In this next module, I'm going to talk about communicating with the media and
with the general public about your work. So, after you've gotten some publications
in the literature, often times you will get contacted, eventually, by a journalist
who's interested in your work. Even if you don't have something in
science or nature, sometimes when you've got a paper even in a, you know.
A, a lesser impact journal, Sometimes it can be something that's of
general interest, and you may be contacted by a journalist who wants to talk with you
about the work. And, in general, it's a good opportunity
to cheer you know, your work with the public.
So, so, it's a, it's a great thing to be interviewed by, by a journalist and to get
to talk with the media. In the next module after this module, I
actually have a panel discussion where I'm talking with three of my former students
who have actually done, had numerous encounters with the media.
And they're going to give you some advice, and some tips about how to be interviewed
by a journalist. So, I'm going to keep this module short.
And I'm going to, because you're going to get a lot of advice from them in the next
module. But I spend a lot of time I do a lot of
science journalism, so I actually do a lot of interviews.
So, I'm just going to tell you a little bit from the interviewer's perspective.
And also give you some tips for specifically how to talk about numbers
with journalists and the lay public. So, few things to keep in mind when you're
being interviewed by a journalist. So, what's that journalists are looking
for. So, when I am interviewing a scientist, I
obviously, I want to understand science, that's, that's paramount. I want to
understand what is going on with the science, and so I may have some very
specific questions that I ask the journalist to help clarify some of the
science, if I don't understand it. Beyond understanding Science however, I
have to write an interesting and compelling story about the, the work.
And so, something that I'm looking for in my interview is I'd like to give the
researcher to give me a sense of some big picture type, what's the overall
significance of the work? That's very helpful for me in crafting my
story. I also want to know of course, how the
research af, research affects people. So,
If you're doing something in basic research,
It's nice to be able to tell a journalist. You know, how might this affect your
readers, even in the long term? What is the, why is this important?
Why might this important to, to the readers of this of the, the media outlet?
Also journalists have to write about new things.
They have to have a news hook. There's some reason why it's being written
about now. So if you can tell a journalist what's
different or new about your results, what distinguishes it from previous studies,
that's very helpful. I'll just give you a sort of a warning
here that when I'm interviewing somebody, if they use some nice, colorful language,
I'm often going to directly quote them on that because of course I have to write up
an interesting and engaging story so colorful prose, you know, makes a great
quote to throw in the article. So, just be a little bit careful because
if you do use colorful prose it's great, journalists love it. But if you use
something that's, you know, like very harsh or, or you know, that might end up
in the article if it's very colourful. So just bear that in mind.
We, we really want you to use good language just be a little bit careful.
Interesting stories. Anecdotes.
Like, How did you happen to come up with the
idea for the study? Those are great things to write up in a
story in a media story that are of general interest.
So, that'll often make it into the story. Anything that's surprising, paradox,
irony, that, journalists love that cuz that actually makes the story really
compelling. So, if you were, you know, going out to
find you were trying to find a, a weight loss drug and it turned out that you ended
up finding a, a cancer drug, You know, that's an interesting type of
story that you might share with a journalist.
Journalists are looking for people focused stories.
So, even if you are doing something in basic research, they always want to know
how does that tie back to their readers. So they're going to ask you that.
If you've got some facts that are interesting,
Historical facts about the research or the history of the research,
Or the development of the idea. That's always interesting for a story.
If you can give some kind of sweeping comment about the significance of your
work, researchers journalists are looking for that.
You, you always, as a journalist, need kind of a first quote for your first
piece. And kind of a sweeping comment about the
significance of the work makes a great first quote.
And sometimes you'll be asked to be interviewed as a commentator on a peer's
research. That may happen.
And if you give, you know, if you point out the controversies or you give very
bold criticisms or laudatory praise, that's likely to make it in the article.
So, you know, of course, you want to be a little bit careful about that cuz if you
say something very critical or very laudatory, that, that will likely make it
into the article. So, these are the kinds of things that
they, the journalist is looking for. They, of course, want to hear about the
science. But they'll, the, the journalist will
usually ask you if there are specific parts of the science that they want
clarified. Otherwise they're not necessarily wanting
to hear all the jargon because that's not easy to quote you want.
Remember, they're often times looking for direct quotes.
And if you put too much jargon in, it's hard to, to make a direct quote out of
that. So, my general suggestions for, if you are
going to be interviewed, and again, in the next module I will talk with three of my
former students and I'll give you some more tips about being interviewed.
So, I just get go through this briefly. But, the first thing is in, you want to
generally be prepared. So, think ahead of the time about the
things that you want to get across to the journalists and, and craft your message a
little bit. You can, if it is the first time being
interviewed, if you want to ask the journalists if they can send you the
questions ahead of time, often times they are willing to do that so that it can help
you to be prepared. Again avoid jargon.
The, the journalist is generally looking for things that they can directly quote
you on. And if it has too much jargon.
They, they can't do that. So you're often told to, to pretend that
you're talking to your aunt or your uncle or your grandmother or your grandfather.
In other words, we don't want to slight any of those groups.
In other words, talk to, you know, Speak as if you're talking to an
intelligent relative or friend who doesn't necessarily know much about science or
about your particular research area. So, bring it down to a level that, you
know, an intelligent person can understand.
So, you know, if you want to think of your uncle or your grandmother or grandfather,
that can help. Make sure you give the journalist clear,
take home messages. So, don't be wishy washy about the
findings mean. Kind of state clearly what it is that you
think that the, that the journalist should focus on in their piece.
Give them some clear take on messages. And if you can,
Try to anticipate any confusions or misinterpretations that the journalists or
lay public might make about your work, especially if some thing controversial.
So, if you, say, well, I know this is one way people might misinterpret the data.
If you can just say that to the journalists like, here is some thing that
people might misunderstand about my work and let me tell you why that's wrong.
If you tell that to the journalists, they are going to factor that in crafting their
piece. So, go ahead and just kind of, you know,
think of those, and explain those away at the beginning.
Anticipate those. Make sure you give a clear statement of
the key limitations of your work. The journalist might not ask you for that.
But it helps if you can give a clear statement of what are the limitations of
your work, What's the context.
That will help the journalist in conveying that to the general public.
So that, you know, the, the work isn't overblown.
And then, finally, the last thing I want to talk about is just, I want to you to
think carefully about how you present numbers to a general audience or to a
journalist. So, remember that not everybody is very
feels very comfortable with numbers. People in general are really bad at
understanding things like risk. So, you want to be careful about how you
present numbers and think carefully. Whatever, however you present the numbers
to the journalists, they are likely to use those exact numbers in their in their
report. Unless they are doing some kind of
investigative journalism, they are likely to just take the numbers you gave them and
assume that those are correct and use them in their story.
So, think about how to present those numbers in a way that is understandable to
a general audience. So, for example, make units
understandable. If you're talking about things like
nanometers. Most people don't really understand or have a conception of that.
Is there somebody you can make that concrete for, for the journalists and the
readers? If you are talking about risks, make sure
you present that in the most, those risks in the most transparent easy to understand
way that you can. Again, human beings are really bad at
understanding risk but we tend to be very frightened of things that have a very low
probability of occurring to us. And we tend to be, you know, not
frightened enough about things that are common risks and that are much more likely
to occur to us. For whatever reason we just don't have a
good conception of risk, And this is pretty much true of everyone.
So, presenting risk in a way that's really to understand it, it is a great public
service. And I'm going to just give you a case
study here about explaining risks to a journalist, or to the lay public.
So, there's sort of two principles. Keep in mind that for most people, whole
numbers are easier to understand than fractions and percents.
So you, as a scientist, probably deal every day with units and fractions and
percents. But keep in mind that most people don't
deal every day with numbers. And for all of us, whole numbers are
always easier to understand than fractions and percents.
So, think about whether or not you can put your numbers in some way into whole
numbers, and I'm going to give you an example of that in a minute.
In the medical literature, we talk a lot about risks.
And, a common way of presenting risk in the medical literature is to talk about
relative risk. Well, relative risk turns out to be this
concept that can be a little bit misleading sometimes.
Because sometimes you can have a very high relative risk even when the absolute risks
are low. And so, keep in mind that you should try
to think about presenting to the journalist or the lay public, what are the
absolute risk, not the relative risk, but the absolute risk.
So, I'm going to give you and example of that as well.
So, here's a case study that we can talk about. This, this is a case where the
researchers of this study and, and the people who put up the press release about
this study did a really excellent job in describing the risk.
So, I was working as a journalist at the time and I was particular impressed when I
saw the press release to realize that they actually thought very carefully about how
to present the risks. And they presented them with whole numbers and in absolute
terms. So, this study was of the women health
initiative. This a large randomized double blind study
where they were treating a large number of women with post menopause hormones and a
large number with placebo. And this study answered a lot of questions
about post menopausal hormones, you probably all heard about it.
It was actually halted in 2002. The hormonal part of the study was halted
in 2002 because hormones were found to increase the risk of breast cancer which
was actually expected. But what was unexpected was that the
hormones were found to increase the risk of heart disease and that was completely
unexpected. And so, it turned out that they had to
halt the study because the, the risks of the hormones turned out to be greater than
the benefits. Now, at the time the study was halted,
there were fourteen million post menopausal women taking the hormones.
So, you have to think about delivering this of course, this was going to be
picked up by the media. And, the researchers had to think
carefully about how to deliver this, this result to the public where they're saying
hey, hormones are bad and there's all these people that's been taking hormones.
So, how do we put that in a way that's understandable and is not going to
frighten too many people? Unnecessarily.
So, so there's a couple of different ways they could have presented the risks in
this study. So, first of all, there's something called
a relative risk. So, it turns out that if you looked at the
study, the relative risk for invasive breast cancer.
So, if you compare women who are on hormones to women who are taking placebo,
the relative risk, which is made by taking the risk in the hormone group and dividing
it by the risk in the placebo group, that turned out to be 1.26.
In the, for heart disease, the relative risk turned out to be 1.29.
And so, the way you interpret those relative risks is,
You would say women who have, who take hormones have a 26% increase risk of
breast cancer and a 29% increase risk of heart disease.
Then, you have to ask yourself though, Is that the best translation for the
public? Those relative risks don't tell you what
the baseline risk of getting breast cancer or the baseline risk of getting heart
diseases. They just tell you there's a 26% increase
in one group relative to the other. So, that can be a little bit misleading
because those sound like really big increases in risk.
But, think about the numbers in another way.
So, here were the same results, presented as absolute risks.
So, in that study, it turned out that the risk of invasive breast cancer for women
on hormones, their risk was 0.38% per year.
So, that's a very low risk to an individual woman.
If you were on a placebo, the risk was 0.30% per year.
So, you can see that though, even though that's, that 0.38% versus 0.30% is a 26%
increase in risk, It's only ab, that's the relative risk
increase. In absolute terms, the risk increase is
only 0.08% per year. So, you can see how much less scary it
sounds when you put something in an absolute risk because the absolute risk is
low to begin with. So, even though you are increasing it a
significant amount, the, the risk is, still remains low.
And for, for heart disease, those risks were, on hormones, it was 0.37% per year.
On placebo, it was. 0.30% So, the risk difference was that
there was an increase of, 0.07% risk per year, if you were on the hormones.
If you're paying close attention, you might notice that if you divide 0.38 by
0.30 that doesn't quite give you 1.26. Even, if you divide 0.37 by 0.30 that also
doesn't quite give you 1.29. Those relative risks came out of some
modelling, so there's a little bit of statistical adjustment going on, so that's
why you get a slightly different relative risks from those models than you get from
just dividing those risks. But they're about, they are roughly same.
So, you can see that the risk picture looks a lot different when you look at
absolute risk. But, again I told you most people don't
understand fractions and percentages very well, so you can actually translate those
fractions into whole numbers. So, how about if we say the risk of
invasive breast cancer, let's put it this way. On hormones, was 38 per 10,000 women
per year. So 10,000 women who take hormones, 38 of
them are going to get breast cancer. From placebo group, there was,
It's 30 per 10,000. So, 10,000 women who aren't taking
hormones, 30 of them will get breast cancer.
So what's the risk difference? It's eight additional cases per 10,000
women who take hormones. So that is a much easier way for most
people to understand the risk. It uses whole numbers and it's giving you
the absent risk picture. For heart disease, you can use the same
logic. And it turns out there is seven additional
cases per 10,000 women. So, seven additional heart attacks per
10,000 women who take hormones. So, you can see this is a much different
way to present the risks and this is a much better way to present the risks to a
journalist or the lay public. So again, the best translation to the
public in that case I don't think it was this we in, in, in fact the media didn't
present it this way. The 26% increased risk of breast cancer
and 29% increased risk of heart disease. That sounds impressive and scary.
Fortunately, the researchers who helped write up the press release and the, in the
journal, the, the reporter who wrote up a press release for this study actually did
a great job because they didn't put it in those terms.
They said. Eight more invasive breast cancers per
10,000 women per year and seven more heart attacks per 10,00 women per year.
And that's a much more transparent and accurate, and less misleading way of
presenting the risks. And also, of course, much less scary for
the public. The, the results were scary enough for all
those women taking hormones. And so, this was a much better way to
present the risks. So, always be very careful, and think
carefully about how to present numbers and risks.
The preceding program is copyrighted by the Board of Trustees of the Leland
Stanford Junior University. Please visit us at www.med.stanford.edu.