Reach for the Sky Challenge Fund - CAA / DfT funding now open to encourage young people into aviation careers

I have literally (not figuratively) been clicking the first link every day for months as I'm going to apply for this funding. My project, if funded, will be an issue of the CS4FN magazine (plus a new aviation portal on the CS4FN blog about flying and careers) about the computer science and human-computer interaction involved in designing, flying and tracking of aircraft and development of lower carbon options. Very excited, wish me luck!

Here's what I've posted to psci-com, the mailing list for science communicators.

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The Civil Aviation Authority and Department for Transport are keen to encourage young people to find out about careers in aviation so this fund is less about public engagement with the science of flight and more about careers outreach (but the previously funded projects obviously do include plenty of flight-related scicomm!).

Reach For The Sky Challenge Fund
https://stem.caa.co.uk/reach-for-the-sky-challenge-fund/
• open today until 12 September 2025
• Total pot is £750k, likely spread among 10+ projects

They are looking for outstanding outreach projects that can meet the following three objectives:

1. Inspire the next generation of aviation professionals, championing the opportunities available in the sector.  Applicants’ activities should focus on developing interest and engagement with the opportunities available in aviation, showing clear links to career pathways. This might also involve supporting someone in developing skills or gaining experience that could be useful for a career in aviation or aerospace, but should not replace formal education, i.e., delivery of statutory licences or educational qualifications.

2. Reach individuals who would not otherwise be aware of opportunities available within the aviation sector. Applicants should consider how their project might benefit under-represented groups (i.e. women and girls, people from minority ethnic backgrounds, people with disabilities or those from lower socio-economic backgrounds).

3. Have a broad impact by reaching and engaging multiple people. This might be achieved through some form of mass participation event, delivery through an education setting or youth group, or via virtual methods that can reach a mass audience.

Other useful links
Today's press release:

https://www.gov.uk/government/news/750000-to-break-down-barriers-and-get-more-young-people-into-aviation-jobs

Reach for the Sky evaluation (26 September 2024, updated 17 Feb 2025)
Evaluating the success of the Reach for the Sky Challenge Fund and its ability to get young people into aviation careers.

Last year's press release (they upped the pot with additional funding, to £810k, and funded 16 projects (actually 18 if you click on the 'successful applicants button on the first page linked).

PDF listing the 2024 successful applicants with a summary of their projects.

The CAA's (quite fun, cute cartoons page on Careers in Aviation and Aerospace which includes everything (engineering, programming, logistics, ground crew, pilots and cabin crew).

Generation Aviation Group (Gov.UK)
"Generation Aviation is a multistream programme that helps build an aviation workforce fit for the future by raising the profile of aviation careers, removing barriers to access and attracting diverse and talented people to tackle new technologies, decarbonisation and other emerging trends."

Flight tracking pages
FlightRadar24 | ADS-B Exchange | Flight Aware (enter an airport name to see what's coming and going)

8 June 2021, 2pm, FREE - Open seminar on a QMUL / EPSRC project (Pambayesian) that blends computer science, Bayesian networks and medicine - with a bit of #scicomm

TL;DR: FREE seminar tomorrow from 14:00 BST on "intelligent medical decision support systems and the underlying technology" with a bit of chat at 4.30pm about outreach which may be of interest for science communicators / public engagement with science folk.

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Tomorrow there's an afternoon seminar to talk about, and to close, the EPSRC-funded Pambayesian project which has recently ended. The project looked at ways of helping doctors and patients make treatment decisions about particular health conditions (the examples under investigation included diabetes in pregnancy (aka gestational diabetes) and rhematoid arthritis) using computer science (specifically Bayesian Networks) to 'weigh' different pieces of ('risk') information. As you can see from the agenda below Bayesian Networks can be used in all sorts of health-decision-making scenarios.

I was involved in helping to produce an issue of our computing magazine for schools (CS4FN, Computer Science For Fun) which talked about Smart Health and included several articles on the Pambayesian project. I wrote a couple of articles myself. It was rather nice to be able to write about diabetes again, as in a previous life I was one of the Science Information Officers at Diabetes UK and wrote nothing but stuff about diabetes back then :-)

My boss Prof Paul Curzon will be speaking about outreach at 4.30pm and you can read the Pambayesian issue of CS4FN as a PDF here (free print copies are already on their way to subscribing UK schools, if you're a teacher please use the purple form here to sign up or invite your child's teacher to sign up). You can also explore the magazine's articles individually on the CS4FN blog.

 

PAMBAYESIAN Project final open seminar: 8 June 2021

When: Tuesday, June 8, 2021, 2:00 PM - 5:00 PM
Where: Zoom

The PAMBAYESIAN (PAtient Managed decision-support using Bayesian networks) is an EPSRC funded project to develop a new generation of intelligent medical decision support systems to help both patients suffering chronic conditions and clinicians treating them.

  Join on 8 June

The project ends on 30 June 2021 and there will be a final project open Seminar that will take place on Zoom on 8th of June 2021 from 14:00 to 17:00. 

You can join the seminar using the following link: https://qmul-ac-uk.zoom.us/j/85147764196

The event will include presentations on the development of intelligent medical decision support systems and the underlying technology. There will be time for discussion of both the technical issues and future exploitation.

Agenda

2.00-2.10: Prof Norman Fenton: Introduction and overview of the PAMBAYESIAN project

2.10-2.20 Dr William Marsh: Overview of the Bayesian Network (BN) clinical models

2.20 – 3.10 PAMBAYESIAN rheumatoid arthritis application

2.20-2.30 Dr Amy MacBrayne: The clinical perspective

2.30-2.40 Dr Hamit Soyel: User interaction

2.40 –2.50 Ali Fahmi: The BN model

2.50- 3.00 Chris Robson (Living With): Integrating the model into a commercial platform

3.00-3.10 Discussion

3.20- 3.50 PAMBAYESIAN diabetes in pregnancy application

3.20-3.30 Prof Graham Hitman: The clinical perspective

3.30-3.40 Mariana Raniere Neves: The BN model

3.40-3.50 Discussion

3.50 – 4.10 Extensions of PAMBAYESIAN

3.50-4.00 Dr Scott McLachlan: The caremap approach

4.00-4.10 Morghan Hartmann: PAMBAYESIAN additional cases studies - Multiple Sclerosis and Pelvic Floor Syndrome

4.10-4.30 PAMBAYESIAN BN technology

4.10-4.20 Dr Maggie Wang: The dynamic BN modelling challenge

4.20-4.30 Dr Eugene Dementiev: The BN deployment challenge

4.30-4.40 Prof Paul Curzon: PAMBAYESIAN impact and outreach

4.40-5.00 Discussion

More details on PAMBAYESIAN: https://pambayesian.org/

 

Suggestion: [schol-sci-com], a mailing list for scientific and scholarly communication, a companion to @psci_com

Summary: I think we need a "schol-sci-com" mailing list as an accompaniment to the psci-com list, for jobs and events that are scientific but not public-focused.

Or does this list or group already exist and I just don't know about it? Perhaps several do - where are they? It needs to be an email list so that emails can be forwarded and people can sign up very easily. (I'm on LinkedIn in only the vaguest, technical sense, perhaps there are suitable groups there too but they're not very emailable from outside the group... are they?).

About psci-com
Psci-com is a public mailing list for science communicators and those working in or interested in public engagement with science. It currently has just under 4,500 subscribers (who receive emailed posts and can post things to the list themselves) and messages to the list include job adverts, events listings, requests for advice, and general discussion. It's been in existence since at least 1998 (originally created by Wellcome I believe) and I've been its owner since Autumn 2012.

The 'problem'
Regarding the job advert side of things there has been a recent noticeable increase in the number of job adverts coming in to its moderation queue that don't fall within the list's remit of public engagement with science. The list's focus is the intersection between science and the public so posts need to be relevant to both.

Some jobs straddle 'scicomm' and scholarly comms - for example a Health-condition Charity might want a research officer whose role involves liaising with researchers to peer-review the research they fund, so that in itself is not particularly scicomm. But there may be opportunities for the post-holder to give public talks about the research, or to write plain-English summaries, or help answer public enquiries - those sorts of jobs are likely more relevant to the list. [Also charities often have lay members on their research committees]

Each post is considered on its own merits by me, as fairly as I can manage it. Where possible I try and work with the person emailing me to 'bring out' the public engagement-y bits of a job advert. In short, I try and get any job ad posts tailored to the list (much as you'd tailor your CV and cover letter if you were applying).

But for some job ads it's really a struggle to find their inner psci-com and I can't let them through as they're just not relevant. This doesn't make me happy as I know there'll be those on the list who'd welcome the info, but I don't want to make the list an 'anything vaguely sciencey' free for all so I try and keep non-remit posts to a minimum.

A proposed solution
I'd like to propose the creation of a new schol-sci-com type of mailing list that caters for jobs, events, conferences and discussions that relate to the communication of science to scientists in industry and academia, rather than to or with the public. When non-remit jobs come in to psci-com I'd like to be able to say that it's not suitable for the psci-com list but would they mind if I forwarded on to schol-sci-com instead. That doesn't have to be its name though!

While I can set up and run this list alongside psci-com myself it might be something for someone else to do so I'm opening this up publicly as first refusal. There's no pay. I'm not paid to run psci-com but it's interesting and fun and means you get to hear about all sorts of cool stuff. You do actually get a bit of exposure ;) ("Oh you're Jo, I'm on psci-com!" - though so far it's not paid the rent!)

Also I'm really not an expert in scientific publishing, scholarly comms, science business marketing and things like that.

There are lots of platforms available. Jiscmail is the path of least resistance for the 'psci-com sister group' concept, however there's a restriction in that you need an ac.uk email address to be the group's owner. But I think it should be something where people can send an email to an email address (rather than having to submit posts to LinkedIn or however it works).

A note on terminology
The term science communication is generally restricted to public communications, with the term scientific communication for scholarly type comms. It's not exactly ideal in terms of avoiding confusion though!

Here's what Wikipedia has to say -

Science communication

Not to be confused with Science publishing, Scientific communication, or Scholarly communication.

For the academic journal, see Science Communication.

 

"Science communication is the practice of informing, educating, sharing wonderment, and raising awareness of science-related topics. Science communicators and audiences are ambiguously defined and the expertise and level of science knowledge varies with each group."

Types of science communication jobs - a list

The most up to date version of this post lives at the ScicommJobs blog

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Prospects.ac.uk is a website with a listing of the types of jobs associated with a particular degree / discipline, full list here https://www.prospects.ac.uk/careers-advice/what-can-i-do-with-my-degree/

Some examples

• What can I do with a biology degree?
• What can I do with an environmental science degree?
• What can I do with a computer science degree?

The biology one does mention 'science writer' as an option but largely focuses on continuing to be a scientist - I didn't find much on the site promoting jobs in science communication. Pinching the list idea of job types from Prospect and the idea of the range of different scicomm sectors from myself I've come up with a starter-list of types of things science communicators might do.

Perhaps you'll be reading this and going "oh for heaven's sake she's forgotten X", hopefully you'll tell me :) @JoBrodie

There's a lot of overlap among the different sectors mentioned, I suppose we could also divide jobs into those where you communicate science face to face, by written media (blogs, newspapers), or spoken (radio) or on TV...

Museums, science centres

• Museum explainer - someone who supports visitors as they meander through the exhibits
• Science show or Planetarium presenter - someone who gives a short talk and possibly answers questions
• Blogger (likely to be part of another role though) - someone who shares interesting or even quirky aspects of the centre's collection

Science or medical journalism

• (Blogger - unpaid, own time)
• As anyone can create a free blog this is a low-cost (beyond time) way of getting some writing practice and seeing what works, while building up a portfolio. While it's highly unlikely that the blog itself would provide an income it may lead to other opportunities.
• Writer / journalist for newspaper or medical journal etc
• Editor / Commissioning Editor
• Researcher / fact-checker
• Social media / blogger (as a job) / podcast or other audiovisual content creator
• For science or medical journals some of these jobs may also be combined with the admin of seeking reviewers for articles submitted, and managing the article submission and publication process. 

TV or radio presenting, or contributor, editor, producer, researcher

• (This can also be a subset of science / medical journalism)
• Might be a helpful idea to create your own YouTube channel so people can see what you're like on camera, perhaps not just presenting to camera but interacting with an interviewed guest. Or something like a podcast.
• See also a post of mine from 2011 on How to be a science presenter, from a BBC Science talk at the Cheltenham Science Festival.

Medical research charities / patient groups (also science research-funding Research Councils)

• Head of Research / Research Grants Manager / Research Grants administrator 
• all involve the administration of the charity's research portfolio which includes managing applications and finding reviewers for them. There is also a lot of translating all this science into plain English to tell supporters what they've funded and why it's important, also for fundraising colleagues to be able to use that info to raise funds.
• (Science) Information Manager / Officer aka Public Information Officer (PIO)
• this job may be combined with other Comms roles but typically includes helping colleagues, healthcare professionals and the public (eg via a Q&A helpline) make sense of the latest and historical research into the relevant condition and help keep everyone up to date. Often this task overlaps with librarian work.
• Director of Communications / Head of Press / Press Officer / PR & publicity
• this can incorporate science communication when writing a press release about research the charity has funded (or commenting on research from elsewhere) but will also involve policy work, and promoting events or news items that might be less scicomm-oriented.
• Publications editor / writer
• Some charities have a magazine for members, also a more medical one for healthcare professionals and even without that there's a high chance that there will be patient information leaflets or info leaflets for medics. These may be written in-house by staff with a biomedical background.

Government / Policy

• Researcher / writer of brief 'POSTnotes' for ministers via the Parliamentary Office of Science & Technology. 
• Department-specific roles eg in BEIS etc.

Learned societies / professional bodies

• Head of public events, event manager, officer - some learned societies will have a programme of public events
• Social media / blogger (as a job) / podcast or other audiovisual content creator - to share info with professional members and the public about events or subject-specific information
• See also Publications editor / writer in Medical charities section as many societies have their own members magazine.

Universities

• Public engagement co-ordinators / managers
• this role may be attached to a particular department (eg one for the Biology dept, another for chemistry) or attached to a dedicated Engagement department. Individual large research projects may also employ their own to both involve stakeholders in the development of the research and later to support dissemination of the project's results.
• Scicomm as a sideline to research
• For people already working as scientists in a university there are plenty of opportunities to share their own research, comment on others' research in the news media. Also plenty of opportunities to make their work accessible via public lectures, fun events, having school groups visit (or giving talks to schools). 

A lovely evening #scicomm event at the Royal Geographical Society, marking Galapagos Day

Thanks to a post published to psci-com (a mailing list I run for people involved in public engagement with science / science communication) I went along to an absolutely brilliant event last night (Wed 10 Oct 2018) at the Royal Geographical Society in South Kensington. It was organised by the Galapagos Conservation Trust and the talks were audio recorded (whether they'll be made publicly available I don't know).

I had such a lovely time at #GalapagosDay @RGS_IBG this evening, hearing talks abt monitoring things near or on the islands: ships (to spot dodgy ones doing illegal fishing), plastic (drones to map, then identify using Zooniverse) & Giant Tortoises + hatchlings (w ISS / Icarus!)

— Jo Brodie (@JoBrodie) October 10, 2018

Other than Charles Darwin's visit and 'rather big tortoises' it had never occurred to me quite how clueless I was about the Galapagos Islands (didn't really know where* they were, didn't know people lived there but about 25,000 do) so this was a useful crash course in getting a sense of the place and what's being done to protect it. I'm a big fan of the Shipfinder app (see also, FlightRadar24 for aircraft) which lets you 'see' where marine vessels are at any given time - they're using something similar to monitor ships visiting the coastal areas and using the data (velocity, direction) along with videocameras to predict possible activity. Jorge Carrion's team at the Galapagos National Park have used this method to catch a few dodgy ships undertaking illegal fishing. His talk was live-translated from Spanish to English, which was quite a remarkable thing to witness.

Brilliant talk from @Diego_EllisSoto at the @RGS_IGB showing how scientists can track Galapagos tortoises from space! Amazing science! @galapagossip #GalapagosDay pic.twitter.com/w1TaJ85SOn

— Nick Dunn (@nidunn1) October 11, 2018

(In the picture above Jorge is on the left and the translator is relaying his talk into the lectern mic)

Ellie Mackay pointed out that the ratio of 'time taken for something to be used' to the 'time it take to break down' highlights that single-use plastic cups are incredibly inefficient (I think she said that cotton can break down in a couple of months whereas plastic is still around decades later). Sadly the ocean seems to be pretty full of plastic and polystyrene and with every tide it's tipping some of this onto the beaches around the world, including those of the Galapagos. She's been using drones to take aerial shots of beaches (much more efficient than trudging many kilometres of beach). The photos can then be analysed by humans (Zooniverse citizen science) and machine-learning magic to spot what's plastic and what isn't. We saw a nice little video of the 'pilot study' of a drone in action collecting images.

🏖Can the Galapagos Islands become completely free of plastic pollution?

The Galapagos Conservation Trust, galapagossip, is working with communities to tackle the growing problem and help ecosystems around the world.#GalapagosDay pic.twitter.com/p2WRSUTZyh

— Marco Mosquera Jensen (@marcomos) October 11, 2018

I also learned that despite being a couple of hundred kilos Giant Tortoises are surprisingly migratory throughout the year making their way from the lowlands to the higher volcanic bits (if the volcano's likely to erupt the tortoises might get airlifted out to safety!) for a change of seasonal food. Migration activity is an indicator of health and GPS trackers are letting Diego Ellis-Soto and colleagues use the International Space Station (in particular the Icarus antenna attached to it earlier this year) to monitor them remotely. Apparently the antenna "can receive data from more than 15 million transmitters worldwide, anywhere on Earth" so it's probably kept quite busy!

Brilliant talk from @Diego_EllisSoto at the @RGS_IGB showing how scientists can track Galapagos tortoises from space! Amazing science! @galapagossip #GalapagosDay pic.twitter.com/w1TaJ85SOn

— Nick Dunn (@nidunn1) October 11, 2018

Ellie had a rather brilliant suggestion in response to a question about what can tourists do to help which was that perhaps a plastic 'exit visa' could be implemented - when you want to leave the islands you have to 'pay' with a kilogram of collected plastic waste from the beaches!

*having no sense of direction I don't really know where anything is ;)

Speakers

Dr Jorge Carrion, Director of the Galapagos National Park

Ellie Mackay, Mission Director of The Plastic Tide

Diego Ellis Soto, Max Planck Institute for Ornithology, who works with the Galapagos Tortoise Movement Ecology Programme (GTMEP)

galapagosconservation.org.uk | discoveringgalapagos.org.uk | descubriendogalapagos.ec 

Language, jargon and communication in science - an old essay of mine from 2004/5

You can pretty much guarantee that if I spot a discussion about the use (or avoidance) of jargon in discussions about science with a non-specialist audience, I'll pipe up. What I'll say - based more on feelpinions than evidence, granted - is that I think it's perfectly fine to use jargon as long as you explain what it means and that there's no real need to avoid it at all costs.

I am more concerned about words that don't seem like jargon but which you (a scientist) use in a particular, precise way and which your audience may understand much more loosely. My classic examples would include protein (eggs, chicken in a meal versus oligopeptides, enzymes), model (someone who looks better than me in a bikini versus a computer program which predicts an output) and theory (well-founded 'model' of how something works which explains current [and predicts new] findings versus a hunch or gut feeling).

In 2004/5 I did a Diploma in Science Communication at Birkbeck College and had a lovely time doing so. I wrote some essays, some were probably a bit rubbish, but I liked this one. I got a pretty good mark for it but somehow the bit of paper with the mark on has become separated from the essay itself, so you'll just have to take my word for it. [Found it, got 75, woo!]

This was written in 2004/2005 and I might think slightly differently now on some points, but the essay is as it was then.

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Sociologists of scientific knowledge are unlikely to disagree with the idea that "words maketh the world". Discuss the ways in which language might be said to 'construct' science.

     In this essay I will consider some of the ways in which language is used by scientists, and others, to express scientific concepts. I would like to look at the way in which language is used among scientists, examining jargon and metaphor in scientific discourse as well as consider some of the ways in which non-scientists could be said to have had scientific knowledge constructed for them by the popular media. I will also consider some of the arguments for and against the view that certain uses of language have contributed to a science that is culturally contrived.

     Language is essential to communicating any endeavour and thus it is fair to say that scientific knowledge is embodied in language. Whether or not this is literally in terms of words or graphical outputs or other 'literary inscriptions' (Latour and Woolgar, 1986) the end-product must be understood. Scientific knowledge exists because scientists are able to communicate their thoughts - "whatever directly affects the speech of science and its development affects scientific endeavour near its core" (Montgomery, 2004). It is difficult to imagine a knowledge that "exists without language or controlled observation" (Wark, 1996) and in that sense, science is not independent of social construction. If, as Leary says "all knowledge is ultimately rooted in metaphorical (or analogical) modes of perception and thought" then science can be considered as relying strongly on language (quoted in Gorman, 1998).

     Words have no intrinsic value and only acquire this through community consensus, thus language is a social construction. Since science is also a community enterprise and one which relies heavily on language it is reasonable to suppose a close association between the way language and thought represent reality (Lillegard, 2004).

     Although all disciplines have their own jargon, scientists have been especially busy in stringing Greek or Latin words together to find new ways of describing things and expressing concepts. While the precise way in which certain words are used ("normal" or "theory", for example) differs from their use in everyday language (and can be a major source of the language barrier between scientist and non-scientist) words like 'poikilothermic' (cold blooded) do appear to be designed to keep out the uninitiated. Words may maketh the world but science "is today the most active area of language creation" (Montgomery, 2004) - in other word, science constructs the language.

[The person marking the essay has pointed out that other disciplines also do this]

     Most scientists (and non-scientists who use field-specific jargon) would defend its use for mutual convenience among those in the same discipline, even though this requires a learning of more words or learning a new way to use familiar ones and Montgomery (2004) has spoken of the perception of a "communicational diaspora... dividing the disciplines by the arcanity of specialist speech" while acknowledging that the barriers between disciplines have become more 'porous' in recent years, thanks to 'transdisciplinary research'.

     Richard Dawkins' use of the analogy of 'selfish' genes has caused some confusion for those who mistakenly take the term literally (Dunbar, 1995) and Darwin was similarly 'sandbagged' by his own use of the phrase 'natural selection' which gave rise to the belief that nature was actively selecting (Eisenberg, 1992). In these cases, ordinary words became jargon due to the specific way in which they were used.

     In an interesting experiment FJ Ingelfinger (the then editor of the New England Journal of Medicine) printed, in 1971, two versions of the same immunology paper - one making no concessions to non-immunologists, the other written in plain English by a professional journalist. Although most readers preferred the one in plain English, the original authors felt that the translation had missed the subtle nuances of the original (Dunbar, 1995) and defended the use of jargon in certain instances. In fact, Wilkinson (1992, quoted in Atkinson, 1999) challenged calls for the use of jargon (and of the passive voice, which will be discussed later) to be avoided because scientists, when publishing in scientific journals, are writing for other experts in the field.

     Despite some problems, metaphors and analogies are often used successfully as pedagogical tools to explain something that is unknown in terms of something that is known (Gorman, 1998). As long as analogies ("A is like B") are not irreversibly stretched too far beyond metaphor ("A is B") then they can provide a useful framework for explaining and understanding concepts. They can be problematic though and metaphor has been described as a "double-edged sword" due to the danger of the metaphor transferring more than one meaning onto the thing which is being described (Scheiderer, 2000b). This adds weight to the postmodern idea that a reader will bring something to the text themselves - when they draw the analogy "many additional meanings may be transferred" (Scheiderer, 2000b).

     However, studies of metaphor in science have shown that their use is more than just a 'convenient linguistic tool' (Scheiderer, 2000a) and there are several examples where metaphor may not only have had a clear role in the construction of scientific ideas but might even have constrained them.

     Some feminist critiques of science have examined the perceived damage from the misuse of metaphor although with varying successes in making a valid point. Sandra Harding's often misquoted observation, that if "Nature as a machine" metaphors are effective in science, then overtly sexualised Baconian metaphors (scientists triumphing over nature compared with men dominating women) cannot be dismissed as 'mere metaphors' makes a valid point when not taken out of context (Brown, 2001).

     Kathryn Hayles' account conflating the difficulties in solving equations for fluid mechanics with gender issues, reported in Brown (2001), on the other hand appears to have taken things a step too far. It is still a matter of debate however, as to whether gendered views in developmental and cellular biology (sperm as active and male versus egg as passive and female as well as a similar dichotomy between the cytoplasm and the nucleus) have hindered development in those fields. Gross and Levitt (1998) downplay the effect of metaphor when they comment that "however negligible the power of inappropriate metaphor may be to shape the ultimate body of scientific knowledge, there is no great harm in sensitising people to it."

     It is not just the words themselves which are of interest to those studying science linguistics. Science is nowadays expressed in very formalised language where the author (the scientist) is apparently meant to be invisible. The reason for this is may be that removing any explicit authorship minimises the perceived subjectivity of the scientific experiments (Montgomery, 1999), the exact details of which are usually expressed in the passive voice (Atkinson, 1999).

[I think even at the time I was writing this things were changing regarding writing actively instead of passively]

     For those whose perception of science comes from other sources the challenges of jargon are often replaced by the challenges of translation. As mentioned above in the case of the immunology paper, the "accommodation" of scientific knowledge (Fahnestock, 1986) involves a truncated version of 'the truth'. The linguistic style differences between journal papers and newspaper articles reflect the differing publishing aims and constraints. Qualifiers found in journal articles which are used to 'hedge' (Atkinson, 1999) are often the first to be pruned in a media re-write. This results in apparent certainty and misses the contingent nature of scientific knowledge. In a facile sense it could be argued that the version of truth given to readers of newspaper articles becomes the accepted "truth" by virtue of reaching a much wider audience than those reached by the journal articles. This is not the same as saying that there are different versions of the truth, any one of which might be correct. Although scientists have debunked the notion that "we only use 10% of our brains" many people still think that 90% remains underused.

     While social influences undoubtedly affect what information escapes the ivory towers I would like now to examine the more troubling (to scientists) view that the influence of social factors goes far beyond this to the actual negotiation of knowledge itself.

     Few would agree with Evelyn Fox Keller when she says that "science is not exempt from social influences" (Bucchi, 2004), however this is a fairly innocuous statement and could be applied to those social influences on the choice of which problem to study, or funding. In fact, the current efforts in improving the public's engagement with science and technology acknowledges the feeling that science and scientists should be subject to social influences on their activities.

     A stronger take on cultural construction makes the assumption that because the process of arriving at knowledge has a strong social element (peer review being one example) the end result is "in whole or in part a social construct" (Wyllys, 2003).

     In attempts to demystify some of the processes operating in science, some social constructivists have attacked the idea that the body of knowledge in science is reliable. According to Gross and Levitt (1998) the 'strong form' view maintains that science is a discourse devised and constrained by one interpretive community of scientists and any claims to truth are not independent of this group.

     In their book, "Higher Superstition", they offer several examples of this sort of reasoning, that can easily be dismissed. Stanley Aronowitz's idea that acceptance by physicists of Heisenbert's "uncertainty principle" heralded a humbler, less confident physics community is described as what can happen "when the connotative power of words... are allowed to drift apart from their contextual meaning" (Gross and Levitt, 1998).

     There are many instances shown here which suggest that it might be an oversimplification to suggest that science is expressed in linguistically neutral terms, or even that the use of language does not have some effect on those discovering or constructing science. In a response to Montgomery's paper, Hayes-Rivas (2004) commented that "language often leads thought" and wondered if the role of a language such as English (with its strict Subject-Verb-Object order) as the lingua franca of science might, if all scientists are eventually writing and thinking in English, constrain the way in which the world is viewed. At the very least, "it is dangerous to assume, without further study, that the effects of such a rigid grammar will be trivial or benign" (Hayes-Rivas, 2004).

Jo Brodie, 2004 or 2005

References
(lost I think, oops)

Feedback - I found the missing sheet with the mark on it
"Jo, a super essay from you here. It was full of interesting ideas and built on the readings given in a very fruitful way. There was a clear line of argument which was well supported with example and supporting evidence. I particularly liked the way you integrated the academic arguments from within science with those from a public engagement point of view - this worked very well, and you kept it relevant to the topic. The only thing I missed was a proper conclusion, rounding up all your ideas and summing up your stance. Overall, an excellent assignme nt. Well done. 75 marks

You can watch some science-themed films at the Royal Albert Hall this year

As part of the RAH's inaugural Festival of Science: Space (5 May to 10 July 2018) there are several film screenings happening - along with a whole bunch of other science-related events. You can "explore Space through a series of concerts, talks, screenings and comedy events for space and sci-fi fans young and old."

• Wall-E - Sunday 6 May (Elgar Room)
• Science behind the movies with Roberto Trotta - Saturday 2 June (Gallery)
• Star Trek Live - Saturday 2 June (Auditorium) - Michael Giacchino's fantastic score performed live by a massive orchestra while watching the film. Awesome.
• Moomins and the Comet (live re-score) - Sunday 3 June (Elgar Room)
• Star Men - Sunday 24 June (Elgar Room) + talk with astronomer Donald Lyndon Bell

The Royal Observatory in Greenwich has a planetarium which also hosts science-themed films. There's a lot of it about :)

You can occasionally watch science-themed films at Greenwich's Planetarium

Image credit: Greenwich Park by "12019", Pixabay CC0 licence
(the main exit gate into Cutty Sark is to the left of this picture)

Last night I went to see Hidden Figures at the Planetarium by the Royal Observatory near the top of Greenwich Park - it was fantastic. I had previously heard of their Silver Screen series but hadn't been along to one (though I did attend a screening of Sense and Sensibility at the National Maritime Museum a few years ago) so I was curious to find out how it all worked.

The Planetarium has a hemispheric screen all of which can be projected on during planetarium shows. Obviously this isn't quite what's wanted in a regular screening. Fortunately a rectangular area of the screen (in front of the seats!) was picked out and the film projected there. It looked completely normal and 'flat' so I wonder if some clever stuff was going on with the lens, in order to project a flat image onto a curved surface. Surrounding the screened rectangle they projected a very gently moving star field / map which I thought was a rather nice touch.

After the film there was a short presentation about the women in the film and about which bits of the history were 'Hollywood-ised' and what actually happened. The talk also mentioned some women 'computers' (which is what mathematicians who made calculations for astronomical and other purposes were called) that were relevant to the Greenwich Observatory.

Here's a useful page which currently has all of the previous screenings but I'm assuming that the next lot (Contact, Tron and ... Predator I think) would be added at the end of it.

Note that I'm hoping to be screening The Dish in September at the Charlton & Woolwich Free Film Festival, date to be confirmed.

Things to be aware of
Greenwich Park closes at different times depending on the time of year. In the middle of summer it's open until 9.30pm but in March it shuts at 7pm (the film started at 6pm). The observatory have a couple of mini-vans to bus people out in groups (don't worry they wait for everyone!) but you'll be taken to the bottom of the park, to St Mary's Gate (the big main gate) near the Cutty Sark ship in the 'main' bit of Greenwich (map of the park with bus and other info). Because I live in Blackheath I'd entered through a different gate at the top of the park, which was now closed - so be aware that you may end up in a different place from where you started. Fortunately I have a travelcard so it didn't cost me any extra to get back home again.

We didn't drive through the gates though (I think they were closed) but were deposited just inside them and walked through. There were some parked cars by the observatory and I don't know which gate they exited through (possibly the Blackheath gate at the top) but we weren't supposed to wander off by ourselves on foot and had to be conveyed to the exit. It was quite fun being driven around the park late at night anyway.

We got briefly confused* on trying to leave the Observatory. You leave through the photography exhibition and then take a small wooden spiral staircase upwards (reversing your journey). At the top if you turn in one direction you'll find the exit quite quickly but if not you may find yourself trying to wander in and out of diferent exhibits trying to remember your route back (unless you have a good memory or sense of direction... guess who doesn't). There was another patron there wondering how on earth to get out but we found it quite quickly, but I might suggest better signposting.

*OK not that confused, but it wasn't a smooth exit ;)

Updating my list of places that might employ science communicators

In 2003 when I began working in science communication I didn't know about all the different type of jobs available or the different sectors, so I began collecting examples of places that had employed, or seemed likely to employ, science communicators. 

That list became a hugely popular blog post in 2009 and I have been perennially updating it ever since. The latest version (checked Nov 2017) now lives in a Google Spreadsheet: Scicomm jobs - list of vacancies pages employing science communicators

Science communication happens in medical research charities, schools, newspapers, museums, universities, community groups, learned societies, pharma companies, government - it is impossible to completely map all the possible ways that one can do scicomm.

The jobs are hugely varied too - health information professionals (my own background), PR people, journalists, museum explainers, bloggers, television or radio presenters and vloggers, scientists who talk about their work, non-scientists who talk about other people's work. It's a big sector!

Anyway if you're new to science communication I hope you'll find something interesting among the suggestions.

Note that these employers also employ IT specialists, HR personnel etc so the vacancies pages will probably be of use to anyone looking for a job, but the focus is on scientific (broadly) institutions.

Note to employers
PLEASE consider adding a /jobs redirect to the end of your homepage address and pointing that to wherever you're currently keeping your jobs. The reason this list of science communication vacancies pages needs updating so frequently is partly because you keep moving your jobs around every time you have a website refresh but also because you use different terms to describe jobs (jobs, vacancies, recruitment, work for us, work with us, opportunities). 

Obviously you are free to put your vacancies pages wherever you wish and call them whatever you like but please let's all point to them with /jobs for simplicity. Thank you. This will let anyone type /jobs at the end of your homepage URL and go straight to your vacancies page, hooray!

Scientific talks in London - 2017 edition

by @JoBrodie, brodiesnotes.blogspot.com.

• Blackheath Scientific Society - 2017 not published yet (programme starts in late October)
• Chelsea Physic Garden - Thursday Supper talks
• Hampstead Scientific Society - programme
• Highgate Literary & Scientific Institution - Lectures / Events (I'll just display the ones that seem the most sciencey, there are plenty of other interesting events there)
• Kew Mutual Improvement Society (KMIS) - Information page (PDF) @Kewlectures)
• Linnean Society - Events (PDF)
• Richmond Scientific Society - programme (starts in September)
• Worshipful Society of Apothecaries - Events (lectures free, booking advisable) 

See also Interesting Talks in London
There are also events from the Royal Institution and the Royal Society which are fantastic but it's almost impossible to copy and paste text from their website so I've not added them here.

Also, feel free to copy and paste this and put it in your own blog posts and listings. It's not my info, it's just culled from all these sources above. Share the science communication news :)

SEPTEMBER 2017
12 September - Tuesday
6pm, Apothecaries Hall
'An illustrated history of modern cardiology and cardiac surgery' - W Bruce Fye
[tickets]

13 September - Wednesday
8pm, Vestry House, Richmond
'How do we know anything? And how can we know things better?' - Michael de Podesta
[Tickets on the door only]

15 September - Friday
7.45pm, Mycenae House, Blackheath Scientific Society
'Pathogen Surveillance' - with Dr David Aanensen, Welcome Trust, Sanger Institute

21 September 2017 - Thursday
6.00-8.15pm, Chelsea Physic Garden
‘It’s not all about the Flowers’  with Matthew Wilson
[More info] [Tickets]

21 September 2017 - Thursday
8.15pm, St John's Church, Hampstead
'You may not believe this but....?' - Heinz Wolff
[Tickets on the door only]

OCTOBER 2017
2 October 2017 - Monday
6pm, Jodrell Lecture Theatre, Kew
'Plant hunting in Northern Vietnam' - Alex Summers
[Tickets on the door only]

5 October 2017 - Thursday
6.00-8.15pm, Chelsea Physic Garden
‘How to Eat Better’ with James Wong
[More info] [Tickets]

9 October 2017 - Monday
6pm, Jodrell Lecture Theatre, Kew
'A study of New Zealand's native flora' - Matthew Rees
'Exploring the forests of temperate North America' - Olivia Seed-Mundin
[Tickets on the door only]

11 October 2017 - Wednesday
8pm, Vestry House, Richmond
'South East Asian Geology' - Robert Hall
[Tickets on the door only]

16 October 2017 - Monday
6pm, Jodrell Lecture Theatre, Kew
'Conservation of the Fen orchid' - Tim Pankhurst
[Tickets on the door only]

19 October 2017 - Thursday
6.00-8.15pm, Chelsea Physic Garden
‘The Joys and Powers of Herbs’ with Judith Hann
[Tickets]

19 October 2017 - Thursday
8.15pm, St John's Church, Hampstead
'Biosignatures in Earth's oldest sediments' - Dominic Papineau
[Tickets on the door only]

20 October 2017 - Friday
7.45pm, Mycenae House, Blackheath Scientific Society
‘Tales of Things’ in the Olympic Park - with Dr Duncan Hay, University College

23 October 2017 - Monday
6pm, Jodrell Lecture Theatre, Kew
'Make America Green Again! A perspective on US public gardens' - Sophie Walwin
'Step back in time: a tour of heritage gardens of France and Italy' - Chris Clowser
[Tickets on the door only]

25 October 2017 - Wednesday
8pm, Vestry House, Richmond
Sopwith Biplanes - David Hassard
[Tickets on the door only]

30 October 2017 - Monday
6pm, Jodrell Lecture Theatre, Kew
'The science and politics of soil carbon' - Ed Revill
[Tickets on the door only]

31 October 2017 - Tuesday
8pm, Highgate Literary & Scientific Institution
'Bitten by Witch Fever: wallpaper and arsenic in the Victorian home' - Lucinda Hawksley
[haven't worked out how you get tickets yet]

NOVEMBER 2017

2 November 2017 - Thursday
6.00-8.15pm, Chelsea Physic Garden 
Grandma’s Herbal Remedies, Fact and Fiction – with Jekka McVicar
[Tickets]

6 November 2017 - Monday
6pm, Jodrell Lecture Theatre, Kew
'Using every opportunity to cultivate, record and conserve' - Martin Gardner 
[Tickets on the door only]

21 November 2017 - Tuesday
8pm, Highgate Literary & Scientific Institution
'Discussing climate change: why so toxic?' - Christopher Rapley
[haven't worked out how you get tickets yet]

25 October 2017 - Wednesday
8pm, Vestry House, Richmond
'Aerodynamics of today's megastructures' - Stefano Cammelli
[Tickets on the door only]

13 November 2017 - Monday
6pm, Jodrell Lecture Theatre, Kew
'Searching for passionflowers in South America' - John Vanderplank 
[Tickets on the door only]

16 November 2017 - Thursday
8.15pm, St John's Church, Hampstead
'The history of local anaesthesia' - William Harrop-Griffiths
[Tickets on the door only]

17 November 2017 - Friday
7.45pm, Mycenae House, Blackheath Scientific Society
Fuel Cells & Electrolysers with Dr Enrique Ruiz Trejo, ImperialCollege

20 November 2017 - Monday
6pm, Jodrell Lecture Theatre, Kew
'Hillier Gardens through the seasons' - David Jewell
[Tickets on the door only]

22 November 2017 - Wednesday
5.15pm, Royal College of Physicians (under the aegis of the Soc Apothecaries)
'Gene, cells and systems - keys to life and the future of medicine' - Paul Nurse
'The college and the Society: origins, ambition and survival' - David Starkey
[tickets and info] - £15 for just the lecture, if you want the lecture and the coach transfer back to Apothecaries Hall for the 3 course dinner you'll need a lounge suit and £110

27 November 2017 - Monday
6pm, Jodrell Lecture Theatre, Kew
'Conifers: a natural history of the Pacific Northwest' - Harry Baldwin
'The botanical wonders of Malaysian Borneo' - Keegan Hickey
[Tickets on the door only]

DECEMBER 2017
4 December 2017 - Monday
6pm, Jodrell Lecture Theatre, Kew
'Before roots, shoots and leaves: the early evolution of plants' - Paul Kenrick
[Tickets on the door only]

7 December 2017 - Thursday
6.00-8.15pm, Chelsea Physic Garden
‘Fashioned from Nature’ with Edwina Ehrman, Curator of Textiles and Fashion at the Victoria & Albert Museum.
[Tickets] 


11 December 2017 - Monday
6pm, Jodrell Lecture Theatre, Kew
'The art of creative pruning' - Jake Hobson
[Tickets on the door only]

13 December 2017 - Wednesday
8pm, Vestry House, Richmond
'Forensic microscopy - tales from the past' - Pam Hamer
[Tickets on the door only]

14 December 2017 - Thursday
8.15pm, St John's Church, Hampstead
'Ancient Chinese science' - Andrew Gregory
[Tickets on the door only]

15 December 2017 - Friday
AGM

7.45pm, Mycenae House, Blackheath Scientific Society 

18 December 2017 - Monday
6pm, Jodrell Lecture Theatre, Kew
'Exploring the flora of Danube Delta in Romania' - Loredana Vacareanu
'Trees of the Chilean temperate rainforest - a trip to the end of the world' - Eliot Bardon
[Tickets on the door only]

JANUARY 2018
19 January 2018 - Friday
7.45pm, Mycenae House, Blackheath Scientific Society
Light, Sleep and Time - and how they interact with Dr Russel Foster, Nuffield - Ophthalmology

FEBRUARY 2018
16 February 2018 - Friday
7.45pm, Mycenae House, Blackheath Scientific Society
The Cassini Legacy and JUICE with Dr Greg Hunt, Imperial College
  
MARCH 2018
16 March 2018 - Friday
7.45pm, Mycenae House, Blackheath Scientific Society
MRI - Imaging & 3D Modelling Prior to Surgery with Dr David Nordsletten, Kings College
    
APRIL 2018
20 April 2018 - Friday
7.45pm, Mycenae House, Blackheath Scientific Society
Positive Thought & Behaviour Boost the Immune System with Dr Fulvio D'Acquisto, William Harvey Institute
   
MAY 201818 May 2018 - Friday
7.45pm, Mycenae House, Blackheath Scientific Society
Discovering Earthlike Planets with Dr Guillem Anglada, Queen Mary College
 

UK researchers might be gagged from lobbying - I have a cunning plan

There are moves afoot that may prevent scientists, and indeed any academic researchers, (who receive funding from the UK Government) from being able to lobby the Government, with evidence from research that the Government has funded - which seems pretty daft and problematic. This may have originated with benign (your mileage may vary) intentions while trying to address a different 'problem' (again, YMMV) and began with this announcement, on 6 February 2016 -

Organisations receiving government grants will be banned from using these taxpayer funds to lobby government and Parliament Press Release from Cabinet Office

The announcement clarifies the intended audience...

"The Institute of Economic Affairs has undertaken extensive research on so-called ‘sock puppets’, exposing the practice of taxpayers’ money given to pressure groups being diverted to fund lobbying rather than the good causes or public services.

A new clause to be inserted into all new and renewed grant agreements will make sure that taxpayer funds are spent on improving people’s lives and good causes, rather than lobbying for new regulation or using taxpayers’ money to lobby for more government funding."

...and although it doesn't mention research institutions or universities specifically, their omission means they may be automatically subsumed into this edict unless there's an exemption put in place.

Here's what the text that's to be inserted into grant applications will say

"The following costs are not Eligible Expenditure: Payments that support activity intended to influence or attempt to influence Parliament, government or political parties, or attempting to influence the awarding or renewal of contracts and grants, or attempting to influence legislative or regulatory action." (emphasis added).

The more detailed document Implementation Guidance for Departments on Anti-Lobbying Clause(Q&A format) makes several mentions of the option for Ministers to make exemptions, see in particular answers to Qs 4, 7, 8 and 9.

My cunning plan(s)
1) Sign this petition
Please sign this petition which asks the Government to consider declawing this new policy by explicitly including an exemption for academic research.
Exempt grants for academic research from new 'anti-lobbying' regulation

2) Raise money that can be used to lobby
While I'm sure some lobbying doesn't need to cost anything there are nearly always hidden costs (taking time off work, printing off materials etc). Hopefully it won't come to this if (1) works but I also think (3) might be better anyway, but note that the press release also says that...
"It will not prevent organisations from using their own privately-raised funds to campaign as they see fit."

3) Lobby the Government yourself
A great deal of academic output is increasingly widely available to anyone with access to a computer. People can download PDFs of published papers and can use them (along with other resources) to make sense of complex information, and act on it if they wish. People with health conditions are good examples of types of people that are motivated to learn more about a topic that affects them, and to learn how to get to grips with academic literature. Having an Open Access culture - in which published research articles are freely available rather than costing $30 per paper - will (hopefully) only increase that.

Obviously there are journalists, science writers and bloggers who can help people make sense of a complex topic too.

This was my cunning plan, in two tweets.

@latentexistence @zeno001 Wonder if a combination of open access to research, an annoyed populace (plus #scicomm support) might 'hack' this!

— Jo Brodie (@JoBrodie) April 17, 2016

@latentexistence @zeno001 if the scientists can't speak out (but everyone can access the science) then other ppl could step in ;)

— Jo Brodie (@JoBrodie) April 17, 2016

Communicating Risk in Health Information (pt 2) - Patient Information Forum event: side effect risks & bowel cancer screening sessions

Last Tuesday I went to PiF (Patient Information Forum)'s event on communicating risk in health information (you can download the presentation slides). It was very good and inspiring and I thought I'd gradually type up my notes.

If you spot any mistakes please let me know, @JoBrodie or my obvious gmail address is somewhere at the top of this blog.

My notes from sessions 1 and 2 are in my previous blog post
Communicating Risk (pt 1) - Patient Information Forum event: health literacy and data visualisation sessions
Session 1: Health risks of low health literacy
Janet Solla, Director, Community Health and Leaning Foundation
Session 2: Using data visualisation to explain risks
Eluned Hughes, Breast Cancer Now

My notes from sessions 3 and 4 below are in this blog post, below
Session 3: Factors influencing the perception of side-effect risk information
Peter Gardner, Head of School of Psychology, University of Leeds

Session 4: Developing a risk communication for bowel cancer screening
Sam Smith, Cancer Research UK Postdoctoral Fellow, Centre for Cancer Prevention, Queen Mary University of London, Wolfson Institute of Preventive Medicine

---

Tuesday 26th January 2016, 10.30-4pm (with very nice food) at NCVO offices, King's Cross

Session Three - Factors influencing the perception of side-effect risk information
Peter Gardner, Head of School of Psychology, University of Leeds
[slides, PDF]

Peter showed us the patient information leaflet (PIL) for a blood pressure drug which had a long list of fairly unpleasant possible side effects (adverse events) - basically a litany of potential doom and gloom. You could easily imagine that reading this would put people off taking the tablets.

One particular problem is the language used in terms of the relative frequency of these side effects, and what people understand by them.

In testing the official EU terms 'very common', 'common' etc they found that people understood that 'very common' means over 50 per cent whereas in fact it actually refers to 'more than 10 per cent' of people taking the medication. In fact I tested this out later that evening in a group of human-computer interaction experts with whom I was having dinner (on our project which is about making medical devices safer) and they agreed that 'very common' would be more than 50%, as do I (even though I'm fairly familiar with PILs and know what they're referring to).

People actually greatly inflate the risks thanks to the use of these unclear words.

Peter and his team have done a bit of testing via a pop-up on a cancer charity page, which invited website visitors to take part. It was slow going as only around 15 people completed the survey each month so it took ages to get enough to start doing some number crunching. Note that participants were self-selected (visiting that particular website, presumably wanting information and likely to be quite motivated... a large proportion of them also turned out to be educated to degree level)

They tested the effects of stating the risk of side effects as verbal descriptoers, percentages, frequency statements and combinations of these.

For example, "If 100 people take this medicine then 3 would get constipation" (they also looked at 'would' and words like 'will' vs 'may' but there weren't significant differences on that).

Verbal descriptions such as 'common' or 'rare' produced markedly less accurate risk estimations on their own though percentages performed quite well, though less good for things that were lower risk.

People preferred combination statements such as "affects 1 in 500 people (0.2%)" ['affects more than 1 in 10 patients is known as a 'frequency band'].

I wondered, but didn't think to ask, how this information affects people's behaviour if they experience these side effects - do they take them less seriously because they're 'just' a consequence of the medication, so ignore them, or do they monitor themselves for the onset of anything a bit worrying.

Fortunately both NICE (National Institute for Health and Care Excellence) and EMA (European Medicines Agency) are fans of some sort of combination - words and numbers. However this is based more on consensus rather than evidence, because everyone thinks it's a good idea (it probably is but doesn't have a particularly strong evidence base as yet). What is the best combination?


There's certainly a possibility of verbal descriptors having a framing effect on people's understanding but what's particularly clear is that people don't even share understanding of the same risk descriptors. They also want to test with other medications (after all there's also an emotional response to certain types of treatments - you might be pretty relaxed about ibuprofens for muscular pain but much more tense about something that's meant to be keeping your blood pressure normal) and also, partly in light of the presentation earlier on the day about health literacy (session one), they want to test numeracy levels and look at other individual differences. Also to investigate the effect on actual behaviour

See also
Berry DC, Knapp P and Raynor DK (2002) Provision of information about drug side-effects to patients Lancet Mar 9;359 (9309): 853-4

---

Session Four - Developing a risk communication for bowel cancer screening
Sam Smith @SGSmith_87, Cancer Research UK Postdoctoral Fellow, Centre for Cancer Prevention, Queen Mary University of London, Wolfson Institute of Preventive Medicine
[slides, PDF]

The NHS' Bowel Cancer Screening programme got going in 2008 and involves sending people between 60 and 74 a thing to poo into and presumably send it back. This is so a faecal occult blood test can be done (blood within the poo structure, rather than bleeding). I did wonder when Sam mentioned that this involves putting a small poo sample on card whether people were actually carding their poo at home, but I think not!

This collection is accompanied by a booklet that explains what the test aims to do and what's involved and they wanted to test how well it was understood. One measure of readability is the Flesch-Kincaid measure which looks at sentence and word length and for comparison the Harvard Law Review is about 30, The Sun newspaper is 76 and the NHS Bowel info is 62. 


Interestingly (depressingly) there's a strong correlation between affluence and the returning of a kit - this can mean a danger of introducing inequalities in screening for bowel cancer because only those who return are being screened. Obviously they don't want this to be the 'fault' of the booklet, where people can't understand what's being asked of them and what it all means.

They also did a study where they got people to read the booklet and at various points asked them to 'think aloud' so that they could record people's impressions, and comprehension. In one example someone misunderstood the phrase 'about one in 20 people in the UK will develop bowel cancer in their lifetime' to mean 'that's one in four of the population, isn't it?'. People struggled to get the gist of the facts-based booklet - there were too many facts, some not really that relevant and some text had too much scientific detail.

They also tested the development of an overview booklet (to give people a 'gist' of what's going on). In this document they used more sign posting to help people find their way through it, and also used vernacular language (bowel instead of colorectal). They also called it a 'two minute' guide but someone suggested that that might imply the recommended time to read and might put people off who wanted more info, or felt they'd take longer to read it. They also rejected 'a simple guide' as that might be a bit patronising.

Although their 'gist' leaflet was well understood it arrived with the 'facts' document and the results indicated that the gist leaflet didn't appear to change people's intentions about screening, even if they had more knowledge about it, so no real difference in uptake. One thing they'd like to do is test the gist leaflet as a standalone thing.

Communicating Risk (pt 1) - Patient Information Forum event: health literacy and data visualisation sessions

Sorry for any typos, written in haste before heading off to see chums so am just getting it up online and will correct any errors later :) This is just my notes from the first two sessions as I'm about to get on a train.

---

Last Tuesday I went to PiF (Patient Information Forum)'s event on communicating risk in health information (you can download the presentation slides). It was very good and inspiring and I thought I'd type up some of my notes from the first couple of sessions. 

Incidentally I retweeted this picture a year or so ago which I think is interesting, on the use of everyday words and how they can be misunderstood (although jargon words are often incomprehensible they do have the advantage of heralding that you might not understand them, whereas an everyday word might make you falsely believe that you have - in a way plain English might actually cause more problems!). I've written about this elsewhere on this blog.

From a paper about communicating climate change, PhysicsToday 2011

Tuesday 26th January 2016, 10.30-4pm (with very nice food) at NCVO offices, King's Cross

Session One - Janet Solla, Community Health and Learning Foundation
The first session was from CHLF and it touched on a topic I'm particularly interested in - people being able to understand information about health matters, including the language used.
[slides, PDF]

She talked about the sheer numbers of people with very poor basic literacy and abysmal mathematical literacy (numeracy), and how there's less stigma about being vaguely innumerate ("I'm no good with numbers, me") compared with that for being unable to read. Confidence is also an issue - if you're feeling that you know less than everyone else you're perhaps less likely to pluck up the courage to ask and get help.

There was a sad example of someone with a problematic cough whose GP referred him for a hospital X-ray, but on arriving at the hospital he was presented with signs saying Oncology, Paediatrics, Pathology, Radiology, Gynaecology etc but nothing saying 'X-ray'. So he went home and didn't get it done.

People who have lower levels of health literacy may also find it harder to engage with decisions about their healthcare - another example was given of a gardener that might be invited for a knee replacement operation in summer (when it would be better for them to have this non-urgent surgery and the recovery period in winter as summer's a busier time).

Similarly it's usually the well-engaged and literate (or health-literate) who get involved in consultations about service changes, so there's poorer representation of people who aren't generic middle class.

She also gave an example of a patient who was told that his blood test was positive and who took this to mean that all was well so was baffled when the doctor began talking about treatments. A woman receiving chemotherapy infused into one arm (which happened to be the same side as the breast cancer for which she was having the treatment) became distressed when the infusion site was switched to the opposite arm - worried that the drugs wouldn't get across to the other side.

This also made me realise how difficult it is for someone who is super-literate to imagine the many ways in which their kindly interventions might fail, and how things might be misunderstood. Training and awareness may be needed.

I thought of the recent news story that medical student applications tend to come from the most privileged pool of people and risks future healthcare teams that aren't representative of a lot of the people they're serving. The speaker, who does run training and awareness sessions for healthcare professionals about health literacy, pointed out an example of a doctor who'd felt that 'dumbing down' information for people was patronising (no, making that information accessible to more people is a good thing, it can be made clearer, not dumbing down) but sadly another thought that if people weren't prepared to learn to read etc then it was their own fault. This is a worrying attitude.

Even those of us who are plentifully literate might be marinated in fear when we find we're in a hospital being given bad news. It's easy to forget important information if you don't write it down (or are unable to, or didn't have the planning ability to remember to bring pen and paper).

Session Two - Eluned Hughes, Breast Cancer Now (formed from merger of Breakthrough Breast Cancer and Breast Cancer Campaign)
[slides, PDF]

This was a great session on using data visualisation to explain risks, particularly related to the risks and benefits of breast cancer screening for women - what should they be told about screening? Eluned's team use 'icon arrays' (think of lots of those little men and women icons that you find on the front of loo doors) which let them show numbers of people affected by a particular thing, and how taking an intervention (or not) might affect those numbers.

Eg 200 icons showing women in a population, as a 20x10 grid, then make 15 of them blue (scattered among them rather than the last 15 in your grid, the scattering can also be used to indicate randomness of breast cancer incidence) and then add a red one to indicate that in every 200 women 1 extra might experience a particular problem if they take this drug or don't take that one.

She also stressed the importance of talking in absolute numbers rather than relative risk (nothing wrong with both, but need absolute) and to make sure that if you use percentages that you also have the "17 in 200" explanation there too. Also keep your denominator (the 200 in the previous example) the same, so you're not talking about different things which adds confusion.

Eluned also thought that these data visualisations didn't have to be too shiny, nothing wrong with keeping things simple and perhaps even a little rough around the edges, don't overengineer. She also recommended actively using words like 'roughly' and 'about' to highlight the uncertainty of data.

Their visualisations are tested for understanding with various audiences including people with breast cancer (as well as experts in screening and risk communications). David Spiegelhalter was speaking later in the day and he thought these icon arrays were a clear way of communicating risk information.

Breast Cancer Now use a mixture of online and printed tools to reach different audiences. I piped up in the Q&A that when working at Diabetes UK we'd surveyed people and found that many of them were given our information by their nurses rather than contacting us directly for info, so if you're thinking about how to reach your target audience you can struggle to do that if you're not also working with the gatekeepers.

There were some good questions from the audience about how you recruit people for testing, how you evaluate the impact, what the survey questions might include (and if people's knowledge is tested or if they just like and understand the information), what decisions did the people make after using this information and is the tool available in languages other than English. Alas I made note of the questions but not the answers, and I'm just about heading out the door... sorry!

PubMed is not for beginners... well, OK, maybe. Making sense of medical research.

Recently I've seen this image (from BasicBiologyBabe on Facebook) crop up a fair bit on 'skeptic Twitter' (of which I'm a member). We are the people who argue with those who claim that [X] can diagnose or cure [Y] despite no good evidence that it can. We also report misleading advertising to Advertising Standards Authority or Trading Standards etc and sometimes get claims removed and dodgy websites closed. As skeptic blogger Guy Chapman once put it we're at the intersection between science advocacy and consumer protection.

While I do try to be polite to people whose opinion differs from mine I find it pretty difficult not to be terse with people who are putting others' health at risk with their bad advice!

Transcript: "PUBMED IS NOT FOR BEGINNERS. Browsing abstracts on PubMed does not take the place of a university education in a scientific field. Experience and knowledge of context are essential to comprehension as well as reading the WHOLE GODDAMNED PAPER. Stop being dicks. - Scientists Everywhere [fb.com/BasicBiologyBabe]"

Clearly there's a big element of truth to this 'PubMed is not for beginners' idea,  but I'm not sure that this sort of advice will convince the people who might need to be convinced.

People who are promoting dangerous or ridiculous treatments or diagnostic tests (think antivaxxers, homeopathy shills, live blood analysis, tuning fork therapy etc) occasionally cherry-pick a PubMed abstract and promote the idea that it supports their favoured treatment or test. I've collected a few examples in this Storify, some are pretty funny but it's sad to think people are being so badly misled. They seem a lost cause to be honest ;)

But what about non-specialist people who have a health condition, or care for someone who does, who want to find out more? 

I'm hoping to go to an event on 'Communicating risk in health information' (London, Tue 26 Jan) which is for the subgroup of science communicator types who communicate health information. This is partly about helping non-specialist people to make sense of statistical information by helping those communicating it to express it more clearly.

A straightforward translation of 'science' to 'plain English' for an abstract (even for a whole article) will never be sufficient because an abstract or article cannot be read in isolation. Readers need to consider how it fits in with what's already known on a topic and also to know what conclusions can reasonably be drawn from a particular type of study design (how many people were involved, were they randomised etc) and just knowing lots about 'biology', for example, isn't enough. In fact it might give people a false impression of knowing / understanding.

A 2011/12 project, 'Patients Participate!', looked at ways in which patients could be more involved with health information providers (for example, medical research charities) and found that patients and the public wanted the following, which are all very reasonable -

• To find out about the latest medical research and how it relates to their health
• Accessible, plain English, searchable summaries of research articles that clearly communicate the implications and limitations of the research findings
• Information they can trust (credible, reliable and unbiased)
• To engage with researchers and research funders
• To be involved
• To learn more about research because theyare interested and they want to be better informed about the latest developments
• To help researchers be better communicators

It's hard enough to provide a dedicated abstract translation service, let alone one that takes all this into account and I don't think we've comprehensively solved that problem sustainably, though different health charities do this in their own ways.

Here's a comment I left under the picture on Facebook in response to people asking 'well OK, but where can we find this info then?' -

"Where possible I'd suggest, for medical articles, asking reputable health charities for their take on a study. Many of them have dedicated science communicators (of varying job titles) whose job it is to (a) explain the content of new studies AND (b) put it in context with other information known about the topic, as well as highlighting what conclusions can reasonably drawn from a particular study design etc.

There are certainly many efforts made to 'translate' scientific abstracts into plain English but by itself this might not be very useful, as there is usually a requirement for some background information needed, in order to know how much weight to give to some new finding."

 To which I'd add this patient-facing resource (there are other suggestions in this PDF (also linked above))

NHS Choices' Behind the Headlines - stories covered in the press might be spot on but often the end result can be that the study is a bit overhyped. The text of the newspaper article can be very good and clear, but let down by a dramatic headline. While we might all hope that everyone ignores the headline and reads the entire article I think we'd agree that's unlikely. Behind the Headlines considers the context of the story and explains the science for a non-specialist audience. It's fab.