Today I had a conversation with someone who is in the middle of a science career, and is having trouble with getting grants funded.

It seems like there are a lot of us mid-career people who are having struggles of various kinds. My goal is to help with those, in any way I can.

In this particular conversation, we touched on the topic of the importance of having papers published in “reputable” journals to get your grant funded. Journals like Nature, Science, PNAS, and etc.

I ended up with a somewhat contrary view to the “conventional wisdom” on this point.

I’ll explain it with an example. Let’s say you’re on a study section, and you have two grants to compare. All other things are equal (and you do not know either author personally), but this:

Grant A was written by a senior scientist who has had 9 Nature/Science papers over the past 10 years on the subject. He is proposing to continue extending the work, by studying new molecular players that may be involved in the pathway. It shows some promise for moving the field forward, but is not revolutionary.

Grant B was written by a newer scientist who has no Nature/Science papers, but does have one paper in a specialist journal on his brand new approach for solving a disease, and in his grant he’s proposing to further develop this promising new approach.

Which one would get you more enthusiastic? More of the same, or something new?

For better or worse, we are a society that thrives on newness and innovation. It has taken us very far (and occasionally led us into troubles, like inventing the atomic bomb). We like the new, and we’re not so keen on the same and the boring.

Given what I just wrote, I would be hard pressed to see how the first proposal would get more enthusiasm than the second – despite the lack of Nature/Science papers for the second grant.

This is especially true because the senior researcher has been working on the topic for 10 years. Let’s say that topic is Cancer (a favorite of mine, since it claimed my father’s life). Now, if the senior researcher had 10 years to work on it already, and he’s only made “decent” progress – but no big leaps – it starts making a reviewer wonder if it wouldn’t be better to invest in a new approach.

I believe this is the greatest challenge that lies in waiting for mid-career investigators. At first, your work is often seen as being novel and new by study sections. But after your second or third funded grant on the subject, it starts growing stale. It just isn’t exciting anymore.

Therefore, I’d argue that the number of high-profile publications is actually less important than the amount of (feasible) innovation present. I think that taking your field in a new direction is a far more interesting thing to most reviewers than just having a bunch of great publications.

So, if you are having mid-career funding challenges, think about the science that you’ve been doing, and ask yourself: has it grown a bit stale? Or is it fresh and new? If it is stale, how could you renew it?

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BTW – I’m not saying that “selling” something new is easy. It never is. That’s what “Marketing Your Science” is all about. (And, yes, I’ll finish that book someday, after I’ve finished some of the many other projects I have going on).

Today Morgan discusses really really boring scientific talk titles. Giving a great science talk begins with having a great title, that captivates the audience and motivates them to come to your talk. Don’t be afraid of giving your talk an interesting title! You will stand out, because everyone else will continue to use boring dry talk titles. Standing out is good. It gets you noticed. Morgan shares her favorite title for a talk, “Modeling biology with equations is like strapping a …. ” (you’ll have to watch the video to find out).

The global warming debate stirs up passions from both supporters and deniers.

One thing that is clearly lost in most of the “popular” debate is the underlying science.

There was an article that studied this: “Balance as bias: global warming and the US Presige Press“.

They make an interesting case about why the popular press coverage of the issue, under the guise of “balanced reporting,” actually skews away from the science.

Here’s a simple thought experiment to illustrate how “balanced” reporting is biased

Say we have the “Purples” and the “Yellows” – two groups of people who have a strongly held belief in their favorite color.

There are 95 Purples and 5 Yellows.

We also have two other groups:  ”Reporters” and “Undecideds”.

Undecideds listen to Reporters.  Reporters have the job of “balanced” reporting of the Purple vs Yellow debate.

So, every time the debate crops up, they report “Purple said XXX” and then balance it with “Yellow responds YYYY.”

Let’s do the math, and compare that to what “Undecideds” will end up reading.

They will read 50% of the reporting on Purple’s side, and 50% on Yellow’s side (if it is truly “balanced”).

So, if there are 100 news reports, there will be a total of 200 statements.

100 for Purple, and 100 for Yellow.

Already it sounds to Neutrals like Yellow is “just as valid” as purple, because we’ve got “fair and balanced” reporting (despite that Purples are actually in the vast majority).

But it gets worse. Because the Yellow population is so small, the press ends up asking the same people over and over again (resampling from a limited pool).  Those five Yellow folks get a lot of practice, and refine their message over time.  Plus, they have extra incentive to promote Yellow, because they get $$$ from donors for it.  So they get really, really good at promoting Yellowness.

However, the Purple folks only get asked once in a while for quotes.  They don’t get much practice. And they don’t get any $$$ for being purple, so they have no real need to refine their message.  Plus they’re the kind of folk who don’t really like “marketing” themselves anyway.  They think “marketing” is a strategy only for, well, marketers.

So, then, you have the “balanced” reporting that gives the undecideds the impression of a 50/50 split, on top of a more refined message from the yellows.

Who’s going to win that debate?

I don’t care what topic you pick (global warming or colors of the rainbow), the minority group with the refined message wins the round.

That’s why Science Marketing is so absolutely vital!

A while ago I wrote about one of my own major “science marketing blunders” (and I have more stories to come).

But this global warming thing is a similar blunder writ large.

On that point, I just saw a tweet from Michael O’Loughlin that is relevant: “So tired of science not being vetted through academia, rather it is being spun by media all the time.”

There are two fallacies in this thinking:

1. That academia is particularly good at “vetting” (I say this having just received yet another crackpot paper review last night from a reviewer who must have been asleep – they missed the point by a mile – while the other reviewer clearly “got it”)

2. That this is the fault of “the media”.

NO.

It is our own fault as scientists, because we, collectively, are horrible at marketing our work to the general public.

I’m not trying to start a war here about whether global warming is real or not – or whether we should do something about it or not.

I’m simply saying that, if the majority of the scientific evidence on the topic says one thing, yet the majority of the populace believes the opposite thing, then we, as scientists, have done a horrible job of getting our message out.  We have failed at marketing.

Why do we do such a horrible job at getting the message out?

There are multiple reasons:

• Because we’re boring. Seriously boring.  I see talk and paper titles all the time that are fluffed up with haughty buzzwords.  It may make the speaker/author look smart, but what it doesn’t do is get a broad audience interested.
• And since we’re boring, our message gets drowned out by the sea of noise out there in the world – Pop stars, Olympics, Car Ads, Beer Ads, Internet Marketers, iPods, iPads, American Idol, Lost… you name it.  It all competes for attention, every day and all the time.  Boring is going to loose that competition, every time.
• Worse still, scientists haven’t caught up with modern internet communications.  Visit a typical scientist’s lab website.  My own is a case in point. (I’ll refer to my own site so as not to offend anyone else.  I’m sure this only applies to my site, and that yours is exciting and interesting).  It is full of tedious facts going on and on about how great we are.  It doesn’t get updated often.  It is not particularly interactive.  We don’t promote ourselves on Twitter or Facebook.  The list goes on. I might want to change it, excepting the following point:
• There is no direct “reward” for marketing or promoting our science to the outside world. This is a humdinger. As a practicing scientist, the best way I can be rewarded (if I care about that kind of thing) is to keep my head down, work hard, publish papers, and apply for grants (then apply for more grants).  Maybe I should mentor a few students and teach a few classes here and there.  That’s it.  If I decide to take it upon myself to do something outside of that – this blog for instance – there is no reward, and quite often, a negative reward.  It takes time away from the grant writing I should be doing.
• We don’t understand that different media require different messages.  Scientific papers may require more rigorous terminology – but communication with the general public requires inspiring, interesting, and exciting words.  They are two different beasts, and almost no scientists I know are trained in the art of communicating with the public (though some figure it out).
• How many times have I heard some scientist on NPR saying “the evidence is inconclusive” or somesuch.  Well, I’ve got news: the evidence for everything, always, is inconclusive! But ordinary people who aren’t scientists don’t understand that kind of waffling.  They get up, go to work, and get a paycheck.  If they don’t go to work, they get fired, and there’s no paycheck.  None of that stuff is “waffling” – it is reality.  There’s no “63.2%” probability there.  So it is hard for someone living in that kind of reality to understand people who sit there and waffle about “we don’t really know how much the temperature will rise”.  Come on, folks!  Some of you are pretending as if human belief has nothing to do with it, and that science is all just about “facts.”  By pretending this, you damage your scientific cause – whatever that may be.

Science is not just about “facts”.  If it were, then explain this phenomenon to me: science goes in fads and fashions.  Once it was a “fact” that stomach acid caused ulcers – until a new “fact” came along that H. pylori causes ulcers.  Those two “facts” contradict one another.

That’s because they are not facts, they are beliefs, supported by some body of evidence.  And those beliefs often change as scientific fads come and go, and as new evidence accumulates.

I’m not saying that global warming is a fad.

What I am saying is that I know many people on the “yes global warming is happening” side of the debate, who act as if the debate is about “facts”.  When you get into a debate and pretend it is about facts when it is actually about belief, you’re going to loose, every time.

That’s because you’re debating from a weak platform.  You’re not admitting to yourself that you actually believe something, and so you’re not allowing yourself to argue the point effectively.

Hence, you go up against someone who does unabashedly believe in their side of the argument, and they’re going to quite frequently come out on top – regardless of “facts”.

If scientists would learn “marketing” this wouldn’t be such a ridiculous debate

Here’s an interesting tidbit: good marketers are just as scientific as any scientist, perhaps more.

They test everything.  Every headline, every word, every ad gets tested – because it is the difference between money and no money in the pocket.

Hence, I find it rather ironic that no scientist I know of is out there testing the efficacy of their own scientific communications.  There is no “split testing” for the efficacy journal article headlines or lab websites.  Hence, most of them are not effective.

Simply put, marketing is a science: the science of swaying belief.

Hence, it is a second irony that the marketers of the anti-global-warming debate are using the science of belief so much more effectively than the scientists with the pro-global-warming point of view.

And that, dear reader, is why I need to get back to writing my book about “Marketing Your Science”. (3 chapters done, a few more partly done – it won’t be that long, if I can just find the time to work on it).

I’m writing a book in which I claim that “you need to market your science!”  Upon hearing the word “marketing”, a lot of scientists look at me as if I’ve gone over to the dark side.  It’s almost as bad as carrying the bubonic plague.

But marketing has got to be better than some of the stupid mistakes I’ve made in my career (maybe I should call it “career blunders?”).  More than once I developed a great idea and then it suffered in obscurity because of my poor marketing of the idea.

I’m going to illustrate the concept with real-life examples. This is the first installment of “science marketing blunders”.

It starts in 1991. I was a graduate student. I had just joined a new lab, bringing my computer skills bear on analyzing data from the latest generation of instruments for DNA sequencing.

I was skilled in computer science, but not skilled in marketing.

I developed a program, called BaseFinder while I was in Lloyd Smith’s lab.  Its goal was to reduce a complex “trace” signal data into a simple stream of letters conveying the sequence of the DNA… A…C…G…T. This process is termed “base calling”.

Section of DNA Sequence Trace

At the time, the only available base calling program was bundled with the DNA sequencing instruments made by Applied Biosystems, Inc. It worked ok, but it was a closed, proprietary solution. When it made a mistake, the user was forced to just eat it, and pray/hope (or attempt to cajole ABI) that it would be fixed in the next iteration of the software.

My program was developed to fill the gap left by the commercial software, providing an open-source solution that had several benefits:

1. It was more accurate than the commercial software.

2. It provided a numerical measure of confidence for each base position, so that downstream processes could be automated to use the confidence value, flagging “poor” calls for review.

3. Its method of scoring the data was “modular” using (new at the time) object-oriented programming methods. So if a user wanted the program to start accounting for new types of features in the data, they could just add a module, without disrupting the rest of the program.

4. The user could define their own data processing “scripts” that combined a set of analysis modules to optimize for their own experimental conditions. Once a script was defined, it could be applied to automatically process large quantities of data.

BaseFinder Screen Shot c1998

I was working in a well known lab, and the community was hungry for software like this. It was technologically superior software to what had been available.

A handful of people have used it over the years for specialized analysis tasks, but it has been far overshadowed by other programs, primarily Phred, which was developed a bit later in Phil Greene’s lab.

Why didn’t it take off? Because of lousy marketing on my part! It had great features and benefits that would have helped people, but I didn’t do the things needed to promote it effectively.

That is a waste of the big investment in that software (10+ person years of effort).

I was too focused on the technology to care about the marketing. That was my fundamental marketing blunder.

Here’s how it manifested:

1. I chose a computer platform that nobody was using, the NeXT (Steve Jobs’ company after he left Apple in the late 80’s). I chose it because of the great technology it embodied. It had the first object-oriented operating system and programming environment, years before Java existed. I thought that it was way cool and would save lots of programming time to use their special object-oriented programming language and toolkits. But this introduced an instant handicap – only people with NeXT computers could use the software! Those computers were expensive – costing $4,000 – $5,000 or more (equivalent to a $10k or more computer with today’s dollar). Also, people didn’t want to spend the time to set up and maintain a new computer platform in their labs. Because of that, the adoption rate of our great new software was almost zero.

2. Once it was working, BaseFinder was old and boring to me. I didn’t talk about it much. I didn’t submit abstracts to conferences about it. While we kept working hard at developing it, there was no concomitant effort to promote it. When I did go to conferences, I was always talking about the latest algorithm, rather than talking about what people really would have benefitted from, which is the software platform itself.

3. User documentation was poor. For the few people who did pick it up and try it out, we had little in the way of good user documentation, so it was a frustrating experience for them. It was a sophisticated and complicated program, that could do many things, but it wasn’t intuitive. Producing intuitive software is “marketing” in its greatest form. The user interface facilitates the user getting value out of the underlying algorithms. Conveying value is a key point of marketing.

4. Our confidence values were arbitrarily scaled and not probabilistic. Even though we were the first ones to introduce this kind of confidence value, our approach was superseded by Phred, which had probabilistic confidence values. Phred’s confidence values weren’t necessarily more accurate, but they were more understandable to humans, because they were framed in terms of something many scientists are familiar with (probability).

These problems could have been remedied with a mind for “Marketing” our work.

For example, I could programmed BaseFinder in a common language like C that could have been readily ported to other environments. I could have skipped the fancy user interface at the start, and then added the user interfaces later for distinct platforms (Phred’s development took that approach).

I could have spent just a few days writing up user documentation to help people get going with the software.

I could have submitted abstracts to at least two major sequencing conferences every year, talking about BaseFinder and highlighting what was new and how it solved important problems. Phil Green did that with Phred.

Instead, I was always too busy with the “technology.” I always thought my problem was that I hadn’t done a good enough job with my software. I thought that if I only worked harder and smarter, and made the software better, that people would discover it. Even after 10 years of doing that, and people still not discovering it in droves, I eventually gave up on it.

Paying attention to the concept of Marketing would have made all the difference in taking the technology that I poured my blood, sweat, and tears into (and the Government poured a lot of money into), and getting it used.  Marketing is all about conveying the value of some thing that you have to offer. In this example, I had a potentially great thing, but I failed at conveying it’s value.

Should marketing really be such a dirty word? Perhaps if used for nefarious purposes.  But using it to promote useful software is far from being nefarious.

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I have a few more good marketing blunder stories that I’ll share here in the future.

What about you? I want to hear about your science marketing blunders. Let me know about that time you should have gotten the Nobel prize, but you didn’t because of lousy marketing on your part, or someone who you were working for.

And, if you’re interested in preview of my upcoming book on how to avoid these kinds of marketing blunders in science, just sign up here.