Communication Matters (Title Inspired by Mark's Book!)

Twenty early career geneticists, two days of intense workshop sessions and one problem; genetics is hard to communicate! Despite being based on supposedly simple core principles – base paring and the DNA > RNA > protein dogma – genetic research is remarkably difficult to communicate to the non-biologist. This central communication problem is what drew me to the Genetic Society communication workshop at Chicheley Hall from 23^rd-25^th of April.

Communication has been a recurring theme throughout my blogs. I wrote about the importance of communication with regard to policy back in November 2013; the need for clearly communicated, reproducible, bioinformatics methods in February; and most recently I discussed communicating science on a range of levels whilst presenting my undergraduate research at the Houses of Parliament. The bottom line is… If we scientists do not learn to communicate our work, it is essentially stuck in an academic vacuum, where it will remain for eternity. So … How do you explain what a transcriptome is? How do you make people care? And how do you persuade publishers and production companies to take on your scientific ideas? There is, of course, no easy answer but the workshop certainly gave us some good strategies to try.

Enthusiasm

Tim Radford (a freelance journalist who worked for The Guardian for 32 years, becoming letters, arts, literary and science editor, as well as winning the Association of British Science Writers award for science writer of the year four times) told us enthusiasm is the single most important factor.  Tim kindly enlightened us by explaining the Latin origin of the word enthusiasm – divine intoxication – and went on to demonstrate how important it is whilst giving us an inspirational evening talk. I certainly have enthusiasm in abundance, so at least I’m off to a good start, but what else do I need to be a good communicator?

Make them care

Another gem from Tim Radford - “nobody cares about science because it is an abstraction … and if it isn’t, then it is already part of our everyday lives and is no longer considered science.” Whilst I think Tim hit the nail on the head, I find it hard to believe. How can science be an abstraction when it is what underpins the global society as we know it? From modern medicine to the iphone 5, it’s all based on science. Okay, so nobody cares, but HOW do you MAKE them care? Clearly, to answer this question fully you would probably need some sort of psychology doctorate, but we mere mortals need somewhere to start. It is, unsurprisingly, no coincidence that good communication plays a major role in shaping the interests and motivations of others.

Storytelling

People love stories. If you can turn your science into a well-structured story, you might be able to make them care. Enrico Coen, president of the Genetic Society, talked us through the principles of storytelling; the premise, the problems and the resolutions. Putting these simple principles into practise was great fun, and it was brilliant to see the groups’ imaginations run wild.

Reaching different audiences

If you choose to communicate your research via scientific journal articles alone, you are effectively choosing to do science in silence. Funded primarily by tax-payers, it is our duty to reach beyond the confines of impenetrable journal articles and give back to our funders – the public. Television, newspapers, blogs, radio and podcasts are all ways to get our ideas “out-there”. We were fortunate enough to hear from material scientist Mark Miodownik, not only has he written an incredibly successful book “Stuff Matters”, he has also appeared on countless television programs and made his laboratory, The Institute of Making, into a centre piece of the Kings College London campus. Mark combined some pearls of wisdom with a hilarious workshop session on commissioning a television program to replace David Attenborough. The session made it clear to us that our science has the potential to be interesting, if we just pitch it right.

It got to about 4pm on Thursday afternoon, after a day and a half of intense sessions we were all starting to feel a little jaded. At this point Chris Smith and his team from The Naked Scientist informed us that at midday on the following day, Friday, each group would be live-recording a 15 minute podcast with a scientific theme which was accessible for a family audience…  Time to put our training into practise.

To our surprise, each group came up with an idea, devised 15 minutes of content including pre-recorded sections and integrated them in three fascinating podcasts, which were all successfully recorded in exactly 15 minutes. What an achievement! I think it’s fair to say we all succeeded in communicating genetics, especially during the podcasts. It is now time to take what we’ve learned, combine it with a dash of confidence and get our science out-there.

Thank you to Enrico Coen for organising the workshop and all the fantastic instructors and facilitators for a challenging, yet incredibly useful workshop.

Links for the podcasts will follow when available :-)