Sarah 0:09 Hi, and welcome to Not Just For Girls, a STEM podcast for people of all genders. Leo 0:14 I'm Leo. Sarah 0:15 And I'm Sarah. And today we're going to be talking about science communication, Leo 0:21 and how that works. Sarah 0:24 I've seen lots and lots of memes recently about how vital science communication is right now in this era of like COVID-19 Leo 0:35 I've seen none of that, but that's just because my memes are all Sarah 0:39 yours are danker than mine. Leo 0:41 I wouldn't say they're danker I just say they're different and not science related. Sarah 0:46 Yeah, I specifically follow science meme groups just so I can get all the science means. Leo 0:55 See, I don't. Sarah 0:58 So there's been one that I've run across a couple of times with this idea that you know, this open communication from scientists to regular people is really important right now. So everybody can really understand the impact of COVID-19 virus and all of that stuff. Yeah. So there is one problem with that. And it's that people who aren't scientists often have a hard time deciphering the science that's in the papers that they're reading. Leo 1:30 Yeah. Well, it's one of those things where it's like, there may be words that you totally know, because you were working scientists that I don't know because I'm just a casual, Sarah 1:44 right Leo 1:44 and I'm a student Sarah 1:45 and and there shouldn't be an expectation that in order for the science to be accessible to people, that they all have to, you know, be pursuing graduate degrees in science. Leo 1:57 Well, that's the biggest problem with me with the things that I had to research is that they're using these big long terms. And I'm like, I can sort of figure out what that means. But a lot of it is just information that I can't understand. Sarah 2:11 And even beyond that, just the reading level. So we think about like a regular newspaper and its reading level. Right? So that's, that's somewhere in the like six to eighth grade reading level. Yeah, because it's meant to be accessible to regular people to be able to read and understand and comprehend. But when we publish things in scientific journals, Leo 2:33 you expect people to be at a college level. Sarah 2:36 Well, it's already been higher. So there's actually a trend that has shown that the journals themselves have started having these expectations of more complicated language in them in order to have like more prestige. Leo 2:51 Well, that is my least favorite thing about writing is that people expect me as a high school junior To have this writing level that I don't like reading, Sarah 3:06 right? I don't either. There was a paper published in Nature back in 1992 by this guy named Donald Hayes. It was about the inaccessibility of science. And I've seen lots of on my bad science memes jokes about it being behind a paywall, which is a whole nother issue. Leo 3:27 Yeah. Sarah 3:27 But this article is actually freely available. So you could go and you could search this article, you could find it, and you could read it, and what it It looked at the lexical difficulty of the writing in the journals, and not just journals so it looked at several different things. Look at some general Science Magazine, so that includes Science and Nature and Scientific American. It looked at professional journals. So those would be journals that are for a particular subset of science, so it might be a biochemistry journal or an astronomy journal or a physics journal. Leo 4:06 Mm hmm. Sarah 4:06 And it looked at textbooks, and then it looked at Popular Science magazines. So those are going to be things that regular people might get a subscription to, that aren't going to be, you know, where people are publishing their cutting edge research is going to actually probably be deciphered by a science writer between those two steps. Leo 4:27 Okay Sarah 4:28 So what they found is so that, so they looked at the lexical difficulty starting in 1900. Remember, this was in 1992. So quite a while ago at this point, Leo 4:39 before I was born, Sarah 4:40 so almost 30 years ago, 28 years ago. Leo 4:43 Yeah. Sarah 4:43 So that that's a long time. But this trend, I think, probably still holds at least to some extent. So what they found was that as the language difficulty increased in these general science magazines, that fewer people, would actually subscribe to them. Imagine that. So when you Leo 5:02 Shocking Sarah 5:02 So when people were like, man, I don't understand these things anymore, but I'm trying to read them, they would be like, I'm not going to pay to keep getting this magazine, but I can't really comprehend. Leo 5:14 Yeah Sarah 5:15 So that actually takes a lot of that direct science out of people's hands and out of their homes. So that's somewhat problematic. And part of it is that a lot of times the vocabulary and the technical words that get used have increased in this time, because the science itself has gotten more complex and we've developed new words to talk about things. Leo 5:39 I mean, yeah, and words and their meanings do change over time as well. Sarah 5:45 To some extent, I'm thinking more like, I used to work in a lab with a guy who was writing a novel in his spare time. Leo 5:53 Okay. Sarah 5:53 All right. Leo 5:53 I know teachers that are doing that as well. Sarah 5:56 You know, it's a nice hobby for lots of people, actually. And he, and he would use Dragon Naturally Speaking. So it was software that would convert voice to text, he would use Dragon naturallyspeaking to write his novel. Leo 6:13 Yep. Sarah 6:14 All right. And that worked great because the dragon program knew all of the words that he needed to write the novel. When he decided to give it a go and see how well it would work to work on a grant application. He found that there were so many words that he had to teach the program, that it was just easier to just type it himself. So one of the examples he gave was we were looking at lipid modifications of protein. So the protein gets translated on the ribosome, and then it goes through a post translational modification, which means it gets something either added or changed somewhere on the protein chain. Leo 6:56 Okay. Sarah 6:57 Okay. And we were looking at the ones that were lipids in particular, so those are fats. So some proteins get fats added to them after they're transcribed. Leo 7:06 Okay? Sarah 7:07 So one of those modifications was called geranylgeranylation. Leo 7:13 Geranylgeranylation. Sarah 7:16 Yes. Needless to say, Dragon Naturally Speaking could not figure out what the heck geranylgeranylation was. Leo 7:26 I would just say Gerald, Gerald, Sarah 7:28 yeah, it would say all sorts of weird things or myristoylation, Leo 7:33 Myristoylation. And yeah, Sarah 7:36 yeah, Leo 7:36 Well, I just remember typing. I can't remember what word it was because it was biology. But when I actually wrote a paper because I did that once in that class. Like I typed in a word, and I kept re typing it because it had the red squigglies under it. But it turns out, I was typing it right every single time. It was just the programming. It had no clue what that word was? Sarah 8:01 Oh, yeah, when, when I was in grad school, I had to teach my spellcheck program, lots of words, Leo 8:07 including your last name. Sarah 8:09 Well, yeah, but I mean, my last name is long and complicated. But one of the words that I used a lot in, in my writing in grad school was was all the different versions of phosphorylate. So I had to have phosphorylate, phosphorylates, phosphorylated, phosphorylation, all of those I had to teach to my computer, so it would know that those were correct words. And the and the problem was, is that I would look at them after a while that I be like, is that right? I don't know. And I kept making the same like typos when I would type those words because of where those letters were, I don't know. So I was always afraid that I was going to teach my spellcheck the wrong spelling of whatever version of phosphorylates it was coming across now. Leo 9:00 And now we can like add stuff to the dictionary fairly easily just by right clicking But Sarah 9:05 well, and I could then too, but you don't want to add it to the dictionary if you aren't sure it's correct. Leo 9:10 I mean, yeah, Sarah 9:11 especially if there's like a common typo that you are always doing and you don't want to accidentally put your common typo in the dictionary cuz you'll never find it again. So what's happened is that the science has gotten more detailed. We've got new language for it. And then there's been this competition. So I don't know that we've talked very much about competition in science. Have we talked about that very much, Leo? Leo 9:40 We I think we've talked about it once or twice. Sarah 9:44 Yeah, so we tend to think of science as very collaborative, and it's really meant to be collaborative. But there's also a part of competition that's involved in it. And so you might have two different labs who are studying the same protein. And whoever gets their experiments done first, and writes it up first and publishes it first gets to be the ones that say that they did it first. Leo 10:15 So exciting. Sarah 10:17 We used to, like carefully watch journals for the people who were our, quote, competition to see what they were publishing. Leo 10:24 That just seems ridiculous. Sarah 10:26 But it was, but it was really helpful because we knew that if this particular lab published something, it might be related to the work that we were doing. And that also meant that if they had developed some reagent that we might want, we know where to go ask for it. Because because we were pretty much obligated to share reagents. So that's the collaborative part, but there's definitely a competition part. Some authors become more prestigious than other people. So there's more important papers or more important authors. Leo 10:58 And does that change With which like science you study? Sarah 11:02 Oh, absolutely. So even within say a broad thing like cell biology, there are going to be some people who are more important than others. But then there's going to be even smaller categories and smaller categories. Does that make sense? Like Leo 11:21 Yeah, Sarah 11:21 Like you're talking about? Well, there's all of cell biology Oh, but then we're going to be talking about, you know, cell signaling. So who are the big names in cell signaling? Oh, well, well, these people do, you know, Ras signaling versus wnt signaling so that then that kind of breaks down. So there there tend to be some go to people in lots of different fields. Leo 11:41 Yeah, Sarah 11:41 People who've been studying the same thing for decades, that tend to kind of have more prestige. So the journals also have competition. So they want to be publishing the latest breakthroughs, you know, so when you write your paper, you have to sort of pick which journal you're gonna submit it too, because the format has to be whatever that journal is expecting. And so when it comes time to write it, you're like, well, should we submit it to Science? Should we submit it to Sature? Should we submit it to Prostaglandins, Leukotrienes and Essential Fatty Acids? That is a journal, I am published there. So, the journals have different levels of prestige themselves. You know, when I was in grad school, I don't know if this is still the case. But it was like in cell biology, we were all like the journals you wanted were Cell, Science and Nature. That was the it, then and then maybe the Journal of Biological Chemistry or the Journal of cell biology. Leo 12:43 But then you you got published in what that big long? Sarah 12:48 Really, I'd already had a similar thing published in the Journal of Biological Chemistry. And then we also submitted a similar paper to Prostaglandins, Leukotrienes and Essential Fatty Acids. Leo 13:02 That's just so, so specific. Sarah 13:05 Right? So there are very specialized journals, you know, if you're working in certain fields, like getting published in Blood is a is also can be prestigious in certain in certain fields. It's just called Blood Leo 13:21 Blood. Sarah 13:21 Guess what it's about? Leo 13:22 Blood. Sarah 13:23 Yeah, Leo 13:24 very exciting Sarah 13:24 and all the things in blood and the different kinds of cells and blood and all the components. So it has things about, like, platelets and all of that. So, so there's competition for the journals, people are competing to get the things in the journals and what's at what kind of drives that is that intellectualism. Right. So So then we're like, oh, we're really smart. Leo 13:49 I hate intellectualism because people in my AP class judged me. Sarah 13:56 And so what happens is you end up with people writing more and more complicated language and to their articles, that then becomes the new standard. So when this guy Donald Hayes did his study, he found that the language in these journals got harder and harder and harder. You're shaking your head over there. Leo 14:17 I feel like science should be accessible to anybody and you shouldn't have to know giant vocabulary words to in order to understand it feel like that should be logical. Sarah 14:31 The challenge is that as the science becomes more detailed and complex, new words are created to explain things like our good old buddy geranylgeranylation . Leo 14:43 Was that named after a guy named Gerald? Sarah 14:46 No. Leo 14:49 How does something get that name? Sarah 14:53 Well, so things get names, all different ways. So You know, like I've already talked to you about sonic hedgehog, right? Leo 15:05 My favorite, Sarah 15:06 right? So somebody discovered that protein Leo 15:09 and named it after their like kids Sarah 15:11 and named it after the video game. Leo 15:13 It's like their kid's favorite video. Yes. Yeah. So sonic hedgehog is the mammalian version of that. And then if you start looking at orthologs in other species that are not mammals, they'll call their version of that protein, just hedgehog and not sonic hedgehog. I like how it's sonic hedgehog, not Sonic the Hedgehog? Sarah 15:39 Yes, it's just sonic hedgehog. So, you know, and so, other things could have been named a long time ago. A lot of times they're using Latin and Greek roots. There's there's actually what was it that in a comic by Gary Larson who did the Far Side? Leo 16:03 Yeah, Sarah 16:03 He made a joke about some spiky thing being called, like a thagomizer or something. And then later when they discovered something like that, and some dinosaur fossils, they actually named it after his comic strip. So things can come from lots of different places. Leo 16:21 Imagine getting like, a fossilized thing named after you. Sarah 16:26 Named after something you made up in a comic strip. Leo 16:29 Yeah, that's just, Sarah 16:31 you know, and and they've named they've named species after people. You know, Leo 16:38 Yeah, well, I used to that. Yeah. Sarah 16:40 So if you're, if you're first to discover something, you kind of get to decide what it's going to be called. Leo 16:45 Yeah. And some people are more creative than others. Some people just use their last names Didn't you have. So your last name is big and monsterish. And you have like a co worker and you said if you ever discovered anything, you would make it your two last man. Sarah 16:59 It was a friend of mine in undergrad, we were taking organic chemistry and we noticed that all of the named reactions were like two big long German names hyphenated together, and we both had long German names. And so we were going to hyphenate our names together, we discovered some reaction, but Leo 17:18 you never did Sarah 17:19 that never happened. And now and now we're very sad about it. Okay, so the other thing that was happening is that as these journals that were meant to be more mainstream, these general science journals, got more complicated language, then whole new magazines would be developed. That would kind of fill in that gap that would be more accessible to people. Leo 17:47 Oh, so just like on like, some of my resources, we have like three different levels. We have the green we have the yellow, we have the red and green is the easiest to read is the hardest to read. And so of course, I go directly for the red ones. Sarah 17:59 Right, but, but exactly, exactly. So they're written at a different level. Leo 18:04 Yeah. Sarah 18:04 And so they're written at a more accessible level. So guess what happened to those over time? Leo 18:10 They got higher levels. Sarah 18:11 Right. So then what happened is then those also increased over time. Leo 18:15 That's just like way too many scientific journals that are just being created to just get. Sarah 18:20 And the main problem is that it's making it so that the science is really only accessible by scientists in that field. So when I was working in a molecular and cell biology lab, I could read the articles that were about molecular and cell biology. But if I picked up a physics journal, Leo 18:38 you were doomed. Sarah 18:39 And as soon as I saw those equations, I was like, I'm out. But so you can understand that but it's not even if you're a scientist, you can do this. It's if you're a scientist in that field, then you that you're able to actually read those articles. And so a part and I realized when I was doing this research, that I always hated reading papers from Cell, you know, the big prestigious journal that we all wanted to publish in. And according to this guy's research, they had one of the hardest difficulties, reading level difficulties out of all the journals. And Leo 19:17 I was not surprised. Sarah 19:18 And I was like, Oh, that's why I always would skip most of what they wrote and go straight to the figures, Leo 19:25 because that's something that you can understand, Sarah 19:27 because it's just figures, because it's graphs and it's edits, pictures, and it's diagrams, and it's things that that are intentionally kind of made as a visual representation. Leo 19:40 Yeah, there were definitely some graphs and stuff that I don't understand. Sarah 19:46 Right, Leo 19:46 but that's just cuz I don't understand their axes. And I don't want to figure out how to understand their axes. Sarah 19:53 The idea being that the actual data is really more accessible to people. Than a lot of the writing as in it didn't dawn on me until I was doing this that I was like, Oh, that's why I was always like, please let it be JBC because I can read the papers and JBC you know, it's not that I'm dumb. It's just that it was easier to read. And I make and it makes more sense to me. So why is this bad for science? Leo 20:20 Because people that aren't in that specific field can't understand it. So. And science is supposed to be accessible to people so they can understand so that they can learn the science, Sarah 20:30 right? You know, so Leo 20:31 And unless you have like a degree in that specific thing, you're not going to be able to understand anything. Sarah 20:37 So there's a less free flow of ideas and knowledge within the sciences and to the public. If we made the language so only the people who are in that field could understand it. Leo 20:51 It's like having an inside joke, but with data. Sarah 20:55 It pretty much, yeah. So that is actually very bad. Bad bad for science. It does. It's a disservice to science. And it doesn't allow people who are not scientists to actually appreciate how science works and how science is self correcting. Because it all just looks like gobbledygook. Leo 21:16 Exactly. I don't want to read a 15 syllable word to try to understand something. Sarah 21:23 Last August, the Pew Research did a survey in order to determine like how much confidence the public in general had and scientists and their ability to act in the public interest. Leo 21:41 Okay. I don't know if I would have that much because I don't understand what they're doing. Sarah 21:47 Right. And so the fact that that it's hard for regular people to understand the science communications means that they're sort of having to like trust their gut that sciences are doing the right things. Generally they felt like doctors and medical researchers and dieticians were doing a decent job. They had positive views of those kinds of fields. Leo 22:10 I think it's also because people see those scientists more often than you know, like you're a cell biologist person, but people outside of like my family probably would never meet one. Sarah 22:26 Right, exactly. And when you're sitting there with your doctor, and the doctor has good bedside manner and is talking to you and explaining things to you, one on one, you have this moment of like, Yes, they are definitely thinking about what's best for me personally, Leo 22:44 and I trust their opinions, Sarah 22:46 right? Because if you didn't trust your doctor, you'd go find another doctor. They're a dime a dozen. Leo 22:50 Yeah. Sarah 22:50 But so what they found was that people thought that doctors cared more about people and patients. And somebody who might have a particular disease, than the medical researchers who were doing the research on that particular disease? Leo 23:09 Well, it's because I don't know what those researchers are doing. Sarah 23:11 Yeah, Leo 23:12 I know what the doctor is doing. They're trying to help me I have no clue about these researchers, Sarah 23:16 right. So So twice as many people trusted the doctors than trusted the researchers. So how are the researchers communicating what they know, through these journals? Leo 23:25 And I don't understand what they're doing. So why should I trust them? I mean, like I do, I'm one of those people that trust scientists to be good people and go towards progress and do what's right. But I can understand why people don't trust the researchers because they've Sarah 23:43 right and then the other piece of that is that they also know that there's this like funding question mark. So if it's industry funded, are the researchers really being honest about what they're finding? Leo 23:56 Yeah, Sarah 23:57 you know, and and I can understand Some of that skepticism as well. Leo 24:03 It's like if something is funded by duct tape, and then you find that duct tape is the best tape. Like I would question that. I'm like you're you're funded by duct tape. Sarah 24:14 Right. So what do they do with the data that didn't say that duct tape was the best tape? Leo 24:18 Exactly. Sarah 24:19 They tied it up in a box and covered it with duct tape. So then the other problem then becomes if regular people can't read and decipher, and some people can, but lots of people can't read these papers and understand what they're saying. You know, especially right now where you've got lots of these journals who are making their COVID-19 articles, all freely available, often pre-peer review. So you don't even know if that's really what's going to be published in the end. It kind of muddies the waters a little bit, and it can make people draw conclusions that are really the conclusions that they don't have the good basis in the science. Leo 25:04 Yeah. Sarah 25:05 So what we rely on is science writers. Have you ever listened to NPR? Leo 25:12 Yes. Sarah 25:13 All right. So they have a science journalist named Joe Palca, who will read the new research that's coming out, talk to the scientists and then parse it out into language that regular people can understand. Leo 25:27 That's kind of what you do too, with me. Sarah 25:30 Right? Well, that's what a good science teacher should be doing. Right? Leo 25:34 Yeah, Sarah 25:35 That that's the whole idea. We want people to have critical thinking skills, and to understand things, we have to be able to bring that information to people at the level that they're at. And so there is a whole job of this and science journalism, where people do this, Leo 25:51 which is cool. Sarah 25:52 It is pretty cool Leo 25:53 thank you for making me understand big, long, complicated words. Like Gerald Geraldson Sarah 25:59 like Gerald Gerald. But not even just understanding the big words, but understand the concepts that's actually far, far, far more important. Because you can forget a word. But if you understand the concept, it doesn't matter if you forgot the word. Leo 26:13 Exactly. Like, for instance, I described words because I can't remember what the actual word is. And you understand what I'm saying. Sarah 26:20 I actually did that on a test once and in college. Leo 26:24 That seems like something I would do. Sarah 26:26 Well, it was a an oral test, our professor had three or four of us come and sit in his office. And then we just discussed what we were learning in class. And from that he determined what we understood. Leo 26:41 Interesting. Sarah 26:42 So it's very subjective in some ways. Leo 26:44 Yeah. But one of the questions was to describe the structure of a fatty acid and I could not remember the word glycerol to save my life. So instead, I just described it and I drew it on a piece paper, you know this thing. Sarah 27:03 And I said, I can't remember what it's called. It starts with a G. And he laughs and then he turns the next person. He says, what was the word that she couldn't remember? I was so mad. Leo 27:17 Okay, but you know the word now? Sarah 27:20 I do I will never forget glycerol ever. So then we have the mainstream media science reporting, and some people do a better job and others of explaining it. But the other thing is, is that these media outlets want eyeballs on their stuff. Leo 27:40 clickbait titles, Sarah 27:42 yes. And sometimes they will pull out some small piece from a finding and blow it up. Like it's the big most important thing and it and it really was not the conclusions of the authors. Yeah, so you really sometimes have to To sort of confirm what the authors actually said. So if the authors of the original article are quoted in the science journalism, usually that's a pretty good sign that it's pretty accurate to what the paper was. But sometimes they get sort of out of control and they like to sensationalize things. So a good example of this was last fall. There were all of these articles that I was seeing that were talking about how Betelguese, one of the stars and the Orion constellation was going to supernova, and it was going to supernova soon. There were videos that were created to show us what the supernova would look like from Earth. And it was just on and on and on. And so I was find. I found articles that were still talking about how this was going to Betelguese was going to supernova. That were brand new published March 6. Leo 29:06 Didn't they figure out that Betelguese wasn't going to supernova like ages ago? Sarah 29:11 You can find that some researchers kind of looked at these fluctuations and the brightness of Betelguese and did some calculations and all this and they published their findings, December 23. That said, Yeah, Betelguese will supernova sometime but it's not going to be anytime real soon. So basically, all of that sensationalism about this Betelguese supernova that's coming was all over, like mainstream science media. But these researchers who were looking at it and looking at the fluctuations and actually doing the astronomy had already concluded that it was fine in December. Leo 30:00 People just really wanted a supernova, I guess. Sarah 30:04 Well, it was sensational. It was exciting to think about that you could find out that there was going to be this supernova because you know, supernovas are we don't observe them, you know, Leo 30:17 yeah, Sarah 30:18 they're rare. So it was exciting. But so how many of those outfits and a lot of them were these sort of like Weird Science websites that you kind of go is this really science or is this just a bunch of baloney? How many did you think went back and updated those articles with Hmm, yeah, no, it's really not gonna supernova. Leo 30:40 None of them because it's giving them clicks. Sarah 30:43 Almost none. Yeah. I, I didn't run across a single one. There might be some that had refined their view on the Betelguese supernova. But they just didn't change anything. You know. So So now if somebody was like, Hey, wait a minute last September, didn't they say that Betelguese was good a supernova? I wonder what was happening with that has that happened yet? And they go and find out that it's not there like these scientists. Leo 31:15 Exactly. Sarah 31:17 So if we don't have people reporting on the, the changes that they learned, right, because this is actually what science is. They saw something. They had a theory about what might be happening. They did more experiments, they came to the conclusion that that hypothesis that they came up with that Betelguese was getting ready to supernova was not correct, that hypothesis was not supported. If we aren't letting people see the whole scientific method, then we're missing the self correcting nature of science. That the science gets better and better the more work that scientists do. And that it's not all just quick. Leo 32:10 No. Sarah 32:12 This is the next thing I want to talk about.There are lots of science communicators. I think I'll I think I'll call them that have like a Facebook page or a blog or they tweet or something. And they're like content aggregators and content creators. You know, to some extent, that's what we're doing too. Leo 32:38 Yeah. Sarah 32:39 Okay. And because they want to make sure that they're getting the shares and they're getting the eyeballs and they're doing whatever. Sometimes they're quick to share some article with a sensationalist title that's garbage. Leo 32:58 It's like they haven't read it. Sarah 33:00 Yes, they haven't read it. They haven't vetted it. They haven't anything. They're just like, wow, this sounds interesting. You know, there was a, there was one that I used to really like. And so the person who started that, at the very beginning, was actually posting really cool like science tidbits and interest things and like, Hey, did you ever know these five facts about sea turtles? So you know, it was interesting. But then over time, in order to have the content and to keep things going, it got kind of sensationalist in the things that they were posting, that weren't always didn't hold up to scrutiny. Leo 33:47 It's like 10 science hacks, and it's all just like, hey, cornstarch and water. Makes weird stuff. Sarah 33:56 Non Newtonian fluids. Leo 33:58 They don't even say it's non Newtonian. fluid, they just are like, hey, look, if you combine cornstarch and water and makes weird stuff, and that's it, that's the entire thing. And then sometimes they put it in a balloon to make a stress ball. Sarah 34:11 I can go all day about looking up science experiments to do on the internet that are just like, hey, put these things together and see something cool. Because that isn't really science that's not really like learning how nature works. Leo 34:26 No, it's just, hey, look at this reaction, Sarah 34:30 which can sometimes be really cool and fun. You know, there's, there's nothing that says that you can't make a baking soda vinegar volcano, but don't fool yourself into thinking that you're doing a real experiments. Leo 34:45 Exactly. Sarah 34:46 Science communication is really important, but we want to make sure that we're actually making it truly accessible to people that you don't have to have a PhD in whatever the field is in order to understand what the experiments are. Because it's particularly important during this like COVID-19 thing that we really understand what it takes to do the science. Coming up in the next few weeks, we're going to be talking about things like vaccine developments, and what that looks like and how long that actually takes, and what steps the scientists have to go through and what kinds of places that they can try to speed things up. And it's hard. It's really hard. And you have to get really lucky and you have to have a lot of people working on it in order for it to be successful. And I think a lot of regular people are frustrated that it hasn't already happened. Leo 35:56 I don't expect science to happen overnight. I Sarah 36:00 I don'tthink very many people expect it to happen overnight. But I don't think they understand the the long runways some of these things have. Leo 36:09 It can take years. Sarah 36:11 Absolutely. And what that actually means when we say it takes years, it's not that this person isn't working hard enough or fast enough. I once got into an argument with my boss in a lab meeting of 30 people, because he wanted my cells to grow faster. Leo 36:30 Your cells grow at the speed that your cells grow. Sarah 36:33 Right? Well, and there were some problems with the cells that had to do with the person who was growing them before me who didn't really know what they were doing. And I was trying to rectify that, but I can't make them go through mitosis any faster than they go through mitosis. Leo 36:51 It's not like you can just like inject human growth hormone to make them grow up faster. That's not how it works. Sarah 36:57 Well. There are some things you can do with some hormones, but those, they might not necessarily still be the same cells that you thought that. But yeah, so it is important that we recognize the value of the science literature being accessible to people, both in terms of being able to get their hands on the articles, and also being able to understand what the scientists did. There are some journals now that have different sections written at different reading levels. And one of them is one I get a subscription to, which is Science. The first part of that is usually more accessible, more science journalism kind of papers, and articles and pieces. And then the back it has like primary research that people are doing with their methods and all of that stuff Leo 38:05 which you read because you're a nerd. Sarah 38:07 Well, yeah. But I only read it in the molecular and cell biology fields, the ones that are in the other fields. I try to read those and my eyes kind of go I have no idea but if I read the science journalism pieces that might be about those things. Like there's a, there was a whole article about bees. Like if I'm, if I'm reading the entomology stuff, I get a little lost if I read the stuff at the beginning about the bees, I can totally follow. Leo 38:39 I like bees. Sarah 38:40 I know you love bees. Leo 38:42 They're good bois. They actually girls. Sarah 38:46 Yeah, they're mostly girls. Leo 38:47 They're mostly girls. Sarah 38:49 I like the fluffy bumblebees with their fluffy bats. Leo 38:53 We have bumble bees in our backyard, Sarah 38:55 on purpose, Leo 38:56 and you're very happy put it Sarah 38:58 Yes. The moral of this story is vet the stuff you're reading? If you find that something is at a reading level or has some things that you don't understand, look for other sources. There are science journalists out there who are trying to make things more accessible to people. Leo 39:17 And don't let somebody else say, Wow, you can't read that this certain scientific level. Yeah, I can't. I don't need to. Sarah 39:28 Yeah, I'm telling you, I was in grad school for Molecular and cell biology, and I hated reading the articles themselves because they were at that higher level. I could understand that it was just harder. Leo 39:39 Exactly. And don't make anybody make you feel bad about that because of it. Sarah 39:44 Absolutely not. If you are trying to learn and find out new things, nobody should be making you feel badly about trying to learn new stuff. Yep. If they are there, just boogers Leo 39:55 Boogers is a funny word. Sarah 39:57 Okay, great. That's all for today. I want to thank everybody for kind of hanging in there with us while we had a longer than planned hiatus. COVID-19 staying at home was really difficult in a mental health aspect. Leo 40:15 Yeah. Sarah 40:16 And coupled with the difficulty of continuous online learning, which was also a mental health problem. Leo 40:26 Yeah. Sarah 40:27 And, and, you know, we recognize that mental health is health, and we need to take care of ourselves when we're having issues with that. Leo 40:36 Exactly. Sarah 40:37 So we took the time to do that. And I proud of us for taking the time to do that. But now we're back in the saddle. At the microphone Leo 40:46 at the microphone. Sarah 40:49 All right. So if you have not already, you should check out our Facebook, Twitter and Instagram at NJFG podcast. Subscribe to our channel. podcast wherever you get your podcasts and if you want to drop us a review on Apple podcasts, that would be really fantastic. Leo 41:09 Catch you later. See you See you Bye Transcribed by https://otter.ai