American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) is now accepting entries for the Kavli Science Journalism Awards until 1 August 2018.

The awards recognize outstanding reporting for a general audience on the sciences, engineering and mathematics. Stories on the environment, energy, science policy and health qualify, if they discuss underlying scientific concepts in a substantive way.

Entries must have been published, broadcast or posted online between 16 July 2017 and 15 July 2018. Independent committees of journalists select the winning entries.

We present two awards in each category: a Gold Award for $5,000 in funding and a Silver Award of $3,500. The categories are large newspaper, small newspaper, magazine, video spot news or feature, video in-depth, audio (radio or podcast), online and children’s science news.

Read our “Contest Rules” and “Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ)” websites before entering. In answering questions about submissions, we discuss a notable change from our past “Television” category to this year’s “Video” category.

Important Note: If a submitted work was not published or broadcast in English, you must provide an English language translation. Further discussion and guidance can be found on our “FAQ” webpage.

Enter online by visiting sjawards.aaas.org

This month we are delighted to hear from Vicki Martin, writing to us a year into her US postdoc adventure. 

It’s been a year since my family and I moved to beautiful Ithaca, N.Y. for me to take up a 2-year Rose Postdoctoral Research Associate position at the Cornell Lab of Ornithology. I’m here to continue research on science communication and citizen science in particular. So far, I’ve conducted interviews with young adults all over the U.S., to understand their perspectives on citizen science and the barriers to their participation in one of the Lab’s largest citizen science programs, Project FeederWatch. I also asked the interviewees questions about the social networks they use to discuss wild birds. This information has highlighted the importance of how we signal who our programs and outreach are for, through the images and messages we use (e.g. the young adults notice that many birding groups are made up of mainly older adults, so they feel these groups are not really “for them”). Another study currently underway is looking at how people’s confidence in their knowledge about birds influences the likelihood they will participate in bird-focused citizen science.

Working at the Lab and being based at Cornell University has facilitated some fantastic collaborations with experts in Science Communication (Professor Bruce Lewenstein) and Communication and Social Network Analysis (Associate Professor Drew Margolin), as well as leaders in the fields of Conservation, Social Science, Ornithology (of course!), Citizen Science and Statistics. These experiences are giving a great boost to the type of work I do, and the support Cornell and the Lab provide for my research has been astonishing. It’s a real privilege to be able to work in such an encouraging environment. I’m trying to make the most of every opportunity while I’m here so when I return to Australia in mid-2019 I’ll come home with a lot more knowledge, skills, and experience to share. In the meantime, my family and I are also enjoying the changing seasons, the spectacular scenery in the gorges and waterways around the area, and the warmth, friendliness and generosity of the people in Ithaca. It really is a special part of the world.

President’s Message

Dr Craig Cormick

Why science is rarely taken into consideration in political decisions

Sorry scientists, but here’s a hard truth – when it comes to most policy decisions, science is rarely a major consideration.

Take the recent decision not to cull wild horses in New South Wales high country parks. The evidence is clear that wild horses are an invasive species causing great damage to fragile Alpine areas. And this damage further threatens endangered species, such as the corroboree frog.

Many scientific reports have been released demonstrating this, arguing there needs to be a cull of the horses to reduce their numbers and reduce their negative impacts.

But up against the scientific evidence we have the emotional appeal of brumbies. Wild horses that represent that slice of Australian heritage embodied in the Man from Snowy River or the Silver Brumby.

And it is also useful to know that the Bill to prevent wild horses being culled was introduced into Parliament by the Deputy Premier of New South Wales, John Barilaro, whose electorate of Monaro covers the highland national parks. Snowy River territory. Home of those who consider wild horses a part of our heritage. Home of many of the descendents of the settler families who established cattle runs in the high country. Done largely on horses.

Groups like the Australian Brumby Alliance have been outspoken about the importance of wild horses to our national heritage, with statements like:

“It’s magic. It’s just a wonderful feeling; you just feel amazed at this majestic horse that can keep itself going in the park without any human interference. It uplifts my spirit.”[1]

By comparison, scientists’ rhetoric tends to be like:

“Horses have been present in the Snowy Mountains since the 1830s when Europeans first explored the region. Substantial transhumance grazing (i.e. the annual movement of stock and stockmen to summer pastures in the High Country) of cattle and sheep soon followed and continued for more than 150 years.”[2]

Another thing that is useful to know is that in politics decisions are informed by a large number of different factors, including: economic factors, interest group lobbying, political ideology, media stories – and scientific evidence.

Of course most scientists would see the weight of scientific input as being stronger than all the others – or maybe even at least of equal weighting. But that’s not the world we live in, is it.

If we had a spectrum of the emotive and electoral sensitivity of different inputs to policy, almost everything listed above would lie on the side of having high sensitivity – except for science evidence, which would be all alone on the other side having low electoral and emotional impact.

That means for issues that are not emotional or electorally sensitive, then there’s a good chance that the science input will count for something.

But if the issue is being dominated by emotions and is electorally sensitive in any way – sorry science.

I mean, which narrative do you think is the most powerful?

• Evidence shows that wild horses are damaging sensitive environments and they need to be culled, preferably being shot from helicopters.

Versus

• Wild horses are an iconic part of Australian heritage that reflect the Australian spirit, and it is cruel and inhumane to slaughter them.

This science narrative above actually plays into an emotional response against it, as we know that there are strong preferences for non-lethal control methods of larger invasive animals – especially among the urban public, who live a long, long way from where such animals roam through sensitive bogs and creeks.

The same type of thing plays out in many contentious issues, where there is a conflict between scientific evidence versus emotional responses – whether the topic is climate change, coal seam gas mining, vaccination, embryonic stem cells – emotions far outweigh the scientific evidence.

So what is a scientist or a science communicator to do, given that they are often unable to play the emotional game to counter emotive arguments? Are you going to be perpetually out-played when trying to make some impact on policy?

Well not necessarily. It is possible to reframe your arguments that incorporate some element of the opposing emotive arguments. In this it might be possible to frame messages around putting the welfare of the wild horses first. Pushing for need to keep their numbers down so that wild horses number won’t grow to the point that it threatens their own well-being.

Frame messages that make you a wild horses lover, not a wild horses hater.

And above all, if you are embroiled in a policy debate – don’t rely just on the evidence. The emotion and electoral sensitivity will usually be more important, and you will need to find some way to address them too.

– – –

[1] Anderson, S (2017), Victorian brumbies: invasive pest, or majestic part of our heritage?, ABC News. 29 January.

[2] Office of Environment and Heritage (2016) This Draft Wild Horse Management Plan, Kosciuszko National Park, State of NSW and Office of Environment and Heritage.

Dr Craig Cormick

PCST Summary
For those members not fortunate enough to have attended the recent Public Communication of Science and Technology (PCST) conference in Dunedin, in New Zealand (or those who attended and got distracted by the local sites), I want to share some of the highlights and my thoughts.

In 50 words or less: the conference was four days of reflection on the arcane art of science communication in a time of growing disruption and fracturing of media, while needing to better address diversity, biases, exclusions, political interference, pseudoscience and echo chambers, in the post-truth, post-trust, post-expertise world we now live in.

In addition to the many case studies and research study findings, many sessions dwelt on our identity crisis, articulated in questions like:

– What is science communications exactly?
– Why should we even do science communications?
– How should we best (re)consider what science communications actually is?

Another key question, asked both in sessions and in the corridors, was:

– Does scholarly research meet the needs of scholars over the needs of practitioners?

That might hint at some of the tensions that emerged in the panel discussions, between sci-comms researchers and sci-comms practitioners (despite many people being both), or between scientists and sci-comms researchers (despite many people being both).

Though to be honest I heard much more concern from science communication practitioners about the lack of sessions dealing with practice than I heard from science communication scholars about the lack of sessions dealing with scholarship (though there were certainly both included in the program).

But if you want a really strong focus on practice you come to the ASC conferences, right!

There were also no clear answers to any of the many introspective questions that were raised, as there haven’t been any at previous PCST conferences, and there undoubtedly won’t be at any future conferences where the questions continued to be asked. For we are a very broad amalgam of disciplines, after all, and our first allegiances are often to other disciplines or agencies or professions in which we work, which collectively makes it difficult to clearly define what a science communicator is and isn’t.

But this can be a strength as well – allowing for more inclusiveness and cross-disciplinary work. People have come to science communications from philosophy and the sciences and social science and media studies and journalism and other areas, bringing those expertises with them, all broadening the field.

So rather than ask the same questions about what is science communications, I would rather ask a broader question: We are very good at talking about the relationships between our own conflicting values and motives and needs, and we are not bad at talking about the values and motives and needs of scientists – but why are we so piss-weak poor at talking about the values, motives and needs of the public when at conferences like this?
They seem to me to be the main missing audience at such conferences. There is a lot of talk about the public, but really no representation from them to take part in discussions about the impacts on them of the communication of science and technologies.

Maybe that is something that will be taken up at the next PCST in Aberdeen, Scotland, in 2020!

Also, a post-conference highlight for the ASC was the Australian ASC team defeating the New Zealand SCANZ team in the inaugural Great Trans-Tasman Science Communication Challenge. Thank you to Tara Roberson, Claire Farrugia, Larissa Fedunik, and Lisa Bailey/Jarvis for joining the team and proving we can win (without using sandpaper).

And finally, a short summary of conference tweets to give you some of the flavour of the Twitteratti:

Christine O’Connell‏ @CocoNell2 Apr 3
Real communication is more about listening than talking. Ask questions, involve your audience, be open, and listen – some of the core points whenever I teach #scicomm. Totally agree on the importance of teaching listening @JohnBesley #PCST2018

Brooke Smith‏ @brookesimler Apr 5
Prof Maja Horst’s advice on controversial science issues: just keep talking about them; don’t shut down the conversation. #scicomm #scipolicy #PCST2018

Anusuya CHINSAMY-T‏ @palaeo_prof Apr 4
#PCST2018, NZ I absolutely love #Otagomuseum Otago Museum’s ‘Lab in a box’. Such a simple, inexpensive, and yet effective concept… converting a container into a Lab that can be easily closed, packed and moved to different locations!

Merryn McKinnon‏ @MezMcK Apr 5
.@PeterGluckman says that science, no matter how good it is, will not make a difference unless there are better national conversations. An international problem which is a call to arms for #scicomm people everywhere. #PCST2018

Tamsin Laird‏ @TamsinLaird Apr 5
Most ‘liked’ question for the final plenary session @PCSTNetwork : is it beer o’clock yet? Panel confirms diversity IS more important than beer  #scicomm #PCST2018

Shanii Austin

Four days, nine concurrent sessions, six keynote presentations, so much food and wine and an endless selection of science communication researchers, practitioners, scientists-in-communication and everyone in between; PCST 2018 has been the most intense, exhausting, mind-blowing and valuable experiences of my academic and professional career so far. I was incredibly grateful to receive the Professional Development Grant from the Australian Science Communicators to help me attend the Public Communication of Science and Technology Conference in Dunedin, NZ from 3-6th April. It taught me so many more things that I expected, and has made me appreciate the value of what we do even more!

As a science communicator, I was taught to ensure my communications are clear, concise and brief. In order to keep this review short and sweet, I have written an acrostic of sorts. If you’d like to read more detail about my adventures at this conference, please find my daily blog posts about PCST2018 at shaniiscicom.wordpress.com.

#PCST2018
# is for social media savvy. While at the conference, a friend of mine convinced me to join the wonderful world of Twitter, and I discovered the rabbit hole that was #PCST2018. I was amazed at the avid social media presence of the people attending the conference, and got incredibly excited when big names in the field (like Bruce Lewenstein and Jenni Metcalfe) were retweeting and liking my posts! I’ve also discovered it to be a great way to share my work with the wider science communication community that I wouldn’t have access to otherwise. Follow me @ShaniiSciCom #shamelessselfpromotion #ASC

P is for people and practitioner-researcher collaborations. I met so many amazing people at PCST2018 – not only researchers whose names I recognised from reading their work, but also Scicom practitioners or scientists dipping their toes in science communication. It was also great to meet other science communicators doing similar work in different countries, including Dr Graham Walker (whose research has heavily influenced my own!), Mikko Myllykoski (Experience Director at Heureka, the Finnish Science Centre), Erez Garty (from the Weizmann Institute of Science in Israel) and Claire Concannon (a science communicator at Tuhura, the Otago Museum science centre), as well as countless others. One of the strong themes highlighted at the end of the conference (and something I feel quite passionate about) was the importance of researcher-practitioner collaborations. One of the great ironies of science communication, in my opinion, is that we are excellent at communicating to our specific target audiences, but not with each other! Both science communication researchers and practitioners have so much experiential and empirical knowledge that we can learn from one another, and continue to improve science communication as field.

C is for culture. The best presentation that I attended from the entire conference was titled Science Communication as Culture: Entertainment, interaction and emotion. Culture was defined as “the production and exchange of meaning”; instead of simply sharing information with your audience, it encouraged us to think of science communication as creating meaning together, with inputs from both the audience and scientists. This session really resonated with me because it encourages new ways of thinking about what science communication really means. I think this presentation sparked a wonderful opportunity for all of us to rethink how we define science communication – not simply as telling our audience how great science is, but starting a proper conversation with them or creating a safe environment for people to discuss science and science-related issues in society. If you’re keen to learn more about this session, you can find more of my musings at: https://tinyurl.com/y8th5t29.

S is for stories and sharing. It is no secret that use of narrative and storytelling as a communication tool is a powerful way to help people remember information and compartmentalise new knowledge. Prominent paleoanthropologist Prof Lee Berger, best known for the excavation of Homo naledi at the Rising Star Cave in South Africa, shared his story of the value of sharing science research. Throughout the entire process of the study, from using social media to ask for “skinny scientists” (a team of amazing women who became known as the ‘Underground Astronauts’), to having National Geographic livestreaming the excavation of the fossils as they were brought to the surface, but also making all the research open-source, including 3D-models available to download and print so scientists around the world could scrutinise and learn from them, Berger made sure nothing was hidden from view. Despite being ridiculed by other scientists in the field on the dangers of sharing ongoing research with “the public”, making the research open-access from day one not only awarded Berger several awards such as Time magazine’s 100 most influential people, but also made the research some of the most highly cited in the field. Sharing the failures of science was also an interesting idea that was proposed. Science communicators often fall into the trap of hyping up the value of new discoveries and research. If everything is the “most amazing, new, exciting, fantastic contemporary discovery ever”, it can be hard for our audiences to work out what is important and can cause people to tune out. By sharing our faults and how we learned from them is a way we can humanise science and make it more relatable – that way when we do share something amazing, hopefully everyone can appreciate its true value.

T is for talking – as in, stop it! As science communicators, we love to share amazing new discoveries and cool facts about science – but is it really what our audiences want to hear? Listening to your audience and asking what they actually want to learn or hear from the world of science was a very strong theme throughout the conference. We’ve done well to move on from the Deficit model, but most science communication is still based on those with “science knowledge” disseminating it to those with “less knowledge”. Moving forward, we have an opportunity to imagine new ways to ask our audiences what they’d be interested in learning – which I think ties in very nicely with the idea of science communication as culture, and creating meaning together.

2018 is for moving into the future. Science communication has come a long way since our early attempts at Deficit model style communication, but PCST 2018 has helped highlight that there are still improvements to be made for us to continue moving forward as a professional and research community. By continuing to keep sharing ideas with each other, asking our audiences what they’d like to hear and discovering new ways to create meaning together with scientists and society, we have a busy and challenging, but definitely exciting future ahead.

President’s update

US cuts Funding to National Science Foundation’s Social Science Programs

Here’s something surprising – the US National Science Foundation recently went to Congress, as they do every year to discuss their $7.5billion budget – and they actually advocated for a cut to their own social science budget.

What the…?

Yes, the National Science Foundation asked Congress to cut their programs into social, behavioural and economic science by more than 11 per cent.

The most any other program was proposed to be trimmed was 2 per cent.

Of course social scientists and those who rely on their research, such as science communicators, were more than a little perplexed, and were curious to know what was motivating this.

And, as we all know, in the absence of facts, rumours fill the gaps.

So according to Democrat member of the House Committee on Science, Space and Technology, Eddie Bernice Johnson, “I do not doubt this steep cut was dictated by the White House,”

The NSF’s decisions on how to allocate its budget is generally decided by scientific advisers, but there is a real concern that this year there were political motivations behind the cuts.

An article in the Pacific Standard, science and health writer Francie Diep stated that while President Donald Trump isn’t known for having any particular views on social science, the same can’t be said for other congressional members of his party.

Representative Lamar Smith, the chairman of the Committee on Science, Space, and Technology that oversees the NSF, for example, has long and vigorously criticized social science studies as a waste of NSF money, and has tried several times to limit social science funding.

Of course social and political science research includes pesky things like climate change studies into what motivates climate change denial, and the political-ideological divides that see most Republicans as denying climate change as being caused by human actions.

The members of the US Committee on Science, Space, and Technology have been divided on social science spending, with some having criticised it as “silly studies”, but other defending it.

This is not the first time cuts or proposed cuts to NSF’s social science programs has made headlines. There have been similar moves, largely by republicans, to cut social sciences with political sciences in particular being targeted, or to limit funding to things deemed to be in the national interest.

The point is, of course, that similar directives of where funding is spent and not spent, are often present – but are rarely so overt, and we all know that political decisions become precedents for other decisions by other governments. Yes, I’m talking about ours.

Every year when the ASC releases its list of grants red-neck yokel politicians try and get cheap coverage by criticizing some as silly or frivolous, and calling them a waste of money. These include a feminist surfboard and the experiences of LGBTI people in natural disasters and spatial dialogues: public art and climate change.

That politicians can decide what research gets funded with public money, as it is in the national interest, I can agree with – but when they make decisions based on what is in their own interests – I think we should all be worried.

Posted on behalf of Dr Neil Doran, UTAS

I am a prior threatened species management officer from Tasmania. We have an upcoming screening of the award-winning Australian cave biology documentary SIXTEEN LEGS in Canberra this weekend (18 Feb), and Devonport, Brisbane and Sydney later this month.

It’s a film that aims to inspire care and appropriate management of unique ecosystems in Australia, and proceeds from the screenings will also support educational work with Australian students.

As added incentive, we are planning to give away a couple of seats on our next Antarctic Flight (later this year) to attendees at one of the premiere sessions – so it’s worth people coming along! We (the researchers and filmmakers) will also be there for a Q&A session following the film.

View the film trailer here.

Film Description

SIXTEEN LEGS is a nature documentary like no other. Featuring Neil Gaiman alongside appearances by Stephen Fry, Tara Moss, Adam Hills, and Mark Gatiss, and with a score co-written and performed by Kate Miller-Heidke, SIXTEEN LEGS tells the story of the world beneath our feet through 6 years of filming, over 25 years of scientific research, and hundreds of millions of years of evolution. Journey into a shadowy world of weird animals and strange rock formations, overseen by giant prehistoric spiders trying to find love in the dark. Meet animals that outlasted the dinosaurs, survived the splitting of the continents and that have endured the entirety of human civilisation in Australia?s deepest caves. As the world seemingly descends into the next period of global mass extinction, a message of hope comes from an unlikely hero: a creature, often reviled, that has survived previous mass extinctions and climatic change in a magical ecosystem hidden beneath one of the world’s last great wildernesses. With award-winning imagery and a dark-fantasy twist, this real-world “Charlotte’s Web” takes you on an adventure through an ecosystem that preceded us and may still outlast us.”Followed by filmmaker and scientist Q&A. Proceeds will support the Bookend Trust’s work supporting students studying unknown aspects of the natural world.

Final Screening Date

SYDNEY (with filmmaker Q&A): 18 March 3.30pm, Chauvel Cinema, 249 Oxford St, Paddington.

Book tickets here.

Hands up who has a boss who doesn’t really understand social media?

Or maybe your boss gets Facebook, or maybe gets Twitter like Donald Trump does, but uses their own personal experience of one to define how others might experience it?

That can be a fairly common problem for all communicators, but the bigger question is how do you explain the nature of new media/digital media to such a boss in ways that help you make a case for being able to best use it in your work.

I can put my hand up for having worked with bosses who saw the agency being criticized by organised Facebook groups, and whose first response was: “We need our own Facebook page to counter these claims.”

And yet such bosses are never likely to respond to being criticised in the Australian newspaper or on television, by saying, “We need our own newspaper or TV channel to counter this.”

The fact the criticisms were being made on Facebook is not the real thing to be focusing on. Of more concern is that the criticisms are being made by an organised group. In this instance, Facebook is just the channel for the group’s issues.

It’s true, as Marshall McLuhan said in the 1960s that the medium is the message – but sometimes you need to not confuse one for the other.

And hand’s up whose boss has decided you need a Youtube channel because – well because… and then is disappointed at the number of visits you are getting – noticing it’s a lot less than many teenage girl’s makeup tutorials or young dude’s game walk-throughs?

Because the world is waiting for one more YouTube channel or Facebook page like it is waiting for one more garage-recorded heavy metal song, or like it is waiting for one more self-published Amazon book.

It doesn’t matter how good your stuff is if people can’t find you in a highly crowded market. Or if only your friends and colleagues are visiting you.

The conversation with your boss (or let’s face it, with yourself sometimes) needs to focus on what you actually want to get from using digital media. For it can be many different things, and you need to often think of it as many things.

It can be a channel, or it can be a place for multiple messages, or a place for feeling the mood of an audience, or a place for conversations with people, or all of these and more.

Effectively understanding the language and use of digital media has been compared to learning a second language. And there are:

• those who have been born into speaking it (digital natives),
• those who have learned to speak it really well even though it was not their native language (digital migrants), and
• those who never fully get it and don’t speak it very well at all (digital tourists).

These are not necessarily age-related categories, though they do tend to favour age categorization, with the digital natives being younger and the digital tourists being much older. So before getting into a heated conversation with your boss over the use of any digital media great idea he or she might have, first seek to understand what their level of fluency is and work around that, not against that.

Sometimes the right response to a boss saying we need a [insert random digital media thing], is to say, “No, we actually need a boss who understands digital media.” But it’s more likely to be more appropriate to say, “No we actually need a communication strategy that starts with clear objectives and use that to define the mediums and messages we should best use.”