In this episode, we talk to the ASA's very own Keeta Jones, the Education and Outreach Coordinator, about science communication: everything from common mistakes scientists make when talking to others about their research, to how to communicate to different types of audiences, to a bevy of tips and tricks you can use when sharing your work with others-- whether it's your grandmother at Thanksgiving, a government official looking to inform new policies, or even colleagues in adjacent fields.
Read all about science communication with the articles in this AT Collection!
Other resources mentioned in this episode:
Read more from Acoustics Today.
Learn more about Acoustical Society of America Publications.
Intro/Outro Music Credit: Min 2019 by minwbu from Pixabay. https://pixabay.com/?utm_source=link-attribution&utm_medium=referral&utm_campaign=music&utm_content=1022
In this episode, we talk to the ASA's very own Keeta Jones, the Education and Outreach Coordinator, about science communication: everything from common mistakes scientists make when talking to others about their research, to how to communicate to different types of audiences, to a bevy of tips and tricks you can use when sharing your work with others-- whether it's your grandmother at Thanksgiving, a government official looking to inform new policies, or even colleagues in adjacent fields.
Read all about science communication with the articles in this AT Collection!
Other resources mentioned in this episode:
Read more from Acoustics Today.
Learn more about Acoustical Society of America Publications.
Intro/Outro Music Credit: Min 2019 by minwbu from Pixabay. https://pixabay.com/?utm_source=link-attribution&utm_medium=referral&utm_campaign=music&utm_content=1022
Kat Setzer 00:06
Welcome to Across Acoustics, the official podcast of the Acoustical Society of America's publications office. On this podcast, we will highlight research from our four publications. I'm your host, Kat Setzer, editorial associate for the ASA.
Today we're taking a slightly different focus and we're going to talk about how we talk about science. Joining me as Keeta Jones, the Education Outreach Coordinator for the ASA. She has written articles for Acoustics Today about science communication and curated the Acoustics Today Collection about science communication, which is a bunch of articles. I wanted to use this episode to talk to her about how acousticians can best talk about their research to others, whether it's a colleague, a classroom of students, a taxi driver, or on the way to the conference, or even a congress person or government official. Thank you so much for taking the time to speak with me today, Keeta. How are you?
Keeta Jones 00:57
I'm doing really good. Thanks for having me.
Kat Setzer 01:01
Yeah, thanks for being here. So first, tell us a little bit about your research background.
Keeta Jones 01:05
Yeah, I attended Ohio State University as a linguistics PhD student. And I studied sociophonetics, because I was interested in how the way people talked could influence, you know, the way other people make judgments about their age, their education, their race, and really anything. And so I ended up doing a couple of studies about social judgments that were made in real time, and about speech accommodation in children. But the reason all of this matters for this podcast episode is because those studies were done at the Center of Science and Industry, also known as COSI, which is a hands on science museum. And that's how I got into informal science education and science communication.
Kat Setzer 01:51
Cool. So how di you end up with your position at the ASA?
Keeta Jones 01:55
Yeah, it was kind of a magical moment while I was collecting data at COSI and working on my PhD, I was learning more about, and even getting a chance to do a good amount of, informal science education, which is, you know, talking to museum goers about the science that I was doing. And I just realized that going into academia probably wasn't what I ultimately wanted to do. And what I really liked doing was science communication. So I took a step and I talked to my advisor about what kind of careers were out there in science communication. And she was great. She encouraged me to, you know, just look what was out there, do some job hunts, just to kind of get a feel of the land. And somewhat serendipitously, you might say, ASA, was looking for an education and outreach coordinator at that exact time. And the job call had a lot of the keywords that I was searching for, you know, things like science communication, and science education, and lots of education initiatives. And so I figured I would apply, and I guess the rest is history.
Kat Setzer 03:08
Yeah, it sounds like it was meant to be, you know, and we're lucky to have you. So why is being able to communicate science important?
Keeta Jones 03:16
And yeah, that's the question. So to me, the reason is really obvious. It's so people can learn, and that we can make the world a better place based on what we learn. But that's basically impossible, or at the very least really difficult, if nobody understands the science that's motivating and informing those kinds of changes. And so science communication is what ensures that knowledge doesn't get, you know, stuck in an academic silo. You can think of it this way: a researcher publishes in JASA which is great, but maybe that person is in a really niche field, and only a couple other colleagues study that topic or even a similar topic. And so this small group of people talk about this published research. Maybe they talk about it for several years, but no one outside of this small group of people is even aware of the research. What if that study had results that could have informed another field? What if that research could have informed research in an unrelated field and help them analyze the results with more nuance or more clarity? Talking to your scientific peers is incredibly important. But talking beyond your peers can actually help research have a bigger impact. A publication will certainly reach your colleagues, but will it help inform policy, if your representative doesn't even know what the field of acoustics is and that this type of research is being done? So that's why I think science communication is really important.
Kat Setzer 05:04
I totally agree with you. So what are the different scenarios where a researcher may need to talk about their science? And how does their communication differ in those different settings?
Keeta Jones 05:14
Great question. I want to preface this a little bit. So the phrase "science communicatio" or "scicom," usually is only used when we're talking about the general public, as in scientists or researchers talking to the public, or the ones doing science communication. I would actually argue that science communication also exists within scientific communities. I say this because scientists and researchers do a lot of information sharing and exchanging peer to peer. And they get a decent amount of training to do this type of information sharing, and many of them do it well. But while scientists may be good at communicating their science, you know, in a journal article, or at a conference, they may not be as good at communicating with a more general audience in the way that we think of science communication. So even if you can communicate research to your peers, which is one type of science communication in one scenario, it doesn't mean you can explain it to your grandma, or journalist or a fifth grader. And that's because those different settings, the scenarios that you mentioned, require different science communication strategies. For example, like a peer-reviewed article usually starts with context, history, background information, motivation. And that's all great for people who are already familiar with the topic and in many cases have years of educational background. For a more general audience, it's usually better to start with, you know, the main takeaway message, since, one, that might be all they're interested in, and, two, they might not understand or care about the other stuff. And so science communication, and settings with a more general audience, is often the exact opposite of what type of science communication researchers are trained to do. So the scenarios can get a bit tricky.
Kat Setzer 07:21
Yeah, you don't want to bury your lede with somebody who's not familiar with the subject and not already invested in it.
Keeta Jones 07:27
Exactly.
Kat Setzer 07:28
So sort of segwaying from that, and you've touched on this before, many scientists will eventually need to talk to the media or even government officials with bigger goals for their communication. Do you have any recommendations for those situations?
Keeta Jones 07:39
Yeah. So it's really important to think about your audience. And so in this case, if you're talking to media representatives, journalists, the news, whoever that is, they might be interested in kind of the ephemeral nature of new fancy research, right, cutting edge, where, one, we might not necessarily know the wider implications, like it might be very nascent, or because it's, it might have immediate, well-known implications. And so if you're talking to somebody like that, you should kind of get in the mindset of where they're coming from. They're really interested in implications, right? Like, what/why is this new or different and what are the implications? And as a scientist, or researcher, we have to understand the needs and goals of the people we're talking to, and not just try to push the narrative of the research that we're doing, which might be very, very valuable, because that's why you're doing the research. So we have to try and find a way to marry those two concepts together, right? You need to make sure that the journalist understands the story with enough context that they can and will publish that information versus just kind of doing an information dump because you want to make sure they have the whole story and nothing is missing, so that they cannot misrepresent you. Because usually what that means is that the journalist isn't going to publish it, because it's going to be read as boring. And so it's tricky, right? So I think we'll talk a little bit about some tips about how you can navigate giving too much information versus too little information and delivering it in a way that your audience will take up. And I say that because, you know, a journalist talking to a journalist is typically going to be different than talking to a Congress member because usually the Congress member might actually want some of the nitty gritty details of the research because they do want the science to inform their policy. But the way you say that information has to be in a way that somebody who doesn't have 5, 10, 15 years of specialized education can understand it. And that is not to say, to speak down to somebody. It is instead to figure out a way to deliver your message in a way that, you know, your district representative can understand.
Kat Setzer 10:14
Right, right. Well, and with the media, going back to the media point, it's like, how often do we see journalists misinterpret scientific information? And so it's giving them enough detail that they don't misinterpret it, but not so much that, like you said, they get bored by it.
Keeta Jones 10:32
Exactly. And we did have recently, if people listening are really interested in talking to media and how to talk to media, we have some resources on acoustics.org from a media interactions workshop, where we gave researchers and scientists a lot of tools to help them do the preparation work so that when and if you get a call, a cold call, or a cold email, as it were, about your research from, say, The New York Times, you can prepare for how that interaction can go, because a lot of the control is in the researcher's hands. And journalists, I would say, by and far are not trying to misrepresent your information, your research and the, your data. They're trying to do two things, which is write a compelling story and share the information that they think is compelling. And so we have as researchers and scientists an active role and helping them to do that.
Kat Setzer 11:32
Yeah, that sounds awesome. We can definitely link to that in our show notes. So are there any common mistakes you see researchers make when trying to talk about their science with those outside of their field?
Keeta Jones 11:41
Yeah, there's kind of a pendulum swing between two extremes. So for example, people will try to say everything there is to know about their research, going into every detail, whether or not the person they're talking to understands or is actually even interested. It's a really unfortunate way to start off in interaction. And I understand the kind of motivation to do this is because you understand, or the researcher understands, that there's a lot of information about this field. This person has maybe been in the field for 20 years, and so they have 20 years of what they consider to be vital information to understanding the current experiment. A lot of people who don't have 20 years of education, probably don't want to get into the most fine detail of your research from the jump. So that's kind of one end of the spectrum is going too deep too quickly. The other end is actually the opposite, which is understanding that it's complicated, and so instead of saying everything, saying nothing. So it's an avoidance strategy. And so because we sometimes understand that there's a lot of nuance to the type of research we're doing, or there's a lot of history to the research that's being done, instead of broaching the subject at all, we just say something really, really, really vague as in like, "I do research." And that is not very informative for anyone, especially for non-acousticians or non-scientists. And so we have to find a middle ground. Instead of saying everything and instead of saying nothing, we have to find kind of the Goldilocks zone. And so like in your intro, you talked about taxi drivers. So like if I get into a Lyft, and the driver asks what I do, I'm not going to start by explaining, like, a Fourier analysis, right? Like, that's really jumping into the deep end. And it's like freezing water. It's not a super fun way to be introduced to phonetics. So instead, I'm going to say something more like, "Oh, I study the way people talk, and how it can influence the way other people make judgments about them." And then I kind of sit back and see how the the driver feels about that intro. Usually, in my case, that's enough of kind of a teaser, that they're like, "Oh, I kind of want to know more." And so we have to find the balance of how much information to give. That's kind of the lead, right? Because we want them to bite the lead, and how much to keep back in case they don't want any more than that. Or now they're interested and they want to know more.
Kat Setzer 14:32
So what advice do you have that you can give to a scientist who wants to talk to others about their work?
Keeta Jones 14:37
Yeah, this is gonna probably come in parts. The first thing I recommend we already talked a bit about, which is, you know, just know your audience or at least think about your audience because you might not know your audience right away, right? Like if you bumped into somebody on the street and they just happened to ask you, this could be a stranger, but you want to think about your audience and you could do this in advance. Right? So who are they? Are you usually going to be talking to adults who you can probably safely presume that they have maybe a high school education? Are you going to be talking to college students? Are you going to be talking to a group of architectural professionals? Right, so it's like, they're clearly educated, and maybe they have some acoustic knowledge, but maybe not to the degree that you the expert has. Maybe that's why they're bringing you in. So think about your audience. Think about their background, like I mentioned their education; think about if maybe they might have any preconceived opinions about your topic. So since I'm in linguistics, a lot of people have a lot of really strong language ideologies, that I know are pretty well situated throughout the community. So if I'm going to be doing some linguistic educational outreach, I can be pretty sure where certain kinds of landmines are, so to speak. So maybe in certain scenarios, I won't want to broach specific topics. But in other instances, I might feel comfortable talking about language and race, and maybe sometimes I don't. So having an idea of that. And another one that I think people often forget about, in terms of their audience is thinking about your audience's goal for the interaction. Like, do they want to learn, right? Like, are they coming to this like interaction because they want to learn something about acoustics? Are they just there because they want to be entertained, they maybe they're seeking kind of that like edutainment area like maybe they learn something, but they want it to be fun. They want it to be, you know, something that maybe they accidentally learned, but they're not seeking a learning experience. Or, like with journalists, they're just, you know, trying to keep a pulse on the news, see what's coming, up and coming. They want to know what's trending. And thinking about your audience in this way, is really going to shape how you deliver your message, right? Like, if they want to be entertained, you might come up with different ways that like gamify, your research. If they want to, like have a learning experience, maybe they're thinking of like formal classroom settings, and so you really might think, "Oh, they want to go to a lecture," right? So there are different ways to meet your audience's goals. Sometimes you might want to ask them, especially if it's like a prepared science communication event, you can see what they want to get out of it. So audience I'd say is really, really key. Try to know as much about your audience as you can. Next, I would say, practice talking to non-scientists about your science or your research. This is just like, you know, practicing a musical instrument for concert. You need to prepare for a good concert. You can't just sit down, you've never picked up a clarinet, and you're like, "I can do this! I have like theoretical knowledge of how to play a clarinet." It might not go the way you think it will go. So instead, you should probably prepare. And so science communication is the same way: practice is going to help you. One way that you can practice is to write down some of these ideas. So for example, there's kind of a formula that you can use just to kind of get you practicing and preparing and thinking. So start with like, a one sentence hook, like I mentioned before, just, you know, like, a catchy little fact or tidbit that will probably grab somebody's interest. And if you already know who your audience is, you can already kind of think of different ways to tailor it for the audience. If you know you're going to be talking to, say, college freshmen, you might choose to use a word like "spectrogram." But if you know you're going to be talking to a classroom of third graders, probably don't use the word "spectrogram," but instead come up with a different phrase, like "visualizations of sound," or "ways to look at sound." And so just come up with that short, one-sentence hook. And then move on to you know, like big picture context. Really, this should be really short too, like one sentence. So for me, talking about the different ways that people sound, I might point out that people on the East Coast of the US sound different from people in southern US and that both of those groups of people have thoughts about the other group, right? So I can give a little bit of context in a short amount of time. And then you can move on to like one to three sentences about why you think your audience should care or maybe does care about your work. So like, in my case, I might ask the Lyft driver, you know, like, "Oh, how many different accents have you heard today, as you've been driving and picking up people?" Or if my driver might be accented in some way, have a dialect of some kind, I might say, "Oh, have you noticed that people don't want to talk to you, because they noticed that you sound different or that they struggle..." So you can bring them into the conversation, make the research relevant to them and their needs, or their interests. And so that could be prepared work, right? Like you can kind of imagine scenarios where it will be kind of a quick impromptu situation. And you can kind of have like these bullet points in your mind about your research that you can go through if you've prepared them in advance. If you've not prepared them in advance, you'll have to do this on the fly. And it can be a bit more difficult. You can still do it, but I definitely recommend preparing some thoughts in advance. And you can even prepare these thoughts for different types of audiences, right. So like a Lyft driver, who I might assume has no awareness of phonetics and sociophonetics, I have kind of a block of information. Whereas when I go to ASA conferences, there are people there who don't know what phonetics is, they don't study phonetics. But I know I can use a word like phonetics, as long as I kind of explain what it is. And you really you could do that in any scenario. The key is, whenever you use jargon, explain what it is. And more impromptu scenarios, I generally recommend not using jargon, even if you explain it, because in those impromptu, like, spur-of-the-moment situations, people will kind of gloss over on jargon, even if it is explained. But what they'll latch on to is the explanation. So they'll remember, "Oh, like, there are certain speech sounds." Like, ah, yeah, that's the more important message. So you can kind of just go through those like three steps, get a hook, have a one, like a one-sentence context, and then come up with a couple versions of why it might be important to the general public. If you're not in speech, maybe you're in architectural, or you're in noise, you could talk about, because I know most people in the US are familiar with those noise barriers on highways, that might be a good way to bring in interest, or a personal, like, buy-in because somebody's like, "Oh, yeah, I live across the street from a highway. And it's so loud." And you could talk about the ways in which your city might manage or mitigate sound, right, or noise. So there's just different ways of using that to help prepare for future science communication interactions. That can also be a writing exercise. So if you want to write a more lay language, or general public version of your research or your abstract, you can use that same method to just write those sentences out. And now you have a kind of general-population-friendly version in a written form, which sidebar can be really useful when you're applying for grants. Because if you have a lay version of your research, oftentimes grant reviewers are not in your very specific field of research or science. And they often do request lay language versions or general audience versions of your research. So this is a good way to practice that, too. And even if you know your audience is has a similar education in the sense of they have been PhD trained, you know, the approach that they can take, but it'll help you navigate what is jargon and what is not jargon, because sometimes we forget that certain words are in fact, jargon, because we've been using them for so long. The one I always point to all the time is the word "theory." The way that scientists and researchers use the word "theory" tends to be quite different than the way the public uses the word "theory." And so just keeping that in mind, in written or kind of spoken spur of the moment, science communication is really helpful. I would say that the more you write for a lay audience, it will help you in speaking to a lay audience, because it will help you figure out your vocabulary in both settings. Because there are lots of tools for identifying jargon in written text. There are fewer tools to help you identify real time jargon as you speak. There are some but they're a bit cumbersome right now.
Kat Setzer 24:51
Yeah, right.
Keeta Jones 24:52
And then the other, I guess there's one last bit of advice for people who want to get into science communication, and I've already mentioned it, is just to develop that key take-home message about your research or work. That way, if you have that one take-home message, you can just keep it in the in your back pocket at all times. It's useful for for spur of the moment interactions, spontaneous interactions at the bar, or at the family dinner table. Because, one, sometimes people do just want a one-sentence version of what you're doing in these casual interactions. And there are also times where you as the person doing science communication, maybe you don't want to go into that much detail. And so you can just have this kind of prepared message. The key, though, about having this key take-home message is that you should be able to deliver it to any kind of audience, essentially, the core of that message should be able to be shared with your grandmother, with your politician, friend, with your partner, with anybody. The core of the take home-message should be simple enough that it can be shared with anybody. But it also should be true enough in the sense that it does reflect your research and your work, so that you could talk to anybody about it at any level. And so the way to think about it is if you stepped onto an elevator on floor one, and somebody said, asked you, or you only have the amount of time to share your work from floor one to floor five, what is that one thing that you want that person to step off the elevator knowing? And that could be like I said, anybody's on that elevator, but you only have that amount of time to give that interaction, and you want to be prepared for it. So just always having that key take-home message always prepared always in your back pocket, is really, really useful. And again, just like I mentioned before, you can always determine after that message is delivered whether or not you go into more or less detail with the people you're interacting with. But yeah, I'd say those are kind of the most important bits of advice are just know your audience, practice talking to non scientists, and prepare a very simple take-home message that you can always, always have with you.
Kat Setzer 27:32
That's awesome. That is a lot of great information. So can you recommend any resources about science communication for acousticians?
Keeta Jones 27:39
Yeah, so you started off with a really good one, which is the Acoustics Today Collection that has all of the science communication articles. The thing that's I think really great about this is that they're from the perspective of acousticians, and so you can hear how other acousticians... or read about how other acousticians do science communication and science outreach. There are tons and tons of resources within each of those articles, so lots of web resources and links that you can go to. I mentioned one earlier, which is ASA did have a media interactions workshop in the past and all of the materials are online at acoustics.org. And we can put them in the notes, as Kat said. Another one is that ASA has lots of opportunities for people to practice science communication. So a really easy way is with the lay language papers program, which is if you haven't accepted abstract for an ASA meeting, you can submit a lay language paper that will be shared online on acoustics.org. We promote it through the ASA social media platforms. And we also have lots of guidelines to help you write the lay language paper. And there's also a feedback option. So you can write a lay language paper following the guidelines and the tips and everything. And then I can review so if you... there's a little box after you submit that says, "Yes, I'd like someone to review my lay language paper." If you check that box, I will review your lay language paper to make sure it is suitable for a lay audience of the kind of press variety. So lay language papers are primarily for news outlets so that they might be interested and want to learn more about your research. So that's one resource. And then the other one is we often at ASA meetings have outreach events where you can practice talking to and interacting with high-school-aged kids about science. And this is another kind of easy entry into science communication because ASA provides all of the demonstrations, so we have a bunch of hands-on, fun activities for students to explore, and we give you all of the guidelines for like how to go through the demonstrations and interact with the students. And you can practice kind of in these little sessions about how do you talk to students about the physics of waves? Or how do you talk to students about loudspeakers or, you know, there are a lot of different demonstrations sessions or tables that the students can go to. So that's a an easy way to get practice with different audiences. And then, outside of ASA resources, I would recommend that people's reach out to their local community college or high school, or elementary school, wherever you're comfortable, whatever kind of audience you want to dip your toe into interacting with, because oftentimes, those institutions, high schools, community colleges, Boy Scout troops, Girl Scout troops, are looking for volunteer speakers to help share science with their students. And so this is a good way to offer what you know to a wider audience. Another way, if you're more inclined to think of advocacy, so informing policymaking and decision makers, you can always.... this is kind of back to ASA... you can go and join the Panel on Public Policy, which helps craft messages and policies to help inform federal-level governance. But you could also look at more local-level policymaking and lend your expertise there. There are different ways to do this type of science communication. And I would say, you can find kind of the category or setting of science communication that best suits you, but you might have to try out a couple before you find out where you want to land.
Kat Setzer 32:00
So do you have any closing thoughts?
Keeta Jones 32:01
My only closing thoughts would be, I would encourage everyone to think of what they do as science communication, because it would help them communicate their science better in all settings. I don't think it is very helpful to intentionally write or explain information in a way that is only accessible to a select few people. There's a really famous history passage in which a historian wrote an entire passage, I believe, in Latin, basically, just to prove he could read and write Latin, because so few of his colleagues would have been able to read it. And that, to me, is a clear example of gatekeeping information. And so I think it will make all of us, it makes science a much better place, if we just proceed with trying to be the best communicators as we can, as opposed to trying to communicate in a way that is only accessible to people who have had extremely similar education and access that scientists and researchers have had.
Kat Setzer 33:23
Yeah, like reduce this perception of elitism in the scientific community, essentially.
Keeta Jones 33:27
Exactly. You've summed it up perfectly.
Kat Setzer 33:30
Awesome. Well, Keeta, thank you again, for taking the time to speak with me today. I think most of our listeners can probably agree that science communication is a vital skill for researchers. So to our listeners, we'll be sharing all those resources Keeta was talking about. Those will be in our show notes. And then have a great day!
Keeta Jones 33:44
Thank you so much.
Kat Setzer 33:48
Thank you for tuning into Across Acoustics. If you'd like to hear more interviews from our authors about their research, please subscribe and find us on your preferred podcast platform.