At the risk of giving you the impression that Idaho is full of backwoods uneducated types, I’m going to mention a recent article about the “vaccination debate” here in Idaho.

The article tells the story of a group of anti-immunization crusaders in Northern Idaho through the lens of two contrasting women. One of these is the leader of the anti-immunization folks, Ingri Cassel. The other is state epidemiologist Christine Hahn.

I’m not going to wade into the depths of the vaccination debate except to say that the vast majority of research points to vaccines being effective, and as a scientist, I like to make decisions based on data, rather than just speculation (when data is available, at least).

But what I will wade into is the communication debate. The article says about Cassel that she’s a “heart-on-her-sleeve rabblerouser who takes on everyone.” It says about Hahn that she “has no desire to engage in a heated debate over vaccinations.”

And that, my friends, is why science is going to loose a battle, yet again.

If you’ve noticed the alarming trend towards science loosing battles against all manner of crazies, you’ve got your reason why in the two quotes above.

The non-science folks are passionate. They tell stories. They pound the pavement. They “market” their ideas.

And most of the scientists on the other side just sit there thinking that “the facts will speak for themselves.”

No, facts don’t speak. Not now, not ever.

The public doesn’t care about the subtle nuances of immunogenicity or fancy buzzwords like that. They listen to passion and stories (yes, anecdotal ones).

If you think this problem is isolated to just a few loonies in Northern Idaho, think again. This is a significant trend that we’ve seen happen in the climate change debates, in the evolution vs creationism, and many more.

If science is going to prevail, scientists are going to have to start being passionate communicators for the value of what they do. Otherwise, we may be doomed.

A few years ago I gave a talk in the biochem department at UNC. Afterwards I went out for lunch with my mentor, and he berated me. (Did I mention that he can be an intimidating guy? But I listen to him, since he’s the one who helped me go from no grants to lots of grants…)

He berated me for several things, including using a difficult-to-read font, giving a software demo that took a bunch of time to get running, and, most of all, for not conveying “the point” of the talk.

I thought I’d conveyed the point clearly. I thought I’d shown how cool and nifty my new project was. But I was wrong. I hadn’t.

I was really bummed out because I used to let things like that affect me all too much.

I was soon coming up for tenure! I knew I’d have to give one or more “tenure talks” at which I had to really wow folks – including this mentor – before they’d vote me in (or out).

I figured that this was a sure sign I was going to fail. Here comes the unemployment line!

Only six months later, I gave a talk for my department, after which the same menotor came to me and said “that was a great talk.”

What changed?

After I got over my long bout with destructive self-pity, I had a few important realizations.

One of the most important of those was that I hadn’t been treating my audience with respect. I was doing the talk simply to build up my own ego and my own reputation, without paying attention to the “needs” or “wants” of the audience.

I see this all the time. I estimate that about 60-70% of all talks I see are coming from the same place. Maybe that’s why they’re often so tedious. The person is talking from a perspective of “hey, you should listen to me because I’m great and my research is great” – without any real engagement.

And here’s the one key thing I did to change it around. I discovered “love.”

Not romantic love… but love for my audience.

Around that time when I was preparing my tenure talk, I went to a friend’s wedding. There was a tremendous feeling of love at the wedding. It made me think about my talk, and I realized that I hadn’t been putting my talks together from a standpoint of caring about how my audience was feeling. And that was a big mistake.

Any human relationship that’s lacking a sense of caring or love is going to be dissatisfactory.

I applied that principle as I put my talk together. For each slide, each sentence, and each figure in the slides, I asked myself: does this help my audience to see or hear this? Or is it just another thing that I’m putting in here for selfish reasons (such as wanting to impress with how hard I’ve worked)?

In other words, I was constantly thinking to myself “I’m going to love my audience and treat them right!”

I haven’t done all of my talks that way. I’ve forgotten and then remembered this principle multiple times. But every time I do a talk or presentation based on this notion, it goes better – much better. That’s because I’m going outside of myself, thinking about the other people involved. I’m considering the time that they’re spending listening to me. I’m not just considering my own time or fame or fortune, I’m thinking about: how can I give them a great experience?

It works. It works really well. If you want to ramp up your results in front of an audience, this is the most potent way I’ve ever discovered. I hope you’ll use it!

ps – to summarize, whenever you’re preparing a talk, constantly ask yourself “am I treating my audience with love and respect?” It will ramp up your talks considerably.

pss – Do you want more tips and advice that will help you in your career? Grab your copy of the free report: “5 steps to a great science career”.

Many of you have probably heard of speed dating, a relatively new (well, 10 years old now) phenomenon where a large group of singles go to meet potential mates. You get 3-5 minutes with each potential person to decide if you like them and want to give them your phone number for a future date. Put yourself at one of these events for a minute. Since you have such a short amount of time, what would you look for to decide if you want to give your phone number to this person?

First, you’d probably go with the “vibe”. Does the person seem interesting, funny, energetic or happy? Or are they sketchy and weird? This first impression is likely to last, and if you don’t get over this hurdle you’re probably sunk, right? In fact, a 2006 poll at a speed dating event in Edinburgh, Scotland showed that 45% of women and 22% of men at a speed-dating event decided in the first 30 seconds if they would give the person a thumbs up or down. Wow! Talk about pressure…

However, this is actually not that different from your proposal. When someone is reading your proposal, the first thing they’re looking for is the answer to “why should I sit up and take notice of this proposal rather than the other 20 in my stack”. It’s the same as the speed dating event – you’ve got 20 women or men to choose from. Is this person in front of you going to make the first cut?

In the case of your proposal, the reviewer is looking for something interesting, innovative, exciting, and most importantly, relevant. If they don’t find something in the first 30 seconds that piques their interest, they’re probably not going to give you their proverbial phone number to pursue potential future funding.

Probably the most interesting thing someone can hear about is a solution to a problem they care about. Let’s break this statement down. First of all, there needs to be problem they care about. This is not just any problem. It’s a problem your audience is actively searching a solution for. You might be a few pounds overweight and know it’s a problem, but if it’s not that big of a problem compared to the rest of your problems, you’re probably not going to get all that excited about a solution. However, if your doctor tells you that you’re going to get diabetes in the next year if you don’t get your weight under control, well then it becomes a big problem you care about and will be actively looking for a solution for.

When writing a proposal you need to know

1. who is your audience that will review your grant, and

2. what problems are they actively looking for solutions for

If you don’t know these things, it’s going to be hard to engage their interest.

Once you have that figured out, you need to propose a solution to the problem they care about. Now, be careful here. Many people propose a solution by delving into the details of HOW they are going to do something, or describing in detail their underlying model and why it is better than the existing model, or building themselves up to establish why they’re the best person to provide the solution. These things are important, but remember, you only have a short time to create that spark. First, you must answer the question of “why should I read more”.

Take your proposal and distill it down to the most basic “what is this about” sentence you can. In 2 sentences or less, describe what the problem is you are proposing to solve and provide one new, interesting or innovative angle on that problem. Sounds simple, but this is something we, as scientists, often struggle with. We’re very used to providing detail, qualifying answers, questioning approaches and results. We’re generally not good at distilling and making bold predictions. Remember, the point of this speed date is not to get the bird in the bag. The point is to sufficiently engage the interest of the reader to put them in a positive frame of mind and keep reading your proposal. You can provide all those details later, but you must set the Vibe right at the beginning.

If you’re a scientist who wants to get your work recognized, then the titles you put on your talks, papers, and grants matter.

Today I had a conversation related to my bike shop that illustrates this point (and how to do it) clearly.

My business partner is doing a tele seminar series on bike touring.  She named the first interview:

“Bike touring with Ross & Laura”

I took one look at the title, and the record playing in my mind came to a screeching halt.

Here’s the problem with that title.  Few people know who Ross & Laura are.

And that leads to a deeper problem: if you don’t recognize a word or a name, it invokes no emotion for you one way or another.  That equates to “boring.”

If I say the name “Obama” I’m sure you have an immediate emotional response (whether positive or negative).

Hence, if the title was a”Bike Touring With Barak Obama” you’d probably be at least a bit curious.

The same point goes for scientific talk titles.  They don’t often use names, but they do convey concepts.

Those concepts can be dry and boring and unfamiliar to most people – in which case your title is doing nothing to draw people to your talk.

Or those concepts can be interesting, intriguing, and clearly understandable.

With our bike touring example, we might change the above to:

“Learning to live with only what you can carry on your bike, and loving it”

If you’ve had any practice at all with the English language, there is nothing unfamiliar in this sentence, and in fact it uses several words that convey emotion.

So the next time you set out to write a talk title, make sure to use words that the majority of your potential audience will understand.  Better yet if those words convey that there’s something interesting to be had here.

I’d like to hear about your best and worst talk titles!  Please leave a comment with your ideas.

Morgan

ps – Also, if you haven’t grabbed it yet, my report on the 5 critical steps to launch your career to the next level is over here at http://scifoundry.com

Sometimes I get to wondering about people, especially when they write in to the blog with really silly comments, like

“Presentation is a trivial part” (referring to grant writing).

This person clearly reacted to the notion that you have to “market” your work if you want to maximize success.

Go on, keep thinking like this fellow (or gal), and keep getting the results you are getting. If they’re the results you want, great!

But let’s say, like > 90% of scientists I know, funding for you is fairly constantly a struggle in today’s environment.

A great saying I heard is: “If you keep doing what you’ve been doing, you’ll keep getting the results you’ve been getting.”

So keep not “marketing” your work. Keep doing some bad grammar thingies. Keep writing long boring technical proposals that have nothing of interest for your reader.

Apparently this fellow (or gal) had a wee little misconception. This person apparently saw the term “marketing” and immediately thought, “oh no, Morgan is telling me that getting your grant funded is like pasting a billboard up on the highway.”

Uh. No.

Good marketing starts with a great product. Your product is your work and your science.

But let’s say I invent a new mp3 player that is 10x better than the iPod. Let’s say I think it is so much better than the iPod that I don’t do anything to market it. How quickly will I go broke (and get my investors really angry at me?) About as fast as spit dries on a New Mexico highway in midsummer.

It is not an OR thing. It is an AND thing. You have to do great work, AND do a great job of explaining and presenting it. That is, if you really want it to get funded.

Events often conspire to force us to wake up and think about things in a new way. I’d had many discussions about whether the Apple iPad is a “necessity” or just superfluous fluff. Having my iPad grabbed from my hands on a train in Paris forced me to really think about this.

The US NIH recently changed the grant format, among other things adding a new section titled “Innovation.” Many of us have wondered: how can we convey innovation if we’re using standard techniques and methods? Morgan has some ideas on this, illustrated with an iPad and a razor.

When we get our grant rejected, it is easy to point the blame at the reviewers. “Those
stupid reviewers, they didn’t get it.” While that approach may be emotionally satisfying and ego-stroking, it doesn’t
solve the problem. Your reviewer didn’t understand your proposal, and there is only one person to blame for that.

A colleague recently said to me, “Graduate education is fundamentally a fact-based activity.” I respond to that somewhat misguided view in the latest video. In my view, a graduate education (particularly PhD) is a skills based endeavor, not a fact based one.

The biggest impediment I see to most people’s success (not only in science careers) is perfectionism.

You can’t be a perfectionist and be successful. Period. End of story.

I’m not talking about doing shoddy work here – one should always strive for excellence.

But excellence is an ongoing process, whereas perfection is an unachievable end state. There is no perfection in the universe.

If you don’t believe me, try to draw a mathematically perfect circle.

Bet you can’t do it.

Nobody can. It is impossible. Quantum physics won’t let you locate atoms or electrons precisely enough to achieve it.

So if you set out to draw a perfect circle, you’ll never get there.

Just the same – if you set out for perfection in your scientific work, you’ll never get there.

I have seen perfectionism destroy more than one career.

It is particularly pernicious when it involves your own judgement.

See, in a job, or in an undergraduate class, you don’t have to worry about “perfection” because you’ve usually got documented standards for “perfect” to go by.

To get an A in a class, the teacher sets forth exactly what you must do. And so you do it (or not) and get the A (or not).

But the world of science, from Graduate School onward, isn’t like that. There is no pre-set criteria for “perfection” (or even for an A grade). There is simply a set of human interpretations about what works and what doesn’t, or about what is the “right” and what is “wrong” way to interpret data. That doesn’t mean there’s an actual eye in the sky judging what is “right” and “wrong” – just human guesses at it (guesses which are often proven wrong in the lens of history).

Many people let this trip them up. I have let this trip myself up – countless times in my career.

But trying to achieve perfection gets in the way of doing. But you have to be constantly doing to really get anywhere.