Where two worlds collide…

I’ve recently started using social media to investigate science, rather than just as an outlet for the more gossipy side of my nature and I have to say, I felt a bit like Alice through the looking-glass. There’s a whole world of research and opinions going on that the large majority of researchers simply aren’t aware of.

The way it’s worked for me is that I’ve started following just a few people via Twitter and quickly been linked to blogs, articles (the difference is something of a contested issue) and research sites on a variety of topics. You get a constant (sometimes too constant) stream of suggestions and, from there, you decide what you want to read, watch or hear. 

The first thing that strikes you about the research promoted via Twitter is how concise you need to be. We’ve all pored over an abstract just to try and understand what a paper is about, only to come away none the wiser – Twitter gives you 140 characters (including your link) in which to get over a title that captures the readers’ attention enough for them to click on the link. This can be done with scientific language

Epilepsy and neonatal diabetes due to a compound heterozygous mutation in #IER3IP1 http://t.co/eQagDHbboL
— Ingo Helbig (@IngoHelbig) October 26, 2013

or, more commonly, a quirky by-line that you can’t ignore

Sewing...in SPAAAAAAACE. http://t.co/GUXoqRptwD HT @helenfields
— Ed Yong (@edyong209) November 5, 2013

and, before you know it, you’re reading an article on an area of science that you never would have read had you merely used your list of usual suspects of reading matter. 

This leads me to my second ‘huh’ moment regarding Twitter - You get an insight into much more varied information than via other means, as well as more varied ways of writing about science. Recently, I’ve learnt about reindeer eyes and lion-fish amongst the occasional cute squirrel picture.

Today's installment of squirrellishness...RT @BBAnimals Squirrel carrying her newborn baby pic.twitter.com/S4izzS4WkT
— Lou Woodley (@LouWoodley) October 28, 2013

This has reassured me that I do indeed find science fascinating and awe-inspiring and that perhaps my recent slump is more to do with the repetitive nature of reading dry documents, mainly within your own field, rather than ‘falling-out-of-love’ with science in general. It’s really refreshing to read an article and then feel the need to explain it, share it and dissect it with someone else. I think as scientists we could learn from the way blogs are written. Generally, they aim to keep the readers’ interest and not just educate them – can we take this approach and apply it to the reporting of core science? I’m not suggesting that the mechanism of the Heck reaction should (or could) be rendered jargon-less, but we could try to make it, at least, interesting to a broader audience where possible. There will always be ‘niche’ research that can’t be made ‘friendly’ but I think it’s all too easy to get lost in the tiny field in which you work and forget that there are other things going on outside of your lab, your field and, dare I say it, your discipline. We’re supposed to be professional ‘learners’ – learn something.  

Finally, and fundamentally I think, a blog about particular research can be read before the original article is printed and distributed. A tweet about the same article can be written quicker than someone can read the blog and it can be re-tweeted faster than...you get the idea.

Communication is now fast and science needs to keep up. Research has always been a pain-staking process, and I think sometimes it needs to be, to ensure all the necessary controls are carried out and the research stands up (see retractionwatch), but we need to get better and quicker at communicating our goals, research and results and it looks like the internet is now providing a conduit for this. The unregulated nature of blogs and tweets could be both social media’s downfall and its saving grace for the communication of scientific research and ideas- You don’t need peer-review for Twitter, you don’t submit a grant for Google+, you put your idea down and you wait. If people like it, you find out immediately. Is using social media for research a bit self-satisfying and narcissistic? Probably. Is it a scary way to get often brutally honest critique? Definitely. Could it be the start of a new way of dynamic and responsive communication between scientists? I think so, watch this space.

I’d like to end with a ‘reader-beware’. Keeping an eye on Twitter and blogs is a time-consuming affair if, like me, you try to make sure that you read everything that looks enticing. As more people use this method of communication to give readers a ‘sneak-peak’ into their research and the research they find interesting, I’m afraid that the information might start to fade into the ‘noise’. If we become bombarded by this head-line and that research topic every 3-4 minutes then, a. how will we know what is worth reading and b. how will we ever find the time to carry out the research! As a lab-based scientist, I spend very little time in front of a computer screen, I've generally liked it that way. How in the world, then, can I possibly keep up?

I don’t know, to be honest, but I’m going to try!

In at the deep-end...

As part of my ongoing investigation into 'life-beyond-the-lab', I'm attending SpotOn London 2013 this week. Hell, I'm going to be a panellist. This is scary for several reasons:

                           1. I've been blogging for a grand total of 2 months

                           2. I've no idea if I know enough to even be going to this conference

                           and 

                           3. Who the hell cares what I think?

Some back story I think...

After deciding to look into the area of science communication, journalism, outreach, whatever you want to call it, I came upon recurrent tweets on some fancy-pants science communication conference. Then I looked closer at the people tweeting about said 'fancy-pants' conference and noticed genuine excitement

Managed to snag a ticket for @SpotOnLondon! *Really* excited about attending next month. Super way to kick off 6 month sabbatical! #Solo13
— Malcolm M. Campbell (@m_m_campbell) October 4, 2013

and enthusiasm

Awww it's nice looking at the list of people going to @SpotOnLondon Now and thinking "2 weeks to go!" *waves at everyone*
— Tania (@CherryMakes) October 24, 2013

about the upcoming event. Then I noticed that the event is sold out every year and the tickets go out in batches (nod to Glastonbury there - I'm imagining shady characters in sports-coats selling and buying extra tickets in the Bloomsbury area) to ensure people get a chance to go. 

This was not your average 3 key-note speakers, old-boys-club-during-the-tea-break followed by one- awkward-glass-of-wine-before-I-leave conference - people seemed to actually want to go!

I ummed and aahed about buying my ticket during the first two ticket sales slots - at £100 I wasn't sure I should risk buying my ticket before asking my boss and I wasn't sure if he'd allow me to go during work hours (I'm currently trying to save my days off for potential interviews so was in a bit of a pickle). 

With each sales slot, the tension mounted due to the clever use of Twitter by the organisers to let us know that the tickets were dripping away...

Half of the final batch of tickets have sold out for @SpotOnLondon - get yours here https://t.co/cqMYUgMSXn #solo13
— Laura Wheeler (@laurawheelers) October 18, 2013

then, I grew a pair (metaphorically, of course). I decided that I should buy a ticket, in fact, I needed to buy a ticket - who knows what I might learn! 

On my way to work the next day I was deciding on the best way to convince my boss that I should go to this, scanning the morning Twitter-feed, I stumbled upon a tweet that suggested that maybe I could get a ticket to this thing for free (and hopefully then know someone there!). 

I'm taking part in a #solo13 session on sci-2-sci communication. We have 1 free ticket for a bright young thing. http://t.co/Krsad2optV
— Jean Adams (@jeanmadams) October 17, 2013

Ticket cancelled with <6 minutes to go!

So, a hasty read of a blogpost,  an (hopefully not too desperate) email and a cancelled ticket reservation (I wasn't too hopeful I'd get a reply, so I hedged my bets) later I was rewarded with not just a place but a chance to help organise a session!

The generosity and helpfulness of this crowd really knows no bounds!

Now, here I am, looking forward to a new challenge, meeting new people and seeing just what people think about blogs and more 'casual' online communication between scientists. I think this is what we need to get past - the fact that because blogging, tweeting and the like are not peer-reviewed or mostly even regulated in any way, that they can't be 'valuable' or for 'proper' science.

We've had one Skype meeting, across three countries and come up with two GoogleDocs. I've realised that almost all people feel variations on my opening three points, about most things, particularly on blogging, science and speaking at conferences, so I'm going to throw myself into this! We're going to create a Storify of the event and I'm sure there'll be follow up blogposts.

I'm also attending the Science ShowOff 'cabaret' of science on the Friday night, although that may involve more gin and less learning.  Or more gin and more learning. Definitely more gin.

I'll probably have more questions than answers, but now I've realised that it's in the British Library and not the British Museum, I know I won't be all alone, next to the big lion statue thinking it's just me that has lots of questions about the value of science going all 'business-casual' online.

Wish me luck?

What's the point of this 'Twitter' thing then...

As a self-professed 'people person', I can honestly say that, until very recently, I didn't really 'get' the power nor point of Twitter and the like. I'm on Facebook, of course. I joined nearly ten years ago when you needed a uni account and people didn't realise what it was or could be, so I know what the concept is, but I've never really appreciated the power of it as a tool to communicate new ideas rather than just a place to check out ex-classmates, ex-boyfriends and their ex-classmates and ex-boyfriends.

So what’s caused this change, then? Well, a number of things actually. Mainly, I’m coming to a haitus in a fairly typical research career and for the last (nearly) two years I’ve been trying to get a job back in industry.

Trying. It seems that our degrees/PhDs are not that special or unique after all. Something no-one tells you. There are so many degree'd and PhD’d people now, that you have to find the thing that you have that is different and extra to all the other people out there and capitalise on that ‘thing’ to get your desired role. But (and yes, I did just start a sentence with 'but') what if you don’t know what that ‘desired role’ is? And (now ‘and’, my GCSE English teacher would not be impressed - Hi, Mrs. Hughes!) I think that this accounts for a lot of people – particularly a lot of PhD graduates.

Why don't we have any idea what we can do? I think, primarily, that we simply don’t know what else we can do because during our PhDs we are surrounded by people who did the conventional degree-PhD-PostDocs-academia - i.e. our bosses. This is a perfectly valid and potentially fulfilling role, but we don’t ever seem to talk about any other choices because this would be a ‘cop out’. Those PhD students that leave the lab to become tax attorneys, patent lawyers and teachers are met with a (fairly sizable) level of derision. They've ‘given up on science’, they couldn't cut it. I’ll be honest, until fairly recently, I probably felt similarly.

The problem is that by not talking about the other options, and there are plenty of others, and, in particular, by devaluing the other options, those people who perhaps aren’t suited to the life of a research scientist are left floundering.

So there I was, wondering what else I could do with my qualifications, my talents and my ‘transferable skills’ and who do I ask? My boss - who wants me to stay (Of course he does, I’m the only PostDoc in a group with an increasingly absent boss)? My PhD supervisor - who planted the seed of research in my brain (and is probably somewhat invested in the idea that I will continue his scientific genealogy)? My PhD cohort - mostly we’re in the same boat (and trust me, nobody wants to be the first to say that they have no idea what they’re doing with their life)? My (new) husband - who  thinks my degree and PhD should be rewarded with riches and fame? Or even, God forbid, my parents - who have very little understanding of what I do (my Dad still doesn’t get that there’s no-one to tell me the answer)?

This is where Twitter comes into it’s own. Unless you’re guilty of some seriously questionable behaviour, most people will let you ‘follow’ them – allowing you a rolling, updated, 160 character facebook status of their lives, if you like. Unlike Facebook, where an unsolicited 'Add' is a thing of cringe-making comments of 'who the f$£k is so-and-so Edwards?', Twitter is designed for you to be able to see what complete strangers are broadcasting to the world. It's supposed to be less private and you immediately have access to an insight into the jobs, opinions and day-to-day lives of everyone you follow, particularly if they realise the power of this medium for shameless self-promotion and detailed descriptions of their work - which most SciComm people should and do. Over the last few weeks, since being on Twitter, I've learnt about the changing attitudes to the hallowed world of publication and open access research, found job ads, got a place helping to organise a session at a major scientific communication conference, been approached to enter a science communication competition and, oh yeah, shamelessly guided over 1000 views to my blog (although I'm sure Facebook helped, too!). I have also learnt a lot more about new and exciting science than I've got from reading my usual list of detailed, focussed and often-not-particularly-exciting journals for my own research.

Yes, Twitter can be a really fun and a great way to find out about things you like socially, but, by it's nature, it's fundamentally a place for promotion. Promotion of ideas, promotion of products and OK a LOT of self-promotion. But, if you know what you're doing if you follow the 'right' people you can learn SO much from the 140 character snippets. The fact that everything is limited to 160 characters means that you get a précis of what's being said, promoted and commented upon. You can then decide of you want to follow the link to an interesting paper, article or, occasionally, random picture of a funny badger.

If you are interested in Scientific Communication and journalism, I've started a running post - a sort of Who's Who in the area...

Pretty much any field can be found and 'followed' on Twitter, giving you crash course in anything you can think of. So my advice would be - If there's something you think you might be interested in, an area of science, retail or life in general, something you've always thought 'I wonder what that job is like' - get on Twitter, have a skulk around and oh yeah, follow me - I've only got a few followers and we all need to save face, don't we?

#2:Scientific Communicators...

Updated March 2014: I've updated the statuses of my 'favourites', where necessary, and added some new people to the list...

Last October I started looking in to scientific communication, using Twitter, Blogger, Facebook and Google+ to learn as much as possible about who was saying what and how. I had no idea where to start but I quickly built up a selection of people whose tweets and work I liked. I thought it would be useful to list this somewhat random bunch, in order to help anyone else out there who fancies skulking around ('following' on Twitter) these people to see how they communicate their opinions and ideas. And the occasional picture of something cute/funny.

Something that I've noticed is that there is definitely an in-crowd in this 'anti-the-in-crowd' crowd. For example, there's a distinct inner-circle of avid bloggers and science journalists who cover a lot of ground between them, re-tweet each-other's work and all manner of interesting stuff. 

If you're looking around with scientific communication in mind then, as somewhere to start, I would start a Twitter account and follow these people, see what they tweet, WHEN they tweet, what they cover and how they write. Their tweets will lead to articles, events and some really useful blogs. Some people have short blogs of a few paragraphs whilst others lean towards my rambling style. As I said, this is my opinion, to which I hold firmly, whilst being completely aware that it may, in fact, be wrong.

In no particular order I like...

On Twitter...

Carl Zimmer - Writes books, articles for the New York Times and Slate, blogs for National Geographic (often cross-referencing his articles - clever use of directing traffic to his articles) and tweets on all things science-related. Definitely a 'biology' man with lots of books published on evolution but also more esoteric topics like science tattoos of the science-and-pain-loving! 'Revered' is a strong word but he is highly respected, it seems, by all in the community.

Ed Yong - Science writer, blogger at National Geographic and prolific tweeter. He has a very irreverent style that is always informative, often quite funny and regularly takes the piss of science and people he deems 'sub-standard'. He tweets A LOT, often in quick succession and his tweets can be a good running commentary and 'thermometer' on the community. I often wonder how he has time for anything else. His name seemed to get dropped at all classes, courses and workshops I've attended recently.

Virginia Hughes - Another science writer and blogger at National Geographic. She has a more 'serious' tone compared to Ed and tends to tweet on a wider variety of things, including art/photography, travel and conferences. Like her NatGeo writer mates, she uses Twitter to heavily promote all of the writing that she does, as well as the work of others at the same publications as her.

Laurie Winkless - My brother recommended this physicist SciComm-er and, after following her on Twitter and listening to her interview on Speaking of Science (see below), I can see why. She's became the Editor for Nobel Media at just 30 and I think this is really impressive. She's working at a prestigious world-renowned organisation, bringing them into social media circles and spreading their message to a much younger, more dynamic audience than it had before. She's got a book coming out in 2016 called 'Science and the City' which I'll be keeping an eye out for as I love to see scientists drawing attention to the science in everyday life.

Laura Wheeler - Recommended by a marketing professional as 'someone-to-learn-from' in the SciComm community. In the few months since I first wrote this post she's moved from the Communities Co-ordinator at Nature and is now the Community Manager for Digital Science. Watch and learn.

Lou Woodley - She's involved in all things science-social-media-online-technology related, it seems. You can find more info on her blog here. I started following Lou after seeing a lot of her tweets re-tweeted by the people above (further evidence of the 'inner-circle' effect). I've found out about lots of online resources, articles and events through her twitter feed. She's recently started the excellent MySciCareer site with Eva Amsen (see below) which I've lost many hours to, browsing the different career paths of those who started out with science degrees. 

Athene Donald - Physics professor at Cambridge, blogs via Occam's Typewriter. I really like the way she writes about life as a scientist, life as an academic and, well, life.

Hope Jahren. I gave her whole name a sentence because I like her a lot. She's a research scientist, working in Hawaii who writes interesting, inciteful and often tear-jerking prose. She also gets to work in HAWAII. I was lucky enough to spend a couple of weeks hopping around the islands last year and the thought of someone who gets to be this good a writer, a scientist and a resident of this freakishly beautiful part of the world makes my heart hurt. Keep an eye out for the resurrection of @TotalGrasshole. Trust me, it's hard to explain why the tweets of an aggressive grass are so funny, but they are. 

Dean Burnett, aka @GarwBoy (Say, garoo-boy) is a Welsh neuroscientist, comedian, blogger and generally interesting guy. He writes regularly for the Guardian in a style that is thought-provoking, topical and, ultimately, very funny. By the by, he does NOT like Hitler.

Kate Whittington draws wonderfully detailed illustrations. You can find them on her blog here. I also like the way that she writes, peppering anecdotes about saving a bee with species identification and rolled-up-newspaper-threats from her dad (for the bee, not her. I think). 

Eva Amsen is the Outreach Director at F1000Research, serial blogger, co-founder of MySciCareer, pro-open access publishing and regular speaker at SciComm and careers seminars. I was once at a seminar where she got narked at the eternal question 'How do you find the time?' Her response was 'I've never seen the Wire or Breaking Bad, I do other stuff instead'. It's fair to say, I like her attitude to just getting shit done, although she may have a clone, as I'm sure she still manages to do more than most. Oh yeah, she also likes investigating the links between science and music at MusiSci. Like I said, she does lots of things. 

Anonymous tweeters and bloggers have received some attention over the past few months- have a look at this blog post and subsequent comments for some interesting thoughts. I will say that I've often been asked if I'm concerned about potential employers reading this (loosely) careers-based blog and finding it imperfect/wrong/rude/desperately job-seeking. The simple answer is 'Yes', but I do it openly because it never occurred to me that I should do otherwise. Sometimes, I do think of things that I would like to write/rant about but I try and keep myself 'on track' and occasionally this does mean I'm not able to talk about what I want. Anyway, my recommendations for some anonymous tweeters and their blogs has a place here as I feel that, rightly or wrongly, this allows a different level of honesty that would be difficult in the first person. In this spirit, check out BioChemBelle, Dr24hours, Dr. Isis and InBabyAttachMode

Miscellany...

Lush green grass at a friday afternoon - Ignoring the strange grammar in the title of this blog leads you to an interesting set of blogs that are used to 'express and share some of our thoughts about the current state of science, its place in society and our lives within this continuously changing discursive environment' - Sounds hard-core, but it's well written (by two people) if only for this candid blog on working in a lab where prior work gets retracted.

Speaking of science - This is an interesting site run by Julie Gould, the Naturejobs web and advertorial editor at Nature Publishing Group. The site acknowledges the myriad ways in which you can be a 'science communicator' and aims to be a repository for interviews (some written, some audio) with people who work in Science Communication - Ed Yong and Laurie Winkless are featured, amongst many others.

Julie Gould has also recently launched a network of science bloggers called Speakers of Science that brings together new people in the SciComm community to try their hand at blogging on different science-related topics. Using cartoons, pictures, videos, text and handy hints for new SciComm attempts, it's ace! (Dislaimer: I am one of the new bloggers and am indebted to Julie for getting me involved!)

PSCI-COM - I can't really complete this post without mentioning this huge site, chock-full of threads, conversations and requests related to all things around 'the public communication of science and public engagement with science'. The most useful thing about this site is that it's a JISCMAIL that you can subscribe to. It's somewhere between a forum and a huge e-mail list where everyone can speak to everyone very easily about anything they need. Generally people abide by etiquette and don't just use it to promote themselves. So far I've learnt of loads of different events and applied for numerous jobs that I heard of through this. It's moderated by Jo Brodie, a veritable font of job adverts, SciComm info and helpful advice on the forum and Twitter. 

In updating this post I've found many more new people to 'follow', websites to scour and blogs to read, but will only add them to this list once I feel that I know a bit more about them. I'll be adding to this post regularly, I hope. In the interest of keeping things as concise as possible I haven't included major organisations such as museums, research councils, festivals etc., you can work that out for yourself.

For all the Twitter sceptics, I posted on my early interactions with this new 'Twitter-verse' and 'blogosphere' (you've got to love the cheesy terminology, if nothing else) and tried to convince you that it's not all just pictures of people's dinner/pets. Although there is a bit of that. And I like it.

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Potentially useful fact:

It's worth mentioning that at the time of me writing this (Oct 2013), there was a somewhat stormy time going on in the world of SciComm. I only include it here as, if you do intend to look in to this field, then you should know that this has gone on...

It 'started' with the removal of a post from a black female blogger (DNLee) who wrote about being called a whore for not wanting to blog for free - causing a massive backlash questioning whether she would have been expected to work for free, or her post deleted, if she'd been a white male scientist - (answers on a postcard). For a whistlestop tour of the ensuing fiasco see here and here.

The shady behaviour of the editor in question (now fired) and the response from what was supposed to be a higher power (Scientific American took her post down) resulted in a name being added to a year-old post about sexual harrassment. This has caused a complete bombshell as the man in question (Bora Zivkovik) is (was?) a heavyweight in the blogging community, loved and respected (there was a twitter hashtag #IhuggedBora for a while) and quite, quite powerful.

Ok so, rewind. There've been a huge number of posts on this, I'm new to the whole area and couldn't/wouldn't comment on what's going on. The gist of it, as I see it is... in a field that is friendly and often revolves around a very casual and social manner, there are a number of people who seem to think that this is a great opportunity to behave inappropriately towards potential writers. This seems mainly to happen when a young or new writer approaches an established member of the community and, as someone who is looking at maybe moving in to this field, I'd honestly say that it's given me pause for thought. It seems like this goes on a lot but the massive uproar this has caused between supporters/victims and everyone else has probably opened a few eyes to what's, at best, pretty shitty behaviour. As I said, I won't go into detail, most of the blogs about this are pretty heated, but the original posts are here:

This happened: Monica Byrne

This happened: Bora Zivkovik

What I will say is that if, like me, you were initially tempted to think this was bad behaviour but put the huge rhetoric down to a (little) bit of over-reaction then check out #ripplesofdoubt on Twitter to see the impact this can have - it really opened my eyes. 

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