Increasing the science communication skills of faculty, staff and students is a priority at the College of the Environment — that is, equipping our scientists to talk about their work with a variety of non-academic audiences.

In recent years, we’ve worked to build out our science communication capacity by giving faculty and researchers more opportunities to hone their skills through one-on-one coaching, interview preparation, half-day workshops and more.

In 2014, the College kicked-off its all-day, intensive communications training session for faculty members who want to dive deep into scicomm. Building on those successes, 2016 marked the launch of UW Environment’s first-ever half-day science communication workshop for grad students, which was held a few weeks ago.

Here’s a quick look at what we gleaned from the graduate student science communication workshop:

Main takeaways

John Meyer, associate director of science communication at the College, leads all of our science communications workshops — including this one. Here’s what he had to say, in terms of major takeaways and impressions, afterward the workshop:

• Know that there is a spectrum of ways you can share your work to have impact. It’s not just talking to a packed house at Town Hall, it can also be talking to your neighbor about why your work matters.
• Think about your audience, your key message, and most importantly, why should they care?
• Practice, practice, practice!

Topics of discussion

Much of the session was fueled by open discussion among participating students. Here are some of the thoughts they shared throughout the day:

• If you do the research and leave it on the desk, it doesn’t make our lives better.
• If the public is paying for your work, then we — scientists — have a responsibility to report out and explain what was learned with those tax dollars.
• People don’t see what we see. And, increasingly, we have to show them.
• Things are rarely black and white. They change, they shift as conditions shift. As scientists, we understand that. But we live in a culture that doesn’t operate comfortably in that grey area. We can help people navigate that.
• The goal of science is about discovery, but also the development of critical thinking. It’s more than the dissemination of straight fact.
• Scientists are becoming better and better at interpersonal communications.
• The idea that scientists are poor communicators is a narrative we’re telling ourselves so much that I think we’re starting to believe it.
• Speaking about your work without scientific jargon is much harder than it seems.
• Policy makers, journalists, scientists… they all want to get it right. Relationships help with that.

Working with the media

Here’s some of what we learned through a panel discussion with Kate Schimel, digital editor of High Country News, and Michelle Ma, science writer for University of Washington News and Information:

• Know the outlet. Do they run stories about the simple joys of discovery, or do they tend to focus on the economic implications of scientific research?
• First and foremost, tell the writer what’s at stake and how (or if) it has the potential to impact their readers.
• Don’t be upset if a journalist does not pick up your story. They have to be advocates for the reader, and think about how your work will resonate through their eyes.
• Work on your message. When speaking with the media, break your science down into terms and concepts an elementary school student would understand.
• You do not need all of the answers in order to discuss your work. Uncertainty is the story sometimes. That there is some uncertainty can often be noted alongside your key findings.

Additional reading

• Escape from the Ivory Tower: A Guide to Making Your Science Matter by Nancy Baron
• Don’t be Such a Scientist by Randy Olson
• The Honest Broker by Roger A. Pielke, Jr.
• UW Environment’s Science Communication web content, especially this list of resources

For science communication questions, help narrowing down your message or defining your audience and/or to receive our soon-to-launch UW Environment Science Communication e-newsletter, reach out to John Meyer at jjmeyer@uw.edu or 206-685-8213.

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Michael Melnychuk/University of Washington

Research published this week in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences suggests that successful fisheries management can be best achieved by implementing and enforcing science-based catch or effort limits. The study is authored by researchers from the University of Washington and California Environmental Associates.

The paper shows that, among 28 of the world’s major fishing nations, there is wide variation in the effectiveness of fisheries management systems at meeting their objectives for productive fish populations. The authors considered several aspects of management systems and three elements seem to be critical to their success.

“Fisheries management systems are complex, with an incredible variety of tools and strategies used around the world, but this research shows the most successful systems consistently have a few management attributes in common,” said lead author Michael Melnychuk, a research scientist in the UW’s School of Aquatic and Fishery Sciences. “There is no silver bullet in fisheries management, but three attributes were consistently associated with positive outcomes: science-based stock assessments, limits on fishing pressure and adequate enforcement of those limits.”

According to the paper, these three attributes were more important for productive fish and shellfish populations than the 10 other attributes they also considered, such as protecting sensitive habitats or collecting data on catch or body size. The analysis included the world’s largest and most valuable fisheries and also some smaller ones.

“This is the first global assessment of how individual fish stocks are managed, and by collecting data at the individual fishery level we were able to identify what was key to success,” said co-author Ray Hilborn, a UW professor of aquatic and fishery sciences.

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Annie Hillier/LinkedIn

It turns out that even in the world of scientific writing, your eighth-grade teacher was right: how you write can matter as much as what you write.

In a study published Dec. 15 in the journal PLOS ONE, researchers from the University of Washington looked at abstracts from more than 700 scientific papers about climate change to find out what makes a paper influential in its field. But instead of focusing on content, they looked at writing style, which is normally more the province of humanities professors than of scientists.

Their idea was that papers written in a more narrative style — those that tell a story — might be more influential than those with a drier, more expository style. Psychology and literary theory have long held that if you want someone to remember something, you should communicate it in the form of a story. The UW researchers — led by Annie Hillier, a recent graduate from the UW’s School of Marine and Environmental Affairs, and professors Ryan Kelly and Terrie Klinger — wondered whether this theory would hold up in the realm of peer-reviewed scientific literature.

Remarkably, it did. The most highly cited papers tended to include elements like sensory language, a greater degree of language indicating cause-and-effect and a direct appeal to the reader for a particular follow-up action.

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University of Washington/OOI-NSF/CSSF-ROPOS

The cracking, bulging and shaking from the eruption of a mile-high volcano where two tectonic plates separate has been captured in more detail than ever before. A University of Washington study published this week shows how the volcano behaved during its spring 2015 eruption, revealing new clues about the behavior of volcanoes where two ocean plates are moving apart.

“The new network allowed us to see in incredible detail where the faults are, and which were active during the eruption,” said lead author William Wilcock, a UW professor of oceanography. The new paper in Science is one of three studies published together that provide the first formal analyses of the seismic vibrations, seafloor movements and rock created during an April 2015 eruption off the Oregon coast. “We have a new understanding of the behavior of caldera dynamics that can be applied to other volcanoes all over the world.”

The studies are based on data collected by the Cabled Array, a National Science Foundation-funded project that brings electrical power and internet to the seafloor. The observatory, completed just months before the eruption, provides new tools to understand one of the test sites for understanding Earth’s volcanism.

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Nathan Bennett

People must be part of the equation when it comes to conservation projects in order to increase local support and the overall effectiveness of the conservation efforts.

That’s the main conclusion of a study published online on Nov. 29 in Biological Conservation. In it, a group of scientists from around the world recognize the need to consider the livelihoods of humans, their cultural traditions and dependence on natural resources when planning and carrying out conservation around the world.

“We really need to think about people as we’re creating conservation initiatives. Forgetting about humans in the conservation recipe is like forgetting yeast in a loaf of bread,” said lead author Nathan Bennett, a Fulbright Visiting Scholar and postdoc at the University of Washington’s School of Marine and Environmental Affairs, the University of British Columbia and Stanford University.

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