Category: Uncategorized

Down the Rabbit’s Hole

Scientist on Assignment

Department of Physics Blogs
Published: September

Today was a day of prescribed distractions.

I started the day working on an article about domestication. While doing research for it, I got entirely fascinated by the process of domestication. I learned that dogs were domesticated from a now extinct population of Eurasian wolves tens of thousands of years ago. The majority of domestic animals were tamed in the mists of prehistory. Ducks, Cats, honey bees, and even silk worms were domesticated thousands of years ago.

Once I felt that I had a fair grasp on the history of domestication, I immediately decided that I needed to know more about Catholic fasting rules, if I was to continue writing my article (I promise to buy a pint for the first person to make the connection between domestication and Catholic fasting rules in the comments below). I contacted a hand full of Catholic organization to verify the facts that I was working with but none have yet contacted me back.

I finished the article. Read over it and submitted it then immediately jumped into reading a big embargoed paper that is related to my field of research. I’d really like to tell my research group about it but it is embargoed until Thursday.

Embargoing is apparently a common practice in the media. An organization (such as the AAAS in science) will send a list of potential stories out to registered journalists. The journalists will get a press release, some contact information and a date after which they can make the information known (an embargo date). This practice is good for the organizations announcing the press releases because they get a big media push on the release date from many news organizations. It is also good for journalists because they are given some time to do a good job interviewing scientists and putting together a well crafted story. Now that I’ve gotten used to it, I think the embargo system is good for science journalism.

I took a bit of time for some lunch today(my first lunch break since arriving) before heading off to an interview with a cancer company.

We’ve known for some time that cancer is not a single disease but in recent years it has become clearer and clearer that no one tumour is the same. In fact, even within a tumour there is a large community of types of tumour cells and you can’t just treat cancer by treating the most aggressive cells. As a consequence it is very unlikely that any one will ever develop a single cancer drug but rather that complicated cocktails of many different drugs will have to be used. But if everyone is different, how can doctors know the right cocktail?

The company that we met with makes “mice avatars” for cancer patients. Mice avatars are rodents that have their immune system knocked out and a piece of a patient’s tumour transplanted into them.  Since mice reproduce so quickly, soon the company has many surrogate versions of the patient’s tumour on which to test many different drug combinations. It’s a strategy that has worked well in cases when the rate of cancer growth is “just right”.

That was it for my responsibilities today but there was still time left so I got to spend the end of the day searching for interesting and exciting British scientists to potentially profile. If any one has any ideas, let me know.

Let’s be Honest

Scientist on Assignment

Department of Physics Blogs
Published: August

One week done. I’ve gotten to write five stories so far. Most of them should come out in tomorrow’s weekend edition. They’ve all been nice and short with no frills — just present the news of the science as concisely as possible. That might not be an easy task but at least it’s straight forward. I’ve covered biology, psychology and fundamental physics. As a wonderful treat, I even got to write a brief about some non-equilibrium statistical mechanics (my field), which may be accompanied by an interactive that I helped to put together.

One thing that I noticed after doing a few interviews was that I wasn’t always truly listening to the researchers. Instead I was hunting for good quotations and when I would nab one, I would scramble to scribble it down.

To make matters worse, many (not all but many) of these researchers would just natter on about details that I had already read in their papers and press releases. These people generally wouldn’t think long enough before speaking. Often they would change thought mid-sentence ruining potentially good quotations.

If I am ever interviewed by a journalist for a print piece, I will strictly adhere to the following rules:

  1. I will listen to the question.
  2. Before speaking, I will silently remind myself that journalists are looking for quotations to broadly encapsulate the point, not to have it explained to them (they’re playing dumb).
  3. I will pause to chose my words carefully.
  4. I will give a one sentence answer that includes any essential caveats.
  5. Then and only then, I will continue on to information that I think journalists will need to write their articles.

Since most scientists don’t do this, I’ve started using a strategy to drag it out from them:

  1. I’ve started recording all my interviews in their entirety — believe it or not this is slower than transcribing quotes as I hear them, since I have to go through the entire recording afterwards.
  2. I ask the question that I would like to get an answer to and listen closely to the researcher’s first answer.
  3. Once the researcher has answered, I say, “So I asked” and repeat the question followed by “If you were to encapsulate all of what you just said into a single sentence for my article, what would you say?”
  4. After I have asked all my questions, I ask if I have missed anything.
  5. I also ask, “If you could have just one quote or point made in the article, what would that be?”
  6. Finally, I ask, “Has anything bugged you or rubbed you the wrong way about the media coverage so far?”

This recipe is forward. It’s honest. It’s cooperative. Some might even call it collusive but I need the best quotation that I can get on specific points and the scientist needs to give the best answers to be quoted in a short printed account of their work. This is the way that I’ve been approaching the last few interviews that I’ve done. I’ve been trying to make it my job to create the best possible scientist-journalist interaction during interviews for the express purpose of producing publishable quotations. And as is often the case with scientists, there’s no place for subtlety.

A Sheep in Wolf’s Clothing

Scientist on Assignment

Department of Physics Blogs
Published: August

Today was all business. I got in knowing exactly who I needed to contact for the stories that I was working. By the time the newsroom started to fill, I was well on my way, which is good because my deadline got moved ahead. By the end of the day, I had finished two brief articles, which will published this weekend. They both needed a substantial working over by real journalists before they could be submitted but they got done. Tomorrow, I attend my first press conference, which should be lots of fun.

One of the stories that might not get covered is about sheepdogs herding flocks of sheep. The researchers’ model is super simple and I think that instead of writing a better blog post tonight, I will try to reproduce their algorithm.

Small World

Scientist on Assignment

Department of Physics Blogs
Published: August

Day one done.

It started off pretty slowly. I woke up early (for an academic) and caught the bus into London. While riding in, I wrote today’s first blog post and got to the FT with plenty of time to spare. I even sat in a cafe and did a bit of physics.

When I arrived in the newsroom, I was shuttled off to sign forms and and learn the content management system at the FT. This is a program that organizes the article submission and metadata. It’s all pretty cut-and-dry: it’s just html-like markup but journalists have to click buttons with a mouse in order to make the header, make an internal link, or anything else.

Going through this program seems to be journalists’ equivalent to doing a WHMIS exam for scientists: its basically common sense and you already vaguely know it all because it’s nearly the same as the household version but it’s important to that everyone does it.

Then things got busy and fun. I was dropped off on the newsroom floor and was immediately given a stack of background material on a company. In ten minutes, I had to be ready to accompany Clive Cookson on an interview. Luckily for me, a big part of the company’s R&D is focused on improving nutrient-uptake in agriculture, which is the same research that is done by the company that my Dad worked for while I was growing up. I wouldn’t be surprised if my Dad knew the CEO. In fact, the CEO is from and still farms in the small part of Canada where I was raised!

I felt completely at home. What a small world.

Getting my Ducks in a Row

Scientist on Assignment

Department of Physics Blogs
Published: August

I’m on the bus heading into London for my first full day at the FT. It’s the Tuesday after the long weekend but I’m not as rested as that might lead you to believe. Being a BSA media fellow will take me out of the lab for an entire month, which is a long time for a post-doctoral researcher. It will be entirely worth it but disappearing for such a long amount of time requires putting my house in order.

Over the weekend, I had to write up a brief contribution to the Supporting Material of a collaborator’s thesis, re-submit a manuscript and complete a response to referee reports. Usually, this is all just mundane business but I doubt that I’ll have much time or energy to work on these this month and none of these jobs can just sit on my computer collecting dust for that long. None of this work has to do with my current work at Oxford — they are all loose ends from my Ph.D.

My current research had a successful month. I say “my research had”, rather than “I had” because theoretical work, perhaps like artistic endeavours, cannot always be forced. Just because I work hard does not always mean that concrete progress is made. But this month was good. I’ve been constructing a coarse-grained computer algorithm for simulating flowing (nematic) liquid crystal fluids.  At the beginning of the month, it wasn’t clear to anyone that my idea could actually be realized into a computationally useful algorithm but it’s clear now that it will work. There are, of course, still wrinkles that need to be ironed out but all-in-all I’m excited about it. I wonder if I’ll be able to fit a little development in on the side while working at the FT. I do have these daily trips into  London, after all.

First Time to the FT

Scientist on Assignment

Department of Physics Blogs
Published: July

Today I visited the Financial Times newsroom for the the first time.

There was no immediate reason to visit except that the FT science editor, Clive Cookson, and I had yet to meet in person. We’d only spoken briefly over the phone back in May before the BSA placements were announced but that was an interview. This was an introductory visit.

It was also a test run of sorts, since I’ll be commuting into London from Oxford for my placement. The trip is more than 2hr long and I may learn to hate it by the end of my placement. But everything went smoothly today, though I did arrive a full hour early (better than a minute late, I suppose).

Cookson and I had a cup of coffee, chatting about the news of the day: Sink holes and fraudulent Taiwanese researchers are interesting enough but nothing is more newsworthy than the west African breakout of ebola (which apparently needs to be added to my growing list of words that I, as a Canadian, pronounce with an American accent). Ebola has been trending on my science-focused Twitterfeed and seems to be a textbook example of a timely news story with an essential science component. It is a tragedy with nearly 700 confirmed dead since February (including a top doctor); it is rightfully worrisome since global pandemics are a real concern; it is an international political issue with Nigeria acting decisively and UK ministers meeting to discuss the outbreak; and it has epidemiological and medical underpinnings. FT readers are getting both the scientific background on the disease and reports on the medical measures being taken to halt the epidemic.

Cookson was about to join the World Weekly podcast with host Gideon Rachman and Africa editor Javier Blas and invited me to come see the process. This was great for me because podcasts are one of my favoured forms of media. I was surprised how smoothly the recording went. The three of them sat down, chatted a moment and then recorded the entire podcast in a single take. It was all very professional.

Afterwards, we visited the newsroom, which is much like other newsrooms that I have seen. It was a big, open, bustling space but the science writers, including pharmaceuticals correspondent Andrew Ward, are tucked away on a quieter floor. This is where I’ll be when there. I can’t wait to get started.

Hello, World!

Scientist on Assignment

Department of Physics Blogs
Published: July

Hello, world. Welcome to Scientist on Assignment, a blog that I will use to share my personal experiences as an Oxford scientist working at the Financial Times for a month.

I have this wonderful opportunity to see how the media covers science through a British Science Association Media Fellowship. Every year, the BSA places ten scientists in newsrooms throughout the UK to build and strengthen bridges between science and journalism.

As a young computational biophysicist, I don’t have much free time; however, I applied for a month-long BSA placement because I strongly believe that we scientists have a responsibility to share what we discover. We do this in three principle ways: We report to our peers through journals and conferences; we teach students in lectures and through supervised projects; and we communicate our findings to the public. Engaging with the public is traditionally the least emphasized and often it is not much more than an afterthought. My BSA Media Fellowship is an opportunity to carry out this responsibility by reporting on exciting scientific findings to the readers of the Financial Times.

Although primarily a financial news publication, the FT superbly covers science news. Science coverage is the domain of science editor Clive Cookson, whom I shall report for while at the FT. The FT operates online with a paywall, meaning that much of the content requires a subscription or at least registration (8 free articles per month). Oxford’s Bodleian Library has a full subscription for academics.

What will I be doing at the FT? I don’t know yet. I don’t begin until August 26th 2014 but I have been informed that I should expect to be dropped into the deep-end — that I will be interviewing, writing and generally reporting science content right off the bat.

This blog (along with my twitter account @BuildingInThere) will informally report my thoughts and experiences with journalists and the media as an embedded scientist. Here, I’ll write about my excitement and frustrations. I’ll summarize what I’m learning and I’ll tell you about the hard days. I hope that readers will let me know about their experiences with science in the media or make suggestions about how this blog or anything that I write could be improved. Expect an exciting month watching a fish out of water.