Narratives in Science Communication

The Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, an eminent scientific journal, recently published a Supplement focused entirely on science communication. I was happy to see this arrive in my inbox from my mentor because not only do I want to work professionally as a science communicator, but I also want my fellow scientists to recognize the importance of this endeavor and focus on the presentation of our work to non-scientists. Frankly, I expect it will be easier to get a job if people give a damn. And my motivations for wanting to get into science communication are several, but among them is a desire to see the issue of talking about science taken seriously and worked on by scientists of all kinds.

(A note: The full articles are open access and available to all. So take a look!)

There are twelve articles in this Supplement and I have yet to churn through them all, but I want to present a summary and commentary of one in particular. I think it is representative of some of the accomplishments and limitations of this kind of scientific writing on science communication.

Titled “Using narratives and storytelling to communication science with nonexpert audiences,” this article by Michael Dahlstrom argues that, despite storytelling’s un-scientific nature, it is an effective form of communication that should be leveraged in our efforts to speak with non-scientists. Contrasting narrative with the “logical-scientific” form of communication common within scientific groups, the author notes how scientific communication aims to remain general and true across contexts, while narratives are inherently tied to a specific context for their meaning.

Drawing on social science research, Dahlstrom points to the primacy of narrative in the human brain. We think in narratives, we speak in narratives, we muse over the past and plan the future entirely in stories. An intrinsic property of human thinking is to prioritize narrative over the less-familiar scientific forms of thinking we have developed over the centuries. It’s presented as an evolutionary advantage for our social species. So, harnessing the power of narrative to drill into the psyche provides an advantage to anyone using the form, including scientists.

Dahlstrom goes on to take the media as an example: forced to compete for an audience’s attention, media naturally gravitates to the powerful narrative format that connects with people. Yet there are limitations—in column inches and in accuracy—to the ability of this kind of narrative journalism to capture scientific workings.

Finally, the article concludes by pondering ethical issues. Should scientists try to bring the public to the right answer, or engage them more on the process and be open for debates? Who decides when it is okay to lead people on in the name of the greater good? Should narratives be used at all, given their limitations in accuracy? Specifically, Dahlstrom questions whether non-scientists will respect the narrative form, given their expectation that we will be speaking in scientific terms.

Well, to answer that, I’d say take a look at Radiolab’s Twitter followers (153,000).  Of course people respond to narrative! This article is powerful in its direct take on the fallacy that narrative has no place in scientific communication, and its reliance on social science research to conclusively prove that point, and in its visibility for other scientists.

Ironically, because it is after all a scientific article, this contribution is itself an example of the blunt instrument that is scientific writing for communicating with an audience. A couple quotes that feel both clumsy and self-evident: “individual people generally act in a timespan that more closely matches the frequency of news publication.” Or, in reference to narratives: “Obvious examples include interpersonal conversation, entertainment television programs, and news profiles…” The fault is not with this article per se, but this article itself demonstrates some of the limitations of this format.

I am fascinated by some of the ethical issues raised. Using narratives to communicate science is a no-brainer to me. But how do we best use them? What about representativeness? Stories rely on the power of a single example to demonstrate something grander. But if that example is chosen poorly, then the audience arrives at the ‘wrong’ conclusion. Or, perhaps worse, if an unrepresentative example is chosen deliberately to lead an audience to the ‘right’ conclusion, then we contend with acting unethically and losing the trust of our audience.

Finally, the article raises some questions that cannot be succinctly answered. My favorite: What is the best way to communicating beyond the human scale? We are built to consider timescales of days, maybe years. Not billions of years. Not nanometers or lightyears, not the mass of the sun, or the movement of electrons, or the probabilistic nature of biology. Through careful deliberation we can consider all of these. But in narrative format, every metaphor feels inadequate and we are left with great challenges to communicate the real science performed every day in a way that is engaging, accurate, and relatable. 

I am glad to see this conversation going on at the highest levels. I hope other scientists are reading and listening. Maybe next time, we should tell them a story about it instead.

Audio File #2: In the Dust of this Planet

Radiolab is a breathtaking exploration of scientific and philosophical topics. Each season is tragically short, but it is always worth the wait for each new show. Jad Abumrad is a former composer and a MacArthur ‘Genius’ Fellow, Robert Krulwich, an award-winning and inventive science reporter.

One of the most recent episodes, unfortunately Krulwich-free, is slightly out of the norm. Unlike many shows that are wonder-filled takes on science, it’s a little darker. The conversation revolves around nihilism. Specifically, Jad’s brother-in-law’s surprising cultural hit, an academic book on the topic called In the Dust of this Planet. What should have been just a contribution to philosophical libraries was sampled by True Detective, fashion magazines, and a video by Jay-Z and Beyoncé for their tour. The show asks: Is this evidence that nihilism is taking a greater hold in our culture now than before?

As a summary of nihilism, they paraphrase Nietzsche who called it “the most difficult thought”: that nothing about existence matters. We aren’t here for a reason. Life is not here for a reason. The universe’s existence is inherently meaningless. The question then, if such morose thinking is overtaking popular culture, is what draws people to that difficult thought? And what makes it cool?

Nihilistic thinking may draw people today because of uncertainty and disorder in our culture. Unlike past fears of the Soviet Union and nuclear annihilation, today we’re afraid of less-tangible carbon emissions and GMOs. And as our progressive society continues to push for social change and empowerment, individual agency reigns supreme. You can decide to be anything, or anyone. Each person is wholly in charge of their own destiny. But with that agency comes responsibility for constructing meaning in a complicated world. What if we’re just not prepared for that responsibility? Nihilism offers us an out—meaning can’t be had, so it’s not ours to construct.

Jad eventually distills the cool factor down to, “It’s not so much 'I don’t give a shit'. It’s 'I’m not afraid.'” In the face of meaninglessness—and our own mortality—facing those thoughts without fear is what gives a gloss of cool. Or as Brooke Gladstone, in a cameo from WNYC’s other wonderful show On the Media, puts it, it’s being a “badass.”

But the show is not all doom-and-gloom. Nietzsche considered nihilism only a first step. That to go forward into nihilism, to accept it and then move past it, brings us to “a re-evaluation of values.” And in fact love is what may be on the other side. Love in the face of nihilism. Love despite nihilism. Maybe even love because of the meaninglessness.

And in one of the greatest summary statements you’ll find today, the philosopher Simon Critchler takes us out: “In a world where love has been reduced to a series of Tinder exchanges… If that’s the hell that you’re living in as a 25-year-old, yeah you’re going to read these mystics [walking into the desert and burning their flesh for love of Christ] and you’re gonna say, ‘I’ll have what she’s having.’” Passion, even flesh-burning passion, is preferable to superficial exchanges that pass for personal relationships.

I think nihilism may be on an upward trend today because of uncertainty about our future and the many challenges we face and our grappling with the immense responsibility of our own happiness. And Tinder. But maybe what comes on the other side for our culture is a keener sense of love. Love for ourselves. Love for others. If so, maybe it’s worth the trip through the wilderness.

Climate Change and Midwest Agriculture

This year, farmers will collect a record harvest of corn and soybeans in the United States, according to the USDA. This is good news for a world increasingly concerned about both a growing population and the agricultural challenges produced by advancing climate change. Predictions by the United Nations put global population at around nine billion by 2050, with the possibility of this being the eventual stable resting point of human population due to decreasing fertility rates around the world. Global food production needs to increase substantially—around 70% according to the FAO— by 2050 in order to feed more mouths and increasingly affluent populations seeking more animal products. As a major breadbasket of the world, the Midwestern U.S. will play a significant role in meeting these demands.

As the capstone to the Workshop on Climate Change and Agriculture in the Midwest hosted by the International Center for Advanced Renewable Energy and Sustainability at Washington University, Professor David Lobell of Stanford University presented on his research into the impacts of climate change on agricultural production in the Midwest. 

Dr. Lobell had two themes: First, respect the problem. Although rising CO₂ levels may improve photosynthetic efficiency to a degree, the global increase in temperature is a net drawback to productivity. Second, we can address the problem rationally. Knowing how crops will likely respond to these stresses can help scientists identify the traits that can help meet production requirements.

The most dramatic impact of temperature increases will be reduced relative humidity. As the air warms, it can hold more water. Yet without an increase in water vapor, the relative humidity will decrease significantly. For us humans, that will hopefully offset the effects of hotter summers; we curse humidity in the Midwestern August. However, plants are exceptionally susceptible to humidity, especially when flowering.

In a tie-in to my own research, pollen, which comes to a sort of equilibrium with its environment, is easily damaged if the air is too dry when the flower opens. As it happens now, corn typically flowers during the hottest weeks of the summer, leaving its pollen susceptible to decreasing humidity. Less water vapor in the air also means the plant will transpire much more, increasing the amount of water needed in the soil to keep the crop happy and productive.

How do we combat this inherent weakness? Perhaps plant biologists can identify traits, or contribute new genes, that make crops use water more efficiently and protect pollen from excessive desiccation. Intensive research is being done in these areas already.

One idea that Dr. Lobell put forward was new to me, but apparently not to some farmers in the Southern United States: double cropping. With the right climate, fields can be planted with wheat in the fall to harvest in the spring, with just enough time left over to harvest soybeans in the fall. Under these conditions, flowering occurs outside the hottest months, and yield can be protected from the extreme heat to an extent. In fact, as the climate warms, Midwestern states will acquire longer growing seasons that make this option available to more farmers. Although this strategy does not necessarily out-produce the incredibly abundant maize crop, it is an example of alternatives immediately available to farmers even without significant improvements in crop germplasm.

Other strategies for helping crops cope with increasing temperatures will likely involve infrastructure, such as how to provide plants with enough water without losing as much to the soil and evaporation. Smarter irrigation systems may help in this goal.

The bottom line from Dr. Lobell’s talk is that adapting already-productive areas like the United States Midwest to climate change will require multiple strategies, because the effects of a warming world are multiple. This will require the sustained efforts of plant scientists, engineers, and innovative farmers. I, for one, am hopeful about the future of agriculture. Us humans seem to do a decent job of getting ourselves out of a mess, even if it is at the last moment. Let’s hope that’s the case here.

Audio File #1: Urban Cultures

Audio stories captivate me. I know I am not alone, but radio is something I can totally geek out about. Hell, it's a cliché now to be obsessed with NPR. It is an old adage that while TV speaks to an audience, radio speaks to an individual. There is something innately personal about hearing another human speak in their voice into your ear, tellng you news from around the world, or stories from their experience in the world.

To honor the power of audio, I am beginning a series of short posts on favorite shows of mine. Up first for the holiday weekend: Urban Cultures, from To the Best of Our Knowledge.

To the Best of Our Knowledge (TTBOOK, as they abbreviate it) comes from Anne Strainchamps at Minnesota Public Radio. At first I was slow to warm to the sometimes-flowery take on different subjects; interviews seemed to lack a hard-hitting truth-seeking approach. But what I came to appreciae was the sheer sense of wonder that seems to drive the production staff of this show, and the breadth of topics they take on. It is not a news magazine show that seeks to tell all sides of a story evenly. Rather, the staff curates interviews with individuals really invested in their take on a subject. (Side note: Strainchamps is apparently the cousin of my boss, and not-infrequently covers plants; both of these things are awesome.)

Naturally I was drawn to the show because of its focus on cities and the human experience of urban life. An ongoing topic in the twenty-first century is the increasing urbanization of our world--the majority of humans live in cities now for the first time in history--and how that impacts our society. I, of course, feel that cities can augment our humanity and bring diverse groups closer together. But it is really in the developing world that the problems of urbanizing hundreds of millions of people over the coming decades will be decided.

The show starts with a melancholy look at Istanbul, once the seat of the Ottoman empire, now an enigmatic bridge between East and West. We move on to the power of cities and their progressive ideals, such as individual property rights, free enterprise, and representation, to reshape the world. Curiously, Russell Shorto proposes that the immigrant experience of New York as the entrance to America helped define American culture as those immigrants then moved inward and continued to take New York ideals with them.

Next we get a chance to consider how places can shape our experiences and memories, and the danger of building or inhabitating "blandscapes", generic stand-ins for authentic locales. Fittingly, the urban section ends with a focus on the cities of China, specifically Shanghai, and how the migrant experience there continues to shape Chinese culture.

One nice thing about TTBOOK is that the final minutes are reserved for different topics. A "dangerous idea" offered is to split America into several smaller countries to make government more nimble. I already worry about the cultural fragmentation enabled by the segregation of liberals and conservatives geographically, so I am left unconvinced. Our government seems to lumber in paralysis today, but I sincerely feel that our progress is strengthened through debate. To live in a homogeneous society driven by groupthink would be a sad state for our society indeed.

The show ends with NPR's Michele Noris recounting her own father's interaction with a police officer, and how the stories brought up by the events in Ferguson, Missouri over the last several weeks go back decades. Unfortunately, the circumstances in our society that lead to ongoing racial segregation and inequity will likely take decades more to address. The solace I find there is that I may be able to contribute to addressing them.

A nice hour of audio coming out of Minnesota this week. Savor it!

Training Scientists as Members of Society

The scientific enterprise is not composed solely of scientists. Science is a societal endeavor that requires researchers, administrators, journalists, policy makers, lawmakers, businesses, and voters. In the United States, most scientific research is supported through taxpayers by large public bodies like the National Institutes of Health and the National Science Foundation, making science a democratic institution. However, the model for training new scientists has neglected both economic and societal truths about how scientific labor should be distributed in the twenty-first century.

Most disciplines train a grossly inflated number of aspiring scientists that are unable to assume traditional research roles. Simultaneously, few graduate programs provide any substantial training in "alternative" (i.e. non-academic and non-research) careers, which the vast majority of their students will eventually pursue. By definition, this is an unsustainable path. Although a number of senior educators and scientists are calling, and have been calling, for changes to scientific training, there is a desperate need to follow through on these recommendations and face honestly the realities of science in our modern world. 

As you can see from the infographic above, the tenured-track faculty position, or your standard research professor, is a rare outcome from advanced scientific training. To pursue that position requires several years to obtain a Ph.D. and one or more postdoctoral training fellowships which may last two, four, or more years each. It is a time-consuming process and reflects a large investment by taxpayers in bright and motivated individuals, who are largely paid in one way or another by federal grants funded by taxes. Unfortunately for scientists pursuing this work, it is still largely a crapshoot that requires a great deal of luck to back up a decade or more of exceptional work. This is because most biology research is in a state of "hypercompetition" due to a glut of doctoral researchers relative to the finite amount of research dollars available to support them. This is by now a familiar tale, but one that remains unaddressed by institutional training guidelines and recruitment patterns. 

Yet this is not for lack of discourse. The most recent letter from the President of the American Society of Plant Biologists highlights the need for more diverse graduate training--while remarking that plant science may buck the trend and could be producing too few doctoral scientists--that is responsive to the economics of demand for scientific labor and trends in federal funding. Although plant biology may not suffer from the same unattenuated growth in graduate training that plagues most biomedical fields, that does not mean that our discipline is training adequately for industrial careers in agricultural sciences or the non-research careers that also support the scientific enterprise like science communication and policy. The President's letter echoes an ongoing conversation where educators discuss pessimistic attitudes by students about research careers and call for more diverse training and a reduction in class size. 

Most calls for change reflect a concern about supply and demand mismatch for scientific labor. Few, however, reflect on the broader question of what makes the scientific enterprise successful. Although basic research performed in academic settings is the foundation of scientific progress, in a vacuum it is nearly worthless. Scientists are largely motivated by intense curiosity and the desire to better understand how nature works. Biologists in particular, myself included, marvel at the apparent miracle of life and how cells and organisms respond so well to their environment and construct the diversity we see in our living world. But in order to support this kind of basic research and reap societal benefits, researchers must function within a web connected to the rest of society. 

Peer-reviewed journals allow scientists to communicate with one another and require publishers and editors. Science writers and journalists disseminate new findings to a general public that is fascinated by and benefits from this work. Entrepreneurs and large companies and engineers translate basic findings about nature into new medical devices, new crops, and new treatments, while stimulating the economy. Policy analysts and lawmakers (ideally) take advantage of our improving understanding about our world to align national policy with truth as we best understand it, in order to protect the environment and human health. Science with a capital 'S' is all of these things. What many educators fail to give sufficient attention to when discussing graduate training reform is that scientists play roles in each of these fields and more. Without trained scientists in diverse careers, our science writing would be limited, our businesses lost, our lawmakers blind to how the world functions. 

Our motivation to improve graduate training should come not only from disparities between the supply and demand of labor, but should also reflect an appreciation of how Science relies on society to function well. Training scientists with the skills to enter these fields and support science from outside the lab will help ensure that the scientific enterprise is not weakened by acting as separate from the world, but rather remains strengthened by its place in society.

Reflections on Ferguson

It’s been a hell of a week.

Last Saturday, a young man named Michael Brown was shot and killed by a police officer in the inner-ring suburb of Ferguson. Since then, the world’s eye has turned on our city. They have seen police in militarized gear, violent protests, and looting. They have seen Al Sharpton and Jesse Jackson. They have seen headlines like “Baghdad USA”. Soon the world’s judgmental eye will turn toward the next catastrophe. I promise you, we will still be here. This is our home.

Although I am protected, both by privilege and geography, from the nexus of events happening in Ferguson, I have been deeply affected. I am a transplant to this city, but if you look over to the sidebar you will see I am a passionate St. Louisan. No zealot like the convert, I guess. I was saddened by the death of Michael Brown and I was shocked by the outbursts of violence and police crackdown. I have been glued to my news stream every night, hoping for peace as the sun goes down. I know one reporter who has sacrificed sleep and risked harm to cover these events and I have hoped for her safety. I have felt tremendously useless, randomly breaking down into frustrated tears.

First let us first not forget that the primary issue is the loss of a young man’s life. Michael was deprived of due process and in seconds a man six years my junior ceased to exist and opened a hole in his family’s hearts. Empathy is not something to be given selectively, and I also feel for the officer and his family as they have fled their home.

The broader picture asks what disparities led these men, both products of their circumstances as we all are, into a tragically fatal interaction? Why are black men stopped disproportionately in American cities? What are the consequences of discrepancies between the governed and their civic leaders? Why does economic disparity and disparity of opportunity so closely follow racial lines decades after most formally racist policies fell? And, most importantly, what can we do to address the inequities faced by racial minorities in this country? These questions have only partial answers and partial solutions right now.

While the world has seen the violence and the police response, I have seen many more things. I have gathered with neighbors from Tower Grove East in support of Ferguson’s community and listened as my neighbor described her son’s fear of riding a bike on our streets and interacting with police. I have joined with my city at the Arch—the symbol of St. Louis that never ceases to bring a smile to my face—to support peace. Lighting a candle for Ferguson that evening led me to a conversation with my neighbor who was doing the same. I listened to her thoughts on the events, and we discussed race in our city and the topic turned toward the divine and how it might be found in all of us. I have had endless, breathless conversations with colleagues and friends trying to wrap our heads around this tragedy, the media’s portrayal of our city, and what race means in the twenty-first century Midwest. These acts do not bring justice to a family deprived of a son. But as our city threatens to tear itself apart as the world watches, I cannot help but hope these small acts help suture some of those wounds, however slowly.

This is far from over. I expect that soon the media—which occasionally outnumbers protestors in Ferguson—will largely disperse, leaving our local reporters to continue coverage. Calm has not yet settled over Ferguson at night and police tactics change daily to cope with unrest in the midst of peaceful, passionate demonstrations. Due process will be had slowly for Michael’s family as investigations churn on. Real change, if it is to be had at all, will only stem from committed action over months and years to grapple with racial and socioeconomic divides in our city and across America.

I am not a religious man. Sometimes I wish I were. Instead of prayers I offer my thoughts and hopes to Michael’s family, to the police charged with defending a community, to Ferguson, and to my city, St. Louis. May we find peace.