There are of course Nobel prize–winners whose orations are Delphic, whose visuals look as though they were put together during a particularly turbulent flight, and so on. But you are not one of them yet, and if that is how your talks are prepared, you never will be either.
—Peter J. Feibelman, A PhD Is Not Enough!
Science cannot thrive without communication. It depends on communication among lab mates, between advisors and trainees, among labs, and between scientists and the public. Although scientists may have a reputation for being introverted, there is an increasing amount lot of collaboration among lab members and labs. Some scientists choose to live at the intersection of science and the public, either because their work directly impacts public interests, or because they enjoy public science communication and find it worthwhile.
Each of these communication paths have their own means, but the underlying principles are the same. it is critical to the scientific endeavor that you can communicate honestly, concisely, and convincingly about your research.
What a wonderful stimulant it would be for the beginner if his instructor, instead of amazing and dismaying him with the sublimity of great past achievements, would reveal instead the origin of each scientific discovery, the series of errors and missteps that preceded it—information that, from a human perspective, is essential to an accurate explanation of the discovery.
—Santiago Ramón y Cajal, Advice to a Young Investigator
Scientific communication should be honest as well as accurate. Being an honest communicator means being upfront about what you did in your experiments as well as what went wrong. This is absolutely critical when you’re speaking with your lab mates or research advisor. It’s very easy to let your ego get in the way—trust me, I’ve been there. You might fear that people think you’re incompetent or incapable of doing research, but the truth is that everyone makes mistakes and everyone’s research has limitations.
Labs that can communicate honestly internally will be able to more efficiently problem solve, and they’ll also be more comfortable and healthy work environments. It’s not fun or productive to be an environment where everyone has a huge ego and has no idea what they’re doing—that’s just not a recipe for success.
Similarly, it’s just as important to communicate honestly beyond the lab. Many labs and subfields are really competitive, and for a fairly obvious reason: Research funding is difficult to secure, and realistically, there are a finite number of research questions to be asked. The feeling that a scientific question is urgent and important can be motivating, and it indicates that multiple labs could be working on similar questions. When two labs publish a similar result, that’s a triumph for science—even if it’s a challenging moment for individual scientists.
However, competition among labs can interfere with honest communication about research. One lab may have tremendous success developing a technique but refuse to disclose their insights because they’re worried about other labs catching up. This doesn’t only stall research, but it can waste countless hours of individual human effort. At the risk of getting too philosophical for the bounds of this book, we each have limited hours on this planet, and humanity will be much better off if each of us doesn’t spend time reinventing the wheel (or, brain recording device, as it were).
I’ve seen folks who put their heads down, refuse to share, and get caught up in the competition. I’ve also seen folks who raise others up, who willingly offer advice, teach others, and talk about their insights. Anecdotally, there is no difference in how successful these people are, and I’m willing to bet that those who are more honest about their science are happier.
Being honest and disclosive can be really tough in competitive environments, but it does get easier the more that you exercise those muscles. Take a moment this week to tell someone about something (research-related or otherwise) that didn’t quite work out for you. You’ll be amazed by the sense of relief and how little judgement you’ll get in return.
Numerous doctoral dissertations and more than a few articles in our professional journals seem to have been written not with the intention of shedding new light on a subject but of displaying the eloquence of the author, who is willing to accomplish the difficult task of writing in any slipshod manner possible—and the longer the better (for they make sure that what isn’t taken up in doctrine is taken up in space)—without taking the trouble to think.
—Santiago Ramón y Cajal, Advice to a Young Investigator
There are about two million published books and papers in neuroscience alone, and the number of papers is growing each day. With open-access journals gaining acceptance and outpacing the speed of traditional publishing outlets, the literature is going to continue to grow even faster. Not even the fastest readers among us will read anywhere close to that number of papers. Most of us will scrape a tiny shaved-ice portion off of the enormous glacier that is published research.
This means that research should be communicated as concisely as possible.
In any form of scientific communication, the burden is never on the audience. Some more dense texts or figures will require multiple readings, but as the communicator, you need to put the work in upfront to make it easier for your reader. Your goal should be to write in a way that concisely conveys the importance, approach, and results of your work. This means creating figures that don’t require a magnifying glass or cryptic translation device to understand. Concise research communication will be more widely read and understood, and that’s a good thing for you. If it comes time to present a talk on your work, you’ll be able to fit all of your amazing findings into any length talk.
You might wonder how you can possibly be both honest and concise. It may help to consider that your communication should be accurate but not necessarily precise. You likely don’t need to describe all of the precise individual nuts and bolts that held your microscope together, and choosing to leave exclude those details from your description isn’t inaccurate. You will, however, want to tell your readers about the scale of the image that you captured with your microscope—they need that information to evaluate your data. Identifying which details you can leave out, while still leaving your communication honest and accurate, is a skill that will help you communicate accurately and concisely.
Sometimes people will disagree with the importance of your research. It’s a fly-eat-fly kind of world out there in terms of research funding, and everyone is fighting for a piece of the pie. One of the most important scientific skills—arguably the most important—is the ability to convince others that your research is important, worthwhile, and feasible.
This doesn’t mean overselling your work. No single research project is going to solve the brain or cure every neurological disorder. It does, however, mean building a narrative around your work that can help the reader understand why it is important. There are a few key elements to communicating convincingly, and they’re not unlike the steps of any good story, or a blockbuster movie trailer:
IN A WORLD without an understanding of the genetic basis for dopamine neuron degeneration in Parkinson’s, ONE RESEARCHER will use CUTTING EDGE TOOLS to show us all that IT’S MORE COMPLICATED THAN WE COULD HAVE EVER IMAGINED.
—The next blockbuster hit, coming to a research center near you.
This may be overkill, but it demonstrates the three stages of creating a narrative about your research: the setting, the challenge, and the resolution.1
Setting the stage
What happened before your research, and what were they missing? This is your chance to set the scene for your research. The best way to decide what needs to be in your opening scene is to ask yourself: What does my audience need to know in order to understand what I’m doing and appreciate its significance? Don’t fill their heads or valuable time with anything that doesn’t snugly fit into your research story.
…but something is missing
The introduction to your research ends with a big “BUT”—but we didn’t know how the cells would respond to this chemical; but we didn’t know which brain region controlled this behavior; but we never quite understood why Captain Marvel was able to shoot light from her hands.
And then, you came along. You, the person with the answer, or at least a way to address the question, which leads us to the big finale.
Boom, this is where your work comes in
Now is your moment! Your reader understands the background and sees you as the protagonist who can address this big, gaping hole in the research. Since you set the stage and highlighted the need for your work, you’re in a better position to convince your audience that what you’re doing is worth it.
In neuroscience, there’s often a bit of convincing we have to do around the validity of our approaches. For example, calcium imaging is a widely used way to record neural activity. With this technique, a protein (more specifically, a calcium indicator) is first introduced to the cell, usually by bundling it up with a harmless virus. Under a microscope and with the right optics, these calcium indicators become noticeably brighter when calcium is present, which is a pretty good indicator of a neuron’s activity. Still, the process of calcium binding with the indicator is slow, and calcium influx is not the same as the cell firing action potentials. Therefore, many researchers argue that calcium imaging is not a viable substitute for recording from cells. Researchers that use calcium imaging often have to argue that the slowness of their signal and its indirect correlation with firing rate doesn’t detract from the primary finding of their paper. For such concerns, knowing your research and anticipating possible caveats (this goes back to honesty) is the best approach.
Ultimately, no research project is a flawless answer to a question. The brain is complicated, and each method has caveats. Your job as a researcher is to recognize these caveats and provide possible explanations.
Science writing
Writing about your science and communicating with your colleagues is a big part of working as a researcher. Still, many scientists don’t particularly enjoy writing grants and papers. They’d rather do the science, they say, than ask for more money or try to convince others that their work is important. Other scientists, however, find it a helpful process to formulate and consolidate ideas. Regardless of whether you like it or not, and almost regardless of what exact career you pursue, you’re going to have to write sometimes.2
Likely the biggest leap of faith you’ll take as a writer is into your first publication. You’ll learn a ton from writing your first paper, and will hopefully receive some guidance from your mentor on how to do so.3
The best way to become a writer is to write as much as you can and get constructive feedback from other people. Many scientists also find it useful to write blog posts to sort out their thoughts and invite opinions from others. Blog posts are also a really nice chance for you to stretch your writing legs in a low-risk setting. If you enjoy writing, there are many different types of writing careers for scientists—see part 4 for more.
Visual presentations
As a junior in college, I had my first opportunity to go to the Society for Neuroscience (SfN) meeting—a huge annual meeting where over thirty thousand neuroscientists come together to talk about their favorite cells and brain regions. The main setting for these conversations is the enormous convention center filled with rows and rows of scientific posters.
Scientific posters are the most common form of scientific communication for trainees. Posters are most often presented by undergraduates, graduate students, or postdoctoral fellows. At smaller scientific conferences, principal investigators sometimes present their own posters. Each year at the SfN meeting, there are thousands of posters. They cover almost an entire mile of length—it’s a wildly overwhelming sight.4
Regardless of the conference, posters are usually first submitted in the form of an abstract. In about 250 words, you describe your project and its findings. For SfN, these submissions are almost six months ahead of when you’ll actually present the poster, which means you have to project a little bit about where your project will be. But don’t get too foolhardy—your abstract will live in perpetuity in the conference proceedings, and you don’t want to make false promises.
Posters are tricky because they need to be both self-explanatory and not completely overwhelming. Personally, I find them harder to design and present than talks. There are a few things to consider when submitting an abstract or preparing a poster:5
■ Is this the right amount of information for a poster?
■ Could someone understand your poster if they walked up to it?
■ Is your poster inviting, or does it contain too much text or technical detail?
Verbal presentations
Being able to give an accurate and compelling presentation about scientific research is one of the most important skills for any scientist. It’s hard to distill presenting advice into a short section, but let’s make sure we highlight the important points:6
■ It’s not about you. Can your audience understand what’s going on? Have you given them the information they need to appreciate your work? It’s easy to get stuck worrying that you won’t look smart or accomplished enough during our talks. Put your ego aside and put yourself in the perspective of the audience. Your talk will hit the mark much better if you’re able to do this.
■ Practice, practice, practice. Especially if this is the first time you’re talking about this data, practice in front of someone else. The best working environments will also create good feedback environments where you can productively get feedback on your presentations. Even principal investigators need help talking about their work.
■ Reduce your text and improve your figures. The number one thing that makes a bad presentation is too much text. Do you have more than ten lines on your slide? Cut it down. Are your figures impossible to read? Fix them. Remember that you’ve seen your figures for hours while you analyzed the data and prepared the talk, but this is the first time your audience has seen them.