Dr. Umar Toseeb Hello, welcome to the Papers Podcast series for the Association for Child and Adolescent Mental Health, or ACAMH for short. I am Umar Toseeb, Professor of Psychology. My research focuses on special educational needs and mental health in childhood and adolescence. In this series, we speak to authors of papers published in one of ACAMH’s three journals. These are the Journal of Child Psychology and Psychiatry, commonly known as JCPP, the Child and Adolescent Mental Health, known as CAMH and JCPP Advances. All listeners to this and indeed, any of ACAMH’s podcasts, are eligible for a free CPD certificate. Do please visit acamhlearn.org for details of his, together with information on how you can access hundreds of hours of free talks, lectures, interviews, all of which you can also get free CPD certificates for. The web address is acamhlearn.org. That’s a-c-a-m-h-l-e-a-r-n.org. If you’re a fan of our Papers Podcast series, please subscribe on your preferred streaming platform, let us know how we did, with a rating or review, and do share with your friends and colleagues. Today, I’m talking to Dr. Fatos Selita from the University of Oregan and Professor Yulia Kovas from Goldsmiths, University of London. Fatos and Yulia are co-authors of the editorial in JCPP, “For Better or Worse? Intended and Unintended Consequences of Science Communication.” This editorial will be the focus of today’s podcast. Thank you so much for joining me. Shall we start by some – with some introductions? Can you give us an introduction about who you are and what you do? Dr. Fatos Selita Well, first, thank you for having us. Thank you for inviting me. My name is Fatos Selita. It so happened that I trained for several things. I trained as a Barrister of England and Wales, then as a New York State Attorney, and before that, I did a degree in military and I also read for mechanical engineering, and more recently, I did a PhD in psychology. That has led to, also, now doing quite a few things. Among those, I have trained and taught communication for over 12 years now and I teach in a few universities. So, that’s in a nutshell a bit about me. Professor Yulia Kovas So, my name is Yulia Kovas. I also have a very multidisciplinary background. So, I studied literature and linguistics as my first degree, then psychology as my second degree, then social, genetic and developmental psychiatry at the master’s level and then PhD in behavioural genetics. Also, I have a degree in pedagogics, and maybe it will, kind of, come through today that because of all this, I think we are particularly interested in communication and communicating messages, but also, linking different disciplines, so natural sciences, social sciences and humanities. So, that’s, kind of like – a lot of the work that we do together is in the bringing together disciplines. Dr. Umar Toseeb Thank you. I love the diversity of background that’s coming to this conversation. I think it’s going to be a fantastic and interesting conversation. Let’s turn to your paper. Can you begin by giving us a brief overview? Professor Yulia Kovas We co-wrote this paper with Alice Gregory, who has just started a new position at the Royal Holloway University. Alice, Fatos and I have written this paper based on a lot of our experience with the pitfalls of communication and miscommunication, more broadly in science, but also in this field of child psychology and psychiatry, where Alice and I have contributed quite a lot of research in these fields, Alice even more than me. And so, we wanted to, kind of, express some of the ideas about why communication can have, actually, often, various unintended consequences, which may actually be very negative. And we were particularly inspired in this work by two of our recent papers. One has just come out and another one is about to be submitted, where we have shown that people’s misunderstandings about some scientific concepts can actually lead to significant, kind of, misconceptions about treatments and about, kind of, courses of action that they can take for themselves and their children in terms of addressing some problems. And in a nutshell, we wrote this short editorial where we summarised the pressures that Scientists often have to communicate their findings, and these pressures come from funders, from their universities, there are, kind of, promotional pressures. But also, our own desire to, kind of, make our own findings well-known and contribute to society or whatever aims we have. And how these pressures often lead to communication that is suboptimal. And we give, in this paper, various examples of how communication can go wrong and why and ultimately, we conclude the paper with giving some suggestions that the three of us think that societies can do to prevent a miscommunication and prevent the negative consequences of scientific communication. Dr. Umar Toseeb Thank you, and you’ve talked about what inspired you to focus on this and I think you said it’s some research that you’ve just published or just got through the system. What were you finding in that and how did that inspire you? Professor Yulia Kovas I’ll just give you one example. So, Alice and I are both Behavioural Geneticists. We have studied the complex interplay between genes and environments in their effects on various human traits, including the traits that are relevant for child psychology and psychiatry. And so, in this latest paper we explored the concept of heritability. People often talk about heritable traits, heritable, I don’t know, disorders and diseases, etc., and we explored how well people actually understand this concept and whether they understand it correctly. We replicated some of the previous work that suggests that heritability is one of the most poorly understood concepts in the history of human science. So, people talk about it, but they very rarely truly understand what it means. What we found in that paper specifically is that people’s, kind of, misconceptions of what heritability is matters for what they think about treatments available to them for the conditions. So, for example, if people believe that insomnia is highly heritable, then they are more likely to opt for some genetic treatments or some, kind of, gene therapy or some other things that they don’t really understand. But if they think that insomnia, let’s say, is caused by stress, they’re less likely to opt for medication, for example, and more likely for some kind of talking therapies. And actually, in reality, there is very little link between how heritable something is and how successful it can be treated with various methods. And so, here we’re demonstrating that actually, just the belief and particularly erroneous belief, can make implications for people’s choice of therapy or treatment for a particular condition. So, this is just one example of how misunderstanding a scientific concept can have serious implications for, kind of, the choices of treatments that are available to people. That we, inspired by this work and a lot of our other work, we are now launching into a very big project, where we’re about to publish some papers specifically dedicated to heritability, people’s understanding and misunderstanding of this concept and what to do to help people to really get to grips with this concept. Dr. Fatos Selita Then if I can add, really, that also, because we’ve done a lot of work in this area, for example, for over a decade delivering training in this area, and – on one thing that is apparent, from this experience training hundreds of professionals, that there are serious challenges with communicating. And when it comes to science in particular, there are even bigger challenges because it is difficult to simplify findings, as much as it is expected, without misrepresenting them. And so, that’s one challenge and the other, of course, challenges with Scientists, is there is pressure for the citations, for likes, for all sort of things, that makes communication even more difficult. Dr. Umar Toseeb In your paper, you describe the three risks that might lead to confusion or unintended consequences of science communication. Can you just talk us through those three risks? Professor Yulia Kovas Of course, there are many risks, but we, kind of, grouped them into these larger categories. And so, the first topic I already touched upon a little bit, that in science, we use linguistic terms and categories to express quite complex concepts. And once these concepts are, kind of, in the world, it’s very difficult to often, know what these concept mean for people on the ground, so to speak. So, you know, there is this concept, what’s it called, like therapy talk or something, where we all use various terms that actually are – kind of like, live the life of their own now, beyond the actual contexts where they mean something for experts. So, basically, scientific language emerged mostly for experts to quickly understand each other, to, kind of – so that we don’t all have to continuously operationalise our terms. But as I’ve just given an example of heritability, you know, if, like, true experts in the field can easily understand what is meant, then the further you go from true expertise in this particular field, the less people understand. And that I know this because I’ve actually tested, you know, highly intelligent Scientists in other domains, even within psychology and psychiatry, who fail to understand, for example, the concept of heritability, and it’s the other way around. So, we, kind of, we draw people’s attention to the fact that often, what – when we use terms, what people hear, or what people understand, is very difficult to know. And I think that really, we all, to a large extent, suffer from this curse of knowledge, where it’s very difficult to imagine what it’s like not to know something. And I will talk a little bit more, maybe at the end, when we come to key messages, of what we think can be done to help us to use the right language, the language that is not misinterpreted. So, another, kind of, key risk that we mention is a risk of misinterpreting results, and this is – really can happen on both levels. Scientists themselves are, kind of, known to overinterpret their results or maybe present them in a way that they can be misinterpreted or overinterpreted, even by experts. And then, of course, misinterpretation of results can happen on the ground, so people when reading something or hearing something, may understand something that is not meant. A, kind of, example is the causation. So, often, Scientists talk about associations, the links, the contribution of one thing to another, but the way the messages are framed, and particularly then transmitted by media, etc., and what a person on the ground hears is that something causes something. And it’s, of course, very dangerous situation and there are many, many errors of judgment and applied errors that can be made based on incorrect causal interpretation. Another problem with interpretation is, kind of, understanding effect sizes. So that often, for example, my message could be that A contributes to B, but what a person may hear is that A causes B. And my initial contribution might have been very, very little, but because I don’t mention it, what a person might hear is that A causes B entirely, and so, that’s how messages, kind of, get further and further from the truth. So, you know, it is recommended that effect sizes are always mentioned and described so a small association was found would be a true finding. And finally, another example that we use in this, kind of, misinterpreting results is that often, what can happen is that the findings are at the average level. So, we can say that on average, this and this is linked, but what we all know is that in reality, at the level of one person, this may not be true. But again, the messages are transmitted in such a way that people believe that this will happen, and this will be true at the level of every case and that’s, okay, very problematic. And finally, we talk about time pressures, and this is a very important point. That we live in a very fastmoving era. When I was a PhD student, I was lucky to work on this amazing study, which produced a lot of very interesting findings, and I started talking to the Journalists as a PhD student. And I found it extremely stressful, because again and again, I was faced with this situation where the Journalist wanted something really fast, very brief and they wanted the easiest, the simplest. The final message what they wanted to hear is that A causes B. There is no time ever to think, to reflect, and as I will talk about later, maybe collect some empirical data on how to present this message. We are supposed to be communicating fast and now, beyond newspapers. My first interviews were in newspapers and now, we’re talking about global world five seconds after the publication of the paper, and that presents enormous risks for misrepresentation of information, yeah. Dr. Umar Toseeb I suppose where I want to go from that is you talk about the potential for these risks and I just want to get an idea of how much of a problem this is, or has been, or potentially, will be. So, is there an ex – like, a concrete example of where science communication in the field of child psychology and psychiatry has gone so badly wrong and it’s had really bad, unintended consequences? Dr. Fatos Selita For me as a – that I’ve trained in this field for most of my life, I find it a luxury to find – to read something which is not – non-scientific, that is not somewhat misrepresenting the findings. So, it’s a luxury to find those, but I think the see – the most common examples are those of cause and effect, that you are this because of this, so if you have this, you have this. So – and you – without mentioning any particular things, but there are many titles like “Three Genes Discovered for Crime,” or these kind of things, that actually can do – see as damage. So, they are, in a nutshell – misrepresentations are almost anywhere and partly, because it is difficult to simplify complex findings too much. And partly, because of the things that Yulia mentioned, that it is now – and that we are under pressure to sell papers. We are under pressure to get likes on social media. We’re under pressure to – there are too many pressures that push us to making things such that other people find them instantly useful. Professor Yulia Kovas If I may add to this. We are, kind of – it’s clear that we are trying to avoid you, the answering your question, and there are good reasons for that. Because I think from a lot of work we have done, what we know is that, you know, consequences or impact is very difficult to predict. So, our intentions are clear, or at least, you know, we think they’re clear. So, for example, my intention is that my work is well understood and contributes to, you know, improving the world one way or another, but intentions are clear, but the impact is a completely different thing. And so, when you say well, other concrete cases of where something was harmful, I guess it potentially, could have very bad impact if I start now talking about specific cases, because it could make an impact, kind of, of almost discrediting somebody’s findings. The findings themselves might be really good. It’s not the findings that are a problem, but the way they were understood. I guess another thing we often discuss is that a little bit of knowledge may be more harmful than none at all, because it gives people false sense of security that, oh, they know something now about this thing. But actually, it’s even easier to then go wrong with your, kind of, logical chains. So, for example, if I know that something is influenced by something, then, you know, it’s logical to think that I need to be, I don’t know, amending the A. But there is no evidence, actually scientific, that that would lead to the needed outcome. Dr. Umar Toseeb In the paper, you talk about the importance of training for Scientists in science communication. What do you think are some of the key elements of this training that you think will be most effective in bridging the gap between scientific research and public understanding of that research? Dr. Fatos Selita Well, when it comes to training, obviously, communication is a complex field, so it’s – it requires a lot of training to get to an advanced level. But the good news is that you can, with little training, you can also make significant improvement in impact. But if one was to choose to select what one was – must focus on, in general, it is for sure, content creation or speech writing, also public speaking. Now, generally, these two are – especially the second, public speaking, is misunderstood as to what it includes and also, misrepresented in trainings, because it is seen as something like, more like speaking with confidence or speaking with excitement, when it actually, it is much more complex than that. It is to – it has to do with thinking of decision-making. So, you train, really – you include in training, information or content that helps the person who is speaking or creating content, tailor that content to having in mind decision-making, how it affects the decision of the listener. And so, these two areas, anyone who could, should take training on, because they affect our life, not only in science communication, but in almost all aspects of life, even in communicating with friends. Professor Yulia Kovas So, yes, I absolutely agree that most people believe that, you know, good science communication is some, kind of, charismatic speaking with great confidence. But actually, you know, the media and the internet is full of charismatic confident speakers who propel all kind of nonsense and very simplistic messages that are really, kind of, popular psychology and have nothing to do with the research we are talking about. Another, kind of, element of training is this, kind of, predicting impact. Like, imagine the decision-making of your listeners or of your audience, kind of, attempt to predict impact, measure impact, and actually, it’s very difficult, it’s very difficult. And so, I’m beginning to think that actually, we need time. So, for example, I’m writing a paper, and I know that it needs to be communicated. It needs some, kind of like, time inbuilt into the system of scientific communication, where I can pilot the impact. Where I can, for example, have a focus group or have some kind of – where I can present the message that I’m going to be presenting and assemble and gather data on how this message can be misunderstood. And, you know, it’s incredible to see how something that you think is absolutely clear, what the audiences perceive, often, which is completely different from – so, often people say, “So, you mean” and they say something which is pretty much the opposite of what you’re just saying. But you see, when we just simply put something out or record a TED Talk or communicate in any kind of media, we have no idea. We have no such data, and I think the more we do that, the more we can find ways of, kind of, predicting better and better the outcomes. Dr. Umar Toseeb And on that note, in your paper, you make recommendations for how to avoid and mitigate the impacts of the key risks that we’ve spoken about. Can you summarise those for us? Professor Yulia Kovas Some of them are, kind of, the usual and we know them. So, for example, clarifying the jargon and the terms that we use, really explain to the list – audiences, whatever the audiences are, what we mean by different terms. Also, terminology changes over time. You know, there – in child psychology and psychiatry, there are a lot of examples of how we continuously adjust the way we talk about conditions and problems and issues. So, for example, you know, the big questions about spectrum disorders versus, kind of, single diagnostic categories, etc. And it’s important, for example, not just to change labels but to really keep track of why we’re changing labels and what these changes mean and help our audiences to also, kind of, be onboard with these changes. Because if we don’t do that, then people will get really confused. Like, yesterday it was this, today it’s this. Like, don’t they know anything at all? And so, we lose credibility, as well. So, we need to contextualise, kind of, our findings and the language that we use. As Fatah’s just said, the recommendation for training is very strong. So, it’s not about simplifying messages, but about understanding what you truly, truly need – want to achieve. What’s the impact that you want? And so – and another one is that these communication competencies, they need to be built and they need to be developed, just like any other skill. For example, we invest a lot of money into training and research methods and acquiring, you know, new statistical packages and new approaches to data analysis, etc., and that really, the same culture needs to happen with the communication. We all, as Scientists or future Scientists, understand that communication has to be more important than ever before, because our messages reach far and wide and fast and so, it really is very important that our messages are tailored. And actually, this is another thing that we discuss often, why is now more important than ever? Is because before, it would take you a long time to, kind of, send your message to enough people, through a newspaper, through a scientific journal, through a library where somebody will go and read it. But now we can achieve it very fast, so we can spend this time that before, we spent on, kind of like, pushing papers around, we can actually spend on acquiring communication skills. So, we should stop, pause and present the best message we can. Dr. Umar Toseeb I suppose a lot of what you’re suggesting is cultural level changes in the culture within academia. But as individual Scientists, there is a pressure to publish and publish fast and communicate and communicate fast, and we need to do those things to get jobs, to get promoted, to get grants. What advice would you give to Scientists or individual Researchers about how to navigate this complexity? Dr. Fatos Selita Well, it is difficult for Researchers, especially when you are at a starting point. You have to get – you, yeah, you need to get citations, publications and so on. But one has to really ask the question to themselves, what is most important to them, so they get a job or that they don’t misrepresent people? And so, it has to be a balancing act for them, but of course, you can only answer that question well if you know how communication can damage. That’s not easy to assess unless you’ve trained for it. So, it’s a – it’s, sort of, this, really, sort of, an interesting circle here that you need communication to know the damage, but then it gets a bit messy, basically. Professor Yulia Kovas It’s a very good point that the more these kind of discussions happen, the more it’s obvious – it should be obvious to people that actually, communication is so important because it can have directly opposite effects from what we want to achieve if it’s not communicated well. My, kind of, advice that I’ve given myself is that first of all, evaluate whether the pressure is real. You know, a lot of the time, it’s, kind of, in our heads. We think that we need all these likes, or we need to put all of these media compu – communications in order to get academic promotions or, kind of – but in reality, what is im – what is most important in academia is publishing good research. Publishing good research in reputable journals and get cited because it’s good research. The simple truth is that there are people with excellent careers who have never done any kind of media exposures. So, in that sense, maybe evaluate how important actually all this hype is, beyond the simple, kind of, intention of putting your research into the real world, where you think it will be doing what you want it to be doing. So, that’s one thing. Another thing to remember is that we – when we communicate via the media, for example, is that ultimately, you are in control. It’s your research and research is usually years of work. So, it’s not just something simply that can be – you know, the Journalist says, “Okay, I need something now and I need it to be in a five-minutes bitesize. Okay, why is the Journalist doing that? And this is an important question that we have, actually, different pressures and different agenda and different aims and different, kind of, you know, intentions. Some people need to get advertising on their website. Some people need some other things. So, here there are – a lot of the time, there’s mismatch in agenda and so, you need to stand firm with your agenda. And here, you can resist some things and I more and more, for example, talk to Scientists who refuse to talk to Journalists, or who only agree to talk to Journalists, or other media platforms, on their own terms. That they will see the final product before it’s published, etc. So, you know, remember that it’s – I think it should be more important to ask what we want to achieve than anybody else’s goals, and that’s easier said than done, I’m sure. But if we remember that we control our findings, it’s ours and so, if we work on how to best present this message and then work with various partners in this system, as partners, as mediators of our messages, then it will probably be a much better situation than it is now. Dr. Fatos Selita There’s another practical thing, with one pub – shares things in simplified way and inevitably misrepresenting things. So, you might get closer to this – to the – your followers, but you might get further away from the knowledgeable people. Because if they see – if you’re a Junior Researcher and they see you’re sharing things that – not in a – properly representing science, they will notice that you’re not as good as you should be, in a sense, for that field, and so, they will move away from you. And that’s not – in the – in a scientific community, that’s definitely not something one wants to do, ‘cause you need to be closer to knowledgeable people to further the knowledge. Dr. Umar Toseeb Yeah, and I think that one of the things that I just wanted to pick up on there, so, we’ve talked about this need for a cultural change in academia and then, we’ve talked about what Scientists can do. And then, we talked a bit about partnerships and it’s a collaborative effort. What can Journalists and the general public do differently to try and understand science better? Professor Yulia Kovas Yes, actually, you just, kind of, read my mind because I was just going to refer back to an excellent concept you brought up, the culture, and it’s not just academia culture. It’s, kind of, the societal attitudes towards knowledge. You know, in science, one of the most popular words is ‘complex’, but in a popular sense ‘communication’, this is a word that is rarely mentioned. So, that’s where we lose, kind of, the – in the transition from scientific finding to what the public sees, loses all the complexity, usually. And so, we need to bring the complex back together as, kind of, partnerships of communicators, and by communicators, we mean, of course, who you already mentioned, Journalists, the media representatives, the Scientists themselves, but also, the kind of, community of different professionals who we can call thought leaders. You know, these are the people who can influence thoughts and decision-making of vast numbers of people. So, this could be all kind of professionals, Teachers, Lawyers, policymakers, all kind of media representatives, entertainment industries, etc. So, these are all thought leaders and I think if we, kind of, focus on the fact that scientific findings are complex, they’re usually very small contributions. So, very, very rarely it’s something, some kind of breakthrough that will change the world. It happens, but, you know, we are far from developing penicillin. So, these are small, small contributions and that’s okay. We should allow science to be that, to have small incremental contributions to knowledge, where, you know, we can allow this, kind of like, discussion what the findings can possibly mean, how they can be misinterpreted, etc. And that is changing the culture, the societal culture of consuming information. The three of us, Alice, Fatos and I, have just applied for a grant, a major funding, for exactly this, working with thought leaders from different, kind of, communities of society, to try and change some of the, kind of, attitudes towards scientific information. Dr. Umar Toseeb Would that kind of stuff include more for the general public or people who are not Academic Researchers to think critically about science quite specifically? Professor Yulia Kovas Critically about science and I would say, also, critically about their own assumptions, views and attitudes. So, we – in our research, for example, that we have done with legal professionals, what we often found in that – so, now they would complete some kind of surveys where they would talk about, like, “This is like this, this is like this,” so, give us some attitudes towards, let’s say, genetic information. And then, we would do more qualitative work, so some kind of focus groups, where we would unpack some of the answers that people gave. And what we often observed is that people actually begin to change their answers in the process of talking about them. We would say, “Okay, well, to this question you said this. Can you explain, like, why you said this?” And then, people begin to answer this and then, in the midst of the answer, they would say, “Well, actually, it seems like I should have said the opposite to this question. Which, kind of, demonstrates, you know, something we all know, that there is thinking fast and thinking slowly and thinking slowly is less error prone, it’s more reasoned. So, when we talk about science and scientific findings, that’s what we should encourage. Dr. Umar Toseeb And you’ve touched on this in various parts of the conversation. What should we look out for coming up, out of this, like, other research that you’re doing or the stuff that you’ve got planned on this topic? Professor Yulia Kovas We have a major project on understanding heritability coming up. So, as I mentioned, this is, like, the most misunderstood concept in science or one of them, and it absolutely applies to child psychology and psychiatry. So, a lot of misunderstandings in this field. So, watch this space, we will be, hopefully, publishing something that will both clarify the concept, but also, analyse misconceptions about this concept. We are planning this research with the thought leaders about science communication. Very excited about that and of course, Alice and I are working on all kind of empirical work in this field. So, I’m working on a paper on anxiety at the moment, so – which will be interesting and hopefully, communicated in the best possible ways. Dr. Fatos Selita We are also, actually, we’re also – we’re – although we are behind with it, we’re also working on a book on public speaking, communication, that has taken some time now, but we’ve made progress with that. Professor Yulia Kovas And in the book, we will use a lot of examples of, kind of, how communication can go wrong and how to, kind of, avoid various pitfalls of communication and miscommunication. Dr. Umar Toseeb Love a good popular science book, so I’m looking forward to reading that, and finally, what’s your take home message for our listeners? Professor Yulia Kovas For me, I think it’s coming up, kind of, more and more strongly, this idea that it’s very, very difficult to predict the impact of your message. We, as I mentioned, we often, kind of, distance ourselves from what we already know, and so, I vouched for myself that I will always pilot the message. So, let’s say I want to communicate this, I will be conducting either some focus groups or working with students to, kind of, really communicate this message to the audience, to the representatives of the audiences that I’m planning and see how it comes back, this message. It’s a little bit like Chinese whispers, you know, you say something, see what comes back to you at the end of it. And through this work, which I am committed to now, I plan to, kind of, begin to predict the outcomes of the message better and better. But I think it’s a commitment that we need to make to science. Dr. Fatos Selita Yeah, and I – if I could add, ‘cause what Yulia said is very important, but if I could add – if there was another thing I could add, if you – it would be that one, if you believe in science, then if there is one thing worth investing on, it is communication skills. I – for – in my assessment, based on my knowledge, it is right there at the top with basic maths skills and literacy skills. It’s the next after them from my assessment. So, if one – and again, I emphasise, if you believe in science, then you must train for it. I say that because if you don’t believe in science, I’d prefer you not to train for it. Dr. Umar Toseeb Thank you so much. That was a – I really, really enjoyed that conversation. For more details, please visit the ACAMH website, www.acamh.org, and Twitter @ACAMH. ACAMH is spelt A-C-A-M-H, and don’t forget to follow us on your preferred streaming platform, let us know if you enjoy the podcast, with a rating or review, and do share with your friends and colleagues.