Our first entry in the ‘Heroes of Science’ series was about Galileo, whose life and work I had been interested in for a while. The next post in the series will focus on someone whose fame is well-known, but whose life and work I didn’t know much about until this week. Even at the completion of International Women’s day last week, there is still a lot of discussion within science and engineering about getting women more involved and how to keep them in research positions. In the midst of hearing about the challenges women face in today’s research environment, I thought back on what the challenges might have looked like over a hundred years ago, when the number of women scientists was far fewer than now, and pondered what it meant to be one of the best scientists (not just one of the best women scientists but one of the best scientists, period) to emerge from that time.
*Disclaimer: As with our previous Heroes of Science post, this post is by no means an exhaustive biography, but is meant only as an overview of Marie Curie's life as a scientist and why she can be considered a Hero of Science. The information presented here comes from our favorite source of fun facts, and there are lots of other resources if you are interested in reading more about Marie Curie. Even if you don’t know her history, you’ve seen Marie Curie’s name everywhere. Her name (as well as her husband’s) can be found on metro stations, airplanes, research institutions, fellowships, hospitals, and the list goes on and on. But before she was Marie Curie, she was Maria Salomea Skłodowska, born in Warsaw in 1867. Maria was part of a family of teachers who had an enthusiasm for science, but unfortunately who had also lost property and status in Russian-occupied Poland while she was growing up. Her father taught math and physics, and when his school had to stop doing lab experiments by order of the Russian government, he brought his chemistry lab equipment home instead. Maria attended boarding school but found herself unable to enroll at a university in Poland because of to her status as a woman. She became involved with Poland’s ‘Flying University’, an underground nationalistic Polish university, but her older sister inspired her to earn enough money working as a governess in order to move to Paris and study there. It took a year and a half of work for Maria to make enough money to join her sister in Paris, meanwhile taking the initiative to educate herself with books and self-tutoring in her spare time. Maria moved to Paris (and thus became Marie) while she was in her mid-20s and enrolled at the University of Paris to study physics, chemistry, and math. She spent her nights tutoring so she could earn money while studying and in 1893 got her degree in physics and soon started work at an industrial lab. She then earned her second degree and soon afterwards met Pierre Curie, who was an instructor in the school of physics and chemistry. Marie was looking for a bigger lab to work and was introduced by a colleague to Pierre. Pierre himself didn’t have a lab of his own, but he did help find a place for Marie. Their mutual love of chemistry and curiosity about the natural world led to a deeper friendship, and Pierre proposed to Marie. She turned him down, as at that time still intent on moving back to Poland. After going back to Poland to visit family, she soon realized that her dream wasn’t achievable: she was denied a place at Jagiellonian University in Krakow because of her status as a woman. Pierre sent her a letter asking her to come back to Paris to work on her Ph.D. and to marry him, and this time she obliged. For her PhD thesis, Marie decided to study uranium rays, thanks to inspiration from recent discoveries about x-rays and uranium. Using an electrometer similar to the one from her father’s old lab equipment, she was able to determine that the amount of radiation from the uranium was proportional to the quantity of the material, so she hypothesized that the rays weren’t from chemical interactions but solely from the atoms themselves. This was a groundbreaking way of thinking about atoms and was just the start of the groundbreaking discoveries that would lead her to two Nobel prizes. During her dissertation work, she had her first daughter and worked as an instructor at the École Normale Supérieure (ENS). The school didn’t have a lab, so she did her work in a converted shed next to the chemistry department. Her school also didn’t sponsor her research, so she worked to get subsidies from mining companies and governments who were interested in her work. She soon became entrenched in a systematic search for substances that could emit radiation, and also inspired Pierre to join in her endeavors. Pierre and Marie worked together and wrote numerous papers as they worked to discover the element that was responsible for higher activities than others. Through their work they discovered the element Radium and also coined the phrase ‘radioactivity’. They published 32 scientific papers in the time span of 4 years, including a ground-breaking medical paper demonstrating that exposure to radium destroyed tumor cells faster than healthier ones. In 1900, she became the first woman faculty member at ENS and later received her doctorate in 1903. She was invited to the Royal Institute in London to present her dissertation work, but due to her status as a woman Pierre had to speak on her behalf. Thankfully, Marie wasn’t denied a Nobel prize due to being a woman, although it did almost happen that way. In 1903 she shared the prize with her husband and Henri Becquerel for their work on radiation. The award was almost only given to Pierre and Henri, but one member of the Nobel committee was an advocate for women scientists and made sure that she was on the list, too. Pierre and Marie used their prize money to fund their lab and to continue their great work. Unfortunately, in 1906 Marie had to continue their incredible work on her own after Pierre died in an accident. Marie was left devastated but still determined to keep working. Before his death, Pierre was ready to accept a new position as Chair of Physics at the University of Paris, a position which the university instead offered to Marie. She took up the role and was determined to use her work and her lab as a tribute to her husband. While her work continued to flourish with the establishment of the Radium Institute, the successful isolation of radium in 1910, and working to define international standards for radioactive emissions, she still faced adversity. Marie was never admitted to the French Academy of Sciences, in part due to her status as a woman but also from strong xenophobic tensions, which also led to France occasionally shedding a poor light on her great work when receiving national awards. Despite both professional and personal adversity, her work was always on point, and she received a second Nobel prize, this time in Chemistry, in 1911—and to this day she is one of only two people to win Nobel prizes in two different fields. At the start of World War I, she worked on developing equipment to help battlefield surgeons, and was the first director of the Red Cross radiology department. Wanting to give everything she had to the allies’ cause, she even offered up her Nobel prizes to support the war effort. While her direct efforts to support soldiers and doctors on the front lines was at the time left relatively unrecognized by the French government, she continued to be a leader both in wartimes and as the leader of an institute which churned out four more Nobel prize winners, including her own daughter. While there are numerous legacies that Marie Curie left behind from her work, what stands out to me is her perseverance as a scientist. She was described as honest and modest, which seems to hold true when you see how she always invested prize money into her and Pierre’s work and worked to build others up in their institute instead of keeping it all for herself. She refrained from patenting her radium-labelling isotopes so that other scientists could more easily do the research they needed to. She also worked in a world that continually told her no, simply because she was a woman. The fact that she continued her research, which was both ground-breaking and Nobel prize-winning work, is proof of her dedication to her role in science and not to society’s expected role for her in the world. Marie Curie wasn’t just amazing because she was the first woman to do so many things in science, but because she provides an example for all of us, man and woman alike, of how we can let our passions and our curiosities drive us instead of letting ourselves be limited by the expectations of the world around us. She goes to show all of us that where you end up isn’t determined by what gender or economical status you’re born into, it’s instead driven by your ambitions and your goals, and the dreams of what you want to achieve, learn, or accomplish. Marie and Pierre also illustrate a great relationship in science—having someone that is your teammate and collaborator, and a person that inspires you to do your best and that helps you accomplish amazing things. Whether it’s your life partner or your science best friend, being in an inspiring and supporting relationship can make all the difference in helping you succeed. I have never been a very outspoken feminist, especially in the context of women in science, but I was really inspired by Marie’s story and the energy she put into working towards a goal, regardless of the obstacles in her way. Despite the challenges that women and other under-represented groups face in the sciences today, the world looks quite different than it did 100 years ago thanks to the pioneering efforts of early women in science. My PhD advisor told me about her days as a Masters student, when she would have lunch with the only other female in the graduate department. I see both her and Marie Curie not as pioneers for women in science but really as pioneers, period: people that go into a place that’s new and unfamiliar and that let themselves and their work shine, regardless of gender, nationality, or any other status. Maybe that’s why science is such a great place for everyone that works there, because it’s the merit of the work that’s the focus, not the person who does it. If you have another scientist in mind that you’d like to see featured in our Heroes of Science series, email your suggestion to science.with.style.blog[at]gmail.com and we’d be happy to feature it in an upcoming post. Until then, we hope you have an enjoyable Easter holiday—whether you get time off from the lab or just enjoy some spare time while eating your weight in chocolate eggs!
With stores full of last-minute shoppers and with lab attendance progressively dwindling over the past week, the time for Christmas break is close at hand and with one last blog post to finish things off. Taking a look back at the most used words on the blog since its inception on the 29th of July, we’ve talked about a lot of topics, not surprisingly with ‘science’ at the forefront of the posts. The word ‘work’ also makes a strong appearance, in the context of working on asking good questions, figuring out your working style, and the importance of interpersonal skills in the work place. Discussions of ‘time’ are also prevalent, especially in terms of taking time to unwind effectively, using time strategically when setting up talks and communicating research ideas, and how to make the most of your time with networking. [We also learned that I seem to use ‘like’ and ‘just’ as frequent filler words, and in an ironic turn of events do a lot of writing about ‘talk’ing]
I’ve greatly enjoyed working on this blog for the past six months and am looking forward to bringing more ideas and discussions to life in 2016. Looking ahead, my goal is to talk more about the ‘Style’ side of the concept of ‘Science with Style’, and the importance of bringing yourself into what you do. It’s not about wearing heels and fancy clothes to do lab work, but rather in knowing yourself and your strengths, and in letting your passions and enthusiasm shine through what you do every day. I’d also like to bring in regular guest posters to talk about their unique science outreach activities and to do highlight posts on researchers who truly embody the concept of being a scientist with style: reserachers who ask good questions, who bring their passions to life through their work, and who make their work open and understandable to more people than just their own lab members.
For the time being, 2016 is still a week and a half away, and I am looking forward to my own much-needed break from writing, working, and alarm clocks. Wishing you all a relaxing end to 2015 and see you in the new year for a 2016 full of science and style! -EKB
Carl Sagan is a hero of science communication: his books and TV series provided a forum for people to learn about science, and he sought to make nebulous topics understandable and interesting for everyone, not just for scientists. Science Friday recently posted an interview in honor of his birthday, which inspired me to explore one of his non-fiction pieces which he mentioned in the interview in greater detail. I am a huge fan of his book ‘Contact’, which I devoured two years ago and consider it one of my science fiction favorites. Over the past couple of weeks I’ve been reading his book published in 1995, ‘The Demon-Haunted World,’ with the running subtitle ’Science as a candle in a dark world.’ To provide some perspectives on the topics he addressed in this book while still giving you motivation to actually read it yourself, I’ll highlight some of his points that stuck the most with me and connect them to what I see as the current struggles between science and society.
Science should be a cautious mix of skepticism and wonder Sagan mentions his parents as a source of inspiration for his own career in science. Not because they themselves were scientists, but because they helped instill in him both a sense of wonder about the world and the complementary skepticism needed to distinguish the true from the untrue. Sagan comes back to these two qualities quite often in his book and relates them as the crucial factor for being a good scientist. You must have a passion to learn about the universe, the wonder and the inspiration that keeps you going through mundane scientific tasks or during the times when it feels like nothing is working. At the same time, you need the skepticism to keep your hypotheses in check, to be able to look at results with a sharp and critical eye, and to prevent yourself from becoming too dreamy-eyed about an idea when new evidence shows up against it. This sense of wonder seems to come naturally to many of us, especially as kids when they start learning about the world, and this natural wonder is the reason why many of us got involved with science in the first place. Being excited to learn about the universe we all inhabit is the driving force behind many endeavors—but it’s the skepticism and the thorough approach that distinguishes science from purely creative endeavors. Scientists and engineers must balance a seemingly contrasting set of ideals and methods: we must be imaginative enough to bring new ideas and perspectives together, but at the same time disciplined enough to know when the logic of an argument doesn’t hold up. The methods of science are more important that the answers Science is very different from other fields because its passion and its core lie in framing testable questions and conducting definitive experiments. While this problem-solving nature is instinctive to the human condition, we still have to be careful in terms of how we set about asking questions and what we do when we get back the answers. A fundamental theme that Sagan stresses is that scientific theories can and should shift when new results reveal a new understanding. This can give some people the impression that scientists are constantly changing their minds and therefore aren’t trustworthy. This can be addressed by better explaining the concept of the scientific method and how theories come and go as new knowledge arises. At the same time, scientists can have a habit of getting overly attached to a hypothesis or an idea, especially if it’s something that they’ve received grant money for pursuing further. Sagan stresses just how important it is for a scientist to be willing to change their ideas when support in the form of data becomes available. As such, scientists should always be striving for new ideas and, regardless of whether their initial ideas were right or not, should aim to leave behind a legacy that can be built upon and amended as needed. Skepticism as a key tenant of science and of life Sagan’s perspectives as an astronomer led him to many interesting encounters with UFO abductees and astrologists. Regardless of what field you’re in, there is probably some related form of pseudoscience that develops from people’s general fears, misinterpretation of science, and a resistance to asking testable questions. Sagan believed that skepticism provided the best way to dispel the haunting demons of pseudoscience. His idea was to provide better training to help students develop their own skills in skepticism, or as he terms it their ‘baloney detection kit.’ Sagan describes his kit in great detail and again brings it back to the scientific method: you start with the results presented to you, whether they be raw data or observations, then try to explain what you see with a testable hypothesis (the key here being testable). Sagan suggested that this skepticism could be instilled in earlier years by having academic scientists more involved in public education settings, and to make it clearer that science is not just about results but also the questions and experiments you use to get there. A look at the ‘demon-haunted world’ 20 years later In today’s world, science is at the forefront of daily news websites, and journal articles are published more quickly and made available more widely than ever before. Newspapers have science columns and science journalists, and there is a reason for that: science can bring in some juicy, dramatic stories. Between predictions about global warming, new cures for cancers, and water on Mars, there are a lot of attention-worthy stories in science today. It’s for this reason that good science and accurately talking about the scientific method, as well as the implications of findings, is so important. Ideas like ‘vaccines cause autism’ are hard to erase from the public mind, even after a paper gets retracted, so having both scientists and lay people being at the forefront of solid science and accurate interpretations of studies is crucial. In my own line of work as an environmental toxicologist, I see demons coming to life not in the form of UFOs and star signs but in the obsession with ‘chemicals.’ There is certainly no doubt that the industrial has severely impacted our environment: pesticides that kill more than just bugs, rivers that catch on fire due to toxic waste, and oil spills that last for 87 days. Because of these very impactful stories, discussions on the use of chemicals and where they end up in the environment can quickly become polarized, especially if they involve impacts on human health. While these dialogues are crucial, the issues can often become overly simplified as a battle between the bad industry company and the good little guy who is unjustly exposed to these evil chemicals. There are plenty of examples of sensationalism and misinterpretation of science in the area of health, with other science bloggers keen to bring to light logical errors on 'poisoning' exposés, which included statements such as ‘there is just no acceptable level of any chemical to ingest, ever’ (not even water, apparently!). In these heated discussions, it becomes quite easy to craft a story of injustice and to point fingers at the big corporations that are ‘poisoning’ us or our environments with chemicals and then to say that we’re being stepped on. In reality, these problems often have a myriad of stakeholders and there’s no bad guy versus good guy, its just different groups with different needs and perspectives. While there will likely continue to be misinterpretations and over simplification of the issues plaguing our world, the goal of science in these debates is to help clarify the ever-present gray area and act as the mediator in these discussions. Sagan strives in his writings and TV shows to help everyone learn about science and how it works, because our success in the future is dependent on science, mathematics, and technology. However, with as much pressure that rests on these fields to deliver solutions, these topics remain poorly understood by many of the people that they impact. As scientists, we have numerous skills that go beyond pipetting: we are good at thinking, working in teams, solving problems, communicating, and teaching. We can put these skills to good use not only to advance scientific progress but also to share science with society. In this book, Sagan not only provides a guide for lay people to understand science but also provides inspiration for scientists to continue his saga of science outreach. Through positive collaborations and more engaging and open forms of communication, we can work towards Sagan’s vision of using science to keep the world’s demons at bay, and to usher in a society that has the same passion for understanding the natural world as the scientists who work towards that goal every single day.
Science communication blogs and social media accounts are easy to find these days, now that scientists are realizing the importance of making their research available to more people than just their academic peers. We can blog and tweet as much as we want, but as with biology there’s only so much you can prove with lab work: at some point, you have to put on your waders and head out into the field. This week I realized that my interest in science education and communication wasn't enough; I had to go out there into the real world and see how things work. So last Saturday I left the safety and comfort of my blog posts to help with some science outreach firsthand.
The University of Liverpool recently launched a series of ‘Meet the Scientists’ events at the World Museum in Liverpool, which are aimed at engaging children and their parents with researchers at the University while learning about the science that they do. The latest one was held last weekend (November 21st) and I volunteered to help out. I hadn’t been to the World Museum Liverpool before and arrived a bit early to see the set-up for the event. Before my shift at the feedback booth, I had time to talk to the scientists running the displays. I was impressed by the time and care that everyone put into coming up with an engaging way to both interest and teach people of all ages. The focus was on conveying a message about science in a way that everyone could understand. There were impressive visual analogies, such as the pool noodle/balloon combinations to help show what cells look like and what gives them structure (the structure coming from the pool noodles, of course). The simple activity of coloring in cartoon mosquitoes was tied to a lesson on how malaria is transmitted. When I asked 6-year old child what he learned at the malaria booth, he replied that malaria comes from the germs carried by the mosquitoes, not the bite itself (crucial information on this widespread tropical disease, and probably something that many adult wouldn't know!). One of my favorite displays was on cancer treatments, which on first glance would be a rather difficult topic to explain to kids. The way it was presented was really fantastic—cancer hits specific parts of the body (indicated by colored cups) but scientists can figure out and use specific, targeted ways to treat it (e.g. putting colored balls into its corresponding cup). It was creative, accurate, and positive, with the goal of talking about a nebulous, potentially scary topic in a way that kids could understand and see how cancer treatments can be helpful.
After doing a tour of the set-up, my task for the day was to collect feedback from the kids and talk to them about what they liked, where they were from, and to hand out a souvenir ‘Meet the Scientists’ petri dish for everyone. For a sunny and cold Saturday the museum was a busy place, and our stands seemed to be full for most of the day. All the kids were engaged with the University scientists at each display and we received positive marks from nearly everyone, apart from one three-year old who was adamant that he did not enjoy the day (I guess you really can’t please everyone). In addition to the petri dishes, kids took home quizzes, fun facts, and a piqued interest in science and medicine. I also enjoyed talking to parents and seeing what they thought, with most of them having a similarly good impression of the event as much as their kids did. I also enjoyed asking kids what they wanted to be when they grew up. Not everyone wants to be a scientist, but I love seeing kids interested in learning new things even if it’s not their most favorite thing. One 6-year old named Isaac gave us some great feedback and wants to come again. When I asked his dream job, he replied that he’d like to be a ship captain. His reply highlights the fact that science isn’t just for scientists: science accepts anyone who is willing and excited to learn. Just because a kid doesn’t dream of a job in biology, chemistry, or medicine doesn’t mean they shouldn’t be encouraged to approach science, or any subject, with curiosity and desire to learn.
In between talking to kids I also talked to my fellow scientists, including some older museum visitors who also had careers in science. As we mused about how lab machines always break at 6pm just before they finish analyzing some crucial samples, or how we sometimes spend 7 hours a day in the lab pipetting, we realized that the running joke was that the science we do now was nothing like the science we were shown as kids ourselves. Our childhood memories included fancy museum displays, television programs on wildlife ecology, astronomy, and chemistry, and repeatedly hearing the message that with science you really could do anything. Then upon starting postgraduate study we abruptly learn the reality of what life as a career scientist is like: long days in the lab, field sampling trips where it rains and you only get half the samples you set out for, tedious chores and meetings and writing papers and all the countless little things it takes to make the breakthroughs that lead to those museum displays and the television programs. How is it that the reality of science seems so different than what we were shown originally? More importantly, can we ever see science like a kid again? I set out to answer this question by going back to the museum on Sunday after the event, this time to explore the museum firsthand, inspired by the kids I had seen the day before while trying to look at it from a kid’s perspective. I had been to a few other museums in Liverpool, but not yet the World Museum Liverpool, and to be honest I haven’t been a regular attendee of natural history museums for quite some time. Since starting grad school I was more attracted to art or human history museums, as if I was searching for a break from my day job, with art or history providing more things to learn and less overlap with my day-to-day work. I decided to end my natural history museum dry spell and headed back, ready to see science with fresh eyes and with the contagious excitement I had received from a museum full of kids who had spent their Saturday afternoon learning about biology. My first stop at the World Museum Liverpool was an unexpected and very detailed exhibit dedicated to horology, although in hindsight not that unexpected, since Liverpool was a hub for clock and chronometer makers to be used on the many ships that came in and out of its port. I mused over the beautiful pieces and studied the displays of their inner workings, so complex yet tiny enough to fit inside your pocket, and for the chronometers with even more detailed inner workings so they would maintain regularity even after long periods of use out at sea. I realized how easy it is to forget the complexity it took to accurately tell time before cell phones and digital watches were everywhere, and the amount of time and work it took into making something that could just tell time (no other apps involved). These pieces weren't just the work of expert artists: the people that made watches clearly needed to be people who were extremely knowledgeable and trained in physics and precision machinery. On the same floor as the horology display was a small exhibit on outer space, highlighting some pieces from the University of Liverpool’s collection of old telescopes and sun dials. These were coupled with examples of more modern tools, with displays explaining how astronomers used slow-capture imagery to understand the contents of galaxies, accompanied by gorgeously detailed modern images, as if to show how far technology has come and how our eye on the universe has expanded tremendously just in the last century. Downstairs in the dinosaur and geology displays, I had a flashback to a trip I took last month to the Utah Natural History Museum and their impressive dinosaur displays there. Not to speak poorly of the World Museum Liverpool, but Utah does have the advantage of having quite a large number of paleontological sites within its borders. In the Utah museum there was a ‘real-live’ paleontology lab, where you could watch scientists wearing dust masks carefully and meticulously clean bone fragments. I thought about those paleontologists this weekend as I roamed through numerous displays of fossils, bone fragments, and fossilized dinosaur poop. What we get to see on display are the shiny, organised, categorised, cleaned-up pieces of history, but when looking at a skeleton that’s 150 million years old it’s easy to forget the back-breaking and tedious work that went into finding the fossil, getting it out of the ground and cleaning the dirt off. As much as my work has tedious parts to it, seeing a picture of a huge fossil ground in Utah, with what appeared to be endless piles of bones from who knows how many animals, confirmed that paleontologists must be a patient and persistent lot, who go through it all with the hope that they can piece together what life looked like so many millions of years ago. Holding true to my biologist nature and environmental scientist training, my favorite part of last Sunday spent at the Liverpool World Museum was about animals. I was enthralled with the beautifully arranged display drawers full of butterflies and plants. I thought about the scientists who put these all together, their pride of having a complete set of species from a region or to have a rare specimen, and with what patience and care it took to pin each one so as not to damage or tear the delicate wings or petals. It was also a unique experience to see a large collection of skulls, from great white shark to sperm whale to hippopotamus, up close enough so that you could get a close look and really marvel at the power these animals have. While I’m not a huge fan of insects, I enjoyed the museum’s displays that showed how ants work together, what they eat in the wild, and how they live and reproduce. I enjoyed seeing kids in this exhibit not afraid or grossed out by the bugs but instead curious and interested to learn more about this small but numerous group of animals. The last stop of the Sunday at the World Museum was the aquarium, which will always be a personal favorite of mine. I didn’t know that the museum had a small aquarium, so I was excited to see some displays not only of tropical species but examples of fish from the North Sea and ecosystems close to Liverpool. There was also a nice taxidermy display on ecological communities, highlighting animals at risk for extinction and explaining the need for biodiversity and good community structure for a healthy world. I couldn’t help but think back to happy childhood summer days spent with my grandparents at Omaha’s Henry Doorly Zoo while watching rays swim and holding my fingers up to an octopus’ tentacle from across the glass. I thought back on my first visit to the zoo aquarium when I was 8, the excitement of that day and of seeing penguins and octopus and sharks so close at hand, of hearing of the plight of oceans and the rest of our beautiful world as a kid and being inspired to do something about it. Even now at 28 and with a PhD to my name, I still feel those natural childlike fascinations and the pull towards doing something good for the planet through science.
After the weekend at the museum, Monday morning came with some retrospections on my own career. The day-to-day life of a scientist doesn’t always make you feel like you're in a position to save the world, but instead can leave you with a feeling that you’re mired in the mundane tasks of science, not its glorious breakthroughs. Whilst that feeling can be hard to get rid of, going to the museum helped me realise something: the mundane tasks, whether they are dusting bones, pipetting yeast, or counting ants, are what need to be done to help create the scientific body of knowledge that the textbooks and museum exhibits rely on. What feels mundane on many days is just the work we need to do to progress, albeit sometimes more slowly than we had hoped. It’s not that we were lied to about what life as a scientist was like, we were just shown the end of the story but not the journey it took to get there.
In terms of how move forward and not to dwell on the occasional misrepresentation of science, take time to reflect back on our own childhood ambitions and remember what got us started on a trail towards science. Ask yourself: what experiences led us to a career in science? What were the questions that got us wondering what else there was to the world and how it works? Who inspired us to dream big and to strive to make an impact beyond money and fame? Remembering what drives our curiosities and inspires us on a natural, child-like level can help re-invigorate our motivation and to get us through the doldrums that we need to progress science as a whole. With the next ‘Meet the scientists’ event coming up in January, I’m already musing on ways to show kids what science looks and why we do it, to show the story from start to finish. I think it is important to tell kids that science is not just about the neat and tidy textbook knowledge, but also about the experiments it takes to get there, and that good questions are the key to good science. Ultimately, although we have museums and books full of facts, there is still so much we don’t know and still so many things left to discover about how the world works - and that’s why we’re scientists!
In previous posts I laid out five (plus/minus one or two) easy* steps for developing a scientific presentation. For today's post I'll be going into more detail about the preliminary work that you should do before you set off on making a perfect** presentation. As an added bonus, you'll get a sneak-preview of my presentation at the upcoming Society of Environmental Toxicology and Chemistry (SETAC) North American annual meeting located in the ever chic and always stylish capital of Utah, Salt Lake City. So not only do I get a blog post from my efforts, I'll have already put some time and effort into my talk before I get to the meeting. That's what we call in science a win-win situation, and in my case even better than free pizza at a seminar you were already actually planning on going to.
*Easy: Remember that nothing good in life comes that easy, as evidenced by the fact that I spend 3 hours making 4 slides for this talk. **Perfect: In the end I'll probably end up getting nervous and making a sarcastic comment about how my bipolar membranes look like lollipops, but that's OK, because the story is what’s important and the story is what they’ll remember. Step 0. Make a story board For my SETAC presentation, I get 12 minutes for the talk and 3 minutes for questions and answers. Following the presentation rule of thirds means the first 1/3 is background/broad appeal, the second 1/3 is in-depth details and concepts for people in my field, and the last 1/3 is my novel contribution to the field. Because of this, I printed out blank Powerpoint slides in groups of four. I'll focus on having 4 minutes of background information/introduction, 4 minutes of detail-oriented methods and ideas relevant for my results, and 4 minutes of my actual results. It may sound like a small amount of data, but having given a good overview of the big picture of my project, as well as a bit more in-depth review of relevant methods will make the data I show more clear and understandable, and therefore more memorable.
With my storyboard printed and ready to go, I started off by going back to the original conference abstract to make sure I set off to present what I said I was going to present. I started with putting two things in my mind: the objective of the work to present in my talk and my audience. Writing down your objective again before starting on slides helps focus your mind on the bigger picture of what you want to present. In my case, the objective of the data for my talk is focused on the molecular mechanisms of narcosis toxicity and developing new screening tools for different classes of narcotic chemicals (as part of my post-doc project with Unilever). My audience in this case is one I know quite well: SETAC regulars who will be coming to the session on '-Omics technologies and their real-world applications.' There will be quite a few people in this audience that I'll know personally, and others whose work I'll be mentioning in my slides. No pressure!
With my audience and objective laid out, I set to work on the slides. Following the rule of thirds, I started off with background information/broad appeal, to get everyone on the same page. While most of this audience will know about concepts like gene expression, risk assessment, and adverse outcome pathways, I want to make sure that someone popping over from an environmental chemistry session will also be able to follow along. At the same time my subject area is not one of the hotter topics at SETAC, so a bit of background in terms of biology and relevance is necessary here.
I decided to start off my talk with a description of narcosis toxicity. As I said, this isn't a hugely hot topic in my field, so I planned on making the first two slides as an opportunity to teach anyone in the audience who hasn't heard it much before. I split this into two parts, one focusing on the basics/textbook toxicology concepts of narcosis, and the second going into more details on recent papers and new understandings. Here I also sketched out what to put on each slide, including my lollipop-esque membranes, and what figures from the literature I wanted to include.
So now that I've put everyone on the same page about what narcosis is, I'll then present the specific problem I'm looking into, in this case the lack of understanding of the molecular mechanism of toxicity. This will be in the context of work done by senior scientists who will most likely be in the audience, so I've made a note to cite their work. This brings in concepts that I discussed in more detail in Step 1 of the perfect** presentation, where you get people's attention by describing a problem in your field, why that problem is important, and then in the next slides how you solve it. For this talk I present the problem and then talk about how knowing mechanisms of toxicity are relevant for accurate risk assessments for chemicals, especially narcotics. Hook, line, and sinker!
At this point I've now laid out the objective of my project, the specific questions I'm asking, and how they will address the issues I presented in the introduction. This slide (#5) also comes at a time where I am transitioning between background information and getting into the nitty gritty of my project. You can skip trying to decipher my bad handwriting and read more about Step 2 and how you present setting out to solve the problem you just talked about.
After the transition slide and describing my project's objective and questions, I then go into a bit more background information to provide context for the data which I'll show next. This includes one slide (#6, see panel above) on how high-throughput molecular techniques can help address these questions, and one slide (#7) on my model system and why we chose it, including background information of toxicity of narcotics in my model system. I then give a schematic of my experimental design and will talk here about the analytical methods I'll be presenting. I also made a note to myself to make an 'emergency' slide with details of one of the methods of my project. As its only a small part of what I'm doing but something that a few people might question, I'll make a slide to have at the end in case I get a question after the main part of the talk.
So with those eight slides I'm now 2/3 done with my talk. The last four slides will be data and conclusions, and to prevent any earth-shattering findings from escaping into The Internet too soon (and to motivate any SETAC meeting attendees to actually come to my talk, on the last day of the conference in the late afternoon!), I'll save those sketches for when I make the real thing. Step 1. Set the stage and Step 2. The Hook To give you a sense for how the introduction slides actually ended up looking, apart from my terrible scribbling, here are how they turned out so far. I added animations in the actual presentation so the content doesn't all come up at once, which also allows what I say and the components of each slide to come together in a more logical progression. As an aside, I have no idea the appropriate color for biological membranes, so I am currently thinking of new ways to see if I can make a bipolar membrane not look like blueberry lollipops. To be determined for the next blog post.
As you can see, there's a lot you can convey with lollipops and arrows, and remember that at the same time that your slides will be on screen you'll also be speaking (as scary of a concept as that seems). Think about how your words and your slides can work together, and keep to a minimum any redundant or unnecessary text as well as figures or diagrams that may be too detailed or too small to see or understand clearly. Before jet-setting off into your experimental design, take a slide to transition from introduction to experimentation while at the same time giving your audience a clear vision of what you are doing and what scientific questions you are answering (e.g. the hook).
While I've touched briefly on some of the last three steps while working on my storyboard (the story, take a bow, and break a leg), we'll save a more in-depth analysis of these for when we get closer to the actual meeting. It will also give me a chance to finish making my data slides, and to practice my talk before giving the real thing to a live, scientific audience, including but not limited to collaborators, experts in the field, and potential future employers. Again, no pressure. Until next time, happy storyboarding!
Now that you’ve done most of the ground work while making your story board, the rest of the steps should fill themselves in easy enough. You’ve done all the lab work, analyzed the data, and gone through the literature, so now all that’s left is to tell your part of story:
1. SET THE STAGE The first crucial question to answer at this point is Who’s in your audience?, because this will determine what goes into those crucial introductory slides, the ones that are going to get everyone’s attention on you instead of motivating them to beat their high score in Candy Crush. You should keep the audience in mind throughout all of the steps, but it’s especially important during the introduction to avoid losing their attention or causing any confusion by assuming the audience is familiar with any aspect of your research. Watch out for jargon/abbreviations/concepts that you use all the time in your lab meetings. It’s easy to forget that not everyone else in the world knows what mTOR or KNN is, does, or represents. Think about the crucial idea or scientific principle that’s at the crux of your research, and have a slide dedicated just to explaining that. Then you’ve made sure that everyone’s on the same page in terms of background knowledge before you jump in to the more subtle and specific aspect of your project. Once you’ve prepared an introduction that will grab your audience’s attention, the next step is setting up your talk in a way that keeps their attention. It’s easy to stay interested with someone explaining a new concept or a system they don’t work with, but if you dive too quickly into the specifics of your project without giving them a reason to listen to your favorite acronyms, they’re going to go back to beating their previous score on Candy Crush regardless of how good your first couple of slides were. One way to do this is to frame your presentation not as a series of facts, but to present a specific problem, its overall importance, and your approach to solving it. In the introduction you should focus on explaining the problem and its importance, and wait for step two to talk about how you’re setting out to solve it, so you can evoke curiosity in your audience. Be careful not to overstep your bounds here: it’s easy for people working in cancer biology to say that they’ll save everyone from cancer, or those working with global warming to say that the world will be completely flooded over in 10 years, but sensationalism will only get you so far. If you stay within the limits of what you’re doing and let your excitement and enthusiasm about your work come through, people will listen. Before moving on to the next step, a few extra tips of things to avoid: - Endless literature review/TMI amounts of data. Stick to background concepts that are necessary for the rest of your talk and mention papers that are directly related to your work, especially any crucial papers that exemplify the area. If people want to know more details, they’ll ask. - Acknowledgements at the beginning. Some people like this approach but I think it breaks up the talk too much. Wait until the end when people know what you’ve done already before you take the time to thank the people that helped you get there. 2. THE HOOK Now that you’ve peaked interest, it’s time to go back to the second important part of setting up your story: How are you going to solve the problem? This seems like a monumental task at first, but in essence, you need to provide an answer to a previously unanswered question, using the approach you’ll describe in the next step. My undergraduate honors thesis mentor was a proponent of using a pen and paper to help you think about concepts in a big picture way (similar to what I described in the last post). It’s something I took from his lab and still use when I work with my own project, presentations, and when talking with other scientists about how to set up their grant proposals, talks, papers, etc. It boils down to five things: 1) GOALS: The long-term ambitions for what you’re doing that go beyond the scope of your project itself. This should be related to the big-picture problem you described earlier. 2) Goals are (eventually) reached by fulfilling OBJECTIVES: What you’re specifically trying to achieve with your project. 3) Objectives are reached by addressing SPECIFIC AIMS: A set of experiments you’re doing that will address the objective. 4) In each of these specific aims are your HYPOTHESES: What you think the answers to the questions you’re setting out to address might be. 5) Your hypotheses then get answered by the EXPERIMENT(S) you run for each specific aim. While the GOALS can be inferred from previous slides, you can include them again as you present your OBJECTIVES and SPECIFIC AIMS. You may be very familiar with the HYPOTHESES and EXPERIMENTS (and the resulting answers), but in this step you should present them to your audience in the context of the the bigger picture which is framed by the GOALS, OBJECTIVES, and SPECIFIC AIMS. This is a transition point in the presentation, as you’ll just have given your audience a large amount of background information and will now be getting into the nitty-gritty of your project. The “hook” is set when you go from here’s a problem in my field and why it’s important to here’s how I’m going to address it using this fancy thing known as the scientific method. You’ve made it clear what your project’s relevance is in the wider scheme of the problem facing your field and also made it clear what exactly you’re setting out to do with your specific project. 3. THE STORY I can’t offer much advice for this section because you are the expert here, not me. Remember that when you talk to your audience too: No one, no matter how smart they are or how long they’ve worked in the field, knows all the finer details of your project like you do. That being said, there’s a few things you can do to help make your story shine crystal clear: - Use text sparingly, especially in methods sections. Powerpoint is best used as a visual aide. You can provide words as need be, but avoid long blocks of text unless they are crucial for understanding something in context. If you have a complicated method, make a schematic instead, even if it’s just using arrows or squares or stick figure mice. It’s easier to walk through your method using a diagram with the audience for them to understand how your experiment or study design looks like. They’ll ask for details on specifics of a method if they want them. - Keep reminding your audience of your hypotheses and specific aims. Break up your story into the experiment and results for each hypothesis and compile the results of your experiments and hypothesis support for each specific aim before moving on to the next one. This will also help break up your talk and allow you to synthesize your results as you go along, instead of having one long stream of information and then summarizing all of it at the very end. Set up your slides and your presentation with reminders of what your questions are and how you set out to answer them. - Make what you’re showing crystal clear. When you make a figure, you know what data went into it and what it shows, but in the 30 to 60 seconds that it’s on screen, someone outside your lab or your field may not be able to make much sense of it. Figures are the way you convince someone that the story you’re telling them is a good one, so make sure your figures are easily readable. One easy way to do this is to put a one-sentence description at the top of the slide telling what the figure shows/presents, for example “Knocking down Gene XYZ caused an 80% decrease in response to Drug ABC in mice” followed by a figure is much clearer than a header which says “Result for Specific Aim 3”. 4. TAKE A BOW And now for the grand finale, and for me, the best part of the presentation: being done! You just gave a long and detailed overview of your entire life’s work/thesis/project, so now would be a good time to remind everyone what you just told them, because some of them might have forgotten along the way. It’s not your fault or theirs, it’s just the nature of our brains to forget the majority of what we hear. After you remind your audience what you just told them, go back to your initial problem and your plan for how you set out to solve it. What did you learn about the problem? What did you make clearer about the problem through your research? What still remains unanswered but is important for solving the problem? Answering these questions to the audience will help frame your conclusion more strongly than ‘this is what we saw, this is what might be interesting later on for future work.’ Circling around back to the beginning again will also close some memory gaps for your audience, as you can remind them once again of what problem you set out to address in the first place and how you went about tackling that problem. 5. BREAK A LEG! The last step, after you’ve made all your gorgeous slides, is the delivery. As a caveat, this advice comes from a person who is NOT an expert in public speaking, or really speaking in general, the classic introvert who would rather spend her time reading and writing than standing at a podium in front of hundreds of people talking about science. The problem for introvert scientists is that in this day and age, at some point you’re required to stand up in such a room and talk about your science, so you might as well get good at it. Moral of the story is: if I can do it, so can you! There are many ways to improve your public speaking skills, but for me it boils down to one simple reminder. You’ll most definitely mess up something. You’ll forget to mention some part about one of your figures, you’ll stumble over a few words, you’ll say mTOWER instead of mTOR. And that’s OK! Minor mess-ups and stumbles will be forgiven by your audience, because it’s message, clarity, confidence, and enthusiasm that they’ll remember instead. If you focus on these last four things instead of perfecting every transition, figure description, etc., then you’ll nail the talk every time. Another simple thing to remember: You’re the expert in your project! So if you don’t explain something as well as you did in your head when you were practicing, remember that you’re probably the only one that will notice. A few more of my quick tips for this part: - No index cards! Being read at is not nearly as engaging as being talked to, so practice enough so you can give the talk without relying on a script. - Embrace the awkward. The clicker won’t work, you’ll bump into the mic and make some terrible sound, a bit of text goes off the screen. Don’t ignore these mishaps. Apologize for any misaligned text or mic issues and keep going. For technical problems, troubleshoot as best as you can and ask the session chair for help if need be. Most importantly during all of this: keep talking! If it’s taking an extra minute to load your presentation or to sort out how to advance the slides, thank the audience for the wait and give a longer introduction of yourself, your affiliation, or discuss the conference venue or city. It will keep the audience focused on you and not on the session chair frantically trying to find your presentation or remember how to use a computer. - Watch and listen to yourself. One of my least favorite parts of speech class in undergrad was going to the speech center and watch a recorded version of my speech. I realized how WEIRD my movements were due to my nervousness, including but not limited to a very awkward wide-legged stance and swaying from side like I had to pee. As much as I hated watching myself, it showed me what I needed to change and better ways to channel my nervous energy. Now I focus on talking more with my hands and taking a break with a drink of water when I need an excuse to not talk for a couple of seconds. Doing a similar exercise yourself will likely be psychologically painful, but once you see how your minor quirks appear to the audience, you can work on finding an alternative way to channel your nervousness and focus on relaxing and presenting your message instead. At the end of the day, remember that it’s your project and you are the expert, and if you don’t give the talk 100% the way you wanted it to go, it doesn’t mean it wasn’t a great talk. With the tips and tricks from this and the previous post, you can now head off on your way to a perfect presentation. Just remember that in this case, ‘perfect’ doesn’t mean that you won’t stumble over words, but instead that you will convey your message and story in a clear and convincing way. By focusing on your story and they key questions you’re focusing on answering, you will deliver a message that your audience will remember as well as one that you yourself will enjoy giving.
There are piles of books, tons of pamphlets, and a wide array of websites focused on how to give a good scientific presentation. So how am I, a classic introvert who gets nervous about speaking in general, qualified to tell you anything better or different than them? Simply put: I used to give bad presentations—really, really bad ones—with terrible Powerpoint templates, feeling constant unease while I stumbled over my words from nervousness, and overly-aggressive laser pointer usage as an outlet for my nervous energy. After an underwhelming PhD qualifying exam presentation, I set out to become better at presenting. I spent a good deal of time trying different approaches, pulling useful parts out from the heaps of hints and tips and listening to great scientific presentations before I figured out the method that worked best for me. I soon learned that there’s no such thing as bad presenters: we can all become good ones, but for some of us it takes more work than others. I then stopped just presenting my research and instead focused on how to tell the story of my work in a way that allowed me to share my science in the best way possible. I’ve now compiled the tricks and tips I’ve accumulated into a tried-and-true method: The Five Easy* Steps for a Perfect** Presentation!
*Easy? Nothing good in life comes that easy. And neither are presentations, for the 99% of us that aren’t naturally comfortable with public speaking. But it can still be done, so read on! **Perfect meaning you’ll share your story in an impactful and memorable way, not that you’ll deliver every word with perfection or not stumble over anything. Because the story is what’s important and the story is what they’ll remember. While the steps are easy, they are a bit long-winded in written form. So today we’ll focus on the preliminary steps towards a perfect presentation before you start to make your slides and tell your story. Step -1. Read the book Presentation Zen by Garr Reynolds (or just browse his blog) Like I said, before we get to the 5 Easy* Steps, there’s a few things you need to get sorted before you go to your computer and open Powerpoint. It may seem like it will take up a lot of time, but the steps that you do to prepare yourself for the main event are like stretching before a run: easy to forget and may sometimes seem inconsequential, yet essential to prevent hamstringing your success (or your hamstring for that matter). I found a copy of Presentation Zen at my university library and took endless pages of notes, but if you have $17 in your book budget you can pick up your own copy here. Garr can tell you better than I can how to design your presentation, how to make good-looking and accurate figures, and how to capture your audience with your simple yet captivating slides. It’s up to you to tell the story and let your voice fill in the gaps that your data can’t easily say on its own, but Garr’s tips and tricks will set you up for success in terms of design and thinking about the presentation itself before you start putting your story into slide form. Step 0. Make a story board Before you even think about opening Powerpoint, sketch out your main points, an idea of the content you’ll present, and an order for your story. This is a trick adopted from Presentation Zen but I’ve made it as a separate pre-step because it makes the rest of the talk flow much more nicely. It’s best to start with an open brainstorming session about your topic and your project before you lay it out slide by slide. When you have your big picture ideas in place, then you can focus in on how you’ll actually make the presentation using the story board approach. Set up your story board using an unconstrained media with whatever suits your style the most: blank paper and pen, whiteboard, sticky notes, tablet and stylus, restaurant tablecloth, anything that lets you get a wider perspective of your story and lets you move ideas around as need be. I like printing off a set of blank Powerpoint slides in the 3-slide format and writing on them directly because you can make notes to yourself next to each idea while still giving yourself space to draw out what can go on each slide. The goal of this step is to decide what you want to share, what order your findings should go in, and what the transitions between slides and ideas will be. You story board should help you lay out your slides in order to follow a single line of reasoning, which you’ll then bring to life during your actual presentation. While you are rearranging content in order to get your story across in the best way, having the story board enables you to have a wider vision of when content and ideas are introduced during your presentation. When you only see one slide at a time (as with the default Powerpoint slide mode), it’s easy to lose track of what you’ve already said or what message you want to convey 10 slides from where you are now. Drawing out your talk will also help you identify the transition points that you'll need to make clear as you shift from concept to concept so you don’t lose your audience in the transitions between ideas. While creating your storyboard, you should keep your audience in mind and always think of ways to keep them interested in what you’re showing. This means they need to understand what you’re presenting while at the same time becoming interested in learning something new about what your project brings to the field. A lesson passed to me by husband (via one of his grad school professors) of how to do this effectively is to break your talk into three equal parts: 1) Things that are easy to understand by a broad audience, 2) Things only people in your field will understand, and 3) Things only you will understand (also known as what you want to teach to the audience). These should be set up as equal thirds regardless of how long your talk is. For example, if you’re giving a 15 minute conference presentation, 5 minutes is easy stuff, 5 minutes is field-specific, and 5 minutes is your project. First 1/3: Set the stage with background information and broad appeal. Your goal here is to capture everyone’s attention by getting your audience all on the same page of understanding. Don’t assume that anyone has read a single paper in your area or knows what you’re talking about when you mention PCA or RPM or TGIF. Think of a conference you’ve been to where even though the overall field is the same (wildlife ecology, cancer biology, astronomy, etc), everyone at the meeting has a different specialty (arctic ecology, tumor suppressor proteins, quasars). You want to keep this diverse set of people interested at the same time, which means you have to talk about your work in a way that a diverse group can follow it. This will likely take some trial and error, but one easy way to figure out if you’re doing this the right way is to give this part of your talk to someone completely outside your field. If they can follow what you're trying to say, so can anyone else that goes to your conference presentation. Second 1/3: Cover in-depth details, concepts, and relevant literature that people in your field will understand and that those outside your field may not. People from your specific field of work will be there, probably sitting in the front row, who will be curious as to what you’ll say about their work. You know what they know already, so this is your chance to show them what you know and how your problem is going to solve an issue within the field. Because of their presence in the audience, this is also a good time not to directly trash someone’s previous work: if you found something convincing that underpins a previous study, let your results speak for themselves, and avoid an overly aggressive question or two after the talk is done. At the same time that you’re thinking about the experts, remember to keep the interested outsider on the same page as everyone else. Be careful not to overuse acronyms or jargon from your field when you make it to this section of your talk and instead use language that everyone in the room can follow. Final 1/3: Present your novel contribution (i.e. the reason you are giving the talk). Once you’ve got both the experts and non-experts on the same page in terms of the finer details and scientific context that leads up to your project, you can finish the talk by telling them all something new. In this part of the talk, you are the expert in the room and this is your opportunity to teach the audience something new and explain to them why it’s important. The best part of this section is that it’s the part that you know the most about. Let your ideas, graphs, and data shine through and conclude with a discussion on the impacts of your work in a way that everyone can follow and understand. While following this strict set-up may sound tedious, it’s the most effective way to keep people interested in what you’re presenting. Don’t think that since everyone at your talk is an expert that you can just jump straight into a more in-depth background to save time, or that the in-depth background is boring and redundant and just go straight to your results from the introduction. Doing so will make it easier to lose members of your audience and will jumble your story around so much that it will be hard to follow or understand why it’s important. Structuring your talk in these three sections gives you an easy template to work with and will make the next five steps slightly easier*. Luckily for you (and me), that should be enough work for you until next week when you get the actual Five Easy* Steps for a Perfect** Presentation. Until next week, happy story boarding! |
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