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Monthly Archives: April 2017

“Welcome Everybody……” Some musings on “Introductions”

Friday, April 21st, 2017 | STEPHEN BRONI | No Comments

In this week’s Science Communication post I thought I would focus on Introductions.
Your introduction establishes not only the topic your show is about but also who you are and the theme or key message you plan to deliver about that topic.
It’s your opportunity to let the audience know the nature of the journey you are going to take them on and engage them right from the start.
There are variety of ways to engage your audience in your introduction
I’m going to focus on just three today
The first is from a Royal Society lecture on antimatter by Tara Shears. Note the strong eye contact with the audience, the structured outline of what is to follow and the emphasis on the fact she will be explaining the relevance of what she will cover.

The second is by climate scientist James Hansen. Here he uses a strong question as an attention grabbing tool and goes on to introduce the science via anecdotes from his own personal journey.
This speaker relies heavily on reading his script. Do you find this style more or less engaging than that of Tara Spears? Imagine how much more engaging he would be if he were to abandon reading every single word of his script as written, step out and face the audience with strong eye contact as he relates his own personal story. He knows his own story. Does he really need a script for that? Would it not be that much stronger adopting a more conversational tone along the lines of what you would use when relating a story from your past to a friend or colleague?

The 3rd is Dr. Jenny Germano a dear colleague from my days as Volunteer co-ordinator at Department of Conservation.  Jenny went on to study urinary frog hormones here at University of Otago. On the day she submitted her PhD thesis she entered the ` 3min Thesis’ speech competition with a talk entitled “Taking the Piss out of Endangered Frogs” …..and won the competition!
A number of things to note with Jen’s introduction. Her passion for her subject hits you from the word go, her use of hand gestures builds on that engaging passion and is even used to good effect in clarifying a couple of semi-technical terms- cardiac puncture and orbital sinus – simply by pointing to her heart and eye in mid-stream without having to pause. Note, no notes or script. She knows the stuff so she can talk from the heart and focus on the audience and not on trying to remember what comes next.
(Note that the graphic in the body of her talk is targeted at an audience of entirely academics as opposed to  the general public audience you will be presenting to in July. So bear that in mind when composing your own graphic support material. The less technical the better for our audience in July)


Have a look at some other science communicators in action and if you find one with an  introductory style you find engaging send me the link and I’ll post it for others to view.

Dancing about Science…

Wednesday, April 12th, 2017 | EMILY HALL | No Comments

Fun, interactive, and engaging Science?

I was looking at some research into Science shows and came across some key findings on how to engage children from Science Museum (UK) focus group research undertaken in 2010:
• Audience participation is regarded as crucial – if children aren’t involved, they may lose interest.
• Parents like young, casually-dressed presenters, rather than the stereotypical white-coated ‘nerd’; they feel an informal approach is important in removing barriers to children’s appreciation of shows.
• The three words they felt would most attract their attention in descriptions of the show were Fun, Exciting and Interactive

For this week’s blog post, I tried to look for some novel ideas on how to present Science to an audience. Keeping in mind those ideas from the focus group on keeping it fun, exciting, and interactive.

One really amazing thing I found was Biology for the blind and partially sighted. Using 3D printing to bring the microscopic world to people who otherwise wouldn’t have any experience of it. Definitely worth watching, especially the audience reactions to being able to interact with the microscopic world for the first time in their lives!

For another novel presentation method, check out this TED talk about dancing scientific concepts which includes, among other cool things, a great example of the difference between ordinary light and lasers using dancers. The 2016 winners of the contest that he mentions “Dance your PhD” are also worth a look. I particularly liked the people’s choice award winner.

I have already shared with you what I think of as some good examples of story telling in Science Communication in a recent blog post on storytelling.

I also emailed the students some examples of one person’s use of music as Science Communication.

Videos are a very popular way to get the message across and the students had a tiny taste of this in the January camp Science Communication sessions. Videos don’t have to be hugely costly high technical productions to be effective, some of the best videos are really simple, for example, Minute Physics.

So hopefully that has given you a bit of inspiration to think outside the box for your presentations. Whether you present your information in the form of a song, a story, a video, a show, a play or something else, using a novel presentation method is one way to keep it fun, exciting and interactive.

Public Perception of Risk with New Science & Technology

Thursday, April 6th, 2017 | STEPHEN BRONI | No Comments

In my last blog post (Knowing Your Material) I talked about researching your topic and the importance of narrowing down that research to address a key message (theme) i.e. the `take-home’ message you want the audience to understand about your topic. WhenGeneric shot of small seated audience we understand something we don’t just `know’ about it but we ‘feel’ for it – it means something to our overall well-being. So in communicating science we need to not only enhance the knowledge of the audience but also engage their emotions, hence the reason your workbooks are entitled `Touching Hearts and Minds’. With that in mind, in this post I thought we’d focus again on the audience and what you might consider about them as you distil your research into an effective and engaging talk to deliver a strong ‘take-home’ message.
Considering your audience is especially important for a talk that involves science on a controversial or potentially controversial topic.
We should consider our audience for every talk, of course.
Questions you should consider when asked to give any talk are.
Will I be talking to:
• An interest group with a specific viewpoint/attitude to my topic and/or science in general?
• Is there likely to be a specific age or gender or ethnic imbalance in the audience?
• Is our audience likely to already be knowledgeable on my topic?
• How is the audience likely to perceive the organisation I am representing?
As Emily pointed out in an earlier post (The Crowd Goes Wild) a public audience will contain a mixture of  what we could term:-
1. “Science Fans”,
2. “The Cautiously Keen”,
3. “The Risk Averse”,
4. “The Concerned”.
While your museum audience in July is likely to have a high proportion of “science Fans’” and “The Cautiously Keen”, you may also have parents/caregivers, members of public who fall firmly in “The Risk Averse” and “Concerned” categories. I think of these last two categories as  people who come through the door thinking “this topic (science in general) is dangerous and poses a real threat to the health and safety of myself, my family, and or my existing way of life and things I currently value”.
With that in mind I came across an interview with Dr. Craig Cormick who has published widely on drivers of public attitudes towards new technologies.
The five key lessons that come out of his research on public perception of risk are as follows:
1. When information in complex people make decisions based on their values and beliefs rather than on facts and logic
2. People seek affirmation of their attitudes or beliefs, no matter how fringe, and will reject any information or facts that are counter to their attitudes or beliefs
3. Attitudes that were not formed by facts and logic will not be influenced by facts and logic
4. Public concern about the risks of contentious science and technologies are almost never about the science itself and therefore scientific information alone does very little to influence those concerns
5. People most trust the people whose values mirror their own.
What does that mean for us when preparing a science talk on a potentially contentious issue?
Good science communication is “more than information. It’s a revelation based upon information’”

In moulding how we present our information we are always seeking techniques that best acknowledge concerns, value systems within the audience and seek to lead them to that  “Ah hah!” moment when they decide for themselves the positive values of the science you are talking about, rather than `being told’ by you the scientist/speaker. Once you have a base script for your talk we can look at which of the techniques we explored in our workshops and in our workbook might be most effective in making  our presentation engaging, relevant and convincing.  That’s one of creative, fun parts of pulling a good talk together.
Here is  Craig Cormick’s interview:-

https://vimeo.com/umriskcenter/riskrage

 It’s quite long, though the interview itself is only 27 mins  there is 18 mins of Q&A  that follows. If you get bogged down after the first 5 minutes of the interview here are some time cues to the more relevant and useful parts of his discussion:
9 min – Affirmation of fringe/whacko ideas and the Google search engine
18 min:32sec – The Role of Trust in influencing public perception
22 min:45sec -The Role of academics/researchers
26 min– Weirdest idea on the internet?
Perhaps the essence of what I’m trying to get across about science communication and contentious issues can be best conveyed in the following quote
“People don’t care what you know,
                                 People want to know that you care”
Dr. Vincent Covello
 Centre for Risk Communication