Communicating to the masses

Alice recently had some press for her impressive NSF Advance grant. She described how awkward she felt being interviewed for a radio story of he achievement. I left a comment on her post describing a much lower profile experience I had with a reporter, but I thought I'd tell more about it here because it opened my eyes to how difficult it is to bridge the gap to lay people (i.e. non-scientists).

I received an award earlier this year and the awarding agency wanted to include a profile of me on their website, as they do for all recipients. Someone from their PR department called me, scheduled an in-person interview, and asked me to respond to a relatively involved questionnaire before the interview to make it more efficient. I spent at least an hour answering the written questions. The next week, we met for the interview. He was a little late and seemed kind of distracted, but very nice. He didn't really ask me too many questions, saying that I had been so thorough on the questionnaire that he didn't need much else. He took a photo of me sitting in a chair, basically a head shot.

The following week, he calledme to say that he needed to follow up on some information, then sent an email with more questions. It was as though he hadn't read my first responses or even looked at the website for the program that had given me the award, a program that is part of his agency! So I spent another hour or so answering more questions and getting him on track. Another week went by, and then I got another request for clarification, this time with really strange stuff in the questions -- he really hadn't understood what I had told him up to that point. So I responded to the latest email, then called him to further explain my answers. More time passed and then I got more requests, this time for an action photo of me in the field or the lab or something. That triggered a whole 'nother mess with a different set of PR people, but in the end one of the technicians took a picture of me at the bench and it was good enough.

About a week later, the reporter sent a draft of the profile asking me to fact-check it. By this point, I decided I would only object to things that were patently incorrect rather than harping on about small misrepresentations of my work. Lo and behold, the piece was pretty good. A final version eventually got posted on the website*.

The point of this post was not to complain about getting press -- I'm very flattered and grateful for both the award and the coverage -- but rather to demonstrate how difficult it can be to express yourself to lay people. The specifics of what I do aren't well known to most people, but I think the main idea and big picture goals certainly are. I had no idea this guy didn't get it after the first conversation, which makes me think that most lay people who I tell about my work don't get it. The most interesting thing was how my family reacted. I shared the profile with them and they all said that the finally understood what I do. I sincerely thought that they already did understand! I had no idea how poorly I had relayed my research, or even the motivation for my research, to my family. It was really a lesson in how differently you have to talk to non-scientists.

I guess this communication is my theme lately. Sorry to harp on this topic.

* Apparently, this was enough to kick up my Google ranking. I have a common name, so it used to take my name plus a keyword to get results for me on the first page. Now you can do it without any keywords and I'm there. neat!