Distilling Your

Message

How to talk about science clearly and

engagingly

June 7, 2011

The basics of Distilling The basics of Distilling Know your audienceMake sure they understand – that’s your jobLook for common groundSay what you do and why it mattersNO jargon. Be conversational.Have one or two main points – things you want the listener to remember

A tip from Steve Martin (in Planes, Trains and Automobiles)

Avoid “the curse of knowledge”

When you know something very well, it becomes hard to imagine what it would be like not to know it.

Beyond the basics

First, engage your listener, then introduce complexity gradually

Use different levels of complexity for different audiences

Tell a story – what’s surprising, exciting, difficult, upsetting, mysterious about your subject

Use examples, anecdotes, analogies

Bacillus anthracis, the etiologic agent of anthrax, is a

large, Gram-positive, nonmotile, spore-forming

bacterial rod. The three virulence factors of B.

anthracis are edema toxin, lethal toxin and a

capsular antigen.”

-- CDC website’s FAQ on anthrax, 2001

What Is anthrax?What Is anthrax?

Anthrax is a disease caused by

bacteria. It usually is curable but can

be fatal in animals and people.

Distilling the MessageDistilling the Message

Eat foodNot too muchMostly plants

Michael Pollan’s Michael Pollan’s 7-word summary7-word summary

Long-term cognitive impairment and functional disability among survivors of severe sepsis

Severe sepsis in this older population was

independently associated with substantial and persistent new cognitive impairment and functional disability among survivors. The magnitude of these new deficits was large, likely resulting in a pivotal downturn in patients' ability to live independently.

--Iwashyna et al, 2010, JAMA

It can be hard to bounce back

If your grandma nearly died from a blood infection, but then pulled through, you’d feel like celebrating. But there may be a catch.

Researchers found that many elderly people never bounce back completely from the blood infections called sepsis. Instead they can have increased problems with thinking and physical abilities, so that it’s hard for them to live on their own. Sepsis permanently changes their life.

Sustaining Fisheries Yields Over Evolutionary Time Scales

Fishery management plans ignore the potential for

evolutionary change in harvestable biomass. We demonstrated experimentally that the continual removal of large phenotypes from exploited fish populations leads to the selection of genotypes that code for slower growth thereby reducing population yield and resiliency. Management tools that account for such Darwinian dynamics and preserve natural genetic variation are necessary for long-term sustainable yield.

--Conover and Munch, 2002, Science

Throw the big ones back?

Everyone knows that when you’re fishing, you should throw the small fish back and keep the big ones. Right? Think again.

A 5-year experiment shows that, over time, if you keep taking the big fish, the next generations of fish will get smaller. That’s because only smaller fish will remain to become parents, and they tend to have smaller children. With each generation, the children will get smaller and smaller. Eventually, you’ll be left with a fishing hole full of runts.

Brian Greene on The Colbert Report

“Simplifying” Does Not Mean “Dumbing Down”

• You can focus on the meaning, rather the process

• You can tell listeners: “This is simplified. It gets more complicated. I can tell you about that if you want to.”

“If you can't explain something to a six-year-old, you really don't understand it yourself. “

-Attributed to Richard Feynman

Thank you!