In Hot off the press, Part I, I talk about some of the requests for interviews I received in the week leading up to my first first-author paper being published in Nature Astronomy. Perhaps the most exciting of these was an email from IFLS.
I was a doting fan of I Fucking Love Science when it came out in the early 2010’s. They were constantly covering new research in a way that was exciting and digestible to me and my friends. The publication’s bold use of profanity in their title spoke to my rebellious heart and captured how truly excited we were about humankind pushing back the boundaries of ignorance and revealing the mysteries of the universe. It is true, I fucking love science.
My joys continued when I connected by Zoom to IFLS journalist, Dr. Alfredo Carpineti. He has Ph.D. in Astrophysics at Imperial College, London (incidentally, one of the co-authors on the paper, Ingo Mueller-Wodarg, is a professor there). He was friendly, casual and professional and expressed his excitement at being able to talk to me, which I found terribly flattering. He asked if he could record our call and I agreed. He only asked about three questions, but for each one I gave a five-minute answer. He really let me run with the thread of the story and flesh out the parts I thought were most important or needed the most clarification. My advisor would later remark on the accuracy and quality of the article. I think that Alfredo’s background in astrophysics contributed to his ability to understand and synthesize the story of the paper and my impression is that by recording the call he was able to capture more of the details than was possible for other reporters taking notes. Having done a few interviews myself, I would definitely attempt to use this strategy in the future. Being recorded did increase my anxiety a bit as the interviewee, but it wasn’t as bad as a taping interview for a video piece, which friends of mine have handled like bosses (e.g. Teddy Kareta). Here’s the article Alfredo wrote:
After several of the news stories came out, I found instances where the information was not factually correct. It is inherently difficult to pass on information that is based on an expansive and technical field, to people who are not experts in that field. I have been warned in several different contexts to be vigilant in speaking to the press because scientists have gotten into hot water after their remarks to the media were misconstrued. On a scale of one to ending up on Ancient Aliens, the miscommunications were mild and I take responsibility for the breakdown in our game of telephone. My advisor informed me that high profile mission teams have talking points for press interviews. I imagine that talking points would be essential for any type of on-camera interview and that they could have helped here. I also wonder if scientists being interviewed ever invite the reporters to relay information back during the interview. This is common in classrooms, and can be useful in synthesizing information and finding misunderstandings. I haven’t heard of this happening and I wonder if reporters would take kindly to being quizzed. At any rate, I sent off a couple emails requesting corrections, not knowing how those would be received. Everyone responded favorably, making updates and corrections within a short period of time.
Most of the email traffic on my account the week before my paper came out was centered around the article written by Gretchen Mcartney in Media Relations at JPL. The JPL efforts were organized by Dr. Linda Spilker, the Cassini mission Project Scientist. Linda has worked on the Cassini mission since 1988 and one of her roles now is collecting and disseminating the most newsworthy new research coming out of the Cassini mission. She has given talks on science highlights of the Cassini mission at the last two American Astronomical Society Division of Planetary Science conferences I’ve attended. This is tangential, but she also has a pretty cool IMDB page.
Linda asked Tommi and I for a summary of the article, highlighting the main findings in an exciting way that would be suitable for the public. We spent time crafting that paragraph and sent it to Linda, Gretchen and our co-authors. There was a search for images to go with the story that was contributed by one my co-authors, Bob West, and by Gretchen herself. Gretchen was wonderfully communicative and asked a lot of questions to make sure she was capturing the science correctly. Everyone provided feedback to the article at varying stages and in the end, after dozens of emails, Gretchen produced an article that was both exciting, accessible and accurate. You can read the JPL feature of the paper here:
The Friday before the paper was set to come out, Linda Spilker asked if someone could make a science nugget for it. That is the moment I first heard of a science nugget, which is “a one-page snapshot of an event that impacted learners using NASA Science-funded experts, content or authentic experiences.” It involved capturing the highlights of the research, pairing them with visually interesting material from the work and displaying it all in a compelling way. That sounded right up my alley and like a lot of fun. I spent the weekend on it, plotting my data up in a new way that my advisor and I thought would be more tangible to the viewer. I got some help from a friend to ensure that it was understandable to the layperson and after a little feedback from the co-authors, sent the nugget out on Monday. Linda Spilker referred to it as “excellent,” which basically made my day. Check out my science nugget:
This week was a highlight in my career. It was exciting to talk to the various members of the press. I appreciated their kindness and professionalism and admire their ability to turn a story on a complicated topic around in just a few days. As is hinted at in this post, the article was truly a collaborative effort and I feel very lucky to have worked with these co-authors. I feel particularly grateful to my adviser, Tommi, who was the driving force behind so much of it and has always had my back. Shout out to Saturn for saving groundbreaking new features for me to discover in my first bit of research as a grad student and of course, continuing thanks to Cassini, for being a stalwart collector of data, fueling many discoveries and Ph.D.s. RIP.
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