Can Twitter be a tool for science?

By Ann Fitzpatrick, Ph.D.

Do you tweet about science?  Would you consider using twitter to find out about the latest science?  

Science magazine has recently published an article(1) about the K-index, based on an article written by biologist Neil Hall at Liverpool University in the UK (The Kardashian index: a measure of discrepant social media profile for scientists, Genome Biology, 2014 (2)).  The K-index, named after Kim Kardashian, famous for being famous, attempts to compare a scientist’s fame by ranking them according to the number of twitter followers they have, normalized by the amount of citations their scientific publications have received. 

I don’t know how I feel about this.

I think this is because I’ve always seen social media as separate to the science that I do.  Sure, it has been the first to inform me of a celebrity’s arrest/death/misdemeanor, and that quiz to find out which city I should really be living in, but I’ve never used it to follow scientists in my field or to find out how a conference I wasn’t able to attend is going…. I think this could be a mistake, but am I happy with the idea of a K-index ranking how well I’m using social media for my career? Probably not.

In the original article, Hall suggests that those with many twitter followers should be back in the lab publishing more papers and has constructed the K-index such that those with a high value have a lot of followers but [relatively] few citations.  I think this misses the important role that social media is likely to play in the future, especially when it comes to outreach and science communication.  

When you ignore the K-index and look at the scientists with the most twitter followers (The top 50 science stars of twitter), this is what you find:

Neil deGrasse Tyson

Brian Cox

Richard Dawkins

No great surprises, all known for their dedication to science communication, and the use of twitter and other social media tools only seems to be helping them.  I wouldn’t call their twitter fame unwarranted and I wonder what the point of the original article by Hall was?  As he has not provided his K-index for any particular scientist we can only speculate on who he thinks is a “Kardashian of science” with an “overblown public profile”.   

He does have a valid point, which is that often, it is the number of followers a person has rather than any insight or expertise they possess that can dictate how far reaching their influence is, or who can “shout loudest”; but doesn’t this mean we want more scientists on twitter, not less?  

The idea that taking the time to engage in the communication of science is somehow reprehensible or that focusing your career in this way makes you less of a scientist is deeply troubling.  With how few of our politicians and business leaders have the background in science needed to understand a research paper, scientists who are willing to act as advisors and go-betweens are invaluable and this shouldn’t just stop with those in power.  The communication of science to the whole population is also important; social media is likely to be a key tool in reaching as many people as possible.

So instead of pointing to the Kardashians of science and calling them outliers who need to spend more time on “real work”, it should be acknowledged that the future of science communication is vital and its superstars will have more twitter followers than you.

One last point to finish on is that both Hall’s K-index and Science’s “top 50 stars on twitter” found that females were underrepresented (as I assume other minorities are, although this was not addressed in either article).  This is hardly surprising, given that women and minorities are underrepresented both online and in science in general, but that this is cause for concern is hopefully something we can all agree on.  Making science welcoming for all is something I want to be a part of and in order to reach this goal we should be free to use every tool we can.  Social media can reach a lot of people, let’s use if for science. 

1.       1.  Jia You (2014). Who are the science stars of Twitter?, Science, 345:6203 

2.       2.  Neil Hall (2014). The Kardashian index: a measure of discrepant social media profile for scientist, Genome Biology, 15:424

Reflections on the AAAS Annual Meeting (back in Chicago this year!)

Here two of our postdoc PDA members from our Public Affairs committee share their experiences attending the AAAS annual meeting, from the last time it was held in Chicago.  The AAAS meeting is returning to Chicago this February, and the PDA would like to encourage all of our UChicago postdocs to attend!  http://meetings.aaas.org/program/

  In 2009, during my second year of graduate school, some friends and I decided that we’d all attend the AAAS Annual Meeting that would be held in Chicago in February. It was 200 years since the birth of Charles Darwin, and AAAS had chosen to honor the great thinker by designing its premier conference around the theme “Our Planet And Its Life: Origins and Futures”. The lineup of talks featured luminaries from the evolutionary biology community such as Sean Carroll and Svante Pääbo, as well as a special address by former Vice President Al Gore, who had recently won the Nobel Peace Prize for his environmental advocacy—not to mention an Oscar for the documentary An Inconvenient Truth. For us young scientists just a few miles away in Hyde Park, the chance to bask in the glow of so much intellectual star power proved irresistible.

                The meeting took place at the Hyatt conference center on Wacker Drive. Outside, the Chicago winter was in full swing, with frigid blasts of air roaring through downtown and turning sidewalks into ice sheets; but inside, the meeting created a carnival atmosphere. Our foursome wandered among the crowds of attendees, program guides in hand, badges pinned to our shirts, stopping to look into the seemingly endless gallery of rooms where the workshops and symposia were taking place. Going down an escalator, we found ourselves in an open exhibition space. Here there were booths and tables staffed by representatives from scientific societies, publishing companies, and sponsors. I stopped at one table piled with books and monographs on various topics and picked up a small tome on protein crystallography theory and practice, which I thought might help me learn more about the method that would become the primary focus of my dissertation project. Across the room, at the National Science Foundation table, I talked to a woman about her job in science policy and how she had gotten there. It turned out that a few years earlier, she had been in a lab with a friend of mine from college!

                The plenary lectures took place in the ballroom of the Fairmont Hotel, across from the Hyatt. Even though the space looked like it could fit perhaps a thousand people, we got there early to choose seats before the conference-goers arrived en masse. Sean Carroll stepped to the podium first, and presented his talk on the history and future of evolutionary biology with the air of a master storyteller. He was followed by Al Gore, who gave a condensed version of his Inconvenient Truth seminar. The sense of anticipation in the room ahead of Gore’s talk was palpable, and when he concluded, he was met with enthusiastic applause that went on for nearly a minute.

                The experience of attending AAAS 2009 remains a very special memory for me. Having the conference back in Chicago in 2014 is a fantastic opportunity, and if you have the chance to go I would definitely recommend it. You’ll expand your scientific horizons, learn about important matters in science policy, perhaps investigate different career paths or make a new networking connection. But beyond these practical benefits, there’s something else you’ll get too. It’s the sense of community that arises from being around so many people who share your excitement and wonder at the natural world. After all, star power generates not just light, but also warmth.

--Kyle Dolan (Medicine)

---------------

       While in graduate school, I managed to get myself to the 2009 AAAS meeting by volunteering as a Session Aide.  In that role, I managed the checklist of speakers for two sessions and ensured that the room was unlocked, the microphones were on, and the speakers knew where to sit.  In exchange for those easy tasks, I got to attend the rest of the conference for free!  It was a fabulous opportunity, one that renewed my enthusiasm for the role of science in society. 

       Many of the scientific sessions were much more about the “big-picture” of science than I normally hear at conferences – about the future of new energy sources such as wind and solar, or the progress and challenges in developing batteries to support a “smart” electricity grid.  I attended a panel about Science Policy in which they speculated on the impact of the newly-elected President Obama’s stance on science.  Later, I sat in the overflow room to watch Al Gore present his argument for why scientists must get involved in changing public policy – I came home so fired up from his talk that I didn’t know what to do with myself.  A fellow UChicago grad student encouraged me to attend a luncheon sponsored by the Union of Concerned Scientists, and together we talked with the leader of that esteemed organization over bites of finger food.  I later joined UCS and have enjoyed being a member ever since.  In the Exhibition Hall, I spoke with representatives from the NSF, NIH, and various national labs, and was invited by several to apply for postdoc positions in their organization (which is what I was hoping for all along).  I also got to learn about Chicago-area science organizations, such as C2ST, and meet the people who were behind them.

       So often, we scientists get caught in our narrow field of expertise and never look up.  The AAAS conference is a great way to lift your head and look around, meet movers and shakers in the broader community, and get excited again about making a contribution to the world.  We are fortunate to have the conference returning to Chicago in February 2014, and I hope many students and postdocs will be able to take advantage of it!

--Rebecca Pompano (Surgery)

Review of the Alan Alda Lecture - "Helping the Public Get Beyond a Blind Date with Science”

by: Vineeth Varanasi, PhD, PDA steering committee member

On Friday, September 26^th, the Kavli Institute of Cosmological Physics hosted a lecture by Alan Alda on communicating science, entitled "Helping the Public Get Beyond a Blind Date with Science”.  The idea behind the lecture and the associated workshop was to enable and encourage scientists to communicate clearly and succinctly with the public.

Communication

The Merriam-Webster definition of the word Communication merits a revisit, since I think it conveys to a large extent the essence of the lecture.

Communication: The act or process of using words, sounds, signs, or behaviors to express or exchange information or to express your ideas, thoughts, feelings to someone else.

It is the meaningful exchange of information between two or a group of living creatures.

Alan Alda

Why Alan Alda?  Isn’t he the actor from West Wing, the Woody Alan movies or M.A.S.H?  What is an actor doing preaching scientific communication?  These were some of the questions overheard in the audience and I am sure some of the readers have the same questions!  Well, besides being a fantastic actor, Alan Alda hosted “Scientific American Frontiers” on PBS from 1993-2005.  The premise of the show is that Alan Alda talks to scientists from various disciplines and tries to understand their work from the perspective of an informed layperson.  Stemming from his experiences talking to scientists over the years hosting the show, he became “convinced that many researchers have wonderful stories to tell, but some need help in telling them.”  A result of this effort is the Alan Alda Center for Communicating Science.  Here’s some of what Alda had to say.

Tell a story, with passion.

Start with a simple take home message that you want to convey to the audience. Then tell a story and engage the audience instead of narrating a bunch of facts or data. Alda also highlighted that scientists are the most passionate people that he has met. They are not the most highly paid or the most famous people in the world, but survive on a deep passion for their chosen field of study. However, this passion does not come forth when we present our work. Alda suggests it is OK to project some passion when presenting your work. If you were thrilled to get a result, share the excitement with the audience. If a result crushed you, it is OK to admit that it was unexpected or upsetting. The idea is to make a personal connection and get the audience involved in your “Story”. In the words of Don Hewitt, the creator of 60 minutes, the secret behind a good program (and good communication), is "It's four words every child knows: Tell me a story." The key to good communication is to tell a story and keep it simple.

Improv

In order to keep an audience engaged, the speaker has to be “spontaneous” to tailor the message in keeping with the expectations and level of knowledge of the audience.  This also comes in handy in collecting oneself after a challenging question from the audience or other interruptions.  Alda suggests Improv as a tool to increase spontaneity.  Improv or improvisational theater is a form of Performance Theater where most of the script is created at the moment it is performed.  An example of this would be the television show “Whose Line is it Anyway?”  Alda runs courses in improv for scientists at the Alda Center, with promising results that he shared with the audience in before and after testimonials.

Curse of Knowledge

This brings us to what I thought was the highlight of the seminar. Alda argues that the main hurdle to effective scientific communication is the “Curse of knowledge”.  Coined by film and TV composer Robin Hogarth, the curse of knowledge is a cognitive bias because of which better-informed people find it extremely difficult to think about problems from the perspective of lesser-informed people.  In other words, we forget what it was like before we gained all the knowledge that we now have.  This cognitive gap not only appears between scientists and lay people, but also between scientists from different disciplines.  Alda ran a simple experiment to demonstrate this.  He asked an audience member to drum the words of a song without the tune.  Most of the audience failed to recognize the song based on the beats of the words, without the tune.  Due to the curse of knowledge, the presenter has the complete song with both the tune and the words in their head, but end up drumming out the words without a tune.  Therefore the message is lost on most of the audience.

Alan Alda touched on some really interesting points on scientific communication during his lecture.  The Kavli institute at the University of Chicago has just started a collaborative program with the Alan Alda Center, raising hope that there will be more such lectures and workshops in the not so distant future.

Career advancement for postdocs

Career advancement for postdocs
One Thursday afternoon in May, a conference room at the Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center (BIDMC) in Boston, Massachusetts, is filling beyond capacity. More than two dozen postdocs and young faculty members from the BIDMC and other affiliates of Harvard Medical School in Boston stream in for tips on how to produce an effective oral presentation. The attendees, many of whom are not native English speakers, look overworked but expectant. They have relinquished the freedom of a late-afternoon coffee break because their career advancement is on the line. They know the importance of being able to deliver an hour-long lecture or a ten-minute talk, daunting though that might be. “I have been giving talks for 30 years,” begins the presenter, Terry Maratos-Flier, an endocrinologist and neurologist who directs the Office for Academic Careers and Faculty Development at the BIDMC. “So I figure I should take my expertise and offer it to you.” To read more, please see below.
Career Adv.: http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v488/n7411/full/nj7411-419a.html

Iowa Postdoc Research Day

The University of Iowa Postdoctoral Association hosted its inaugural Postdoc Research Day on May 14th.  Several institutions were invited to participate in this event, including Iowa State University and the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. Two postdocs from the University of Chicago, Terrie Vasilopoulos and Sean McConnell, were invited to give oral presentations. At the end of this successful event, Terrie Vasilopoulos was awarded the prize for best oral presentation.

Attending this research day at the University of Iowa was a great experience, providing us a chance to discuss our work with postdocs from diverse research backgrounds. We encourage other postdocs at the University of Chicago to seek out similar opportunities to present their research.

Locally, the University of Chicago Postdoctoral Association will host its second Postdoctoral Research Day in October and plans to invite postdocs from several neighboring universities.

Here are the details from the Postdoc Research day as advertised in our PDA Bulletin:

POSTDOC RESEARCH DAY

When:                May 14, 2012.  9:00am-5:00pm
Where:               The University of Iowa, Iowa City, IA (CPHB, College of Public Health Building *** NEW LOCATION)

What: An opportunity for postdocs to learn about the exciting research being conducted by your peers.  Registration for this event is FREE and open to all postdocs from the University of Iowa and other nearby institutions.  A light breakfast and lunch will be provided.  This event is hosted by the University of Iowa Postdoctoral Association (UIPDA) with support from the UI Office of Postdoctoral Scholars and the Graduate College.