Cadmore media player playing video How Lessons Learned from Shark Research, Conservation, and Education Can Help Advance Scholarly Communications
Video Player
Accessibility
Using forms mode, you can utilize keyboard shortcuts to make usability more efficient.
Space bar will play and pause the video. Pressing escape will close all displays and pressing it again will jump to the end of the player.
You can press A to open the Keyboard Shortcut Dialog which also provides an audio description of the player and all of its features.
Language
1x
Play Speed
Adjust Volume
Transcript
Search
Result Count
of
Click to jump to result
Search
Re-center
Segments
Result Count
of
Click to jump to result
Search
Name:
How Lessons Learned from Shark Research, Conservation, and Education Can Help Advance Scholarly Communications
Description:
How Lessons Learned from Shark Research, Conservation, and Education Can Help Advance Scholarly Communications
Thumbnail URL:
https://cadmoremediastorage.blob.core.windows.net/eded1853-5ee3-4397-8e27-dc583e63648b/videoscrubberimages/Scrubber_780.jpg
Duration:
T01H14M28S
Embed URL:
https://stream.cadmore.media/player/eded1853-5ee3-4397-8e27-dc583e63648b
Content URL:
https://cadmoreoriginalmedia.blob.core.windows.net/eded1853-5ee3-4397-8e27-dc583e63648b/SSP2025 5-28 1600 - Opening Remarks and Keynote.mp4?sv=2019-02-02&sr=c&sig=d6MUrEbe5rqOPGQbr3rm4M0ZsQlbMxIFWlDKu2jzCYo%3D&st=2025-12-05T20%3A58%3A27Z&se=2025-12-05T23%3A03%3A27Z&sp=r
Upload Date:
2025-07-17T00:00:00.0000000
Transcript:
Language: EN.
Segment:0 .
Welcome to the SSP 47th annual meeting. We're so excited to have you here with us in rainy Baltimore. I'm Heather Staines, and for a few more days, I am honored to be the president of SSP in my. Thank you. In my day job, I'm a senior strategy consultant for deltasync, and I'm happy to be here in that capacity as well with a couple of my colleagues that I haven't seen yet.
So I hope they made it through the rain. Got a few housekeeping items to kick us off. We would not be able to put this meeting on without the generosity. In many instances, it just went by itself. It's going to be one of those years. All right. Now we know. So just what to expect.
I did not touch it without the generosity of our sponsors, many of whom support us on an annual basis. You can see them here as well. Please do stop by the stands and the exhibit Hall for those who have stands. And if you see folks from these organizations, do go up to them and thank them for their continued support. Some other folks that we would not be here today without our annual meeting program chairs.
So thanks so much to Erin Foley, Jessica Slater, Greg Fagan, and the entire annual meeting program committee, which I hear is about 40 people for everything they did to put this together for you. Let's yes, clap. You can find the agenda for the meeting in the SSP. Engage see it. Did it again.
I'm going to keep pushing it back because it's my moment in the SSP engage app, which is brand new. And if you haven't downloaded it, I encourage you to do that. It's going to be a year round engagement forum for us here at SSP. So it's not one of those annual those meeting apps that's just going to disappear on you. It's going to be valuable for you and it's going to get more so over time.
Let's see here. If for any reason you need assistance during the meeting, you can stop by the registration desk. Hopefully you've been there. You have a badge. You can hopefully remember where that is. It's not too far away just outside the key ballroom, which is this room. After the meeting, recordings for all sessions will be available.
There is Wi-Fi for the conference. It's Hilton meeting one word and the password is integra 2025. So capital I integra 2025. Thank you to integra for supporting us in our Wi-Fi. Yeah next up. I didn't invent that one. That one was on me. I thought maybe it would go by itself.
It was a test. Remember to silence your phones. And while you were looking for your phones to silence them. If you cannot find your phone, an iPhone has been turned in to the registration desk. I don't know anything about it, so I can't. There we go. It's going again. I can't tease what it is or say, whether it's got a picture of a dog or a baby or a sporting team, but do go and get that.
They will keep it safe for you. You can go get it now. I won't be hurt. You don't want to miss a minute of this keynote. Believe me. We have an SSP code of conduct. If you've attended other meetings before, you will have heard of this. SSP is committed to diversity, equity, and providing a safe, inclusive, and productive meeting environment that fosters open dialogue and the free expression of ideas free of harassment, discrimination, and hostile conduct.
Creating that environment is a shared responsibility for all participants. Please be respectful of others and observe our code of conduct and if you have any questions or issues, you can find any of us who have been introduced or talked to someone at the registration desk. And we will certainly help you. What am I missing a slide.
Oh, there we go. These slides. It's OK. Just be prepared if you're up here on the stage. See, I don't have any slides tomorrow because I was out ahead of that one. We also have an antitrust statement. SSP is committed to complying with competition and antitrust laws.
Please avoid any discussions of pricing, market allocation, boycotts or other topics that could be interpreted as anti-competitive. If any such discussions arise, they shall be stopped immediately to protect both the individual participants and the organization. Through the generous support of digital science, we have our keynote speaker, and I'm going to invite Helen cook to join me on the stage.
Helen is the SVP for sales and publishing markets for digital science. And she's got a little bit to say to you. Oh, it's very this thing shakes when people come on stage, so be careful. Thank you. Thanks, Heather. Good afternoon, everyone. I'm Helen cook, SVP of sales for publisher markets at digital science, and I'm delighted to be here with you all, and even more so to say that we are really proud to be a diamond sponsor of this year's SSP conference.
Now, digital science has always believed that research is the most powerful transformational force for long term societal improvement, and there's probably no audience that understands that better than this one. The academic publishing community plays a crucial role in shaping that impact, and we're really thrilled to be supporting you. Many of you already know us very well.
Five of the six largest publishers globally are what we'd call super users of digital science products, and publishers of all shapes and sizes. Use our resources from dimensions and Altmetric to Overleaf and Figshare. You use our tools every day, whether it's for society bids, launching new journals, reporting to institutions, or simply finding a trusted reviewer on a deadline. In fact, one leading publisher, half of all staff have interacted with our environment in just the last month alone.
We like to think of ourselves as part of your daily workflow or routine. A bit like your first cup of tea or coffee, quietly essential and best delivered without any fuss. And now we're launching something new, which we're particularly excited about. Dimensions author. Check this is a powerful new dashboard and API using dimensions data that lets you embed fast, reliable research integrity checks right into your publishing workflow, whether you're Reviewing Editors, authors, or peer reviewers.
Author check helps you to confidently assess publication and collaboration history, including retractions or other integrity concerns, all within your existing systems. Its integrity screening where and when you need it. And we've built it for scale. So whether you're making strategic decisions, managing editorial pipelines or figuring out who not to invite to review, we're here to help you do it better, faster, and with confidence.
So do please come and talk to us at the digital science booth, where the publisher team will be really pleased to tell you more. Thanks for having us and we look forward to an excellent few days together. Thank you Helen. And now I would like to introduce and invite to the stage our co-chair of the annual meeting program committee.
Aaron Foley. She's coming. Aaron is director of rightsholder relations for the copyright Clearance Center, and she will introduce our keynote speaker. Thank you. Thanks, Heather.
Thank you. Good afternoon, everyone. As Heather so kindly said, my name is Aaron Foley and I'm the director of rightsholder relations at copyright Clearance Center. And more importantly for today, I'm one of the co-chairs of the annual meeting program committee here at SSP.
And I could not be more proud to welcome everybody to the 2025 SSP annual meeting. I hope everybody had some seamless travel, although I hear maybe not on the way into Baltimore yesterday or today. And we're really glad that you're here, because I'm very pleased to welcome you to this opening keynote on behalf of my fellow co-chairs, Jesse and Greg, who are sitting in the front and also on the rest of the behalf of the SSP annual meeting program committee.
It is a 40 person committee, which is backed up by tremendous amounts of work across the SSP staff, the board and many other volunteers. So thank you also to the people who are not standing up here today. I would also like to thank our sponsors. Without you, this meeting would not be possible. So this year it was surprisingly easy to come up with a meeting theme, which might sound odd to you, but which we felt really reflects the current state of play in scholarly publishing.
And the team working on the potential keynote speakers had so many wonderful ideas related to our theme of reimagining the future of scholarly publishing at the intersection of value and values. But the challenge, of course, comes in when we're attempting to narrow down all that creative thinking into one speaker who can address elements of the overall theme and add their own thought provoking spin.
And in a moment where the inherent value of research and the information ecosystem in which it thrives is under a myriad of threats, both in the US and globally, we really wanted to know how do we protect and improve the information ecosystem, communicate the value of research, continue to drive meaningful impacts, and embody our values in a fraught and polarizing time. So to that end, big shoes to fill. I'm very honored to introduce our speaker, Doctor David Shiffman, who is a marine conservation biologist running a DC based conservation science, policy and communications firm working with US governmental agencies, environmental nonprofits and universities all over the world on efforts to protect endangered sharks Among his many, many roles, Doctor Schiffman is an associate editor for open, the open access journal conservation science and practice and adjunct professor at both Nova Southeastern University and Georgetown.
And in addition to several globally syndicated op eds, Doctor Schiffman has published more than 60 highly cited scientific journal articles. He's written for National Geographic, Scientific American, and the Washington Post, and he has a monthly column in scuba diving magazine. He has spoken at events around the world, including a 70 City International book tour for his book Why sharks matter, which is published by Baltimore local Johns Hopkins University press.
And he recently coordinated the international marine conservation Congress in Cape Town, South Africa. Finally, you might already be familiar with Doctor Schiffman's work because he has a very prolific social media presence under the handle why sharks matter, which you can find anywhere social media exists. A quick caveat for people who know me personally, I swear selecting doctor Schiffman was a keynote committee decision.
And not just because I love sharks, but I am a massive shark enthusiast. See me later and we'll look at all my shark apps and see if there's any of our finny friends around. So as someone who works whose work combines a combination of academic research, policy work on the ground, conservation efforts, and public discussion, we're extremely excited to have Doctor Schiffman speak to how lessons learned from Shark research, conservation, and education can help advance scholarly communications.
As a reminder, Doctor Schiffman will be joining us at the opening reception just after this keynote in the exhibition Hall. And he is going to say hello and sign some copies of his book. But we only have 49 copies because this one's mine and you can't have it. But we have about 49 copies, so please, first come, first served Come and get your book signed. And with that, David, thank you so much for your time and welcome to SSP.
Is that mic check. Sound is on. You guys are great. Well, I'm so excited to be here with you today in Baltimore to share with you some insights from my career working on sharks, Shark science, Shark conservation, and talking to the public about sharks and share with you some lessons that can be perhaps a little more broadly applicable, because I've been told that some of the people in this room might not work on sharks.
We'll see if we can change that by the end of the day. So today I want to talk a little bit about my story, who I am, the different types of outreach and research and policy work that I do. I can't do that without introducing you to some of the work of some of the background issues surrounding sharks and shark conservation, and the state of play with public understanding of this, and I've been asked to also talk about how you guys can do stuff like this and for your various areas of expertise and the people that you work with.
I'll do that in the context of both some tips and tricks, and some talk and some discussion about what not to do, which is a lot more fun. Throughout this talk, I'll share some lessons learned that are related, perhaps more directly to sharks, but I'll talk about how they can be more broadly applied. I will share examples of how this works well, when it's done well, and how it works real bad when it's not done well.
Since I know I'm in a room of scholarly communications nerds, I have citations to learn more on just about anything. And at the end of this talk, I'd be delighted to answer any questions that you want to know about any of this or any of the other things that I work on that Aaron mentioned in the introduction. I do, and ask me anything on social media every week, which means I can just about guarantee that the weirdest question you can think of is not the weirdest question I've ever been asked, but please hold those questions to the end.
So first, who am I. As Aaron mentioned, I live and work in the Washington, DC area, so I had a relatively easier time getting here than some of you that I heard about. And I work at the intersection of science, conservation policy, and public understanding of science. Most of what I work on is in the context of sharks, but I also work on broader sustainable fisheries issues and endangered species issues.
And in addition to being a researcher and an educator, I'm an author of among other things, why sharks matter. A freelance journalist and a public speaker, I train scientists and early career managers and conservationists all over the world how to do this stuff. And you can find me on social media at white sharks matter, which is also the title of the book. So before I get into this, let's have a quick discussion about why public science engagement matters.
Why should we break out of the so-called ivory tower. The people in this room publish some of the world's leading journals, and published some incredibly important and influential academic texts. Isn't that enough. Well, I think recent events have shown that there is perhaps value in what our non-academic neighbors understand about the value of science and what they think about science. Their tax dollars pay for many of our salaries.
Their votes affect things that matter to us. So I think it is important that everyone appreciates how science works and why it's good. And that means we cannot just publish our work in journals that, no offense, most people don't read. So what is the context that I work in. I work in the context of global shark conservation. And the things that I need people to know are that sharks are ecologically important animals.
Many species are threatened with extinction. And we know what to do to help, but we need the help of the public. And critically with this, we don't need the public to guess what to do to help. We have very specific roles that we need the public's assistance with, and this requires informed, targeted engagement. Whenever I do the whenever I do my training sessions on how to talk to the public about science, someone will inevitably raise their hand and say, well, this is easy for you.
You work on sharks. I work on bacteria. I work on fungus, I work on plants. To some extent. Maybe sharks are an advantage. One of my best friends is a seagrass restoration ecologist and she has to start her talks with this is what a seagrass is. And I don't have to do that with sharks because everyone knows what a shark is.
If anyone here does not know what a shark is are five blocks away from the National Aquarium. It's the beautiful glass pyramid building in the center of the beautiful logo here. It's worth stepping out for a little bit, but everyone knows what a shark is. But the problem with that is that a lot of what people know is wrong and wrong in a way that is harmful, which means I need to correct people's misconceptions without making them stop caring.
I often feel like I'm playing the role of Captain science. Buzzkill that hey, I'm so excited that everyone's talking about science this week. Yay, science! The thing you're saying is actually wrong though, but still care about science. Where are you going. Come back. This is a big problem, especially in shark world where there is tons of wrong information shared sometimes by non-expert enthusiasts who are well-intentioned but uninformed, and sometimes by a very active community of fraudsters and scam artists trying to take advantage of that dynamic.
There is so much nonsense in this space, you guys. I have colleagues who study misinformation and disinformation on topics like plastic pollution, nanotechnology, GMO foods, climate change. They're shocked at how much nonsense there is in shark conservation world. It's that bad. A quick, amusing example of this is Shark Week. How many of you have heard of Shark Week.
Show of hands. So for those of you who haven't, Shark Week is a week long series of sarcastic air quotes documentaries that airs on the Discovery Channel. And it is the longest running cable news event in history. It's in its 37th year this year. It is the largest. It is the largest stage in the field of marine biology. Many careers have been launched by an appearance on Shark Week.
It is the largest temporary increase in Americans paying attention to any science or environment. Issue of the year. And it is a dumpster fire of lies and nonsense. This is a big problem. So I've been called Shark week's biggest critic, and I don't know if that's true, but I'm certainly not on their Christmas card list. This slide and the lower left here.
If we go back to the. That's one of my favorite articles that's ever been written about my work. That was back when I used to live tweet back when Twitter was a thing. I hope everyone's using blue sky, not Twitter now, but back when we used to live tweet things. A Vox reporter took some of my selected tweets throughout Shark Week and noticed that they looked progressively more deranged.
So the problem here, a key point here, this is not just me. We actually did science on this. We did what's called a media content and discourse analysis, which is published in PLOS one. That means I had a team of poor undergraduate volunteers who agreed to watch every episode of Shark Week ever and write down what was in it. So I have data showing that it's a dumpster fire of lies and nonsense.
But one particular thing that was the result that seemed to get the most pickup in the media my field is more than 60% women. You would not know that from watching Shark Week when not only are there more men than women featured, but there are more guys named Mike than women featured. That result was the headline in the Washington Post coverage of the work. And Mike Rowe, who is, of course, a guy named Mike who has hosted Shark Week.
He also hosts dirty jobs with Mike Rowe was very upset about this. That image was my Facebook profile picture for a year. So when you're trying to talk to people about science or whatever your technical area of expertise may be, no one just wants to go to a dry, stuffy, boring science lecture. Everyone had to take those intro to bio classes at Monday at 8:00 AM with 500 people.
No one has happy memories of that experience, so making a personal narrative helps. And I'm going to show you an example of how I do this with talks associated with my book tour for the book Why sharks matter. So to help promote the book sales and also to help advance my broader communications goals associated with writing the book. I organized an international book tour that Erin mentioned at the time that I wrote this article explaining what I was doing.
It was 40 cities. It's now over 70. I did this has been not only Intercontinental, but I gave a talk in Antarctica about it that was pretty cool in the context of doing this, I've spoken to thousands of people of all ages, all about sharks and marine biology and ocean conservation and why you should care about all this stuff. And this is a way of doing that as a personal narrative.
I'm sure we've all attended talks that start with something like merriam-webster's dictionary defines quantum physics as yeah, you can do that. Or you could make people actually want to listen. Here is how I do this with a personal narrative. I've loved sharks for a very long time. And in my talk today, I want to tell you some of the reasons why I love them and how they've held my attention for so long, and some of the things that I've learned in a career of studying them and a lifetime of loving them.
And in doing so, I'll introduce to you some of the themes of my new book. Do you see the difference there between merriam-webster's dictionary defines versus that. I also want to quickly note here the picture on the right, the hands that you can see going in there. Those are the hands of Doctor Jeff carrier, another Johns Hopkins University press shark author who unfortunately passed away last year.
He was the first marine biologist I ever met. So when you're talking about your science, also don't you do need to get those facts in there. But you can make them interesting. You can make them fun. Part of the answer to this is you talk about things that excite you how this was taught to me initially was channel your inner golden retriever. Everything is so great, I can't wait, et cetera and to some extent people can tell that might not be genuine, but it's a lot more fun than a dry, stuffy, boring list of science facts.
So here's another example from the book tour talk. So one of the things that I do, especially when I do this for audiences of little kids, I'll do it with you guys too, because it seems like a nice group. I want you to think of all any shark species that you can think of and for 15 seconds, just shout out names of sharks that you've heard of. Go mako.
Nurse Greenland Hammerhead whale. All right. And stop. I heard 11 different species. That's pretty good. At the children's library in ST Michaels, Maryland. I got up to 22 species. So you guys have some very little shoes to fill. But there are 536 known species of sharks with a new species of shark, skate ray or chimera, discovered somewhere in the world about every two weeks.
Everyone can picture the shark from jaws. And it's the 50th anniversary of jaws this summer. If anyone wants to feel old, but sharks come in a wide variety of shapes, sizes, colors, behaviors. Some live in the open ocean where they'll never encounter a hard surface in their life. Some live in the deep sea. Well, they're never where they will never see the sun.
Some live under Arctic ice. US Navy SEALs have a saying that if you want to see if there are sharks in the water near you, you dip your finger in the water and you taste it. And if it's salty, that means you're in the ocean. And there are sharks near you. And that's true, but it's incomplete because some sharks live in rivers. These are some of my favorite weird and wonderful species.
Can we go back to the slide, please. In the lower right. That's one of my favorite newly described species. Relatively new. That's the American pocket shark. It is not called that because it's small enough to fit in your pocket, though. It is blown up on this screen that is bigger than they are in real life.
It is called that because of the little pocket of flesh it has behind its eye that's full of glow in the dark liquid that it can squirt on command to startle away predators. So you see how you can make this exciting. And I actually do think this stuff is really neat. But after giving this versions of this talk 100 times, some of this is channel your inner golden retriever. I also can sneak in some videos showing really cool behaviors there and some fun stories.
For example, in the upper right there, that's the Greenland shark. And that video is not artificially slowed down. They're the slowest moving large vertebrate in the ocean, but they're in no particular hurry because they can live to be 400 years old. They're not considered to be reproductively mature adults till they're in their 160 seconds, which is a really long time to go through puberty.
They also eat polar Bears and reindeer. So you see how you can turn science into a story. I heard several grown adults say, wow to that. Every single time I give this talk. There is something like that for your field. I also love this endearing story here on the left side there, that's a kitefin shark shown glowing in the dark. It is the largest of the shark species whose whole bodies glow in the dark.
There are many of these. They're called lantern sharks. My favorite lantern shark is called the Ninja lantern shark, and it's called that because my friend and colleague who discovered it discovered it around Thanksgiving, and she was home with her family, and everyone was talking about what's new at school, what's new at work. And she said, I discovered a new species of shark, and I can name it whatever I want.
And her seven-year-old cousin says, ninjas are cool. Call it the Ninja shark. So she did. Have you ever heard an audience reaction for that. For describing taxonomy. So some other things that I want people to know now that I've got them hooked on this idea that sharks are neat and it's worth paying attention to them.
Sharks are not a threat to you and your family. Many people think about sharks in the context of sharks being dangerous, and it can actually be hard to get people to care about and want to conserve something that they're afraid of. Let's talk to Spider scientists or snake scientists about this. And one way that you can diffuse this tension is with humor, for example, sharks are not really a threat to humans.
Any human death or injury is a tragedy, but some things that kill more humans than sharks in a typical year include flowerpots falling on your head from above. When you walk down a city street under apartment buildings, more people are bitten by other people on the New York City subway system each year than are bitten by sharks in the whole world. And I can always tell who's been to New York City by your facial expression.
Some people are going, what. And some people are going, yeah, that makes sense. As a social media guy, I love this one. More people die falling off cliffs trying to take selfies of scenery behind them than are killed by sharks. So I also want people to know that sharks are ecologically important animals, that they're some of the most threatened animals in the world, and that they need our help.
A problem that I have repeatedly run into over my career is that some of the shark enthusiast community. People know the part up to here. They know that sharks are important. They know that sharks aren't dangerous. They know they need our help, but they don't know what the threats are, and they misunderstand what the solutions are, which leads to at the very least, wasted effort.
Some examples of this. And a key lesson that I'm sure you all have examples of from your world, is that lots of people want to help. Lots of people are trying to help, but wanting to help and trying to help is not the same thing as actually helping. Whether or not something helps is measurable. We know the answer. On the right here, we have a representative of the macho cowboy idiot scuba diver community.
This is a term I'm trying to get into the peer reviewed journal literature. Maybe someone in this room can help me. Notably, it is a gender neutral term and many of the worst offenders are women. But there are people who ride sharks, who grab sharks, who kiss sharks. They take a shark, they take the biting end of the shark, and they put it on their face.
And they say, I'm raising awareness that sharks aren't dangerous. Don't do that. We know what to do. We know what works. And that's crazy. A slightly more niche thing, but something that drives me crazy is that most people think that shark finning and the shark fin soup trade is the number one threat to sharks.
If you want to learn the story of why that is, it's explained in detail in why sharks matter. But as it turns out, that hasn't been the number one threat to sharks since the 1990s. But you see these petitions pop up all the time that say ban shark finning and Florida banned shark finning in the United States. This one, from 2023, got 60,000 signatures to ban the practice of shark finning in Florida.
Not one of those people bothered to check and learn that we banned shark finning in Florida in 1993, 30 years before this petition was made. This cannot possibly do anyone any good. All it does is waste people's time and make them think that they've done something to help and make them misunderstand what the threats and their solutions are. This is bad and it happens all the time. And it's not just me ranting about it.
We have published about it. I have citations showing that this sort of public misunderstanding of conservation issues is a real problem. When called out about these people will inevitably say, oh, I'm raising awareness. Raising awareness of wrong information is also called lying. Raising awareness.
You need to raise awareness of things that are really true, or else I don't know what we're doing here. Important to keep in mind here that facts alone will not change people's minds. Something I'll explain in a little bit more detail later. But facts still matter. They have to be a foundation of the argument. If people do not know what's really happening, they have no chance of coming to the right conclusions.
And finally, I want people to know that there are solutions. The forecasts for shark population declines are quite dire. The forecast for what that means for the ocean and natural resources and wild places we depend on are quite dire. But hope is not lost. We know what policy solutions work and how to do them. That doesn't mean that our leaders are going to make smart choices, especially lately.
But we know what to do. Hope is not lost. So in summary here, I need people to understand that sharks are important but threatened, which many people, especially in the shark enthusiast community, already know. But also what we need for you to what we need your help with to save them matters. Don't just guess.
Don't reinvent the wheel poorly. Help when we ask for help in specific ways and lots of what people know is wrong. And I don't mean a different opinion than me. I mean factually wrong. And that provides a clear path for public engagement from subject matter area experts like me and the folks I train. So some other things that I do to help communicate this and mention that I do a lot of freelance journalism as well as op Ed writing.
I generally write topics that other science journalists aren't covering. So my value to the science journalism ecosystem is not that I'm the best writer or the fastest writer, but it's that I'm reading the scientific journal literature and attending conferences, so I know story tips that other people don't. I often write about little known cool new studies or upcoming policy deadlines or things like this.
I had an op Ed in the conversation in the lower right there recently about plans from the Trump administration to remove protections from the US's largest marine protected area. I write for environmental nonprofits like the Ocean Conservancy and the Union of Concerned Scientists and things like this. I have an article coming out soon that you guys are all going to love an American scientist.
I was promised it was going to be out by today, but it looks like it's going to be next week, so stay tuned. A key thing that I've learned from this space is in media studies. They have in journalism they have a saying no one owes you their eyeballs. Think about all the different things that you do throughout a day, throughout the day. Think about all the news stories that you maybe were vaguely aware of but didn't have time to read.
Everyone else is like that too. You cannot assume that any given thing that you write is going to be valued as important by your audience, so you need to make it clear to them that it's important. You need to make it relevant. You make it relevant to their lives, relevant to their interests, make it matter. And part of that is that we don't overload them with stuff that doesn't matter.
I do a lot of consulting for universities, talking to them about media strategy, for new research and things like that. And one of the most common things I say is, do you really want to write an article about this paper. Do we really need it. And people are flabbergasted because they've heard, oh, we need to communicate science. Yes, in general.
But not every individual unit of science needs to be broadly communicated. Not every paper is going to get a New York Times story. Not every paper is going to be discussed on Science Friday. In communicating with scientists. An important thing that has come up that I'm sure you've all experienced, especially the editors in the room, is that scientists and other technical subject matter area experts are not very good at understanding what people who are not experts in their field know about their field.
This is one of my favorite comics from the math and science and philosophy nerd comic XKCD. It notes that even when trying to compensate for it, experts will wildly overestimate the average person's familiarity with their field, as exhibited here. Silicate chemistry is second nature to us. As geochemists, it's easy to forget that the average person probably only knows the formulas for olivine and one or two feldspars.
I have had conversations that are almost exactly like this with real people. So one of the things that I do is train scientists, especially early career scientists, graduate students, and how to do this stuff, how to communicate with people who aren't experts in their field. And I've done this with over 2000 people all over the world. Often I do it at professional development workshops before or after a conference, or I'm brought into a graduate school for a weekend to do a crash course or things like this.
I'm now teaching a semester long graduate course about this. That's a core class for two different programs at Nova Southeastern. So teaching people how to do this is important. And one of the most important things, the fundamental things that so many people get wrong when doing this stuff is called the knowledge deficit model. So I see a few people nodding here. Some of you have heard of this and know why it's wrong.
Every one of you has seen this in action, even if you didn't know a name for it. The premise of this is I'm having a discussion with somebody who's not an expert in my field, and we have different policy preferences. I want to do something. He wants to do something else. And if I were to think I'm really smart. I'm an expert.
I know a lot of facts. You're not an expert in this. You don't know as many facts as me if I just shout facts in your general direction, you will know no more things and then you'll change your policy preferences. That doesn't work ever No one in the history of the world has ever been persuaded to change their mind. Because of this.
And something like half of all public science engagement is based on this model. Not good. Facts still matter. We need to introduce facts into the discussion, but they need to be organized as part of a persuasive narrative argument crafted to someone's needs and interests in a way that makes it relevant to them. Just shouting facts.
Just providing a list of facts does not do it. If you want to learn more about the deficit model, why it doesn't work, and what works instead, I wrote about a. I wrote about this in the environmental context for revelator news, entitled How to make friends and influence people to save the world. Most scientists think facts alone will change minds. They're wrong. This goes into a lot of discussion about what works instead and how to do it.
I also do a lot of talking to schools and school groups, especially from March to May 2020, when as you may recall, a lot of stuff was happening at school groups. I volunteered one to two hours a day for three months, and I said, I will Zoom with any school group in the country, and I managed to speak to classes in all 50 states doing this, which was awesome, but I only managed to get 49 states, naturally. And then the Wyoming Department of Education posted this on their Facebook page.
And then I had to do 20 talks in Wyoming. But it was still it was still worth it to get to do this. I still do this all the time. Never a charge for public schools, never a charge for public libraries. So if any of you have connections in those communities back home, I'd love to chat more. Another thing that I do to help advance these communications goals is to help universities and environmental nonprofit groups to make strategic communications plans, which are detailed, data driven ways to get from where we are now to where we want to be and what we go through along the way.
And if you do not have a strategic communications plan and you just sort of shout facts in someone's general direction with no data or plan behind it, it's probably not going to work. Normally, these are done at the institutional level rather than at the individual scientists or expert who wants to communicate with the public level. To give you a sense of scale, one of these I just did for the IUCN Red List was about 150 pages long, but there's value in thinking about it in this way, even if it's for an individual, smaller scale project.
So what you want to do for sure in any one of these is you want to have a goal. You want to have a mission. What would we like to be different as a result of our intervention here. Assess the current state of affairs. What's the problem in detail. Not just people don't know stuff about quantum mechanics, but what is the problem.
Why is it bad. How many people don't know things. What don't they know. Identify your audience. And your audience is not the public. The public is 8 billion humans who have a wide variety of levels of understanding of science, a wide variety of hopes and dreams, a wide variety of abilities to influence world affairs.
Then you propose channels for disseminating your information that can be a blog, Instagram, talks at a museum, whatever. And then you craft your messages, usually on the order of 5 to 10 messages associated with a plan. So some lessons associated with this that I want you to take away from this, other than have a plan before you just start doing something, is that tools are not a strategy.
There are an enormous variety of communications tools, many of which are exhibiting here at this conference, some of which will be part of panel discussions and things like that. Some you use every day, like Instagram or something like that. Those are incredibly powerful tools that can be used to advance a strategy, but by themselves, they are not a strategy.
I talked with some groups and they say, oh, our strategy is we're going to post on Instagram a lot. That's not a strategy. That's a tool. And another key point is the difference between an output and an outcome. If any of you have a marketing background, I'm sure you've heard this, but for the rest of you, there's value in understanding this key point that your marketing friends talk about.
Perhaps too much. In my world, for example, let's say I'm worried about sea turtles choking to death on plastic bags in the ocean that look like jellyfish. Again, if you go to the National Aquarium just a few blocks away, they have a great exhibit on this, but an output would be. I posted 10 times on Instagram that plastic bags are bad for sea turtles. An outcome is because of that.
15 of my followers stopped using plastic bags and switched to reusable Canvas bags. Do you see the difference there. One of those you have a lot more power over n is a lot easier to measure, but it also doesn't matter. What matters is the outcome. A sea turtle does not care how many times I posted on Instagram. The sea turtle only cares that there's less plastic pollution in the ocean.
So in summary for this section, when it's done right, public science engagement is great for the public and great for science. Lots of scientists want to do this, especially lately, but many don't know how to do it. Or they do it wrong or use outdated models or debunked practices. It is good to communicate science, but it matters what we communicate and how we do it.
So I'm assuming that at least some of you want to try doing this yourself, or maybe have tried a key. First step here is know your audience, then go where your audience is. That can mean physically where your audience is. If you're trying to reach people who live in a particular community, they're not going to come across town to listen to a talk at your University.
You go to them. It can mean sort of topically or digitally where that meet them where they are. As one example, I gave one of my science communication training workshops at a conference in Brazil, and afterwards someone came up to me and said, oh, I never thought about using Twitter this way, but this was back when Twitter was a thing. Again, use blue sky now please.
I can't wait to go home and talk to my target audience of Brazilian shark fishermen on Twitter, but they don't use Twitter. How can I use Twitter to talk to them. You can't. That's it. Go where people are. Many of you are probably going to be in a position of doing some degree of 1 on one communication that might be speaking to a stakeholder.
It might be speaking to someone before or after an event. It might be a friend or family member or neighbor or coworker. Critical points associated with this is you are talking with someone, not talking at them. I do recognize the irony of this given our current dynamics, but I hope that some of you will come up afterwards and talk to me one on one. A key component that I try to do is listen as much or more than you speak, and treat your audience with respect, even if sometimes they say cuckoo banana pants, insane things, which, let me tell you in shark world happens.
As one example, during my PhD, I worked a lot with commercial shark fishermen in the rural southeastern United States, which is a politically very conservative group. They're distrustful of the government, prone to believe in conspiracy theory, but they all have fun stories. I actually really enjoyed my time with them, but a lot of the several of the crusty old fishing captains who look like they could be straight out of Central casting on Deadliest Catch or something would come up to me and say, I've been doing this a long time, and you're the first scientist who's ever talked to me like don't think I'm stupid and that's horrible, you guys, we're doing something wrong if that's happening.
But then I would usually say to them, I don't think you're stupid. I think you're wrong. And then they start laughing and then they say, OK, we can have a discussion about this now it works. It can work. Well, if you are in a position to Host an Event in which members of the public can come in, open and welcoming and informal event is often a great place to start.
Apparently, I'm told not everyone wants to spend their Saturday nights paying $30 to go see a lecture at a museum, but I sure do that from time to time. But one thing that worked really well is the National Academy of Sciences used to have this two scientists walk into a bar program, and they had bars all over the country that were participating in this and the bars.
The bar would advertise to the regulars, hey, we're having a dinosaur scientist who's just going to be sitting at the bar on Thursday. Come ask questions or we're having an asteroid scientist coming to sit at the bar on Friday. Come and ask them questions. I did this a lot because hey, free beer. But it was people had questions and they never would have had an opportunity to answer or to get them answered under their normal day to day lives.
Some things about scale that are important to keep in mind here. Not everyone has the flexibility or the budget to travel around the world talking about science, as I have been very fortunate to be able to do. I told you I gave a talk in Antarctica about why sharks matter there. I am reading some chapters in it. It does mention penguins briefly to a group of indifferent penguins behind me, but not everyone needs to travel all around the world.
One one of my good friends and colleagues, Doctor Asha de vos, is a Sri Lankan marine mammal biologist and her saying that I absolutely love and I use all the time is every coastline needs a hero. That can mean a physical coastline. Many of you may have seen there's a David Attenborough documentary about the oceans coming out. David Attenborough reaches a lot of people, but he doesn't reach everyone because the story doesn't touch on every part of the ocean.
But someone who lives in your community is well positioned to speak on behalf of your community, with other members of your community. So knowing your niche and acting is part of a network helps. You do not need to be all things to all people. If you can do something you're good at and you're comfortable with as in concert with as part of a planned overall activity with other people doing the same.
Another important thing with scale is that you don't have to reinvent the wheel. There are often pre-existing campaigns to do things. Many of the cities that you guys are from have a nerd night lecture series. Has anyone ever been to a nerd night lecture series. More hands should be going up than this when I see you guys again next year. They're great.
They billed themselves as Ted Talks with beer. A lot of fun. You can plug into your local communities with that, but also stand up for Science, which is a great organization that has been organizing all those protests against science. Budget cuts all over the country is starting a series of nationwide teach ins this week. The first one is Friday and it's me.
If anyone is still in town and wants to hop in an Uber over to Silver Spring, I just came that way. It's not that far. The Uber was like 40 bucks. I'll buy you a beer if you do that. I will be talking all about this. And I am also helping stand up for science trained scientists and experts all over the country to do this. A lesson when you're crafting your message is you need to know what your take home message is.
Think about the last talk that you attended relatively recently that you liked a lot, or the last paper that you read relatively recently that you liked a lot. I bet most of you can't recite that entire talk or that entire paper word for word, but you remember a key home from it, and you, the person writing that, the person giving the talk, which in some cases, you should craft the whole thing with that take home message in mind.
In public speaking classes, they sometimes describe this as tell them what you're going to tell them, then tell them. Then tell them what you told him. If you do not know what you want the take home message to be, neither will your audience and that is just a wasted effort. And sometimes the content of the talk is pretty similar, but the hooks, the take home message is different. In my world, this can be the difference between educating people about an issue versus encouraging them to change their behavior, versus promoting some of my own work.
That can be. I want you to know that sharks are in trouble versus here's a thing you can do to help sharks that are in trouble, versus I found a new way to protect sharks that are in trouble. Cite me. Invest in me. Give me a grant. Most of the content of those three talks or those three papers would be very similar.
But the hook is different and that is what people would take away from it. Can this work. Yes my PhD research was able to change the law in the state of Florida under then-governor Rick Scott, to protect endangered species of hammerhead sharks. Not only my PhD research, but a strategic communications plan I made about it. I wrote this up in conservation science and policy, which, as Aaron mentioned, I'm now an editor of.
It's a wonderful, open access, interdisciplinary environmental journal. I also want you, when you're talking to members of the public, to not one part of people saying he didn't act like you thought I'm stupid is the level at which you communicate with them. And I do not want to ever hear anyone say, I dumbed it down because that's not what you did.
You're not talking to someone who's dumb. You're talking to someone who is smart at something different from what you are smart at. And if you keep that in mind. You will treat your audience with respect. But this has to do, of course, with jargon. Those big 15 syllable words that we use all the time at meetings like this. But when you're talking to your non-scientist neighbor, maybe don't use those words.
A rule that I use and I teach is never underestimate your audience's intelligence, but always underestimate their vocabulary. Another humorous example of this from my friends at XKCD. Some of you may have seen this on the right there. Up goer five the only flying space car that's taken anyone to another world explained using only the thousand words people use the most often.
This is, of course, the Saturn V rocket that brought humans to the moon, explained using only the 100 most commonly used words in the English language. I say 100 because 1,000 is not one of the 1,000 most commonly used words. So you get things like stuff to burn, to make the box with people in it go really fast. And what's great about this is, first of all, it's endearing as hell.
But also it's not wrong. You absolutely can explain fairly complex scientific concepts at this level, and upgo or XKCD actually made this little web application where you can put your own text in and it highlights what's not the 100 most commonly used words. That's the text of one of my recent abstracts. You can see it's like every other word you can't use, so don't actually go out and talk to people at this level.
My nephew is three years old and he has a vocabulary of more than thousand words. But this is a fun and sometimes very entertaining way of practicing explaining your research at multiple levels. And once you get some practice at that can tailor it to a few different levels. It's also important to think about, should you be the person communicating this or should it be someone else.
Sometimes the messenger matters as much or more than the message. There are some fishing communities that will not listen if it is coming from me, but given that I care about making the world a better place and not necessarily about getting famous for it, I don't care about that. And I can talk to someone in that community and say, hey, can you pass this message along.
You can say it's from you. And they do that and they make the change and no one ever knows I was even involved. That works great. So as one example from this, we had a paper a few years ago about improving diversity, equity, and inclusion issues in scientific professional societies with a case study on my shark society, the American elasmobranch society, where I'm on the board of directors.
We have 22 authors. I'm one of two white guys on there, and people asked, hey, why are you the one who's the lead author. Why are you the one who's presenting this at a conference. Because I was asked to because I was told some people will listen because it's coming from you when they wouldn't otherwise. So I'm happy to do happy to do things like that.
The final lesson that I want to leave you with here, before I wrap up and take any questions that you have, is that you can be a professional without being stuffy, dry, and boring. This is a photo I did from a talk I did at nerd night in Miami at the Perez Art museum, which is a very fancy museum in Miami, Florida. Effective public science engagement can be funny or even silly, and it should be fun.
Something that I can tell you from those three months in 2020, talking to so many little kids over Zoom when everyone was home and in a new environment. How do you get little kids who are stressed out and freaked out about that to pay attention to you. Wear a funny hat. That's it. I had their attention. Teachers were amazed.
This should be fun. I love this stuff. I look forward to it. I'm excited about it. Some of this is to channel your inner golden retriever, but some of this is genuine. I really like doing this. If you are hearing some of this and you're thinking, oh, I should do some public science engagement, but oh my God, not that.
Trust yourself. Don't do that. Do something else. This should be fun if you see this on. If you see this stuff as one more thing on my giant to do list, I hate my giant to do list. You're not going to give this your all. You're not going to do a good job with it. It's not going to accomplish your communications goals.
So find something that works for you. I have been told that some people are not as extroverted as I am. I haven't. I don't know if that's true, but I've been assured. So science is under attack. Science funding is under attack. Public science engagement and getting people to care about this stuff and getting them engaged matters more than ever.
And there are lots of ways to do this. But no one right way to do it. But there are some best practices to incorporate and some common mistakes to avoid when you do this correctly. When you do this well, it can absolutely move the needle. It can make a difference in your little corner of the world and make your little corner of the world a better place. But to do that don't just shout facts in someone's general direction.
You need a goal. You need a detailed strategy. You need experience. You need training, you need help, and you need the right tool for the job. I would love to chat with anyone about this, about any of this stuff. If any of you have schools or libraries or home institution that is interested in bringing me out for a book tour talk or bringing me out for a departmental seminar, always open to that stuff.
If your team needs public science engagement training, I'm always open to that stuff. That's my email. I'll put it on the last slide too. If people are not sick of hearing me rant yet, I am going to be back here tomorrow I'm speaking on a panel about innovations in science communication. Before I wrap up and take your questions, I just want to once again thank SSP for having me out here, especially Aaron and Jesse and Greg for all the work they put into planning this, I did.
I've done this for conferences. I know how much work goes into it. Thanks to my numerous co-authors and collaborators and partners and editors who have whose work I presented throughout here. And thanks to all of you for listening. I'm happy to take your questions. I believe Aaron, Jesse and Greg are circulating with microphones.
Are these on. Yep well, first of all, before we take any questions, I just wanted to say, David, thank you so much again for these amazing remarks. And I think something that really helps to encapsulate what we're really hoping to get out of this week is a multimodal modal approach, leveraging the community that we have here and the value of that research, the research communications and the values that we share in SSP and in our individual organizations and as members of this community.
So that was a really good overarching theme. And so now we're going to open it up to questions from the audience. Hopefully you have a lot. OK I'm going here in the middle first guys I'm wearing heels. So bear with me real quick. And when you ask your question, if you could briefly say your name and where you're from.
Hi, I'm Cambria, I'm from Austin, Texas, so I'm enjoying the rain. Question about how you approach cause fatigue. Yes so how do I approach cause fatigue. There's so many horrors all the time. How do we get someone to care about fixing mine. Honestly, if someone's working on making their tiny corner of the world a better place, and they don't have the energy to help with my corner of the world that needs help being made a better place.
I'm happy because they're working. Working to make the world a better place. But one thing to do is make it fun. Make it engaging, make it different. It's not just signing another petition. It's not just writing another check. It's doing something creative. It's doing something enjoyable. One of the things that I do is I take members of the public out on Shark research expeditions in Florida.
So in exchange for their donations that support some of this stuff, they get to meet sharks and they get to help with shark research. So no one gets cause fatigue when there's a fun trip. At the end of the day, it doesn't have to be something that dramatic though. Also, if anyone's interested in doing that, let me know. It doesn't have to be that dramatic, but it can be. Maybe a behind the scenes tour at your museum, or entered in a raffle to see.
Free to get four free tickets to the new David Attenborough movie. There are ways to make it fun. There are ways to keep people's attention. There are ways to keep it fresh. But it's absolutely a problem that especially lately, every day there's some new horror. How do you get people to pay attention to all of them.
Over here. Yes hi. Hi I'm Andrew Harmon with the Endocrine Society. I fascinating talk and as wonderful and cool and fascinating as sharks are, how intuitive or easy has it been for you to apply these tools when consulting or talking to people in other sciences that have nothing to do with marine biology or anything like or conservation, such as for instance, the chronology and public health and things like that.
Yeah so public health has some advantages that I don't have in that no one wants to be sick and everyone knows someone who's been sick. So you can talk about some of that stuff in general. Yeah, absolutely. It can be tricky to find your wow facts. To find your specific version of don't sign these petitions to ban shark finning that's been banned for 30 years.
But there are versions of this for just about everything I find. It usually starts with a conversation talk to me about the state of your field. Talk to me when you're trying to talk to your friends about what's new in your world that are not in your field, what do you tell them. What is the thing that you're complaining about the most at the bar.
At the end of the day, what is the thing that you're most excited about that you've read something and you texted someone. That sort of stuff is usually a good starting point to shake something loose. Thank you. I can't see much with these lights, but I do see a hand up here.
Sorry, Jesse. Thanks Tim Lloyd from live links. I was really interested about your point about outputs versus outcomes. Yes and it's really, really easy to measure outputs. And you made the point. It's really tough to measure outcomes. So using your own experience as an example, how can you tie what you're doing to our less sharks losing their fins.
How do you do that. Thank you. Yes so how can you actually measure outcomes. How can part of it is crafting your engagement strategy so that the outcomes are clear, which requires some thought at the beginning. A lot of the work happens before I start talking. In this case, we have access to government data on the state of fisheries.
So we can see did this intervention lead to less stocks being overfished? Did this intervention lead to higher what we call spawning stock biomass, which is population of fish with the Sharks in Florida that I talked about during my PhD, I was able to document the scale of this previously unknown fishery using social media that these anglers were posting pictures on social media that in a forum that the government wasn't monitoring.
And we found that these people know that what they're doing is illegal and didn't care and were discussing like, oh, the patrolman is off tonight. This is a good time to come to this beach. So by shutting that down, that was able to be a really clear outcome. There are also in my world, it's sometimes a little easier because we have by federal law, a lot of data points that are required to be collected and publicly shared by NOAA.
But sometimes it's about surveying your people. You can explicitly ask them, hey, did you happen to see an Instagram ad about so-and-so? Did you. What were you previously using. Plastic bags. Where are you now. Still using plastic bags, et cetera. So sometimes it's about surveying.
So the social science methods can be helpful. Sometimes it's more sneaky behind the scenes marketing tools. The world of marketing actually has a lot to teach us, which nobody told my brother that he has an MBA and works for internet marketing. So I say not to show any favoritism to sessions. But we do know that there is a session tomorrow led by Lady Conrad and Jennifer Vogel, that is actually talking specifically to this issue of outputs versus outcomes.
So, oh, great. If people are interested in this topic, you can find out more tomorrow. And we've got a question over here. Do you think that scientists should be talking less to other scientists and more to the public. Or is there a role for pure academic with the 15 syllable words.
Yeah, there's certainly some individual scientists who I wish would talk less, but that usually that's to me. No, there's absolutely a role for pure research. Not everyone needs to be doing this stuff because not everyone wants to do this stuff. And frankly, not everyone is any good at it. We all know some professional researcher colleagues who are maybe great scientists, but if they were ever given a microphone on the local news, the villagers would be taking pitchforks and torches to the school, so maybe don't let that person talk in front of the public.
What I would like to see academia world do is not require everyone to do this, but to recognize the value of it more and that include it in things like hiring, tenure and promotion. Because right now, in most schools, it isn't my colleagues who work full time in academia who do this stuff. They still have to do curriculum committee.
They still have to do their other leadership and service, and they do this on the side. This stuff should absolutely count as leadership and service. But no, there's absolutely a role for pure science. Always, always, always should be. Always will be, I think. But I would like to see more people aware of the value of doing this public science engagement. And I would like to see institutions value people who do it more.
Hi over here, Alice Meadows, more brains cooperative. Given the audience, is there anything that you would like to see publishers do to support this kind of work. So yeah, in general just value it more. I have been very fortunate with the publishers that I work with. Johns Hopkins University press gave me a lot of freedom to write why sharks matter in a way that is rigorous enough that it's used as a graduate school textbook, but accessible enough that a scuba diver who just likes sharks can pick it up and follow along.
So that was nice. I wasn't told no, you have to write this explicitly in 15 syllable words. That stuff is great. Those of you who publish journals lay summaries can be great, but maybe with some training on how to do that. Well, not everything needs to be written for people who have a PhD in 30 years experience, but there should always be a home for stuff that is.
High right here in the middle, directly in front of you. Snowden Becker with the locks program at Stanford University. I'm just curious. This isn't a call out or an indictment or trying to catch you out. What are your parents and siblings think you do. So a thing that I have actually been proposing for a while is that we should have a conference with a bunch of leading scientists and have their parents, have their siblings, have their spouses give a talk about what they think that person's work is.
So my parents, I think, genuinely have no idea that something with sharks, they've always been very supportive. When I was five years old, I which was shortly after some of those pictures were taken, I told my dad I want to be a marine biologist, and he said, I don't know what that is, but I'll find out. And now he's retired and he brings his golf buddies on Shark research trips.
My brother, has a pretty good idea of what I do because he's often my sounding board when I'm doing some of these communications things, when I'm trying something new. He's sort of my target audience in that he's a smart guy. Not in my world. And if I can explain it to him and he says it makes sense, I feel like I've done something right. If I can explain it to him.
And I ask him to explain it back to me in his own words, and it's approximately correct. I feel like I've done a great job. So he has a pretty good idea. My parents would say something with sharks. Hi, I'm Rachel reef Albright. I am a librarian at Eastern Kentucky University. So, one of those red places nobody wants to go.
We were just in Paducah last weekend Really Yeah. Oh my gosh. So my question I'm coming from a communication standpoint. That's what my undergrad was in. And I was always trained that the best presentations and interviews are dialogues. So how do you relate to people who are very different from you. And how do you feel like you're giving them autonomy in that conversation.
Yeah, it can be tricky. So again, I do have an advantage in this space. Not because of sharks, but because of the fisheries management, legal infrastructure in the United States that we have these fisheries management councils established by federal law that includes scientists that include NOAA, people that include environmental nonprofit groups and include fishermen. So there's a built in space for dialogue.
So that helps when I'm giving a talk at a museum or giving a talk at a library or something like that, it's often this what some folks derisively call the sage on the stage model, which is what you're seeing here rather than a conversation. But afterwards I'll go out to dinner with people and just chat. And often that's a lot of listening to what they want, listening to what they feel, listening to what they fear.
And just by listening and not being a jerk or the occasional I'm sorry that happened to you. Without acknowledging that their policy preferences are correct because of it can go a long way. Hi other side. Hi thanks for a great talk. Richard Gallagher from annual reviews. Do you consciously or try to avoid giving information on how science works, with the hope that people will apply a more scientific approach in other issues that they are interested in.
Or is that kind of a no no, because it takes them away from what they're actually coming to you to hear about. Great question. And the answer is it depends on my audience. Sometimes I'm with people for a whole week, and that's something that takes a little longer to develop. But how do I think this way. How is what is a useful way for you to approach this. But sometimes I'm with people for 15 minutes or for an hour at a talk like this.
Then there's probably not time to do that usefully. But I can often encourage people to stay in conversation. Usually I am more interested in people understanding of consensus results than methodology or why we did it that way, but it depends on the situation. I certainly have done a lot with explaining methodology or why. Well, we're looking for another question. I'm going to take a chair privilege and ask a question.
Great which is I'm back here, David. Way in the back. Yes which is the lights. I really can't see anything. I know I could do jumping jacks, but I'd fall. Also, I forgot to say this earlier. I'm going to leave some business cards on the lectern here. If people can't find me later. Yes, please.
My question is, as a community that's very invested in advancing diversity, equity, inclusion, and accessibility initiatives, both as individuals, organizations, and as a community as SSP. Do you have any suggestions about how to invite people in that might have historically not been invited into work, like the work that you're doing. It's a great question. So a group that I really, really admire and have started to volunteer to help with through their organized formal allyship program is called minorities in Shark Sciences or myths.
And they have done absolutely amazing work changing the shape of my field to give you a sense of this, the American elasmobranch society at the time we did this initial membership demographic survey, we had about 600 members. There was one person who was Black in the society, and that was the person who became the president of minorities in Shark Sciences, Jasmin Graham, who's absolutely amazing.
And she said what. I may be the only one in this society, but I know I'm not the only person of color who likes sharks. So she started asking on social media, and now minorities in Shark Sciences, which is exclusively for women and gender minorities of color, has more members than the American elasmobranch society. So they have also brought several hundred people into the American elasmobranch society, which, let me tell you, has changed how we vote on certain things in ways that are great.
So one thing you can do is ask people what they want. Ask people how no one's ever going to be offended that you say, I want to help you, but I'm not sure of the best way. Can you have a conversation with me. That's a great start, trying to guess what people want. You're going to run into trouble. There are minefields that I'm sure you're not aware of. Even the best educated, best intentioned potential allies don't know everything.
And finding someone and getting in a position where they trust you and you can ask questions about. All right. Here is what I see as a problem. Here is what I was thinking about. Possible solutions. What do you think. Do you have anything to add and giving them real, real autonomy. Real agency.
That goes a long way. Thanks, David Excuse me. OK. Hi. So I had to write down my question, or else I'm going to lose my train of thought. My name is Sarah black from the American Society of plant biologists.
So kind of a tactical question when you are framing. See, didn't I say the threats and naming what's important. And the threats against it. How would you approach when the thoughts about those threats or your audience's views around those threats align really closely with deeply held personal beliefs or political beliefs that kind of challenge that.
So, for example, sharks are in trouble and the person says, no, they're not. You're lying. That's a lie. It's a conspiracy. So how do you. And do you try to steer away from those things, or do you then go back to that or try to frame a new message entirely that is a little more palatable to maybe a more resistant audience.
A great question, and the answer is it depends on the context. Some of these conspiracy theory Loons, who I absolutely do encounter all the time. Some of them don't really have any power to influence the overall proceedings, and I can let that go. But some of them might be the president of the fishermen's society, that person. I need to at least be receptive to ideas.
So that's where this sort of charm offensive listening, treating them with respect can be useful. That's where we can get into what someone was asking earlier. Do you ever explain how do we know. Do you ever explain, how do we test this. Why that's when you can get into that stuff. But scientists in particular, when they're first brought into some sort of policy issue, they immediately gravitate towards the people who have the wackiest ideas to try to persuade them, even if those people have no actual power to influence the outcome.
And that is just a waste of everybody's time. You're not going to convince someone who says the sky is green, that the sky is blue because they've made it their whole personality to be contrarian. They might not even believe that the sky is green, and they're just saying it to get a rise out of you so it can be you get a sense of this with practice. What is a real what is a real problem versus what might not be.
What is someone who is persuadable versus what's a conspiracy theory loon? Who's someone that it's worth trying to persuade, versus someone who is worth making sure that someone sees as near you. But it comes with practice. And thank you guys all for your amazing questions. With that, I think we'll thank David one more time and welcome Melanie up for some final remarks.
Business cards. Thank you. Yes doctor Schiffman, thank you so much for sharing your experiences, your expertise in this area. It's clearly very relevant to us in this time and also your passion for sharks. As Aaron mentioned, Doctor Schiffman will be in the exhibit Hall at the membership booth signing copies of his book.
And I don't have it to hold up. But why. Shark matters. Yes thank you. Please stop by and chat with him a little bit. While you're there, purchase some of the new SSP merchandise to celebrate to contribute to the generations fund as well. And so I do not want to stand in your way to the opening reception.
I want to do want to thank digital science, one more time. Let's give them around of applause. And with that can make your way across the skywalk to the holiday ballroom, where the exhibit Hall is now open.
Segment:0 .
Welcome to the SSP 47th annual meeting. We're so excited to have you here with us in rainy Baltimore. I'm Heather Staines, and for a few more days, I am honored to be the president of SSP in my. Thank you. In my day job, I'm a senior strategy consultant for deltasync, and I'm happy to be here in that capacity as well with a couple of my colleagues that I haven't seen yet.
So I hope they made it through the rain. Got a few housekeeping items to kick us off. We would not be able to put this meeting on without the generosity. In many instances, it just went by itself. It's going to be one of those years. All right. Now we know. So just what to expect.
I did not touch it without the generosity of our sponsors, many of whom support us on an annual basis. You can see them here as well. Please do stop by the stands and the exhibit Hall for those who have stands. And if you see folks from these organizations, do go up to them and thank them for their continued support. Some other folks that we would not be here today without our annual meeting program chairs.
So thanks so much to Erin Foley, Jessica Slater, Greg Fagan, and the entire annual meeting program committee, which I hear is about 40 people for everything they did to put this together for you. Let's yes, clap. You can find the agenda for the meeting in the SSP. Engage see it. Did it again.
I'm going to keep pushing it back because it's my moment in the SSP engage app, which is brand new. And if you haven't downloaded it, I encourage you to do that. It's going to be a year round engagement forum for us here at SSP. So it's not one of those annual those meeting apps that's just going to disappear on you. It's going to be valuable for you and it's going to get more so over time.
Let's see here. If for any reason you need assistance during the meeting, you can stop by the registration desk. Hopefully you've been there. You have a badge. You can hopefully remember where that is. It's not too far away just outside the key ballroom, which is this room. After the meeting, recordings for all sessions will be available.
There is Wi-Fi for the conference. It's Hilton meeting one word and the password is integra 2025. So capital I integra 2025. Thank you to integra for supporting us in our Wi-Fi. Yeah next up. I didn't invent that one. That one was on me. I thought maybe it would go by itself.
It was a test. Remember to silence your phones. And while you were looking for your phones to silence them. If you cannot find your phone, an iPhone has been turned in to the registration desk. I don't know anything about it, so I can't. There we go. It's going again. I can't tease what it is or say, whether it's got a picture of a dog or a baby or a sporting team, but do go and get that.
They will keep it safe for you. You can go get it now. I won't be hurt. You don't want to miss a minute of this keynote. Believe me. We have an SSP code of conduct. If you've attended other meetings before, you will have heard of this. SSP is committed to diversity, equity, and providing a safe, inclusive, and productive meeting environment that fosters open dialogue and the free expression of ideas free of harassment, discrimination, and hostile conduct.
Creating that environment is a shared responsibility for all participants. Please be respectful of others and observe our code of conduct and if you have any questions or issues, you can find any of us who have been introduced or talked to someone at the registration desk. And we will certainly help you. What am I missing a slide.
Oh, there we go. These slides. It's OK. Just be prepared if you're up here on the stage. See, I don't have any slides tomorrow because I was out ahead of that one. We also have an antitrust statement. SSP is committed to complying with competition and antitrust laws.
Please avoid any discussions of pricing, market allocation, boycotts or other topics that could be interpreted as anti-competitive. If any such discussions arise, they shall be stopped immediately to protect both the individual participants and the organization. Through the generous support of digital science, we have our keynote speaker, and I'm going to invite Helen cook to join me on the stage.
Helen is the SVP for sales and publishing markets for digital science. And she's got a little bit to say to you. Oh, it's very this thing shakes when people come on stage, so be careful. Thank you. Thanks, Heather. Good afternoon, everyone. I'm Helen cook, SVP of sales for publisher markets at digital science, and I'm delighted to be here with you all, and even more so to say that we are really proud to be a diamond sponsor of this year's SSP conference.
Now, digital science has always believed that research is the most powerful transformational force for long term societal improvement, and there's probably no audience that understands that better than this one. The academic publishing community plays a crucial role in shaping that impact, and we're really thrilled to be supporting you. Many of you already know us very well.
Five of the six largest publishers globally are what we'd call super users of digital science products, and publishers of all shapes and sizes. Use our resources from dimensions and Altmetric to Overleaf and Figshare. You use our tools every day, whether it's for society bids, launching new journals, reporting to institutions, or simply finding a trusted reviewer on a deadline. In fact, one leading publisher, half of all staff have interacted with our environment in just the last month alone.
We like to think of ourselves as part of your daily workflow or routine. A bit like your first cup of tea or coffee, quietly essential and best delivered without any fuss. And now we're launching something new, which we're particularly excited about. Dimensions author. Check this is a powerful new dashboard and API using dimensions data that lets you embed fast, reliable research integrity checks right into your publishing workflow, whether you're Reviewing Editors, authors, or peer reviewers.
Author check helps you to confidently assess publication and collaboration history, including retractions or other integrity concerns, all within your existing systems. Its integrity screening where and when you need it. And we've built it for scale. So whether you're making strategic decisions, managing editorial pipelines or figuring out who not to invite to review, we're here to help you do it better, faster, and with confidence.
So do please come and talk to us at the digital science booth, where the publisher team will be really pleased to tell you more. Thanks for having us and we look forward to an excellent few days together. Thank you Helen. And now I would like to introduce and invite to the stage our co-chair of the annual meeting program committee.
Aaron Foley. She's coming. Aaron is director of rightsholder relations for the copyright Clearance Center, and she will introduce our keynote speaker. Thank you. Thanks, Heather.
Thank you. Good afternoon, everyone. As Heather so kindly said, my name is Aaron Foley and I'm the director of rightsholder relations at copyright Clearance Center. And more importantly for today, I'm one of the co-chairs of the annual meeting program committee here at SSP.
And I could not be more proud to welcome everybody to the 2025 SSP annual meeting. I hope everybody had some seamless travel, although I hear maybe not on the way into Baltimore yesterday or today. And we're really glad that you're here, because I'm very pleased to welcome you to this opening keynote on behalf of my fellow co-chairs, Jesse and Greg, who are sitting in the front and also on the rest of the behalf of the SSP annual meeting program committee.
It is a 40 person committee, which is backed up by tremendous amounts of work across the SSP staff, the board and many other volunteers. So thank you also to the people who are not standing up here today. I would also like to thank our sponsors. Without you, this meeting would not be possible. So this year it was surprisingly easy to come up with a meeting theme, which might sound odd to you, but which we felt really reflects the current state of play in scholarly publishing.
And the team working on the potential keynote speakers had so many wonderful ideas related to our theme of reimagining the future of scholarly publishing at the intersection of value and values. But the challenge, of course, comes in when we're attempting to narrow down all that creative thinking into one speaker who can address elements of the overall theme and add their own thought provoking spin.
And in a moment where the inherent value of research and the information ecosystem in which it thrives is under a myriad of threats, both in the US and globally, we really wanted to know how do we protect and improve the information ecosystem, communicate the value of research, continue to drive meaningful impacts, and embody our values in a fraught and polarizing time. So to that end, big shoes to fill. I'm very honored to introduce our speaker, Doctor David Shiffman, who is a marine conservation biologist running a DC based conservation science, policy and communications firm working with US governmental agencies, environmental nonprofits and universities all over the world on efforts to protect endangered sharks Among his many, many roles, Doctor Schiffman is an associate editor for open, the open access journal conservation science and practice and adjunct professor at both Nova Southeastern University and Georgetown.
And in addition to several globally syndicated op eds, Doctor Schiffman has published more than 60 highly cited scientific journal articles. He's written for National Geographic, Scientific American, and the Washington Post, and he has a monthly column in scuba diving magazine. He has spoken at events around the world, including a 70 City International book tour for his book Why sharks matter, which is published by Baltimore local Johns Hopkins University press.
And he recently coordinated the international marine conservation Congress in Cape Town, South Africa. Finally, you might already be familiar with Doctor Schiffman's work because he has a very prolific social media presence under the handle why sharks matter, which you can find anywhere social media exists. A quick caveat for people who know me personally, I swear selecting doctor Schiffman was a keynote committee decision.
And not just because I love sharks, but I am a massive shark enthusiast. See me later and we'll look at all my shark apps and see if there's any of our finny friends around. So as someone who works whose work combines a combination of academic research, policy work on the ground, conservation efforts, and public discussion, we're extremely excited to have Doctor Schiffman speak to how lessons learned from Shark research, conservation, and education can help advance scholarly communications.
As a reminder, Doctor Schiffman will be joining us at the opening reception just after this keynote in the exhibition Hall. And he is going to say hello and sign some copies of his book. But we only have 49 copies because this one's mine and you can't have it. But we have about 49 copies, so please, first come, first served Come and get your book signed. And with that, David, thank you so much for your time and welcome to SSP.
Is that mic check. Sound is on. You guys are great. Well, I'm so excited to be here with you today in Baltimore to share with you some insights from my career working on sharks, Shark science, Shark conservation, and talking to the public about sharks and share with you some lessons that can be perhaps a little more broadly applicable, because I've been told that some of the people in this room might not work on sharks.
We'll see if we can change that by the end of the day. So today I want to talk a little bit about my story, who I am, the different types of outreach and research and policy work that I do. I can't do that without introducing you to some of the work of some of the background issues surrounding sharks and shark conservation, and the state of play with public understanding of this, and I've been asked to also talk about how you guys can do stuff like this and for your various areas of expertise and the people that you work with.
I'll do that in the context of both some tips and tricks, and some talk and some discussion about what not to do, which is a lot more fun. Throughout this talk, I'll share some lessons learned that are related, perhaps more directly to sharks, but I'll talk about how they can be more broadly applied. I will share examples of how this works well, when it's done well, and how it works real bad when it's not done well.
Since I know I'm in a room of scholarly communications nerds, I have citations to learn more on just about anything. And at the end of this talk, I'd be delighted to answer any questions that you want to know about any of this or any of the other things that I work on that Aaron mentioned in the introduction. I do, and ask me anything on social media every week, which means I can just about guarantee that the weirdest question you can think of is not the weirdest question I've ever been asked, but please hold those questions to the end.
So first, who am I. As Aaron mentioned, I live and work in the Washington, DC area, so I had a relatively easier time getting here than some of you that I heard about. And I work at the intersection of science, conservation policy, and public understanding of science. Most of what I work on is in the context of sharks, but I also work on broader sustainable fisheries issues and endangered species issues.
And in addition to being a researcher and an educator, I'm an author of among other things, why sharks matter. A freelance journalist and a public speaker, I train scientists and early career managers and conservationists all over the world how to do this stuff. And you can find me on social media at white sharks matter, which is also the title of the book. So before I get into this, let's have a quick discussion about why public science engagement matters.
Why should we break out of the so-called ivory tower. The people in this room publish some of the world's leading journals, and published some incredibly important and influential academic texts. Isn't that enough. Well, I think recent events have shown that there is perhaps value in what our non-academic neighbors understand about the value of science and what they think about science. Their tax dollars pay for many of our salaries.
Their votes affect things that matter to us. So I think it is important that everyone appreciates how science works and why it's good. And that means we cannot just publish our work in journals that, no offense, most people don't read. So what is the context that I work in. I work in the context of global shark conservation. And the things that I need people to know are that sharks are ecologically important animals.
Many species are threatened with extinction. And we know what to do to help, but we need the help of the public. And critically with this, we don't need the public to guess what to do to help. We have very specific roles that we need the public's assistance with, and this requires informed, targeted engagement. Whenever I do the whenever I do my training sessions on how to talk to the public about science, someone will inevitably raise their hand and say, well, this is easy for you.
You work on sharks. I work on bacteria. I work on fungus, I work on plants. To some extent. Maybe sharks are an advantage. One of my best friends is a seagrass restoration ecologist and she has to start her talks with this is what a seagrass is. And I don't have to do that with sharks because everyone knows what a shark is.
If anyone here does not know what a shark is are five blocks away from the National Aquarium. It's the beautiful glass pyramid building in the center of the beautiful logo here. It's worth stepping out for a little bit, but everyone knows what a shark is. But the problem with that is that a lot of what people know is wrong and wrong in a way that is harmful, which means I need to correct people's misconceptions without making them stop caring.
I often feel like I'm playing the role of Captain science. Buzzkill that hey, I'm so excited that everyone's talking about science this week. Yay, science! The thing you're saying is actually wrong though, but still care about science. Where are you going. Come back. This is a big problem, especially in shark world where there is tons of wrong information shared sometimes by non-expert enthusiasts who are well-intentioned but uninformed, and sometimes by a very active community of fraudsters and scam artists trying to take advantage of that dynamic.
There is so much nonsense in this space, you guys. I have colleagues who study misinformation and disinformation on topics like plastic pollution, nanotechnology, GMO foods, climate change. They're shocked at how much nonsense there is in shark conservation world. It's that bad. A quick, amusing example of this is Shark Week. How many of you have heard of Shark Week.
Show of hands. So for those of you who haven't, Shark Week is a week long series of sarcastic air quotes documentaries that airs on the Discovery Channel. And it is the longest running cable news event in history. It's in its 37th year this year. It is the largest. It is the largest stage in the field of marine biology. Many careers have been launched by an appearance on Shark Week.
It is the largest temporary increase in Americans paying attention to any science or environment. Issue of the year. And it is a dumpster fire of lies and nonsense. This is a big problem. So I've been called Shark week's biggest critic, and I don't know if that's true, but I'm certainly not on their Christmas card list. This slide and the lower left here.
If we go back to the. That's one of my favorite articles that's ever been written about my work. That was back when I used to live tweet back when Twitter was a thing. I hope everyone's using blue sky, not Twitter now, but back when we used to live tweet things. A Vox reporter took some of my selected tweets throughout Shark Week and noticed that they looked progressively more deranged.
So the problem here, a key point here, this is not just me. We actually did science on this. We did what's called a media content and discourse analysis, which is published in PLOS one. That means I had a team of poor undergraduate volunteers who agreed to watch every episode of Shark Week ever and write down what was in it. So I have data showing that it's a dumpster fire of lies and nonsense.
But one particular thing that was the result that seemed to get the most pickup in the media my field is more than 60% women. You would not know that from watching Shark Week when not only are there more men than women featured, but there are more guys named Mike than women featured. That result was the headline in the Washington Post coverage of the work. And Mike Rowe, who is, of course, a guy named Mike who has hosted Shark Week.
He also hosts dirty jobs with Mike Rowe was very upset about this. That image was my Facebook profile picture for a year. So when you're trying to talk to people about science or whatever your technical area of expertise may be, no one just wants to go to a dry, stuffy, boring science lecture. Everyone had to take those intro to bio classes at Monday at 8:00 AM with 500 people.
No one has happy memories of that experience, so making a personal narrative helps. And I'm going to show you an example of how I do this with talks associated with my book tour for the book Why sharks matter. So to help promote the book sales and also to help advance my broader communications goals associated with writing the book. I organized an international book tour that Erin mentioned at the time that I wrote this article explaining what I was doing.
It was 40 cities. It's now over 70. I did this has been not only Intercontinental, but I gave a talk in Antarctica about it that was pretty cool in the context of doing this, I've spoken to thousands of people of all ages, all about sharks and marine biology and ocean conservation and why you should care about all this stuff. And this is a way of doing that as a personal narrative.
I'm sure we've all attended talks that start with something like merriam-webster's dictionary defines quantum physics as yeah, you can do that. Or you could make people actually want to listen. Here is how I do this with a personal narrative. I've loved sharks for a very long time. And in my talk today, I want to tell you some of the reasons why I love them and how they've held my attention for so long, and some of the things that I've learned in a career of studying them and a lifetime of loving them.
And in doing so, I'll introduce to you some of the themes of my new book. Do you see the difference there between merriam-webster's dictionary defines versus that. I also want to quickly note here the picture on the right, the hands that you can see going in there. Those are the hands of Doctor Jeff carrier, another Johns Hopkins University press shark author who unfortunately passed away last year.
He was the first marine biologist I ever met. So when you're talking about your science, also don't you do need to get those facts in there. But you can make them interesting. You can make them fun. Part of the answer to this is you talk about things that excite you how this was taught to me initially was channel your inner golden retriever. Everything is so great, I can't wait, et cetera and to some extent people can tell that might not be genuine, but it's a lot more fun than a dry, stuffy, boring list of science facts.
So here's another example from the book tour talk. So one of the things that I do, especially when I do this for audiences of little kids, I'll do it with you guys too, because it seems like a nice group. I want you to think of all any shark species that you can think of and for 15 seconds, just shout out names of sharks that you've heard of. Go mako.
Nurse Greenland Hammerhead whale. All right. And stop. I heard 11 different species. That's pretty good. At the children's library in ST Michaels, Maryland. I got up to 22 species. So you guys have some very little shoes to fill. But there are 536 known species of sharks with a new species of shark, skate ray or chimera, discovered somewhere in the world about every two weeks.
Everyone can picture the shark from jaws. And it's the 50th anniversary of jaws this summer. If anyone wants to feel old, but sharks come in a wide variety of shapes, sizes, colors, behaviors. Some live in the open ocean where they'll never encounter a hard surface in their life. Some live in the deep sea. Well, they're never where they will never see the sun.
Some live under Arctic ice. US Navy SEALs have a saying that if you want to see if there are sharks in the water near you, you dip your finger in the water and you taste it. And if it's salty, that means you're in the ocean. And there are sharks near you. And that's true, but it's incomplete because some sharks live in rivers. These are some of my favorite weird and wonderful species.
Can we go back to the slide, please. In the lower right. That's one of my favorite newly described species. Relatively new. That's the American pocket shark. It is not called that because it's small enough to fit in your pocket, though. It is blown up on this screen that is bigger than they are in real life.
It is called that because of the little pocket of flesh it has behind its eye that's full of glow in the dark liquid that it can squirt on command to startle away predators. So you see how you can make this exciting. And I actually do think this stuff is really neat. But after giving this versions of this talk 100 times, some of this is channel your inner golden retriever. I also can sneak in some videos showing really cool behaviors there and some fun stories.
For example, in the upper right there, that's the Greenland shark. And that video is not artificially slowed down. They're the slowest moving large vertebrate in the ocean, but they're in no particular hurry because they can live to be 400 years old. They're not considered to be reproductively mature adults till they're in their 160 seconds, which is a really long time to go through puberty.
They also eat polar Bears and reindeer. So you see how you can turn science into a story. I heard several grown adults say, wow to that. Every single time I give this talk. There is something like that for your field. I also love this endearing story here on the left side there, that's a kitefin shark shown glowing in the dark. It is the largest of the shark species whose whole bodies glow in the dark.
There are many of these. They're called lantern sharks. My favorite lantern shark is called the Ninja lantern shark, and it's called that because my friend and colleague who discovered it discovered it around Thanksgiving, and she was home with her family, and everyone was talking about what's new at school, what's new at work. And she said, I discovered a new species of shark, and I can name it whatever I want.
And her seven-year-old cousin says, ninjas are cool. Call it the Ninja shark. So she did. Have you ever heard an audience reaction for that. For describing taxonomy. So some other things that I want people to know now that I've got them hooked on this idea that sharks are neat and it's worth paying attention to them.
Sharks are not a threat to you and your family. Many people think about sharks in the context of sharks being dangerous, and it can actually be hard to get people to care about and want to conserve something that they're afraid of. Let's talk to Spider scientists or snake scientists about this. And one way that you can diffuse this tension is with humor, for example, sharks are not really a threat to humans.
Any human death or injury is a tragedy, but some things that kill more humans than sharks in a typical year include flowerpots falling on your head from above. When you walk down a city street under apartment buildings, more people are bitten by other people on the New York City subway system each year than are bitten by sharks in the whole world. And I can always tell who's been to New York City by your facial expression.
Some people are going, what. And some people are going, yeah, that makes sense. As a social media guy, I love this one. More people die falling off cliffs trying to take selfies of scenery behind them than are killed by sharks. So I also want people to know that sharks are ecologically important animals, that they're some of the most threatened animals in the world, and that they need our help.
A problem that I have repeatedly run into over my career is that some of the shark enthusiast community. People know the part up to here. They know that sharks are important. They know that sharks aren't dangerous. They know they need our help, but they don't know what the threats are, and they misunderstand what the solutions are, which leads to at the very least, wasted effort.
Some examples of this. And a key lesson that I'm sure you all have examples of from your world, is that lots of people want to help. Lots of people are trying to help, but wanting to help and trying to help is not the same thing as actually helping. Whether or not something helps is measurable. We know the answer. On the right here, we have a representative of the macho cowboy idiot scuba diver community.
This is a term I'm trying to get into the peer reviewed journal literature. Maybe someone in this room can help me. Notably, it is a gender neutral term and many of the worst offenders are women. But there are people who ride sharks, who grab sharks, who kiss sharks. They take a shark, they take the biting end of the shark, and they put it on their face.
And they say, I'm raising awareness that sharks aren't dangerous. Don't do that. We know what to do. We know what works. And that's crazy. A slightly more niche thing, but something that drives me crazy is that most people think that shark finning and the shark fin soup trade is the number one threat to sharks.
If you want to learn the story of why that is, it's explained in detail in why sharks matter. But as it turns out, that hasn't been the number one threat to sharks since the 1990s. But you see these petitions pop up all the time that say ban shark finning and Florida banned shark finning in the United States. This one, from 2023, got 60,000 signatures to ban the practice of shark finning in Florida.
Not one of those people bothered to check and learn that we banned shark finning in Florida in 1993, 30 years before this petition was made. This cannot possibly do anyone any good. All it does is waste people's time and make them think that they've done something to help and make them misunderstand what the threats and their solutions are. This is bad and it happens all the time. And it's not just me ranting about it.
We have published about it. I have citations showing that this sort of public misunderstanding of conservation issues is a real problem. When called out about these people will inevitably say, oh, I'm raising awareness. Raising awareness of wrong information is also called lying. Raising awareness.
You need to raise awareness of things that are really true, or else I don't know what we're doing here. Important to keep in mind here that facts alone will not change people's minds. Something I'll explain in a little bit more detail later. But facts still matter. They have to be a foundation of the argument. If people do not know what's really happening, they have no chance of coming to the right conclusions.
And finally, I want people to know that there are solutions. The forecasts for shark population declines are quite dire. The forecast for what that means for the ocean and natural resources and wild places we depend on are quite dire. But hope is not lost. We know what policy solutions work and how to do them. That doesn't mean that our leaders are going to make smart choices, especially lately.
But we know what to do. Hope is not lost. So in summary here, I need people to understand that sharks are important but threatened, which many people, especially in the shark enthusiast community, already know. But also what we need for you to what we need your help with to save them matters. Don't just guess.
Don't reinvent the wheel poorly. Help when we ask for help in specific ways and lots of what people know is wrong. And I don't mean a different opinion than me. I mean factually wrong. And that provides a clear path for public engagement from subject matter area experts like me and the folks I train. So some other things that I do to help communicate this and mention that I do a lot of freelance journalism as well as op Ed writing.
I generally write topics that other science journalists aren't covering. So my value to the science journalism ecosystem is not that I'm the best writer or the fastest writer, but it's that I'm reading the scientific journal literature and attending conferences, so I know story tips that other people don't. I often write about little known cool new studies or upcoming policy deadlines or things like this.
I had an op Ed in the conversation in the lower right there recently about plans from the Trump administration to remove protections from the US's largest marine protected area. I write for environmental nonprofits like the Ocean Conservancy and the Union of Concerned Scientists and things like this. I have an article coming out soon that you guys are all going to love an American scientist.
I was promised it was going to be out by today, but it looks like it's going to be next week, so stay tuned. A key thing that I've learned from this space is in media studies. They have in journalism they have a saying no one owes you their eyeballs. Think about all the different things that you do throughout a day, throughout the day. Think about all the news stories that you maybe were vaguely aware of but didn't have time to read.
Everyone else is like that too. You cannot assume that any given thing that you write is going to be valued as important by your audience, so you need to make it clear to them that it's important. You need to make it relevant. You make it relevant to their lives, relevant to their interests, make it matter. And part of that is that we don't overload them with stuff that doesn't matter.
I do a lot of consulting for universities, talking to them about media strategy, for new research and things like that. And one of the most common things I say is, do you really want to write an article about this paper. Do we really need it. And people are flabbergasted because they've heard, oh, we need to communicate science. Yes, in general.
But not every individual unit of science needs to be broadly communicated. Not every paper is going to get a New York Times story. Not every paper is going to be discussed on Science Friday. In communicating with scientists. An important thing that has come up that I'm sure you've all experienced, especially the editors in the room, is that scientists and other technical subject matter area experts are not very good at understanding what people who are not experts in their field know about their field.
This is one of my favorite comics from the math and science and philosophy nerd comic XKCD. It notes that even when trying to compensate for it, experts will wildly overestimate the average person's familiarity with their field, as exhibited here. Silicate chemistry is second nature to us. As geochemists, it's easy to forget that the average person probably only knows the formulas for olivine and one or two feldspars.
I have had conversations that are almost exactly like this with real people. So one of the things that I do is train scientists, especially early career scientists, graduate students, and how to do this stuff, how to communicate with people who aren't experts in their field. And I've done this with over 2000 people all over the world. Often I do it at professional development workshops before or after a conference, or I'm brought into a graduate school for a weekend to do a crash course or things like this.
I'm now teaching a semester long graduate course about this. That's a core class for two different programs at Nova Southeastern. So teaching people how to do this is important. And one of the most important things, the fundamental things that so many people get wrong when doing this stuff is called the knowledge deficit model. So I see a few people nodding here. Some of you have heard of this and know why it's wrong.
Every one of you has seen this in action, even if you didn't know a name for it. The premise of this is I'm having a discussion with somebody who's not an expert in my field, and we have different policy preferences. I want to do something. He wants to do something else. And if I were to think I'm really smart. I'm an expert.
I know a lot of facts. You're not an expert in this. You don't know as many facts as me if I just shout facts in your general direction, you will know no more things and then you'll change your policy preferences. That doesn't work ever No one in the history of the world has ever been persuaded to change their mind. Because of this.
And something like half of all public science engagement is based on this model. Not good. Facts still matter. We need to introduce facts into the discussion, but they need to be organized as part of a persuasive narrative argument crafted to someone's needs and interests in a way that makes it relevant to them. Just shouting facts.
Just providing a list of facts does not do it. If you want to learn more about the deficit model, why it doesn't work, and what works instead, I wrote about a. I wrote about this in the environmental context for revelator news, entitled How to make friends and influence people to save the world. Most scientists think facts alone will change minds. They're wrong. This goes into a lot of discussion about what works instead and how to do it.
I also do a lot of talking to schools and school groups, especially from March to May 2020, when as you may recall, a lot of stuff was happening at school groups. I volunteered one to two hours a day for three months, and I said, I will Zoom with any school group in the country, and I managed to speak to classes in all 50 states doing this, which was awesome, but I only managed to get 49 states, naturally. And then the Wyoming Department of Education posted this on their Facebook page.
And then I had to do 20 talks in Wyoming. But it was still it was still worth it to get to do this. I still do this all the time. Never a charge for public schools, never a charge for public libraries. So if any of you have connections in those communities back home, I'd love to chat more. Another thing that I do to help advance these communications goals is to help universities and environmental nonprofit groups to make strategic communications plans, which are detailed, data driven ways to get from where we are now to where we want to be and what we go through along the way.
And if you do not have a strategic communications plan and you just sort of shout facts in someone's general direction with no data or plan behind it, it's probably not going to work. Normally, these are done at the institutional level rather than at the individual scientists or expert who wants to communicate with the public level. To give you a sense of scale, one of these I just did for the IUCN Red List was about 150 pages long, but there's value in thinking about it in this way, even if it's for an individual, smaller scale project.
So what you want to do for sure in any one of these is you want to have a goal. You want to have a mission. What would we like to be different as a result of our intervention here. Assess the current state of affairs. What's the problem in detail. Not just people don't know stuff about quantum mechanics, but what is the problem.
Why is it bad. How many people don't know things. What don't they know. Identify your audience. And your audience is not the public. The public is 8 billion humans who have a wide variety of levels of understanding of science, a wide variety of hopes and dreams, a wide variety of abilities to influence world affairs.
Then you propose channels for disseminating your information that can be a blog, Instagram, talks at a museum, whatever. And then you craft your messages, usually on the order of 5 to 10 messages associated with a plan. So some lessons associated with this that I want you to take away from this, other than have a plan before you just start doing something, is that tools are not a strategy.
There are an enormous variety of communications tools, many of which are exhibiting here at this conference, some of which will be part of panel discussions and things like that. Some you use every day, like Instagram or something like that. Those are incredibly powerful tools that can be used to advance a strategy, but by themselves, they are not a strategy.
I talked with some groups and they say, oh, our strategy is we're going to post on Instagram a lot. That's not a strategy. That's a tool. And another key point is the difference between an output and an outcome. If any of you have a marketing background, I'm sure you've heard this, but for the rest of you, there's value in understanding this key point that your marketing friends talk about.
Perhaps too much. In my world, for example, let's say I'm worried about sea turtles choking to death on plastic bags in the ocean that look like jellyfish. Again, if you go to the National Aquarium just a few blocks away, they have a great exhibit on this, but an output would be. I posted 10 times on Instagram that plastic bags are bad for sea turtles. An outcome is because of that.
15 of my followers stopped using plastic bags and switched to reusable Canvas bags. Do you see the difference there. One of those you have a lot more power over n is a lot easier to measure, but it also doesn't matter. What matters is the outcome. A sea turtle does not care how many times I posted on Instagram. The sea turtle only cares that there's less plastic pollution in the ocean.
So in summary for this section, when it's done right, public science engagement is great for the public and great for science. Lots of scientists want to do this, especially lately, but many don't know how to do it. Or they do it wrong or use outdated models or debunked practices. It is good to communicate science, but it matters what we communicate and how we do it.
So I'm assuming that at least some of you want to try doing this yourself, or maybe have tried a key. First step here is know your audience, then go where your audience is. That can mean physically where your audience is. If you're trying to reach people who live in a particular community, they're not going to come across town to listen to a talk at your University.
You go to them. It can mean sort of topically or digitally where that meet them where they are. As one example, I gave one of my science communication training workshops at a conference in Brazil, and afterwards someone came up to me and said, oh, I never thought about using Twitter this way, but this was back when Twitter was a thing. Again, use blue sky now please.
I can't wait to go home and talk to my target audience of Brazilian shark fishermen on Twitter, but they don't use Twitter. How can I use Twitter to talk to them. You can't. That's it. Go where people are. Many of you are probably going to be in a position of doing some degree of 1 on one communication that might be speaking to a stakeholder.
It might be speaking to someone before or after an event. It might be a friend or family member or neighbor or coworker. Critical points associated with this is you are talking with someone, not talking at them. I do recognize the irony of this given our current dynamics, but I hope that some of you will come up afterwards and talk to me one on one. A key component that I try to do is listen as much or more than you speak, and treat your audience with respect, even if sometimes they say cuckoo banana pants, insane things, which, let me tell you in shark world happens.
As one example, during my PhD, I worked a lot with commercial shark fishermen in the rural southeastern United States, which is a politically very conservative group. They're distrustful of the government, prone to believe in conspiracy theory, but they all have fun stories. I actually really enjoyed my time with them, but a lot of the several of the crusty old fishing captains who look like they could be straight out of Central casting on Deadliest Catch or something would come up to me and say, I've been doing this a long time, and you're the first scientist who's ever talked to me like don't think I'm stupid and that's horrible, you guys, we're doing something wrong if that's happening.
But then I would usually say to them, I don't think you're stupid. I think you're wrong. And then they start laughing and then they say, OK, we can have a discussion about this now it works. It can work. Well, if you are in a position to Host an Event in which members of the public can come in, open and welcoming and informal event is often a great place to start.
Apparently, I'm told not everyone wants to spend their Saturday nights paying $30 to go see a lecture at a museum, but I sure do that from time to time. But one thing that worked really well is the National Academy of Sciences used to have this two scientists walk into a bar program, and they had bars all over the country that were participating in this and the bars.
The bar would advertise to the regulars, hey, we're having a dinosaur scientist who's just going to be sitting at the bar on Thursday. Come ask questions or we're having an asteroid scientist coming to sit at the bar on Friday. Come and ask them questions. I did this a lot because hey, free beer. But it was people had questions and they never would have had an opportunity to answer or to get them answered under their normal day to day lives.
Some things about scale that are important to keep in mind here. Not everyone has the flexibility or the budget to travel around the world talking about science, as I have been very fortunate to be able to do. I told you I gave a talk in Antarctica about why sharks matter there. I am reading some chapters in it. It does mention penguins briefly to a group of indifferent penguins behind me, but not everyone needs to travel all around the world.
One one of my good friends and colleagues, Doctor Asha de vos, is a Sri Lankan marine mammal biologist and her saying that I absolutely love and I use all the time is every coastline needs a hero. That can mean a physical coastline. Many of you may have seen there's a David Attenborough documentary about the oceans coming out. David Attenborough reaches a lot of people, but he doesn't reach everyone because the story doesn't touch on every part of the ocean.
But someone who lives in your community is well positioned to speak on behalf of your community, with other members of your community. So knowing your niche and acting is part of a network helps. You do not need to be all things to all people. If you can do something you're good at and you're comfortable with as in concert with as part of a planned overall activity with other people doing the same.
Another important thing with scale is that you don't have to reinvent the wheel. There are often pre-existing campaigns to do things. Many of the cities that you guys are from have a nerd night lecture series. Has anyone ever been to a nerd night lecture series. More hands should be going up than this when I see you guys again next year. They're great.
They billed themselves as Ted Talks with beer. A lot of fun. You can plug into your local communities with that, but also stand up for Science, which is a great organization that has been organizing all those protests against science. Budget cuts all over the country is starting a series of nationwide teach ins this week. The first one is Friday and it's me.
If anyone is still in town and wants to hop in an Uber over to Silver Spring, I just came that way. It's not that far. The Uber was like 40 bucks. I'll buy you a beer if you do that. I will be talking all about this. And I am also helping stand up for science trained scientists and experts all over the country to do this. A lesson when you're crafting your message is you need to know what your take home message is.
Think about the last talk that you attended relatively recently that you liked a lot, or the last paper that you read relatively recently that you liked a lot. I bet most of you can't recite that entire talk or that entire paper word for word, but you remember a key home from it, and you, the person writing that, the person giving the talk, which in some cases, you should craft the whole thing with that take home message in mind.
In public speaking classes, they sometimes describe this as tell them what you're going to tell them, then tell them. Then tell them what you told him. If you do not know what you want the take home message to be, neither will your audience and that is just a wasted effort. And sometimes the content of the talk is pretty similar, but the hooks, the take home message is different. In my world, this can be the difference between educating people about an issue versus encouraging them to change their behavior, versus promoting some of my own work.
That can be. I want you to know that sharks are in trouble versus here's a thing you can do to help sharks that are in trouble, versus I found a new way to protect sharks that are in trouble. Cite me. Invest in me. Give me a grant. Most of the content of those three talks or those three papers would be very similar.
But the hook is different and that is what people would take away from it. Can this work. Yes my PhD research was able to change the law in the state of Florida under then-governor Rick Scott, to protect endangered species of hammerhead sharks. Not only my PhD research, but a strategic communications plan I made about it. I wrote this up in conservation science and policy, which, as Aaron mentioned, I'm now an editor of.
It's a wonderful, open access, interdisciplinary environmental journal. I also want you, when you're talking to members of the public, to not one part of people saying he didn't act like you thought I'm stupid is the level at which you communicate with them. And I do not want to ever hear anyone say, I dumbed it down because that's not what you did.
You're not talking to someone who's dumb. You're talking to someone who is smart at something different from what you are smart at. And if you keep that in mind. You will treat your audience with respect. But this has to do, of course, with jargon. Those big 15 syllable words that we use all the time at meetings like this. But when you're talking to your non-scientist neighbor, maybe don't use those words.
A rule that I use and I teach is never underestimate your audience's intelligence, but always underestimate their vocabulary. Another humorous example of this from my friends at XKCD. Some of you may have seen this on the right there. Up goer five the only flying space car that's taken anyone to another world explained using only the thousand words people use the most often.
This is, of course, the Saturn V rocket that brought humans to the moon, explained using only the 100 most commonly used words in the English language. I say 100 because 1,000 is not one of the 1,000 most commonly used words. So you get things like stuff to burn, to make the box with people in it go really fast. And what's great about this is, first of all, it's endearing as hell.
But also it's not wrong. You absolutely can explain fairly complex scientific concepts at this level, and upgo or XKCD actually made this little web application where you can put your own text in and it highlights what's not the 100 most commonly used words. That's the text of one of my recent abstracts. You can see it's like every other word you can't use, so don't actually go out and talk to people at this level.
My nephew is three years old and he has a vocabulary of more than thousand words. But this is a fun and sometimes very entertaining way of practicing explaining your research at multiple levels. And once you get some practice at that can tailor it to a few different levels. It's also important to think about, should you be the person communicating this or should it be someone else.
Sometimes the messenger matters as much or more than the message. There are some fishing communities that will not listen if it is coming from me, but given that I care about making the world a better place and not necessarily about getting famous for it, I don't care about that. And I can talk to someone in that community and say, hey, can you pass this message along.
You can say it's from you. And they do that and they make the change and no one ever knows I was even involved. That works great. So as one example from this, we had a paper a few years ago about improving diversity, equity, and inclusion issues in scientific professional societies with a case study on my shark society, the American elasmobranch society, where I'm on the board of directors.
We have 22 authors. I'm one of two white guys on there, and people asked, hey, why are you the one who's the lead author. Why are you the one who's presenting this at a conference. Because I was asked to because I was told some people will listen because it's coming from you when they wouldn't otherwise. So I'm happy to do happy to do things like that.
The final lesson that I want to leave you with here, before I wrap up and take any questions that you have, is that you can be a professional without being stuffy, dry, and boring. This is a photo I did from a talk I did at nerd night in Miami at the Perez Art museum, which is a very fancy museum in Miami, Florida. Effective public science engagement can be funny or even silly, and it should be fun.
Something that I can tell you from those three months in 2020, talking to so many little kids over Zoom when everyone was home and in a new environment. How do you get little kids who are stressed out and freaked out about that to pay attention to you. Wear a funny hat. That's it. I had their attention. Teachers were amazed.
This should be fun. I love this stuff. I look forward to it. I'm excited about it. Some of this is to channel your inner golden retriever, but some of this is genuine. I really like doing this. If you are hearing some of this and you're thinking, oh, I should do some public science engagement, but oh my God, not that.
Trust yourself. Don't do that. Do something else. This should be fun if you see this on. If you see this stuff as one more thing on my giant to do list, I hate my giant to do list. You're not going to give this your all. You're not going to do a good job with it. It's not going to accomplish your communications goals.
So find something that works for you. I have been told that some people are not as extroverted as I am. I haven't. I don't know if that's true, but I've been assured. So science is under attack. Science funding is under attack. Public science engagement and getting people to care about this stuff and getting them engaged matters more than ever.
And there are lots of ways to do this. But no one right way to do it. But there are some best practices to incorporate and some common mistakes to avoid when you do this correctly. When you do this well, it can absolutely move the needle. It can make a difference in your little corner of the world and make your little corner of the world a better place. But to do that don't just shout facts in someone's general direction.
You need a goal. You need a detailed strategy. You need experience. You need training, you need help, and you need the right tool for the job. I would love to chat with anyone about this, about any of this stuff. If any of you have schools or libraries or home institution that is interested in bringing me out for a book tour talk or bringing me out for a departmental seminar, always open to that stuff.
If your team needs public science engagement training, I'm always open to that stuff. That's my email. I'll put it on the last slide too. If people are not sick of hearing me rant yet, I am going to be back here tomorrow I'm speaking on a panel about innovations in science communication. Before I wrap up and take your questions, I just want to once again thank SSP for having me out here, especially Aaron and Jesse and Greg for all the work they put into planning this, I did.
I've done this for conferences. I know how much work goes into it. Thanks to my numerous co-authors and collaborators and partners and editors who have whose work I presented throughout here. And thanks to all of you for listening. I'm happy to take your questions. I believe Aaron, Jesse and Greg are circulating with microphones.
Are these on. Yep well, first of all, before we take any questions, I just wanted to say, David, thank you so much again for these amazing remarks. And I think something that really helps to encapsulate what we're really hoping to get out of this week is a multimodal modal approach, leveraging the community that we have here and the value of that research, the research communications and the values that we share in SSP and in our individual organizations and as members of this community.
So that was a really good overarching theme. And so now we're going to open it up to questions from the audience. Hopefully you have a lot. OK I'm going here in the middle first guys I'm wearing heels. So bear with me real quick. And when you ask your question, if you could briefly say your name and where you're from.
Hi, I'm Cambria, I'm from Austin, Texas, so I'm enjoying the rain. Question about how you approach cause fatigue. Yes so how do I approach cause fatigue. There's so many horrors all the time. How do we get someone to care about fixing mine. Honestly, if someone's working on making their tiny corner of the world a better place, and they don't have the energy to help with my corner of the world that needs help being made a better place.
I'm happy because they're working. Working to make the world a better place. But one thing to do is make it fun. Make it engaging, make it different. It's not just signing another petition. It's not just writing another check. It's doing something creative. It's doing something enjoyable. One of the things that I do is I take members of the public out on Shark research expeditions in Florida.
So in exchange for their donations that support some of this stuff, they get to meet sharks and they get to help with shark research. So no one gets cause fatigue when there's a fun trip. At the end of the day, it doesn't have to be something that dramatic though. Also, if anyone's interested in doing that, let me know. It doesn't have to be that dramatic, but it can be. Maybe a behind the scenes tour at your museum, or entered in a raffle to see.
Free to get four free tickets to the new David Attenborough movie. There are ways to make it fun. There are ways to keep people's attention. There are ways to keep it fresh. But it's absolutely a problem that especially lately, every day there's some new horror. How do you get people to pay attention to all of them.
Over here. Yes hi. Hi I'm Andrew Harmon with the Endocrine Society. I fascinating talk and as wonderful and cool and fascinating as sharks are, how intuitive or easy has it been for you to apply these tools when consulting or talking to people in other sciences that have nothing to do with marine biology or anything like or conservation, such as for instance, the chronology and public health and things like that.
Yeah so public health has some advantages that I don't have in that no one wants to be sick and everyone knows someone who's been sick. So you can talk about some of that stuff in general. Yeah, absolutely. It can be tricky to find your wow facts. To find your specific version of don't sign these petitions to ban shark finning that's been banned for 30 years.
But there are versions of this for just about everything I find. It usually starts with a conversation talk to me about the state of your field. Talk to me when you're trying to talk to your friends about what's new in your world that are not in your field, what do you tell them. What is the thing that you're complaining about the most at the bar.
At the end of the day, what is the thing that you're most excited about that you've read something and you texted someone. That sort of stuff is usually a good starting point to shake something loose. Thank you. I can't see much with these lights, but I do see a hand up here.
Sorry, Jesse. Thanks Tim Lloyd from live links. I was really interested about your point about outputs versus outcomes. Yes and it's really, really easy to measure outputs. And you made the point. It's really tough to measure outcomes. So using your own experience as an example, how can you tie what you're doing to our less sharks losing their fins.
How do you do that. Thank you. Yes so how can you actually measure outcomes. How can part of it is crafting your engagement strategy so that the outcomes are clear, which requires some thought at the beginning. A lot of the work happens before I start talking. In this case, we have access to government data on the state of fisheries.
So we can see did this intervention lead to less stocks being overfished? Did this intervention lead to higher what we call spawning stock biomass, which is population of fish with the Sharks in Florida that I talked about during my PhD, I was able to document the scale of this previously unknown fishery using social media that these anglers were posting pictures on social media that in a forum that the government wasn't monitoring.
And we found that these people know that what they're doing is illegal and didn't care and were discussing like, oh, the patrolman is off tonight. This is a good time to come to this beach. So by shutting that down, that was able to be a really clear outcome. There are also in my world, it's sometimes a little easier because we have by federal law, a lot of data points that are required to be collected and publicly shared by NOAA.
But sometimes it's about surveying your people. You can explicitly ask them, hey, did you happen to see an Instagram ad about so-and-so? Did you. What were you previously using. Plastic bags. Where are you now. Still using plastic bags, et cetera. So sometimes it's about surveying.
So the social science methods can be helpful. Sometimes it's more sneaky behind the scenes marketing tools. The world of marketing actually has a lot to teach us, which nobody told my brother that he has an MBA and works for internet marketing. So I say not to show any favoritism to sessions. But we do know that there is a session tomorrow led by Lady Conrad and Jennifer Vogel, that is actually talking specifically to this issue of outputs versus outcomes.
So, oh, great. If people are interested in this topic, you can find out more tomorrow. And we've got a question over here. Do you think that scientists should be talking less to other scientists and more to the public. Or is there a role for pure academic with the 15 syllable words.
Yeah, there's certainly some individual scientists who I wish would talk less, but that usually that's to me. No, there's absolutely a role for pure research. Not everyone needs to be doing this stuff because not everyone wants to do this stuff. And frankly, not everyone is any good at it. We all know some professional researcher colleagues who are maybe great scientists, but if they were ever given a microphone on the local news, the villagers would be taking pitchforks and torches to the school, so maybe don't let that person talk in front of the public.
What I would like to see academia world do is not require everyone to do this, but to recognize the value of it more and that include it in things like hiring, tenure and promotion. Because right now, in most schools, it isn't my colleagues who work full time in academia who do this stuff. They still have to do curriculum committee.
They still have to do their other leadership and service, and they do this on the side. This stuff should absolutely count as leadership and service. But no, there's absolutely a role for pure science. Always, always, always should be. Always will be, I think. But I would like to see more people aware of the value of doing this public science engagement. And I would like to see institutions value people who do it more.
Hi over here, Alice Meadows, more brains cooperative. Given the audience, is there anything that you would like to see publishers do to support this kind of work. So yeah, in general just value it more. I have been very fortunate with the publishers that I work with. Johns Hopkins University press gave me a lot of freedom to write why sharks matter in a way that is rigorous enough that it's used as a graduate school textbook, but accessible enough that a scuba diver who just likes sharks can pick it up and follow along.
So that was nice. I wasn't told no, you have to write this explicitly in 15 syllable words. That stuff is great. Those of you who publish journals lay summaries can be great, but maybe with some training on how to do that. Well, not everything needs to be written for people who have a PhD in 30 years experience, but there should always be a home for stuff that is.
High right here in the middle, directly in front of you. Snowden Becker with the locks program at Stanford University. I'm just curious. This isn't a call out or an indictment or trying to catch you out. What are your parents and siblings think you do. So a thing that I have actually been proposing for a while is that we should have a conference with a bunch of leading scientists and have their parents, have their siblings, have their spouses give a talk about what they think that person's work is.
So my parents, I think, genuinely have no idea that something with sharks, they've always been very supportive. When I was five years old, I which was shortly after some of those pictures were taken, I told my dad I want to be a marine biologist, and he said, I don't know what that is, but I'll find out. And now he's retired and he brings his golf buddies on Shark research trips.
My brother, has a pretty good idea of what I do because he's often my sounding board when I'm doing some of these communications things, when I'm trying something new. He's sort of my target audience in that he's a smart guy. Not in my world. And if I can explain it to him and he says it makes sense, I feel like I've done something right. If I can explain it to him.
And I ask him to explain it back to me in his own words, and it's approximately correct. I feel like I've done a great job. So he has a pretty good idea. My parents would say something with sharks. Hi, I'm Rachel reef Albright. I am a librarian at Eastern Kentucky University. So, one of those red places nobody wants to go.
We were just in Paducah last weekend Really Yeah. Oh my gosh. So my question I'm coming from a communication standpoint. That's what my undergrad was in. And I was always trained that the best presentations and interviews are dialogues. So how do you relate to people who are very different from you. And how do you feel like you're giving them autonomy in that conversation.
Yeah, it can be tricky. So again, I do have an advantage in this space. Not because of sharks, but because of the fisheries management, legal infrastructure in the United States that we have these fisheries management councils established by federal law that includes scientists that include NOAA, people that include environmental nonprofit groups and include fishermen. So there's a built in space for dialogue.
So that helps when I'm giving a talk at a museum or giving a talk at a library or something like that, it's often this what some folks derisively call the sage on the stage model, which is what you're seeing here rather than a conversation. But afterwards I'll go out to dinner with people and just chat. And often that's a lot of listening to what they want, listening to what they feel, listening to what they fear.
And just by listening and not being a jerk or the occasional I'm sorry that happened to you. Without acknowledging that their policy preferences are correct because of it can go a long way. Hi other side. Hi thanks for a great talk. Richard Gallagher from annual reviews. Do you consciously or try to avoid giving information on how science works, with the hope that people will apply a more scientific approach in other issues that they are interested in.
Or is that kind of a no no, because it takes them away from what they're actually coming to you to hear about. Great question. And the answer is it depends on my audience. Sometimes I'm with people for a whole week, and that's something that takes a little longer to develop. But how do I think this way. How is what is a useful way for you to approach this. But sometimes I'm with people for 15 minutes or for an hour at a talk like this.
Then there's probably not time to do that usefully. But I can often encourage people to stay in conversation. Usually I am more interested in people understanding of consensus results than methodology or why we did it that way, but it depends on the situation. I certainly have done a lot with explaining methodology or why. Well, we're looking for another question. I'm going to take a chair privilege and ask a question.
Great which is I'm back here, David. Way in the back. Yes which is the lights. I really can't see anything. I know I could do jumping jacks, but I'd fall. Also, I forgot to say this earlier. I'm going to leave some business cards on the lectern here. If people can't find me later. Yes, please.
My question is, as a community that's very invested in advancing diversity, equity, inclusion, and accessibility initiatives, both as individuals, organizations, and as a community as SSP. Do you have any suggestions about how to invite people in that might have historically not been invited into work, like the work that you're doing. It's a great question. So a group that I really, really admire and have started to volunteer to help with through their organized formal allyship program is called minorities in Shark Sciences or myths.
And they have done absolutely amazing work changing the shape of my field to give you a sense of this, the American elasmobranch society at the time we did this initial membership demographic survey, we had about 600 members. There was one person who was Black in the society, and that was the person who became the president of minorities in Shark Sciences, Jasmin Graham, who's absolutely amazing.
And she said what. I may be the only one in this society, but I know I'm not the only person of color who likes sharks. So she started asking on social media, and now minorities in Shark Sciences, which is exclusively for women and gender minorities of color, has more members than the American elasmobranch society. So they have also brought several hundred people into the American elasmobranch society, which, let me tell you, has changed how we vote on certain things in ways that are great.
So one thing you can do is ask people what they want. Ask people how no one's ever going to be offended that you say, I want to help you, but I'm not sure of the best way. Can you have a conversation with me. That's a great start, trying to guess what people want. You're going to run into trouble. There are minefields that I'm sure you're not aware of. Even the best educated, best intentioned potential allies don't know everything.
And finding someone and getting in a position where they trust you and you can ask questions about. All right. Here is what I see as a problem. Here is what I was thinking about. Possible solutions. What do you think. Do you have anything to add and giving them real, real autonomy. Real agency.
That goes a long way. Thanks, David Excuse me. OK. Hi. So I had to write down my question, or else I'm going to lose my train of thought. My name is Sarah black from the American Society of plant biologists.
So kind of a tactical question when you are framing. See, didn't I say the threats and naming what's important. And the threats against it. How would you approach when the thoughts about those threats or your audience's views around those threats align really closely with deeply held personal beliefs or political beliefs that kind of challenge that.
So, for example, sharks are in trouble and the person says, no, they're not. You're lying. That's a lie. It's a conspiracy. So how do you. And do you try to steer away from those things, or do you then go back to that or try to frame a new message entirely that is a little more palatable to maybe a more resistant audience.
A great question, and the answer is it depends on the context. Some of these conspiracy theory Loons, who I absolutely do encounter all the time. Some of them don't really have any power to influence the overall proceedings, and I can let that go. But some of them might be the president of the fishermen's society, that person. I need to at least be receptive to ideas.
So that's where this sort of charm offensive listening, treating them with respect can be useful. That's where we can get into what someone was asking earlier. Do you ever explain how do we know. Do you ever explain, how do we test this. Why that's when you can get into that stuff. But scientists in particular, when they're first brought into some sort of policy issue, they immediately gravitate towards the people who have the wackiest ideas to try to persuade them, even if those people have no actual power to influence the outcome.
And that is just a waste of everybody's time. You're not going to convince someone who says the sky is green, that the sky is blue because they've made it their whole personality to be contrarian. They might not even believe that the sky is green, and they're just saying it to get a rise out of you so it can be you get a sense of this with practice. What is a real what is a real problem versus what might not be.
What is someone who is persuadable versus what's a conspiracy theory loon? Who's someone that it's worth trying to persuade, versus someone who is worth making sure that someone sees as near you. But it comes with practice. And thank you guys all for your amazing questions. With that, I think we'll thank David one more time and welcome Melanie up for some final remarks.
Business cards. Thank you. Yes doctor Schiffman, thank you so much for sharing your experiences, your expertise in this area. It's clearly very relevant to us in this time and also your passion for sharks. As Aaron mentioned, Doctor Schiffman will be in the exhibit Hall at the membership booth signing copies of his book.
And I don't have it to hold up. But why. Shark matters. Yes thank you. Please stop by and chat with him a little bit. While you're there, purchase some of the new SSP merchandise to celebrate to contribute to the generations fund as well. And so I do not want to stand in your way to the opening reception.
I want to do want to thank digital science, one more time. Let's give them around of applause. And with that can make your way across the skywalk to the holiday ballroom, where the exhibit Hall is now open.
Form Title Download
Transcript
Form Title Bookmark
Entire Media
Segment(s)
Custom Clip
Start At:
End At:
Form Title Share
Entire Media
Segment(s)
Custom Clip
Start At:
End At:
Form Title Accessibility and Keyboard Shortcuts
The cadmore media player is a professional video and audio player experience designed to deliver media as well as relevant transcript, segmentation, and metadata. On the screen is a traditional html video player with buttons such as play, pause, forward, captioning, language and play speed selection and more. Adjacent to the video player are generally tabs, one of which shows a scrolling transcript of the video and the other shows any segmentation of the media, sometimes referred to as chapters. At the top of the video is a menu bar containing an Explore button and Tools button. The Explore button allows you to dig deeper into the video by opening up an explore dialog which contains tabs for a visual navigation of the video using thumbnails, an about tab which contains rich metadata about the media, a segments tab which contains further information about the video, and a related tab which contains links to other media related to this media. The tools button opens a menu with options for sharing the media on social media, creating bookmarking links, creating embed codes for your website, generating citations, and more.
Keyboard Shortcuts
Keyboard shortcuts only work while you are in forms mode. By entering forms mode, you will be able to quickly access portions of the media player with single key commands.
Spacebar: Play/Pause Toggle
I: Info Menu,
O: Tools Menu
T: Transcript Tab,
S: Segments Tab
F: Forward 15,
R: Rewind 15
L: Languages,
P: Playspeed
M: Mute Toggle,
V: Volume Bar
N: Video Only Toggle,
B: Full Screen Toggle
C: Captions Toggle
Escape: Closes dialogs and menus / Exits Player
Z: Next Transcript Chapter
X: Previous Transcript Chapter
Q: Next Transcript Paragraph
W: Previous Transcript Paragraph
Entire Media
Segment(s)
Custom Clip
Start At:
End At:
Embed Size
-
You Size - Responsive
-
We Size - Responsive
-
Picture Overlay Popup
-
400 x 225
-
512 x 288
-
400 x 700
-
768 x 1024
-
1024 x 512
-
1280 x 608
Form Title Cite
No citation provided.
Info
Segments
Related
Thumbnails
Exit Clip Mode
You have requested to see a portion of the video outside of the clip.
Click OK to switch to the full video or click if you would like to stay inside the clip. You can always go back to the clip with Tools and Clip Mode