Hello. Today we're going to talk about something that I am really excited about. I teach about this a lot in my own classes and I think it's incredibly important for scientists to think about. We're going to, talk about what it's like to write as a scientist for the public - for audiences other than our, our technically-trained colleagues. There are three categories of science communication and a lot of overlap between them. for the most part science communication involves translating research to other audiences, to broader audiences. The real challenge for scientists is that we have to deal with uncertainty. Darn. [LAUGH] That is a very tricky thing, to learn how to communicate well, and I think a lot of us could, could think about the way that global climate change for example, is communicated. That's a, a shining example of how hard it is to communicate uncertainty Some scientists are involved policy advocacy here at Duke and the school that I am part of, the Nicholas School of Environment. We regularly have faculty testify before Congress, again translating their research in the service of a policy or advocating a particular policy. And finally, many scientists are involved in education efforts. And that can sometimes mean educating our own classes of students but often the general public as well. So I want to talk about Op/Eds first as one technique that sometimes scientists use to translate their work for the public, I teach Op/Eds in my class and you will be doing Op/Eds in this class Because it's a great practice. It's a great training for very concisely and propellingly discussing one point, making one argument in only 750 words or less. and, there's a real difference, it's really important to understand this and I'm sure we will, we will cover this elsewhere too. Op-eds are not letters to the editor, they're not rants. Instead they are educated opinions, using your expertise as a scientist, to, to make this argument, and that expertise that you have is actually part of your evidence. Interestingly, we don't use a whole lot of citations in Op/Eds, instead, but we can discuss studies by providing some type of citation information in the actual text. And there's some great examples of this, that I'm sure we'll be looking at. At Duke we have lots of faculty Writing op/eds almost everyday it seems and they are all gathered on a website here, called Duke Today. And this is a really, if you have time I would go look at it because you can see people from all different disciplines, not just the scientist writing Op/Eds in major newspapers and local newspapers. This is one key way scientists translate their work for the public. Another way, perhaps a more fun way, is through science blogging, and I don't know if it's just me, but it seems like almost every scientist I know has a blog or contributes to a blog. These are less formal, not, often not peer reviewed, like many of our other writing, although the comment section sometimes does serve as a, as a peer review mechanism, but the goal of a blog could be education. It could be promotion of your own work and ideas, or could be in the service of advocacy. So we use blogs, of course, in lots of different ways. [SOUND] what this has resulted in is a very crowded, science blogosphere. And so there are these meta-blogs, and the natureblognetwork is a great example of this. It sort of collects all sorts of information about blogs. Ranks blogs and gives you a sense if you're interested in a particular issue the top few blogs that you may want to look at. So, a very crowded space, but an exciting opportunity for scientists to to sort of practice the the translation of their research and their ideas for for their audiences, broader audiences. There are two blogs at the Nicholas School that showcase this translation very well. The Dean of our school, Bill Chameides has a blog, the Green Groc, where he talks about current science and current policy and gives his two cents. there's also a blog, that is That has been created by some Ph.D. students who are now teaching in social media called Southern Fried Science and I get a kick out of the title. Content's pretty fancy too. There are other places that we do research translation and we are seeing some really innovative collection of that translation happening. The Yale 360 dot site, I think it’s a great example of this, it’s a place where scientists can write about their work, they can write about other people’s work and they can also comment and reflect on policy or other sorts of issues related to, to their science. So these sort of communities that are, that are being created online for scientists and others to come together to, to discuss their work are very exciting places, places to visit. I have some resources here. I wanted to give you the websites of the blogs that I had mentioned. I also wanted to give you a link to my own class blog. I just had a class take a trip to Hawaii, and the students blogged from there about their experiences as restoration ecologists. And I this is a really great exercise. It was a translation of science to, to, for the public. So if you want to Read my students work you can check it out there. To find op-eds all you need to do is pick up a major news paper or scroll through a major newspapers website to finds op-eds and the Duke Today website if you want to see what our faculty is publishing is a good source of that. Finally, I just wanted to mention that scientists are almost always asked to translate their work and it might be in front of Congress, but it's also possible you will be doing at a community meeting or a cocktail party and, and the skill of doing that both through your speaking and through your writing is one that I am still working on and probably will be working on, my whole career. Thanks. Enjoy your day.
