Science Communication

Looking forward to EGU 2014

Laura Roberts-Artal April 24, 2014

This time next week EGU 2014 I’ll be looking at a sea of posters and enjoying workshops, splinter sessions and talks galore and I literally can’t wait!

You may have noticed (and we apologise), Dan and I haven’t been so good at updating Geology Jenga with regular posts. We have both made the transition into the deepest and darkest depths of thesis writing and it really is an all-consuming thing. They do say a change is as good as a break and that is why I’m so looking forward to the meeting next week.

It’ll be great to catch up with all the people I’ve met through the PhD journey and I’m thrilled that a lot of them are going to be at the meeting this year. The proposed tweetup, will be great for putting faces to twitter handles! If you want to come along, sign up here. And of course, there will be the lovely sights of Vienna to enjoy.

However, it’s not all about the socialising and sightseeing. This year, not only am I attending as a scientists, I will also be blogging for EGU. You can expect me to cover some of the courses and workshops, as well as key note lectures and a range of talks. On Thursday I’ll be mainly covering the developments in my field, palaeomagnetism.

Above all, what I’d really like to do is talk to people about their research and their conference experience. Expect to see me at as many poster sessions as I can physically attend and by all means, talk to me about your work! I’m very keen to interview a range of scientists as part of our 10 minute interview series and will be featuring the interviews throughout next week and also over the coming months. If you’d like me to come and see your work, get in touch! I’d love to hear from you. (@LauRob85 or leave a message in the comments below).

Dan & I will also be tweeting as much as we can, so stay tuned!

Some personal perspectives from a PhD student on the peer-review system

Daniel Schillereff March 19, 2014

This is a follow-up to a previous post from September 2013 entitled ‘Soliciting peer reviews from PhD students’. In that piece, I summarised the responses I’d received from a number of editors of peer-reviewed journals in the field of Quaternary Science having asked them their feelings on soliciting peer reviews from PhD students. Some recent events, most significant being the acceptance of my first paper and being invited to review a manuscript a manuscript for the first time, have encouraged me to outline my personal experiences.

Reviewing my first paper

Late last year an email out of the blue from an Editor of a peer-reviewed EGU Open Access journal arrived in my inbox inviting me to review a manuscript. I initially presumed the Editor in question had read my recently-published blog post and was following up my expression of interest, but the timing didn’t work; I received the email before the post went live. I’ll elaborate on my experience of the reviewing processes in a moment, but after I had returned my review, the Editor kindly gave me some feedback on my review and told me how I’d come to their attention: it turned out a colleague had seen a talk I gave at a recent conference, the Editor examined my online profile and judged my knowledge base to be appropriate. This certainly confirms that aiming to give oral presentations from an early stage in your PhD can lead to unexpected rewards!

The Open Access profile of EGU journals means the full manuscript is available as a Discussion version; I spent considerable time scanning the manuscript while deliberating about whether to accept. I have no qualms in admitting I was nervous! By accepting the invitation to act as a reviewer, I was, in essence, responsible for deciding whether the rigour and relevance of the work was sufficient for it to permanently enter the realm of published research. This quote from Dr Stephen Keevil (KCL) in the ‘Peer Review: The nuts and bolts’ report on the role of a reviewer was definitely on my mind:

“…to act as a gatekeeper for quality in an area of science that I know and care about”

In the end, I decided to undertake the review because I felt comfortable that my background knowledge was sufficient to assess where the work fit in the current state of science and whether the investigation carried out met the stated aims and also that sufficient more specialist expertise I’d gained during my PhD would enable me to comment on the rigour and methodology of the research.

I was most anxious about my lack of detailed knowledge pertaining to the environment from which the samples were collected. I have a general idea of the local topography and landscape but I know very little about the geology, climate and landscape history of the area in question. These characteristics can have enormous effects on the sedimentary record and I felt this was not fully addressed in the paper; thus, several questions I posed in my review sought clarification on this aspect. However, this was not the principle aim and other researchers with experience working in the same region would not require such detail to be included in a paper and I remain unsure whether it was appropriate to focus on these aspects so much.

It was interesting to read the response from the authors explaining how they had addressed the comments from both reviewers. Looking at the final published version, my view is that the majority of my suggestions to the authors were explicitly addressed but a couple of my more substantial queries (related to geomorphic setting) were deemed not sufficiently important as to alter their findings. The Editor clearly felt their revisions were sufficient and what I believe to be an interesting and high-quality manuscript is now published.

Submitting my first paper

The acceptance of my first peer-reviewed manuscript a couple of weeks ago was wonderful, although I imagine the feeling of seeing it published online with paginated formatting and a DOI number will be even more gratifying! The process has been a tremendous experience and I cannot emphasise enough to other PhD students the value of going through the peer-review system at an early stage (obviously substantive results are necessary!). Obviously it looks impressive on your CV but the reviewers raised questions that I had never before considered (and neither had my Supervisors!); I have no doubt my overall PhD, not just this paper, will be substantially improved by this experience.

Diagram from the ‘Peer Review: The Nuts and Bolts’ 2009 report from the Voice of Young Science network.

The three reviews were largely positive and some of the comments were quite pleasing. The reviews were very different in terms of their length, detail and principal concerns but all three raised very good points that I needed to address. One section ultimately was removed from the original manuscript; While deleting hundreds of words was disappointing, it also made me realise I had been rather narrow-minded and too focused on one particular area of my own research and had missed some of the wider implications. I think this is easy to do when undertaking a PhD but is definitely a useful lesson. One reviewer examined the manuscript in extraordinary detail and offered numerous constructive comments and I am extremely grateful for their efforts. While I recognise the time commitment required, I do hope my future submissions receive a similar degree of attention from reviewers and it has certainly inspired me to ensure if and when I am invited to review again, I invest equivalent time and effort.

Most importantly, the revised manuscript is without doubt much better than my original submission. The Nuts and Bolts report indicated 91% of researchers felt their last paper was improved after peer-review and I certainly include myself in that section. Please do get in touch on Twitter or the Comments section if anyone has any questions about my experiences.

Seismologists must leave their comfort zone: A Guest post by Steve Hicks

Laura Roberts-Artal February 17, 2014

Scientists studying earthquakes should be prepared to put themselves forward to reduce the risk of earthquake damage. This was one conclusion from a meeting of scientists and engineers in London last week.

Picture yourself here. You are an earthquake scientist. Years of research conclude that a capital city lies close to active fault that has the potential to generate a large earthquake. The local government fails to act on your finding. Speaking at a meeting of the British Geophysical Association, Prof. Eric Calais (ENS, Paris) describes to fellow scientists how he found himself in this situation in 2008.

Predictable damage

In January 2010, that damaging event finally happened: a magnitude 7.0 earthquake striking Haiti. The earthquake killed 320,000 and displaced over 1 million people.

The earthquake was unpredictable; the damage was foreseeable. In Calais’ eyes, the combination of corrupt government and poor building codes was fatal.

In the aftermath of the earthquake, Calais joined the UN’s Development Program to advise on future geohazard policy in Haiti.

Image from: Unitarian Universalist Service Committee (Flickr username: uusc4all)

Connecting with policy makers

Calais says that communicating science is difficult in a country that has sustained political and socio-economic problems. Scientists need to reach across a plethora of interested parties – from government and the private sector, to NGOs and foreign aid donors. Keeping lines of communication open is difficult where poverty is rife and public exposure to science is minimal.

By tuning into the objectives of those who write policy, scientists can help to reduce the risks from geohazards. Here is an example to illustrate. Geophysicists often deploy networks of seismometer and GPS instruments to better understand earthquake hazard. To a scientist, this monitoring sounds like a good idea, but policy makers have a different focus. The monitoring network could be adapted into a primitive early-warning system operated by a civil protection agency. From the government’s viewpoint, such an initiative will allow the country to take on responsibility for risk reduction.

The Italian effect

Calais maintains that a gap exists between the makers and users of scientific products. To close the gap, scientists must be the ones to step forward to engage with policy makers and governments.

More researchers are becoming trained in public engagement. Yet there is little emphasis on actively engaging with policy and governance, leaving many scientists without the confidence and skills to stand up for their research at times when it is needed the most. More worrying is the recent prosecution of seismologists in Italy that may cause some geoscientists to disconnect altogether from policy makers, narrowing their comfort zone to an all-time minimum.

The manslaughter conviction was wrong on all levels, yet there are lessons to be learned. With better training for scientists, we are entering a new era for geohazard risk communication. New projects such as Geology for Global Development and Earthquakes without Frontiers plan to set a new precedent for risk communication by combining earthquake science with the social sciences. Because of such initiatives, we can be hopeful that geoscientists’ comfort zone will continue to widen and important science will reach those who need it the most.

Earthquakes: from Mechanics to Mitigation was a meeting organised by the British Geophysical Association at the Geological Society of London on 13^th and 14^th February 2014.

Stephen Hicks is a Postgraduate Research Student in Earthquake Seismology at the University of Liverpool. His current research involves making 3D images of the earth’s subsurface in order to understand what factors may control large earthquakes in subduction zones. He is currently heads an outreach project supported by the British Geophysical Association that makes information about significant global and UK earthquakes available to the public. His Twitter handle is @seismo_steve.

10 Minute Interview – Finding the right path

Laura Roberts-Artal February 7, 2014

It turns out, I’m not so great at keep the promises I make our blog readers… I AM working on the next post for the Making the most of your PhD series.

In the mean time, this 10 minute interview actually fits the theme of the Making the most of your PhD series quite well. This week, I bring you Hayley Dunning, of the Natural History Museum, London. Whilst Hayley’s current role is as a science web editor, the route to finding her path and career wasn’t straight forward. It is sometimes difficult to see how a love of science can be continued into a fulfilling career that does not involve academia and research. Hayley embarked on a PhD and decided it wasn’t right for her. As a science web editor she has been able to combine the two things she loves most, science and writing. I talk about PhDs a lot in Geology Jenga, but actually, the whole point of the 10 minute interviews is to highlight the unsung heroes of science (in the traditional academic sense) and Hayley is most certainly one of them!

Vital Statistics

You are: Hayley Dunning
You work at: The Natural History Museum, London.
Your role is: Science web editor

Q1) What are you currently working on?

Right now I’m building pages about the Museum’s cetacean strandings program. They have been recording details of stranded whales, dolphins and porpoises around the UK for 100 years, and now they want to the public to be more involved in reporting and identifying strandings.

I also write news articles about whatever new research is published by the Museum’s scientists; today it’s about meteorites (as it often is!).

Q2) What is a typical day like for you?

If there’s a journal article coming out, I’ll read the paper and call the scientist to find out more about it. Often I’m looking for a nice colourful anecdote – something the national media wouldn’t get. It’s fun to learn about the scientist’s personal adventures.

If there’s no news that day I’ll make web pages, usually about the research that goes on behind the scenes, the massive collections the Museum houses or something that the public are thinking about. For example, the other week I wrote up pages about the false widow spider in the UK, trying to allay some of the undue panic!

Q3) Does your job allow you to have any academic outputs?

I don’t write academic papers, but since I decided to go this route I’ve written a lot of articles for magazines and other publications. I used to be on an academic path, working towards a career as a volcanologist, but I found it too narrow in the end. Since, I’ve written articles about intelligent machines, body clocks, meteorites from Mars, drugged mummies and everything in between.

Hayley with Sir David Attenborough, or at least the bit she was able to keep!

Q4) What has been the highlight of your career so far? And as an early stage researcher where do you see yourself in a few years time?

At the Museum, the false widow spider report was a highlight. I just heard today it helped make October one of the most successful months ever on the website.

A long article I wrote about fracking in Canada was a personal achievement. I like writing about all sorts of different things every day, but it’s also nice to get a deep expertise in something. I guess I’m still at scientist at heart!

In a few years I’d like do more features and long-form science writing, bringing an art back to the joy of discovery. Non-fiction books would be great, but as long as I’m still learning I’ll be happy.

Q5) To what locations has your research taken you and why?

Volcanology took me to Canada, Alaska, Mexico and Japan, for which I am very thankful! At the Museum, the fun stuff tends to come to me instead. Working for such an old and renowned public-facing science organisation has its perks – last week Sir David Attenborough and Bill Bailey unveiled a statue of Alfred Russel Wallace at the Museum. I grabbed a random postcard from my office and managed to get an autograph from Sir Dave!

Q6) Do you have one piece of advice for anyone wanting to have a career similar to yours?

Go for it. Here’s the silly fact about me: I have three Masters degrees. Two are in Earth sciences; the second started out as a PhD (the third is in journalism). I’d always liked writing, and it was honestly a lightbulb moment when I realised I could marry science and writing as a career. I thought long and hard about giving up my PhD – I’d never get to call myself Dr Dunning! But I realised in the end it wasn’t giving up, it was not wasting time and effort on something I ultimately didn’t want, and wasn’t going to use. I’m not suggesting it was a sudden decision that anyone should take lightly, but if there’s something you really want to do, don’t let a seemingly pre-determined career get in your way.

Q7) If you could invent an element, what would it be called and what would it do?

I’d love to create an element with the power to make me less sleepy or to make things float, but practically it would be nice to have a radioactive element that would act as a powerful and relatively clean fuel source. I think I’d call it Infinitum (although it’s chemical symbol would be Hd – I want some glory!)

Hayley did an MSci in Environmental Geoscience at Bristol where she spent a year abroad in Iceland. She then did an MSc in Earth and Atmospheric Sciences at the University of Alberta, and finally a Masters in Journalism at the University of British Columbia. Now she’s not a student any more, she’s trying to figure out what to do with all this spare time that isn’t filled with assignments and deadlines!