How can we communicate the successes and failures of research? SciCom-Special #3 with Evelyne Fraats.

Introduction to Kaleidoscience

0:00Hi, and welcome to Kaleidoscience. You are listening to our winter special, where we are taking a look at science communication. During December, we'll have special episodes on Sundays, where we talk to fellow science communicators about their medium and experience. In January, we'll go back to our schedule and we will take a look at the research behind science communication. This episode is hosted by Elisa Palme and Luffy Kühne. So sit back, relax and enjoy this week's episode.

0:34Hello and welcome to this episode of the winter special.

Interview with Eveline Fratz

0:39Today we are talking to Eveline Fratz, who is a doctoral student at the Moral and Social Brain Lab at the University of Ghent in Belgium. And additionally, she's an avid science communicator working for the InMind blog, doing science communication with children and showing the good and the bad sides of being a researcher on LinkedIn. Welcome. Hello, welcome. Thank you. Thank you.

1:34Hello, welcome.

1:40Thanks again.

1:48Nice.

1:50Our second sentence. Currently, I'm most fascinated by?

1:56At this moment with Christmas decorations.

2:01Relatable. um and our last sentence if i was an emoji i would be i think the one with like the the tongue out and then with the wink the one with the straight head or with the turned head straight head okay yeah okay don't think we've had that one yeah i don't know or a cat i would also choose a cat nice

Importance of Science Communication

2:31why do you think is it relevant that scientists themselves also communicate their science so why shouldn't scientists just do their science keep it separated from everyone else who isn't into science so why should we talk about it i personally feel that science communication is part of our job it's like part of our responsibility as a researcher because we are paid we are paid by the

3:01government we are paid by taxes so we are paid by society and society the world everything is built on science of yeah i hope so but a lot of a lot of things are built on science so i think it's only normal that researchers talk about what they're doing and not only in their ivory tower in their fancy journals but also in ways that people can understand and i know sometimes it can be a bit

3:33more difficult when you have a very abstract topic for example like my topic i work with moral decision making with people with like um doing the good doing the bad uh so for me it's very easy because everyone can relate to that everyone knows situations about morality or making decisions or like authority but still i think it's your job to communicate science because society has to know what we're doing

4:08to also have the trust in us there are a lot of mediums that spread things that are maybe not so scientific and even though as a scientist i also don't know everything uh and i also make mistakes and when i talk about a topic that's maybe not fully my my expertise most of the time i will make a mistake but still i know more than just a random person talking about it on another platform maybe

4:41so i also think it's our responsibility to what we know to communicate it that people have good knowledge and that they can that they know the right things or also that they sometimes know that we also don't know like i i recently had to go to a doctor um and i asked something and he said yeah i actually don't know i'm gonna check in my book and i was like wow that's actually so nice

5:12i didn't feel i didn't feel like oh my god that's a bad doctor but i was just like yeah that's just how it is um and i think it's also important to spread that very good i already uh introduced that you work for the in mind blog and that you do some science communication

InMind Blog and Science Festival

5:32with children could you tell us a little bit more about both projects so um in mind i'm the blog coordinator in mind is a platform for psychology uh it's written in dutch uh it's for netherlands and belgium and uh what we do is we have a monthly blog about a science psychology sociology related team and as a blog coordinator i receive all the

6:04blogs i give them the first um feedback i edit them um and then whenever they have processed the article again i will put it online um and i will also make sure that everything goes smoothly and that is not uh twice the same topic um things like that and with a festival for children uh that's called the brain bee or the hersenimpiade in the netherlands um it's an international event actually we are connected to the whole international brain bee and what we kind of do is um organize

6:41olympiads for high school students and then the winner of the olympiad goes to the international version of the brain bee and we give them all types of neuroscience related questions like anatomy but also patient diagnosis and random facts um and then besides the quiz itself we also organize a whole day around it with um a lot of researchers coming and talking about their work we have a kind of market where we show a lot of work and a lot of yeah for example vr glasses or like

7:15models um they normally have a brain dissection that they can attend um normally someone from the psychobiology bachelor in amsterdam gives an eeg session so that's what that day looks like that sounds so cool yeah i would have loved that as a child yeah i fully agree and all of the things you do like being a blog coordinator is obviously very different from doing like a practical

7:45event uh with children what do you think kind of brought you to do these different kinds of science communication like why did you decide to work on a blog and on like event planning compared to i don't know a podcast for example i have to admit that i know i i never would make a podcast myself so most of my mediums are always written like my small my small post on linkedin um or the the

8:17blogs are right for in mind but actually a podcast i would never do that myself i still love to be here with you but for example i would never initiate it myself uh so in mind and the science festival of children are very different but there are both two ways that i can get that i can talk at the general audience uh because a high school student will maybe not listen to a podcast or read a very long

8:47blog but if you have a day full of events that's maybe more encouraging for them um and i also really like to do more different things um yeah i also really like that just to do different things i think that's really cool and what do you enjoy about being like the blog coordinator of in mind what i like about being the coordinator is that i am the first person to read

9:22all the blogs and because people it sounds very obvious i know but uh most of them have not have a lot of experience with like writing blogs and then still sometimes they write such good blog and like wow this is amazing this is so cool and sometimes i'm like okay we can do this and we can do that but the topic is really great and that they take the time voluntarily to write it and um yeah to think about

9:55how can i make my message for the real public i just think it's really fascinating and i'm also i also love psychology research myself and i haven't had the time to always read papers and and always because phd life is already pretty chaotic so i also love it to read it myself and the people who write for the in mind blog these blog posts are those usually like researchers like people who generally just inform themselves well on the topic or

10:29i think everyone we have now on the team which is around 11 persons are all researchers most of them are phd students we have a few postdocs and i think even one assistant professor um so they're more specialist in their own fields and most of them write in their own field and their expertise uh sometimes try to challenge them that they write a bit outside just science in general um but most of them are really researched themselves yes that's very cool and um what do you enjoy the

11:07most about doing science communication with children and organizing these like events children are just so fun they are horrible to communicate with like don't ever do an event for people 16 17 18 because it's very hard to talk to them but the people that attend the festival they are so motivated and they are so they are so clever like we give them like a little bit of homework like okay this is the material for the quiz and sometimes i'm

11:42like oh my god i i i knew this question i knew the answer somewhere but then these children are so amazing and they're so intrigued by the brain already that i'm like wow that's so cool that's that's yeah i just find it super inspiring that they are already so motivated uh that they like it so much um and sometimes people really come to me afterwards i'm like yeah i really know what i'm gonna study now or um i really like this bachelor because we also have a bachelor promotion of the three neuroscience

12:17bachelors in the netherlands and i just i'm so happy that that that platform is there because i never had it for me brain science was really yeah it's it's i think there was one chapter about it in my biology books but that's that was it and then when i when i went to my first bachelor open day i was like wow this is amazing but i also grew up in the south of the netherlands so then i wouldn't say opportunities

12:49opportunities were less but it was for it is west lau connected then for example amsterdam or utrecht so i never knew about initiatives like this or something like this um so i'm really happy that it's there and that's i also always actively promote in my area in the south of the netherlands and um yeah i'm just really happy it exists because i wish it was there for me i think this just brought

13:19back a memory that one of the reasons i actually went into science was a guy who gave a um presentation about his research on parkinson's i think at that point at school and i remember like being so amazed by this because it was this so i was about 15 at the time so um i obviously also could only know from like stereotypes but it was this like heavily tattooed guy with long black hair and he then held such an

13:53interesting talk about how he was researching parkinson's on flies and well this sounds very like random this actually was part of the inspiration that kind of drew me into neuroscience and drew me into starting to like look into that topic so i think these events for children and giving them opportunities to learn and opening their eyes to parts of the world they might not see otherwise actually very helpful

14:24i completely agree and neuroscience is not such an old discipline yet so for example your the brain olympiad is already much older in the netherlands and there are so many children that are already attending and whole schools but like neuroscience that's very very new actually um so yeah i really like that and i really hope that we can continue with having more participants and more popularity and what would you say is like the most challenging part about organizing these events you already touched

15:00that the communication with the children is kind of difficult but is that the only thing or are there other things where you like well it's not that it's just a difficult group to target because uh they're like young adolescents and uh yeah you communicate formally via email and sometimes they're already also quite busy yeah because they're choosing their career their their technique bachelor day sometimes they have to do a lot of admin tests um admission tests i'm sorry so it's also normal that they're a bit difficult to target

15:37um but i do know that people who come they are really motivated so that's really nice for me well events like this they are built on connections they are built on people knowing each other and we have a professor from name here who is um of the donald institute who is working with us we have someone from tilburg we have some of an amsterdam and i think through the years i really noticed like we need them we need all those connections because you can formally write an email to the head of

16:10department x asking like hey can i use this room can we book this equipment blah blah blah but just having those connections it's so much easier uh it's also essential and um i moved almost two years ago to belgium from the netherlands to belgium and then i also noticed it's sometimes more difficult for me to organize the events because i can do things online but it's much harder for me to just go by or to know what's really going on um so i say just communication with all the different people

16:47involved from the sponsors towards the people from the room to the emergency people to like everyone that's sometimes quite challenging and it's really built on connections um yeah and is there anything you find challenging about coordinating the block um it's just very different than for example the the event for children that i organize because it's more something it's completely remote uh so it's completely online um and i can kind of make my own schedule like for example someone just

17:26uh hand in a blog and i have to read it somewhere this week and then send them the feedback but it's completely up to me when i can when i can when i will read it um so actually time management and communication wise i am a bit like the leader yeah not sounding like dominant but just just the way it's structurized um sometimes i find it hard to because i'm not really used to be a leader so

18:00i can give people feedback and sometimes they don't agree with me or they still you ask hey um you give me a blog of 800 words and they come with 1600 words and then my my first reaction is always ah i i really want this to be cool blog and i want to invest a lot of time in it but but then i have to remind myself okay i'm the coordinator i just have to give them the feedback like okay no the blog has to be around 800 words these are the suggestions can you do this this this and

18:32this so and that's new for me just handling people in that way and uh still being respectful and also i have my own way of writing blogs i've written already two blogs for in minds and i'm now working on my third one for another platform i have my own way of writing and i like it but of course other people have other ways uh and that sometimes it's just very new still for me so i have to sometimes

19:05find a way to like okay i like it i don't like this how can we find a balance um and that's a bit new for me um but i think i'm adjusting quite well but yeah that will be my challenging point if i have to say something yeah i can imagine to have like it's difficult to still be like it's really cool that you're doing this but also we need you to do this a little bit different than you're currently doing this like have clear boundaries while still emphasizing that you're obviously happy that

19:39people write about their research so you also um use linkedin for your science communication where you

Science Communication on LinkedIn

19:47kind of show like you call it the good and the bads of research if i remember correctly um where you show a little bit like all the parts because usually linkedin is more like a cv or like a highlight of most people i at least that's what i assume otherwise everybody's doing very well um and you also show the little hiccups during experiments or like yeah the the more normal parts of research could you tell us a little bit more about how you do that and why you do that

20:26so indeed on linkedin i try to share my authentic research journey so from looking for a phd as a master student to now being a second chair phd student and my motto is really to show the goods and the bad which comes from the the soundtrack the goods bad and the ugly because i really like that music coming back to the introduction sentence um and i do that in two ways um in one way i do it for the

20:57researchers because i sometimes think linkedin is full of bullshit and um a lot of very high pressure things uh so i try to just show my story in a really vulnerable open way but also with a bit of humor um because indeed what you say linkedin can be or not can be for me it is very

21:25high pressure and people only share their achievements and their new papers and they only criticized uh other people um and on the other side i do science communication for the general public so people that are not scientists uh may need to talk about what i'm doing as a phd student because people still think i'm in a lab with a white coat and doing experiments um so tell them what's really like to do science uh and also to talk about science

21:59in a way that they can understand and it also touches on the first point because they all think scientists are like einsteins and perfect so also to spread some we are humans in the message uh i remembered when i was a master's student i hated linkedin everyone says yeah you have to use linkedin because it's good for your connections and things like that but it really made me sad and frustrated and very insecure just looking at all these stories and then one day i decided to write a

22:36very very unstructured post about uh about my my what i would do after my master because people would always ask me yeah you're almost done with your masters what are you going to do afterwards and i hated that question because it's it just seems that you have to figure it all out and i was just trying to i would not say survive but writing my literature review doing my internship by moving uh everything

23:08and then people always would say it um and i yeah so i made a post about that just saying like hey it's actually very frustrating when people do that because it made me feel very insecure and that i haven't figured it out so maybe don't do that and i got so many reactions on that and i was like whoa this is actually pretty cool and then i actually kept doing that more and more and eventually it really became my thing on linkedin to share those short blogs or short posts i wouldn't even call them

23:42blogs just about doing research uh what i'm doing in my day what went well what didn't go well um yeah just the real life stories i think that's really nice and it's also ironic i mean having looked at your linkedin profile recently also in preparation for this episode you do so many things so i think it's always um yeah in comparison to everybody else it always feels like we're lacking so i think it's

24:16really good what you're doing on linkedin showing that it's not all glamorous publications yeah um since you are doing science communication in so many different ways or media is there anything

Most Interesting Part of Science Communication

24:36where you would say that's the most interesting part or the most interesting thing i've learned the whole time doing that

24:45so over the years that i do a lot of science communication um i learned really to frame my research it sounds very obvious of course but it's really true and it's actually very hard it's very hard to to for example explain your research in one sentence because you're working on it full-time and for multiple years so to say it in one sentence that's very hard and to also make that sentence understandable to other people if you can do that

25:17you have understand your topic but that's actually very very hard and until today i still struggle with it sometimes uh how to communicate what i do effectively and that also goes in linkedin because for example not everyone is a psychology researcher um so if i say something like yeah i studied the neural cognitive mechanisms of pro-social disobedience using non-invasive neurostimulation then people are like yeah that's fun that's a lot of so yeah but but if i say i study which brain

25:53processes are important for moral decision making by stimulating the brain people are like oh yeah that's cool and how do you do that or they always have a next question they can think about it and that's what matters for me so i really learned to how to frame my research in what i say you have a yamake language um i also met a lot of people um science connections just people doing kind of the same

26:25what i do or that are really interested in what i do but also since i sometimes share the things that i like or don't like about a phd then people sometimes really relate to me uh and sometimes they really send me messages like wow i i felt so understood by your by your post or this really helped me um and i also like that it also sometimes makes me feel a bit less insecure and less alone and

26:57yeah just knowing that people like what i do uh even though i'm really vulnerable and sometimes sometimes when i post something like oh my god why did i say that but if then people accept it and see it the way i see it then i'm happy with that um it also made me a bit stronger in a way

27:27because linkedin is full of a lot of people and there have been times when i get negative comments on my post or feedback or um yeah recently i posted something about the pressure as a phd student and

27:47that that i that i think oh my god you have to do this and you have to do that then you have to do this and then i saw something on linkedin that says yeah you have to write 500 words each day do three hours of deep work i don't know it continues it was a i think i know which post you comment i think you commented on it i also saw it and it was like yeah if you do these 15 things a day and you walk at least 10 000 steps and read at least one paper day you're ahead of all the other phd students and i was like yeah because then i don't need to do anything else anymore and i don't want to be i don't

28:21want to criticize him because of course on itself it are good points because if you don't if you don't do anything or if you only sit on your phone don't do deep work if you don't write research is not going very well but just this list and i was already in a stress state and i'm seeing this list i don't know it made me so frustrated and insecure and i reposted it and then it there was a whole discussion and then in the end someone said

28:53yeah i'm just thinking if you can't handle the pressure maybe your phd isn't for you and i don't know then comments like that then i'm like okay this is my boundary i don't accept this uh at this moment i at that moment i i don't know i really deleted linkedin for a few days out of posters um yeah and that's that's hard i i sometimes really don't like that that there are so

29:26many comments and i try to be really vulnerable but in the end i i deleted that post and on the one hand i do regret that because as you said you can relate to it and i know other people who have said that but then that one comment that's yeah that's hit me yeah yeah i can imagine and again as you said all of the points that were named in this post are really important points but simultaneously

30:00you never know the full scope of a person's situation so i always feel like if you generalize like that yeah i yeah i don't think that's an appropriate comment to recommend somebody to not do a phd based on a few linkedin interactions i don't yeah and also why do you have to be the best phd students or why do you have to be top one percent phd students like if you look at a phd a

30:32phd is already quite a high standard something in in research and it's a very harsh world if you love it that's amazing but you cannot deny that it's i wouldn't say more stressful but it's just a highly competitive environment so why then even be the one top percent like then you then you kind of encourage that already um yeah yeah it's difficult yeah and that's what i try to just make people aware

31:09of that okay this is going on and it's not that it's always going well there are also a lot of researchers who struggle there are also researchers who are very successful but still struggle there are also researchers who are not successful but still struggle it's not always grand this paper that publication this um i really want to just say like this is it and i don't know well i hope that i can have a very good academic career but this is what it is now and sometimes i am afraid that

31:44with being so open i kind of break down my own career or that people say oh my god you're too vulnerable or you're too this or you're too that but i also know that i want to break the cycle of that a phd student has to be perfect because i know that that's not possible and that if we keep if we keep pushing that i don't know that's not that's not how academic career how an academic world

32:15should be for me so i try i try to change that a little little bit okay so do you yourself consume

Consuming Science Communication Media

32:27other science comm media or is there like a science comm medium which you personally like look at that you really enjoy well there are multiple i do love uh i'm more about the local things or like not like the world wild wild things like i for example love eos in belgium um that's like a science platform um

32:58i do follow a lot of science festivals myself uh like last week it was like science day um i now helped i volunteered but otherwise i would have go myself there are also some events for for example woman in science which i also really love um

33:21yeah i don't know i don't know exactly there are a lot of just random things but i don't have one favorite things actually i'm currently reading the book of my promoter which i also really love even though i already know a lot about the topic but i admire her very much and it's very nice to read about it in this way and yeah so i just have a lot of random things i'm also reading a book what my sister gave me a book about why people for example do bad things

33:56lucifer the lucifer effect so i just have a lot of random things and i switch a lot but i think that's really cool because science festivals are for example something i have never attended in my life i wasn't even fully aware that this existed so i think that's really cool um if you if you tell us what they're called exactly we can also put the ones you think are the most interesting uh in the show notes i will send you some thank you so thank you so much for being in

34:32our podcast and taking the time to talk to us today thank you so much for inviting me and just at the end could you just real quickly tell our listeners where people can find you so you can find me on linkedin and blue sky and that's actually both just my name evelyn vraat or evelyn vraat in dutch and we will link all also here the um block um and both accounts um in the show notes but uh thank you so much for talking to us today thank you for organizing

35:07this was kaleidoscience we hope that you enjoyed this episode and we would love to have your feedback you can rate our podcast and give us feedback on our instagram account have a great week and you'll hear from us again in two weeks this episode was hosted by sophie kühne and elisa palmer produced by imogenhüsing clara kühne sophie kühne söhnke löw and elisa palmer the music is from jan luka schroeder and the logo is from annika richter