may not find at all humorous.  And I might just find it offensive. So let the humour arise from your subject matter. Some of the ways frogs reproduce are very funny - as well as being amazing.

Into the sex organs with - ?

Actually, Olson says very little about how to be a sexy scientist.  His main advice is to steer clear.

But let's say this.  It would be nice to be well groomed. Press your shirt; get a good haircut; clean your shoes.  A number of female scientists have mentioned to me how important they feel image is, especially when meeting young people.

Male scientists will often agree - but they usually need prompting.

Don't Be Such a Scientist: new thoughts on Randy Olson's work

Randy Olson is a man with a mission.  A professor of marine biology who fell in love with Hollywood, he has been making films since 1990.

Olson’s 1999 film,  Talking Science, is a straightforward and entertaining guide to delivering effective presentations at science conferences.  The material is helpful but not especially unusual - although the tips it offers will be useful to anyone who has to present to their peers at a specialist event.

 

The audience at a conference is what Olson describes as 'pre-aroused'.  They are ready for complicated information; they need little to entertain them; they will be suspicious if you try to be nice to them. 

Any other kind of audience is not 'pre-aroused'.  Visitors to a museum, viewers of a film of aTV interview, or readers of an article in a newspaper require a different approach. 

Olson became fascinated with the question why science was failing to win over the general public, especially when it came to big questions like health, genetic modification or climate change .  In his 2006 film Flock of Dodos, Olson asks why evolutionary biologists are losing the battle for the hearts and minds of Americans to the proponents of creationism or intelligent design.

Flock of Dodos turns out to be a staging post on Olson's journey to a manifesto for better science communication.  In 2009, Olson published Don’t Be Such A Scientist.  This book – which by his own admission could just as well be called Don’t Be Such An Expert – presents his five-part framework for improving the way scientists communicate with the public.  And his ideas will be valuable for specialists and professionals of all kinds - not just scientists.

Olson is now taking the journey one stage further.  He has set up a website, The Benshi, as what he calls 'a sort of sequel or addendum' to his book.  It's already proving valuable. (Go to the site to find out what a Benshi is.)

Olson's book offers a five-point programme of behavioural techniques. Some of them challenge the received wisdom of science communication, promoted by organisations such as the Union of Concerned Scientists. The book is discursive, anecdotal and entertaining.

I have been thinking about Olson's five strategies, and trying them out with scientists in one of the greatest museums in the world.  I like them.  I have begun to develop my own variation on them, which links Olson's ideas to my own and sometimes plays variations on them. So, with thanks to Randy for all his work and courage in confronting some elements of the scientific establishment, I offer my 'take' and some of my own thoughts.

Olson's approach revolves around five key instructions.

 

1.  Don't be so cerebral.

2.  Don't be so literal-minded.

3.  Don't be such a poor storyteller.

4.  Don't be so unlikeable.

5.  Be the voice of science.

 

I would love to make these headline instructions positive rather than negative.  How about these?

 

1.  Appeal to more than the head.

2.  Be more imaginative.

3.  Tell stories.

4.  Be more likeable.

5.  Develop your own voice.

 

 In future postings, I shall develop my thoughts on each of these ideas.