This week we read an article on how to (and why to) to create a message box: a distilled, headlined story of all your research that is interesting, intriguing, and relatively easy to understand. Quite the feat. The biggest outcome of the message box is a clear articulation of the "so what." And not only that, but different "so what"s that you can give to journalists, policy makers, NGO's, and even your neighbors. While I think that this is very important, I struggle with my own research to create these "so what"s and even a complete message box. My lack of completeness is surely due to not having a complete project or really any results from my study as of yet. I'm not sure what my research will reveal my message to be. Even then, I can still fill in the boxes and make up a message that I want to give the world. The problem comes when I wonder who really cares that frogs are declining. When I tell people that frogs are disappearing their reactions are usually, "Really? I didn't realize that. That's too bad." And that is where it ends. It is too bad that frogs are declining, but their loss doesn't mean anything.
So how can I make my frog project a bigger deal? Admittedly, frog declines is not my larger question. My large question is centered on land use and species persistence, and my species can answer questions pertaining to biodiversity loss as well as invasive success (supposing my results match my predictions). But even then, how many people really care that biodiversity is declining. It's too bad that the Amazon is being destroyed; it's too bad that the wetlands are being filled; it's too bad that agriculture and urbanization are destroying natural habitats and contributing to declines in biodiversity. But really, as long we have our cows, corn, and deer, does other life matter? I know that I am taking a severely pessimistic view of humanity, but I feel like these are the challenges I am faced with when trying to make people care about cricket frogs.
But nevertheless, here is a first attempt at a message box.
Issue: Biodiversity is declining due to human activities
Problem: Land use changes and habitat fragmentation put species persistence at risk; amphibians are declining worldwide and land use change is one of the leading causes.
So What: If habitat fragmentation causes species declines (and not just in frogs) then common, beloved, and economically important species may become rare.
Solutions: Land management
Benefits: Maintain biodiversity for future generations and all the benefits associated with biodiversity.
Monday, April 25, 2011
Monday, April 18, 2011
Journalistic Science
In perusing my amphibian book, the amphibian book which holds many answers, "Amphibian Declines: The Conservation Status of United States Species," I came across an article entitled: Of Men and Deformed Frogs: A Journalist's Lament, by William Souder. In it, Souder tells the story of deformed frogs from the discovery in Minnesota by middle school children, through the scientific debates, the discovery of nematode mediated deformity, and the continued debate. He also tells the story of how it happened in the media. Basically it was: "Deformed Frogs!", a few articles here and there about the mystery, and then, after the nematode discovery, "Mystery of Deformed Frogs Solved!" In the literature, the story is not over, but it is for the media. Why? One reason Souder gives is that results are not published immediately or continuously and thus are invisible to the public media eye. Because of this lag between publications, science is covered by journalists in a different way than politics and other topics. According to Souder, reporters and editors see science as a discontinuous story. Science is a boring process that occasionally produces news.
And really, this isn't wrong. A journalist would have to follow a scientist (or group of scientists) for many years before having what one might consider an exciting and news worthy story. Think about the recent earthquake/tsunami in Japan. There was hourly coverage, then daily coverage, and now we are at about weekly coverage. I'm sure the coverage will continue to slow down, but there is a continuous story. The same when elections come around. It's all the news can talk about because new things are always cropping up. Now I think about my project: population structure of cricket frogs in a fragmented landscape. Oooh, exciting I know. But the process and story is not news worthy week to week. These would be some headlines. "PCR Fails! project falls a few days behind," "PCR Failure due to Machine, not Researcher," "PCR Success, Fragment Analysis Fails! Project stalls," "Everything Works! 12 individuals added to data set after week of work,"
Perhaps, my little story is not worthy of new coverage. But surely, the issues of habitat fragmentation on species persistence is. In this case, new research is being published every week and a truly dedicated journalist could follow all the articles and come up with one very confusing, contradictory, and complex story to run for the rest of human civilization. Science has no end and this makes things hard for journalists when the story doesn't stop. But not only does the story not stop, the story the keeps changing, and when journalists rely on published data for their story, the story has huge gaps.
Is there anything we researchers can do (or should do) to make science more journalisticly friendly so that our stories continue in the popular media?
And really, this isn't wrong. A journalist would have to follow a scientist (or group of scientists) for many years before having what one might consider an exciting and news worthy story. Think about the recent earthquake/tsunami in Japan. There was hourly coverage, then daily coverage, and now we are at about weekly coverage. I'm sure the coverage will continue to slow down, but there is a continuous story. The same when elections come around. It's all the news can talk about because new things are always cropping up. Now I think about my project: population structure of cricket frogs in a fragmented landscape. Oooh, exciting I know. But the process and story is not news worthy week to week. These would be some headlines. "PCR Fails! project falls a few days behind," "PCR Failure due to Machine, not Researcher," "PCR Success, Fragment Analysis Fails! Project stalls," "Everything Works! 12 individuals added to data set after week of work,"
Perhaps, my little story is not worthy of new coverage. But surely, the issues of habitat fragmentation on species persistence is. In this case, new research is being published every week and a truly dedicated journalist could follow all the articles and come up with one very confusing, contradictory, and complex story to run for the rest of human civilization. Science has no end and this makes things hard for journalists when the story doesn't stop. But not only does the story not stop, the story the keeps changing, and when journalists rely on published data for their story, the story has huge gaps.
Is there anything we researchers can do (or should do) to make science more journalisticly friendly so that our stories continue in the popular media?
Monday, April 4, 2011
All the World's a Stage
This week in our Science Communication seminar, we explored the use of radio. In an article we read, Christopher Joyce (a correspondent for NPR) pointed out the challenges of radio which are not faced in print media. The main one being that the reporters have only one chance to tell the listeners something and the listeners only have one chance to hear that something. Radio is a fluid media in which you can cannot go back to a previous time - as you can with print where you just flip to the previous page as needed. With radio it is imperative that you capture your audience's attention early and hold it throughout the entire segment; you need to use colorful descriptions, animate with sounds, and not get bogged down in complex vocab and numbers (lest you loose your listener's attention and she misses some vital detail necessary for the story). Christopher Joyce points out the necessity of metaphor and analogy to help explain ideas and concepts.
In the radio segments I listened to from NPR, I found that the success to which scientific information is told varies widely. The first segment on stem cell research was fabulous. The scientist knew what he was talking about, was able to make the complexity easily understandable, his use of metaphor was appropriate, and I was really interested in what was being said. The second story was a short clip on estrogen-like chemicals which are leaked from plastics. I found this to be a purely straightforward release of information. I now know that all plastics leak chemicals and that we don't know what the human health effects are, but I'm glad it was only 3 minutes long. The last segment was on ice. I nearly turned this off a few minutes in - instead I let my attention wander to other things while I passively listened to an author and a physicist talk about ice. Neither held my attention. The author seemed clueless and the physicist tried using metaphor to explain the complexities of ice - but failed. I thought they were hard to imagine, especially since he changed tactics half way through.
In all this, I began to wonder how I would explain my research. How do you talk about population genetics, gene flow, and dispersal - and how these are affected by land use? These seem like pretty easy topics to me: as individuals move between different populations and mate in those populations you get a the flow of genetic material. And if a land use type impedes dispersal you will get less gene flow. Intuitive, right? But perhaps I can make it more visual - more exciting:
Maybe frog populations are like small towns - everyone knows everyone else and most have lived in the same place their entire lives. Dispersing individuals are like rebellious teenagers looking for more exciting places to live. Settling down in a new town and having children = gene flow. The mixing of populations is like the mixing of colors. If you have a bowl of red and a bowl of blue and a tiny bit of red enters the blue - you will get a very blue-purple. And if a little bit of blue enters red you will get a very reddish-purple. As you continue to mix, eventually you will have two identical purples - one population. I could liken land use to a mountain or desert or a flat plains. I'm trying to figure out whether crossing agriculture/urban/forest/grassland is like crossing a mountain range or walking across a prairie.
These obviously need a lot of work, but hopefully by the time I have enough prestige to give an interview on Science Friday, I will have perfected the skill of making up metaphors.
In the radio segments I listened to from NPR, I found that the success to which scientific information is told varies widely. The first segment on stem cell research was fabulous. The scientist knew what he was talking about, was able to make the complexity easily understandable, his use of metaphor was appropriate, and I was really interested in what was being said. The second story was a short clip on estrogen-like chemicals which are leaked from plastics. I found this to be a purely straightforward release of information. I now know that all plastics leak chemicals and that we don't know what the human health effects are, but I'm glad it was only 3 minutes long. The last segment was on ice. I nearly turned this off a few minutes in - instead I let my attention wander to other things while I passively listened to an author and a physicist talk about ice. Neither held my attention. The author seemed clueless and the physicist tried using metaphor to explain the complexities of ice - but failed. I thought they were hard to imagine, especially since he changed tactics half way through.
In all this, I began to wonder how I would explain my research. How do you talk about population genetics, gene flow, and dispersal - and how these are affected by land use? These seem like pretty easy topics to me: as individuals move between different populations and mate in those populations you get a the flow of genetic material. And if a land use type impedes dispersal you will get less gene flow. Intuitive, right? But perhaps I can make it more visual - more exciting:
Maybe frog populations are like small towns - everyone knows everyone else and most have lived in the same place their entire lives. Dispersing individuals are like rebellious teenagers looking for more exciting places to live. Settling down in a new town and having children = gene flow. The mixing of populations is like the mixing of colors. If you have a bowl of red and a bowl of blue and a tiny bit of red enters the blue - you will get a very blue-purple. And if a little bit of blue enters red you will get a very reddish-purple. As you continue to mix, eventually you will have two identical purples - one population. I could liken land use to a mountain or desert or a flat plains. I'm trying to figure out whether crossing agriculture/urban/forest/grassland is like crossing a mountain range or walking across a prairie.
These obviously need a lot of work, but hopefully by the time I have enough prestige to give an interview on Science Friday, I will have perfected the skill of making up metaphors.
Subscribe to:
Comments (Atom)