Episode 69 – How to be strategic when communicating science

This week Jen and Michael had a wonderful conversation with Professor John Besley about strategic science communication. John studies public opinion about science and scientists’ opinions about the public. His goal is to help science communicators be more effective by helping them consider evidence-based and strategic communication choices. He also does research aimed at understanding how peoples’ views about decision-makers and decision processes (i.e., trustworthiness and fairness beliefs) affect their overall perceptions of science and technology (S&T).

John has published more than 100 peer-reviewed journal articles and book chapters. This work has appeared in high-ranking journals including Risk Analysis, Science Communication, Public Understanding of Science, and the Journal of Risk Research as well as a range of edited volumes. He has received funding from the National Science Foundation, the United States Department of Agriculture, and a range of foundations. He is the associate editor for risk communication for Risk Analysis.

In addition to his regular research, John was the lead author for the 2014, 2016, 2018, and 2020 National Science Board chapters on public attitudes and knowledge about science and technology. Michigan State University awarded John its William J. Beal Outstanding Faculty Award in 2021 and the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) honored him as a fellow in 2018. In 2013, the Association for Education in Journalism and Mass Communication awarded him the Hillier-Krieghbaum Under 40 Award.

You can follow John and learn more about his work here:

Transcript

Jen (00:00:20)
Hello and welcome to Let’s Talk SciComm, a podcast by the University of Melbourne Science Communication Teaching Team. I’m Associate Professor Jen Martin and my wonderful co-host is Dr Michael Wheeler and we believe that science isn’t finished until it’s communicated.

Jen (00:00:45)
Hello everybody. I’m Jen and I am delighted to welcome you to another episode of Let’s Talk SciComm, my favourite place to be.
And I get to be with one of my very favourite people. G’day Michael. How are things?

Michael (00:00:59)
G’day, Jen.
I’m doing very well today.

Jen (00:00:59)
Ahh yes.
I got the g’day. I got the g’day, the Irish g’day.

Michael (00:01:00)
It’s, it’s not often that I caught saying g’day, but it’s a special occasion Jen. We have [a] very special guest today.
And I think the reason why today’s guest is very special is normally our you know, our podcast has been running for about two years now. And normally, we invite friends and colleagues and people within our circle that we know to come on the podcast.
But this time, our special guest reached out to us as someone who is working in science communication, but as a researcher who has heard of the podcast and thought we had some mutual areas of interest.
So we were delighted to hear that someone else out there has heard of the podcast. So welcome to the podcast. I would like to introduce you to Ellis N. Brandt Professor, Professor John Besley. Welcome, John. Thanks for reaching out to us.

John (00:01:57)
Thanks. Thanks for having me. I appreciate it.
Of course I’ve heard of the podcast.

Michael (00:02:00)
Excellent. And it’s especially exciting because you found us from internationally.
You are based at Michigan State University. And every time I visit a new campus, and I’ve never been to Michigan State University, but every time I visit a new campus, I kind of rank the campuses in my head in terms of how nice they are.
How nice is Michigan State University?

John (00:02:23)
It’s beautiful this time of year. The leaves are in full color. My lawn is covered in them, but it’s in full color. We have a nice river going right down the center of campus.
It’s one of these big American agricultural universities, right? And so, it’s big. I mean, we have 50,000 students. And we’re right in the middle of Michigan, a little flat down here, got to go north to get some of the hills.
But Michigan’s a beautiful, beautiful state surrounded by lakes on three sides. It’s a pretty fantastic place.

Michael (00:02:48)
I’m sold. I think. Jen, what do you reckon?
Should we head over to Michigan State University?

Jen (00:02:53)
I think we absolutely need to organise you know, a roving podcast tour.
John, could we come and visit you sometime?

John (00:02:59)
Absolutely. We got a, we have a radio station right in the building. We have all the equipment you need. We can do all kinds of stuff from here.

Michael (00:03:05)
Ok, well, I’m taking notes. We might return to that.
But John, it’s really great to have you on, because I think you offer a slightly different perspective to what we’ve normally spoken about, a different perspective on science communication, which is really really great.
So for the listeners, John is probably one of the most active researchers in the area of science communication.
He’s published over 100 peer review journal articles and book chapters. John is a fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science. And he’s won several notable awards as well for his work, including the William J. Beal Outstanding Faculty Award in 2021, and the Hillier-Krieghbaum Under 40 Award from the Association for Education in Journalism and Mass Communication.

John (00:03:53)
That was a couple of years ago. But you know, I’m getting closer to the 50 now. But you know, it was a nice thing to, to be appreciated.

Michael (00:04:00)
Yes, excellent, excellent. And secondly, I think another reason why you have a bit of a unique perspective is that previously on the podcast, we’ve talked a lot about individual-level skills, things like being concise, storytelling, listening, and so on.
But John, you take the perspective that scientists can be good at these individual-level skills but still make poor strategic choices. I think that’s really interesting.
So that ties into your goal then, which is to help science communicators be more effective by helping them consider evidence-based and strategic communication choices. So really looking forward to getting into that in a bit more detail.
I also should mention that John has recently published a book on this topic called Strategic Science Communication with Anthony Dudo. So umm, can’t wait to discuss these ideas a little bit more.
But before I do, I’d love to take it back a little bit John and ask you, can you tell us a little bit more about your journey into science communication?

John (00:05:07)
Absolutely, yeah. So I went to journalism school, thought I would be a journalist. But decided, like after my first year of journalism school, I’m going to go do a public policy degree. ‘Cause I really, I really like the sort of political side of journalism.
And particularly, I was really interested in science journalism and environmental journalism. And so I did a policy degree thinking I would go back to journalism. But I didn’t. I found myself working in government. Working in government, working for Environment Canada, a Canadian.
It was a little bit frustrating, because my journalist friends, my other friends, they would sort of point to the government and say, “Well, why aren’t you guys doing something? Why aren’t you guys doing more for the environment? Don’t you have any guts?”
And our view was, we would be happy to. So happy to do more if someone would just ask us to, if there was sort of this political will from society to help us make these choices.
And so I was, I started getting interested in public opinion. As these things happened, somehow I found myself applying to some PhD programs at Ottawa, where I was, is only about four hours from Cornell University in upstate New York.
And Cornell’s you know, it’s a great university. And they happen to have some folks who study science communication, environmental communication. So somehow I found myself at Cornell doing a PhD. Got married, and we both moved down to the States.
And at that time, it was the Bush administration. So there wasn’t a ton of money for environmental research. But I found myself studying public opinion about genetically modified food. And I started studying public perception of cancer clusters and public meetings.
And it turns out the concepts, the theories are all pretty similar. And I did that for about 10 years. I got a faculty job in South Carolina, did that.

And I was really studying public opinion about science. I got interested in especially trust and trustworthiness and how… and sort of the dimensions of that. And then in 2010, or 20 somewhere in there, around there, I got access to some survey data. Rather than survey data about the public, survey data about scientists and what they think about communication.
That got us into science communication training and working with foundations and all these different groups that are ultimately interested in how do we help scientists be better communicators.

Michael (00:07:04)
That’s really interesting. So as you know, I guess research is a process of you know, you follow questions and it sounds like you followed the path that led you to science communication through research. So yeah, that’s fascinating.

Jen (00:07:18)
Yeah, and I love the fact that you’ve kind of taken it from both sides. You know, thinking about both sides of that coin of what do we need to do in order to promote more successful, positive, trustworthy relationships with our audiences?
But of course, empowering scientists to be able to do that well. You know, they’re two distinct, but obviously really closely related things.
So John, I guess I really want to hear more about the book then. Was the motivation here your sense just that, I mean, the reality is that scientists are very busy. They have a lot of demands.
I’m sure most scientists absolutely believe that they want to do this well. And they can see that communicating effectively with different audiences is important.
But our whole experience has been that very few scientists get the opportunity to have the training that they need. Is that kind of where this book is coming from?

John (00:08:08)
Yeah, and so I think we started… So the first question we asked was, we sort of got into this, the first types of question we asked were, why don’t scientists engage more?
And we did a little bit of that research. And we found that you know, the reason they want to engage, there was sometimes this idea that scientists are afraid of communicating, or afraid of engaging, or think that they shouldn’t. But we just haven’t found that.
We found there’s lots of scientists who would love to be more active when it comes to communication. And so then we started to get into well, what would quality look like? Stop going about quantity and start thinking about how do we increase the quality of the communication that’s out there?
And as part of that, I studied trust. And so one of the things that you know, if you study a topic and you hear people talk about trust and trust in science in the media and stuff. If you study it, it’s like oh, that’s not quite, it’s not quite how I would talk about it.
That’s not quite how… And so we started to think well, how is the evidence that I try to create, that my colleagues try to create around how communication affects work, how communication works?
To what degree is that part of the training programs? And so we had this opportunity to study a lot of the training programs with that. And we saw that a lot of it was you know, speak clearly. That’s a wonderful… People should generally try to speak clearly, or tell stories, or engage in dialogue.
In our perspective, we’re like, that’s great. Speak clearly about what? Tell stories about what? Have dialogue about what? To what end?
And so trying to go from those sort of very individual-level skills that are great, but they’re just skills. And to well, how can we give guidance on well, when you speak clearly, don’t just speak clearly about hey, here’s what I found. Maybe share information about – here’s the benefits of something. Here’s the risks of something. That’s not too hard.
But maybe the norm. Like what’s the norms? What [do] other people think about something? Maybe it’s, we need to focus more attention on what can you do, which is like a self-efficacy thing.
If you’re talking about trust, rather than saying “Oh, we need to build trust”, and getting really frustrated about why don’t people trust us? We can look at the research and say, “Well, what is trust?”
On one hand, trust is a behavior. On the other hand, trust perceptions are — Do people think you’re caring? Do people think you’re honest? Do people think that you have competence? Those are things you can communicate. If you have 600 words, 60 seconds. You can say something about your motive.

Michael (00:10:18)
Hmm. Yeah, it’s really interesting. You know, is it a bit of a pitfall for scientists that they don’t necessarily do strategic science communication?
Like if you’re good at all of these individual level skills, but you can still make poor strategic choices. What would an example of that look like?

John (00:10:36)
Absolutely. So let’s imagine that a scientist is really angry about something and they get, share their anger and they tell stories that get other people angry.
Well getting people angry doesn’t mean they’re going to do the behaviour that you might want to happen. And so it’s about thinking about what, given the thing that I want to happen, the behaviour I want to happen, I want this policymaker to consider this evidence, I want this community member to consider this evidence.
What are the things that make it more likely that’s going to happen? And you can spend all your time, you can spend your whole time like “Here’s what I found in my science” and never get to the part of “and here’s what we need to do”.

Jen (00:11:09)
I feel like John, these are all things that when you speak to them, it’s just absolutely obvious that these are things we need to take into account, that we need to think about, that we need to be really clear on.
But I mean, I’m just sort of thinking about what are the barriers? Is it lack of time? Is it lack of knowledge? Is it people not understanding that there’s this whole research literature out there to inform our practice?
Like, I’m just sort of thinking you know, it all just sounds so sensible.

John (00:11:41)
So it’s an interesting question. So I think one of the big challenges is that when people think of communication, they often default into education mode.
And they think, I’m going to teach people… So we say, I’m going to communicate my science, rather than I’m going to communicate in the context of my science in order to… right?
And so it’s just so easy to fall into that… I mean, we all love education. We all spent so much of our time in school.
Another really important goal, and there’s this aspect of strategy that’s always a little bit dangerous. But for example, all scientists should have a goal of changing their own behavior.
So you go into a communication context. Think, what am I going to learn so that I can make better research choices or better communication choices, right?
So again, if you don’t think ahead of time, and make this a day of… And we almost called the book “Intentional Science Communication”. Intentional about, Oh, what’s? What am I trying to figure out? What do I need to change about, consider changing about my research?
 It’s easy just to not do it. It’s easy to just plow ahead and share the stuff that you think is interesting. Unfortunately, for whatever reason, all our training is about individual scientists.
Our… A lot of the discussion is about how do we help individual scientists? We have some research now where we’re trying to figure out, what would it be like to improve the infrastructure that’s available to a scientist who wants to be a little more?
You know, how do we make sure that they have somebody to help them with strategy? How do we make sure that we have somebody to help them really, sort of more of a coaching model, rather than a, like a train a whole bunch of people and hope for the best model?
Which is what you see in like regular organisations that aren’t science.

Michael (00:13:13)
Yeah, it’s really interesting. It kind of reminds me of my own research field in physical activity. Obviously, there’s a goal of getting people to increase their physical activity and you can look at it from different levels. You’ve got the individual level, but then you’ve got social and ecological levels to it as well. So it just makes absolute sense that the same applies to science communication.
So yeah, curious to ask a little bit more about some of those systemic influences then, you know, what are some of the yeah, the systemic kind of influences that determine whether someone is going to be able to communicate effectively or not?

John (00:13:51)
Yeah, and so this is absolutely research we’re still doing right now. But the thing that I’m hearing a lot, the scientists that I think seem to have the best opportunity to do what sounds like effective communication are the ones that find themselves in organisations.
And it doesn’t have to be their own organisation, right? So I might be a university scientist, but then maybe I’m partnering with a government agency or a non-governmental organisation, and that they have some ability to coordinate and you know, maybe build relationships with community that the scientist wants to work with.
And so that it’s… To me, that it’s that finding… how do you find organisations within the scientific community or next to the scientific community that scientists can work through?
It’s, a lot of the scientists we talk to, they’re so busy. They’re so hard pressed to… They want to be good communicators, but they just don’t have access to help.
I mean people, communication’s hard. Effective communication is hard, and to expect scientists to do that on top of everything else.

Jen (00:14:54)
Yeah. And I think well, first of all, I couldn’t agree more that effective and strategic communication is really hard.
Michael and I always joke that’s why we have jobs. If it were easy, you know? People wouldn’t need us, but…

John (00:15:04)
I see that too.

Jen (00:15:05)
But I think one of the things you just pointed out there is this idea of time. You know, and that I don’t know anybody who’s not drowning in workload and really quite struggling to do all the things they’re meant to do.
Certainly, the people we interact with in our academic setting. And so I think people who are very passionate and potentially enjoy sharing their work do some of the things that you’re talking about.
But where I see things falling down, and one of the things that you focus on in the book is around evaluation. You can keep going out and telling your stories, giving your talks, going on the radio, writing your blog. Whatever it is, you can keep doing that.
And potentially, you can have some impact, and you can have quite a lot of enjoyment. But the thing that takes time is the evaluation. How do we effectively evaluate the impact of what we’re doing?
And I sort of wonder if that comes also down to some institutional support. I mean, what would you say?
Someone who’s listening to this podcast saying, “Look, oh my gosh, I really love communicating about my work. I think I’m reasonably good at it. But I don’t know that I’m particularly strategic.”
I mean, evaluation is around, how can we get better? How can we improve? Is this actually working in the way that we hope it is? What are your thoughts on evaluation?

John (00:16:15)
Again, you’re absolutely right that that doesn’t just happen. We need help with that.
And almost ironically, one of the things we’ve got from interviewing most of the trainers is none of the trainers even get to evaluate their training.
And it’s… I mean, at some point, all of this is there just isn’t enough money out there. We say we want to communicate well, and we can do as best we can on a shoestring.
But if we really want to take communication seriously at some point as a scientific community, we need to figure out how to put money behind that.
And again, that’s another. And this, when we get into this infrastructure thing, that’s kind of where we’re going is like maybe the behavior we need is how do I develop a strategy to get scientists to put more resources into communication? Because in other words, we’re just, we’re a little bit just spinning our wheels.

Jen (00:17:03)
But I think that also has to come from institutional support because… So I had the real privilege of not long ago attending an international symposium about how to embed communication training for scientists into research and academic institutions.
So there were a lot of Europeans there. The conference was in Europe, but there were also some people from the US, from South Africa, different parts of Asia. There were a few of us there from Australia.
And the universal experience was a lack of support, funding, investment in communication training. So although it’s very easy to make the case that for any organisation, you’re going to achieve all of these wonderful things if you equip your scientists with skills and also give them time to do this well and whatever money they’re going to need.
Yet there’s just this complete lack of flow on that for, everybody was telling the same story. You know, “My institution likes it when I do this stuff, but they don’t give me time for it. They don’t give me money for it. And I haven’t had any training in it”. Which is just nonsensical, really.

John (00:18:03)
So I agree that training is great, but I do think we need to take a step even further back than training.
It needs to be like, it’s like again, scientists, we can never train a scientist well enough that they can do evidence-based strategy, right?
Like there’s a reason that a whole multi-billion dollar communication industry, for good or ill, I mean, they do all kinds of crazy things. But conceptually at least, there’s a reason that we have professional communicators.
We’re only going to get so far if we think of it as science communication is about training scientists versus putting scientists within a framework where they have access to skilled writers, skilled technicians as well as strategists, somebody who’s there to push them.
I spend a lot of time talking to scientists and they’ll say like, “Well, what’s your goal?” “I want people to feel awe and wonder about science.” And I have to say, “Well, why do you want them to feel awe and wonder? What do you hope will happen?”
Or “I want to correct misinformation”. Great, “Why do you want to correct misinformation? What do you think will happen if you correct misinformation?”
And then once we finally get to what they want to happen, now we can say, “Well, is correcting misinformation?…” Misinformation about what, first of all? But “Is that the only path there?”
“Is awe and wonder?” If awe and wonder… Well, I want kids to choose STEM careers. Was awe and wonder the only objective that we need to get kids to choose STEM careers? Don’t they need to see that STEM careers are going to benefit them, that they have the ability to do STEM, other things beyond just sort of the top of mind things that scientists think when they think goals.

Michael (00:19:28)
Hmm. Yeah, it’s really interesting ’cause I guess it’s, it’s not necessarily top of mind. You do need to kind of reflect on that and what you can learn from that process of reflection I think can be really insightful then to your communication from what it sounds like.

John (00:19:42)
Yeah, and it’s not always fun to be like the person who’s telling scientists, “But why do you want to do that?” “Why?… Why did we just do that?” “Why are we putting money into this and not that?”
Like it takes somebody, and this is others. I’ll go back to the bias question, but also a power question. A lot of the people who’re doing science communication don’t have that power to push back on this powerful scientist and say, “Like, no, that’s a terrible idea. That may not be the greatest idea. What if?”
And so that ability to, to really, to be a real thinking partner to scientists and help them make these choices.

Michael (00:20:17)
Hmm, yeah. That’s really interesting. I mean, it sounds like you’ve got a wealth of experience in this.
And I guess when you speak about strategy and evaluation, that’s really kind of long-term thinking, isn’t it?
It’s about not viewing science communication as say, you know, isolated events. But it’s about connecting them and it’s about a process of kind of continual learning.
So yeah, I think, I mean, the fact that you’ve been in this area researching this for a long period of time gives you a really unique perspective.
And I guess I wanted to ask a bit of a forward-looking question now. Where do you see the field of science communication heading?
And what advice would you give to our listeners who are aspiring science communicators or who are already accomplished science communicators that want to kind of position themselves well, strategically for that future?

John (00:21:14)
Yeah, and so I do think we’re getting better. We are getting better at thinking about goals and getting better at thinking, sort of getting past that sort of knee-jerk reaction that makes it feel like strategy’s wrong.
People are starting to [question] like okay, dialogue is great, but dialogue for what? And how do we make dialogue ethical?
And so I think we are gradually getting more sophisticated and moving towards that and starting to get into, I mean, I don’t know, it’s sort of self-serving, but I feel like we’re getting into these broader discussions.
I’m lucky to be part of some of these discussions in the US of getting to like well, what would infrastructure look like? What would next, the next version of training look like? Starting to see those discussions.
And then in terms of what I would tell to people getting into this is being open… So it’s nice as a scientist to say, “Oh, I’m just doing it for the science. I want to understand something.”
But nobody devotes their life to studying climate change ’cause they don’t care about climate change, right?
And so being reflexive, being thoughtful about what am I really hoping to do? And how can I do that in a way that’s honest to what I would want to achieve but still ethical, still lets me do great science.
And so I think it’s really about figuring out, not falling into the trap of just communicating for the sake of communicating.
And again, communication can be a lot of fun. And that’s okay. But then there’s this higher level thing which is, can it be satisfying? Can you feel like you’re accomplishing something? That’s more than just fun.
And so how to get to that point of not just thinking of it as something we do for fun, but something that we do that gives us this deep personal satisfaction I think is, is what I would encourage folks.
Also, don’t do it alone. Don’t reinvent wheels. Find people to work with. Like find people who share your goals and work with them rather than…
It’s, It’s a lot. It is, and I really appreciate that long in your perspective. It is a long-term process. And so if you’re thinking in that way, how do I find a team of folks that I’m working on this for the long haul?

Michael (00:23:05)
Yeah, that’s great advice. Not just doing it for fun, but also kind of having some other priorities in mind.
Something we do for fun, John… Is that towards the end of our, to round out our discussion, we’d like to ask some fun questions. Some lighthearted, quick questions just to round out our chat.

John (00:23:28)
I’m ready.

Michael (00:23:38)
So the first question that I would like to ask is if you had to pick an alternative career to what you’re doing, what would it be?

John (00:23:46)
So I think, I thought, I’ve been thinking about this. I thought I know you guys asked this. I think I’m going to go with like a food historian or a food anthropologist. I just think like, I think you like food too if I’m not mistaken.

Michael (00:23:58)
Yes, I love food.

John (00:24:00)
The idea of like being able to study all the weird foods around the world and that I just, that seems like that would be pretty awesome.

Jen (00:24:06)
As long as you get to eat the foods while studying them right?
There has to be eating involved.

John (00:24:08)
Oh, absolutely.

John (00:24:12)
Eating and like visiting the farms, visiting the, the breweries, all of that.
I think it’s really important to get out in the field, not…

Michael (00:24:20)
So umm, bonus question John.
What’s the weirdest food you’ve ever eaten?

John (00:24:24)
The weirdest food I’ve ever eaten. That’s… I have no idea. I mean I’ve, I’m sure I’ve eaten insects, I’ve eaten…

Michael (00:24:30)
It’s pretty weird.

John (00:24:30)
I always, I still think, it was just in Rhode Island. And I still think eating oysters is super weird. I don’t know why. Why people eat oysters? Who thought that was a good idea?

Jen (00:24:42)
Next question could involve food, but wouldn’t necessarily I think.
How would you describe your current work in three words?

John (00:24:51)
So communication, strategy and oh… a third one, trust probably.
I still like doing trust research, so I think that’s still sort of core to my, what I do.

Jen (00:25:02)
Love it.

Michael (00:25:03)
Great. Bit of a departure from food with that last question, but I’m going to bring it back to food now, John.
You’re hosting a dinner party. In addition to your other friends, you can invite along one scientist, living or from history. Who would you invite and why?

John (00:25:19)
So George Gerbner. I don’t know if you guys know George Gerbner. But so, he was the longtime Dean of the Annenberg School of Communication. He was the longtime editor of the Journal of Communication, started the Cultivation theory world and the Cultural Indicators Project really on this like long term communication effects of media. Did some of the first studies of how scientists were perceived.
Also super interesting guy. He died in 2005, just was when I was a grad student. But so he, he was Hungarian Jew, flees Europe, goes to school in the US, finishes journalism school, joins the army. Somehow ends up fighting with the resistance in Eastern Europe.
And then he comes back and and he does all this amazing communication stuff. So I never, I never got to, to… I saw him give a talk once. I don’t know, I Think George Gerbner.

Jen (00:26:04)
He sounds amazing.
But I do have to ask. Do you think he’d expect oysters?

John (00:26:11)
I kinda… Yeah, I don’t know. I don’t know. I, I don’t, I don’t, I would not expect oysters.
I feel like, I feel like I, I still don’t understand why people eat those.
People love them though, so more power to them.

Jen (00:26:23)
Absolutely. Well, diverse. You know, life’s all about diversity, right?

John (00:26:26)
Absolutely.

Jen (00:26:27)
So kind of sticking with the food dinner party theme. We love to ask our guests John, about work life balance.
Pretty much everyone we speak to has the you know, very good fortune of doing work they love. But of course we all do very busy jobs. Tell us about a key for you in maintaining some semblance of balance.

John (00:26:46)
I have a pretty good job. My university appreciates the work that I do. You know, I hear these scientists who feel like that they’re not, don’t get credit for doing communication engagement stuff.
I do. people really appreciate when I… And so there’s that. And yeah, I mean, I live in a beautiful place. I try to, I purposely live in a place that I can be outside, that I can do that sort of stuff.
I think it is, I’ve made choices over the years about what I value. I cannot, I mean, I read on the weekends. I try not to come into the office on the weekends. I try, I might read in the evening. I don’t tend to write in the evenings very often.
That being said, I get up and I’m here, you know, pretty early in the morning. And so I just make it.
It goes back to strategy, intentionality. I try to make intentional choices about how much I work, when I work. I try, I don’t do a lot of meetings ’cause I don’t love… I don’t find it’s a great use of anyone’s time. I started thinking about like, if this was a company and we were all billing by the hour, how much would this meeting cost?

Jen (00:27:44)
Yep.

Michael (00:27:45)
That’s interesting. I feel like it kind of leads on to the last question that I’d like to ask. Which is, for our listeners out there, if you had to pick one top tip, a practical piece of advice for being a more strategic science communicator, what would your top tip be?

John (00:28:02)
I feel like I already said the goal things. So I don’t want to say the goal.
I mean, at the end of the day, like know what you were trying like, it’s that intentionality, like know why you’re doing it. Don’t just do it for the… don’t just do things for the sake of doing things. Like you have to know why you’re doing things.
It’s true of research too. Why are you doing the research? Is it just because something was interesting or do you have?… Is the research helping you answer a question or helping it?
So that just that intentionality, goal setting. Like to me, that’s I don’t know, it’s kind of taken over my life a little bit. I worry a little bit about it,
But it just seems like it starts to apply to everything. But I do think that that is the number one thing that is, is that you can do is make sure you know why you’re doing stuff. Don’t just go along with the stuff.

Jen (00:28:42)
I mean, I think we could all be, benefit hugely from just being a bit more intentional about how we spend our time, right?
It’s so easy, particularly if you’re tired and if you’re really struggling with workload, it’s very easy to just kind of get buffeted by the winds of what’s, you know, who’s asking for the thing most loudly and how am I going to you know, get this person off my back.
And trying to keep control of email and you know, all of those things. But actually having a clear vision of yeah, what am I trying to achieve with this and then being intentional about prioritising the things that will get me to that point. I mean, I think that’s golden advice for probably everybody, everywhere, regardless of what sort of work they do.

John (00:29:19)
Absolutely. And then giving yourself some… You know, when you don’t achieve like, give yourself some slack. You know, you’re not going to, everything’s not going to go perfectly.

Michael (00:29:28)
Yep. No, that’s great advice.

Jen (00:29:29)
Yeah. Self compassion goes a long way.

John (00:29:32)
Absolutely.

Michael (00:29:34)
Excellent advice. Well John, that’s been a fascinating chat. I can’t believe we are out of time already.
But thank you for reaching out to us and for coming on the podcast today. That was really really valuable.

John (00:29:47)
I really appreciate the chance to share and I look forward to seeing you guys again somewhere.

Jen (00:29:51)
Yeah. Thanks so much, John. And I’m guaranteeing you there’s going to be a lot of people who are now immediately going to go and find themselves a copy of your book because it sounds like there’s much we could do better.

John (00:30:00)
And I’m happy to be helpful. And, and yeah, I’m sure people can find me if they need to find me.

Jen (00:30:05)
Fantastic. Thanks so much John.

John (00:30:08)
Thank you so much guys. Have a good day.

Michael (00:30:09)
Thanks John.

Michael (00:30:29)
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