[program music intro]

[program music in background]

Regina Barber DeGraaff [post-production]: Welcome to Spark Science. I’m your host, Regina Barber DeGraaff. I teach physics, astronomy, and science communication at Western Washington University. Our guest today is Dr. Reyhaneh Maktoufi, who is a Civic Science Fellow at NOVA, and just completed her PhD in media, technology, and society at Northwestern University. She’s also an artist who uses comics to encourage the use of empathy in science communication.

In this episode, we try to answer the following questions. Why do people choose to reject science? How do we make science less intimidating? What makes certain audiences connect to a science message? We hope you enjoy another meta-conversation about the science behind science communication.

[music grows louder]

[music fades out]

Regina: We are talking today with Dr. Reyhaneh Maktoufi. And we actually know each other from this Jackson Wild Fellowship that we did together, which was awesome. But you just got your PhD in science communication. So you can you tell our listeners: what did you study? And this is a new field, so tell us a little about it.

Dr. Reyhaneh Maktoufi: Sure, yeah. So the program that I was a part of at Northwestern University was called “Media, Technology, and Society.” And it’s very interdisciplinary and you can choose the different things you want to study. And I did not know that the science of science communication is a thing. I started doing health communication. I did a master’s in health psychology. So I knew there was a science to how we get people to, you know, take their medicine, give up smoking.

But there’s a science. For example, there’s theories, like the planned behavior theories, right? Where you’re like, okay, if I want to change someone’s behavior, there’s certain things I need to know. For example, that person should know, should change their attitude.

They should know that, one, smoking is very risky and could kill you. But also, that if you give up smoking, it’s very effective and your lungs would start to recover. They should also know that they have the self-efficacy, that they have the ability to stop smoking. So you’re like, “Hey, did you know if you started using these nicotine patches, you can give up smoking,” right?

And then there’s norms. So you’re like, “Hey, did you know that most people in your school or in your age don’t actually smoke and they don’t approve of smoking?” And—

Regina: It’s just peer pressure.

Dr. Maktoufi: [laughing] Right? Exactly! So you’re using all these different things. And everything should kind of be ready for people to give up smoking. Because what if I want to give up smoking and I can’t? What if I want to give up smoking but all my friends are smoking, and I’ll be left behind? So there’s a kind of science to it. And there has been researches and studies that have been showing, for example, this kind of frame might work, this kind of frame will not work. If you want to change their behaviors specifically on that, these are the kinds of things you can do.

So when I started my studies, I was doing mostly health communication. But I was actually a big astronomy nerd. And I was an amateur astronomer. At some point, I realized, hey, I don’t just have to do health communication; I can do more science communication. So think about the different sciences. Like, how would–you know, if someone like Carl Sagan would come and say something about science, like this “pale blue dot”–something about Earth and it’s majesty and its beauty, but also how tiny it is in the context of the universe–people would get that tattoo on them. And that’s science!

[Regina laughs]

Right? So how can you cause that enthusiasm, that interest in science? If people would go above and beyond to change their behavior, to, you know, make life decisions based on science. And I found that to be very interesting and very excited. And that’s how I kind of started studying the science of science communication in different fields, starting with astronomy.

So I worked in a planetarium, at the Admiral Planetarium in Chicago, to see how scientists there talked to people, get them to be curious, get them engaged, use pop culture references to interact with people and build some kind of warmth and trust when you’re having conversations. Especially when it gets to more controversial conversations like with aliens, flat earth, young earth creationism. If you have to make sure that people, you know, see you and perceive you as a trustworthy and warm person.

Regina: I wanted to ask you about that. Because you were talking about Carl Sagan, and he is beloved by many, many people, and I think he’s a very nice man, but he didn’t grab my attention like for other people. I think there was a part of me that just felt very separated from a very academic guy. Do you know what I mean? He didn’t feel like–everybody was like, “He was so approachable,” and I was like, “Ehhh, I don’t know.” He was trying to be, and there’s nothing he can do about who he is. Have you talked a lot about, like, the delivery of that science, and when people can attach to it and when people can’t?

Dr. Maktoufi: You know, Regina, I think that’s a very great example that talks about–when we come up with a strategy, when we want to talk about a certain message being delivered, you can never say “This is for everyone. This message is for everyone.” Every message, every film, every TV show, every book that we make has its own audience. And it’s really hard to say that everyone would be the audience of that and everyone would like it. And there was

something about Carl Sagan that didn’t work for you, right? There’s certain things, for example, I grew up really loving this science fiction movie, Contact, with Jodie Foster playing the scientist. And she—

Regina: I also loved that movie.

Dr. Maktoufi: Right? It’s great! And she appealed to me. She was a woman. She was a scientist. She had an adventure and I loved it. And maybe a lot of other people will not be able to connect to that, right? So I think something very important about delivery of message is the source. Who’s your source? Who’s delivering that message? Do you identify with them? Can you connect with them? Do you see them as someone you can trust? That you like? Are they likable characters or not, right?

And I think there was something about Carl Sagan that probably made him very likable because of the literature that he was using. He seemed like he was telling stories. He seemed just like a nice person. He would smile and walk with you.

He’s also a White man that is talking from very academic position, in some ways. And it might be hard to relate to that. Like maybe, if I’m growing up, I would probably–and this is me, this is not for everyone, right? I would probably not imagine myself in a turtleneck with a a jacket just walking by the beach. I would probably see myself more as a Jodie Foster character. You know, a woman that is going out in the wild to fight aliens! And ironically, Carl Sagan wrote that story, right?

Regina: Oh yeah, I know, yeah. [laughs]

Dr. Maktoufi: [laughing] Right?

Regina: I don’t think he’s–I don’t think he didn’t think about that, right? I think probably he would have been one of the first people to be like, “I’m not going to reach everyone.” But there is this mentality. And I think a lot of our colleagues, because we’re both in academia, that, like, “This is the way you talk to people about science. This is the one way. And if this doesn’t work, that’s their fault, not mine.” You know?

Dr. Maktoufi: You yeah.

Regina: And, like, everyone should like all the same thing. We should all watch PBS. And so there’s that issue. And that’s what I like talking to you about because there is this, like you said, there’s a science to what speaks to certain audiences. Not necessarily what works for everybody.

Dr. Maktoufi: Yeah. Yeah, definitely. Sometimes when I have my workshops on science communication and communication skills, I try to tell everyone to find their own way of communicating. You don’t want to be another copy of another person. Because then it

would be boring, right? We connect to different people, and if a part of your personality is something I could connect with, I would rather you be that authentic self that you are.

And I’m sure there would be different people that would connect to that. And if we’re all copy-paste–so for example, Carl Sagan–that would be a very boring universe. And it’s, I would, say, very counter to what science is about. Because science is about different things and different fields and different varieties and different diversities, right?

[program music]

Regina [post-pr: We’re speaking with Dr. Reyhaneh Maktoufi about resistance to science.

[music slowly fades out]

Regina: I want to get back to what you’re talking about with controversial things. Because you had talked on Big Science.

Dr. Maktoufi: Yeah, it’s a podcast from the SETI Institute. Also from the movie Contact with Jodie Foster.

[both laugh]

Regina: So you were talking with them at this big convention and you had used this analogy to talk about controversy. And I teach a science communication class, and we have a week where we have students to pretend to be talking to somebody who, not as anti-vaxxer–like, doesn’t go to the websites–but is vaccine-resistant a little bit. Like, how do you talk to that person? Because in the sciences we’re kind of not–we’re not taught how to do that. Can you tell us your analogy that you used on big picture science?

Dr. Maktoufi: [laughing] Yeah. Well, I think all of us either have gone through that or had friends who have been dating someone that has been kind of, like, we don’t approve of. We can see their flaws. But when someone is in a relationship–when I was in a relationship that was not a good one, I had friends that were closed to me and would be like, “Rey, this person is an idiot and is, like, a horrible person. Why are you dating them?”

But at the time, these are facts, right? Like, they’re give me facts. They’re giving me observations. But at the time, there’s so much emotion involved, so many things assisted with my identity as a person that is dating this other person, that I would feel like, okay, if they’re right and if I have to break up with them, I will lose a lot of the friends that we have together. I will have to spend a lot of emotional energy to get over that breakup. It also means I spend all of this time dating someone that was bad for me. So I have to admit to certain bad life decisions and accept that I’m losing a lot of things by breaking up this relationship.

Regina: It also hurts your ego, right? Like, “I made bad decisions.” I’m paying–like you just

said, bad life decisions [laughs].

Dr. Maktoufi: Definitely! It will hurt my ego. And it would say something about me to me, right? So, when I hear those facts, those information, I would start doing this thing called motivated reasoning, which is basically like the example that I said. You have certain ideas, right? And then you start getting new information. And the new information is that, hey, that person that you have been dating is a bad person, right? So my brain doesn’t like that inconsistency. And it has to be like, okay, either this new information that I’m getting is wrong, or I have to change my ways.

So if I get this new information, this new data about this person, my brain has to adjust. So either I have to accept that new information and change my behavior, and that behavior would mean that okay, I have to get rid of my friends, all this emotional energy would go to it, and so on and so forth.

Or, I could say hey, this new information that came in is wrong. You might be lying to me, or the person that I’m dating might have very good reasons for their behavior. Maybe they actually really love me and this is their way of showing me their love. Maybe they’re going through a hard time. Maybe this is not really them and this is just an exception. So I start to do this motivated reasoning, right?

And the same thing applies to a lot of science issues. A lot of times, for example, when we’re talking about climate change, just imagine if my job depends on, for example, on working in a mine. If this new technology comes (for example, just like green energy stuff), I would lose my job. Which means I will lose my insurance. Which means I will not be able to support my family, right? So there’s a lot of consequences.

So instead of accepting that information, what I might do because of my worry, because of my stress, is to say, “Okay. First of all, this might be fake news about this whole global warming stuff.” Or, “This energy might not be good for us.” Or, “There’s all these conspiracy things that are happening.” So I’ll start doing this motivated reasoning because I’m scared of all the things that might happen if this is actually true, right?

And I think realizing that, realizing that we all do motivated reasoning, and realizing why people do motivated reasoning would actually make us more empathetic when we are encountered with a lot of science skepticism. It makes us realize that, oh, a lot of us are coming from this idea that we are worried. We are concerned about our social group. We are concerned about our identity. We’re concerned about all the consequences of a scientific topic being true, right?

Regina: And this is why I like talking to you so much. Because I think when we talk about science communication and we try to be empathetic, there’s this, I think, myth that is kind of in our academia. Where we as scientist kind of, we pretend that we’re spurrite from the public. That we’re separate. We do not have any of the feelings or flaws or biases. We’re

completely objective.

Like we’re doing this motivated reasoning when we’re in relationships. We do the motivated reasoning when we’re hearing stuff on the news and we’re like, “Oh my gosh, that does scare me” if we don’t take the time to actually look up. I would, I would actually challenge all of my academic friends to say, like, were they ever duped into some story? Like I think you had mentioned the dolphins in Venice. And you’re like, “Oh my gosh, that sounds awesome!” And you’re like, “Wait a minute. Let me actually take a second and see if that’s actually true.”

Dr. Maktoufi: Yeah.

Regina: Even if we aren’t finally duped, we are for a second. So to have some empathy is important. But what do we do from there? So once we have the empathy and we realize that we are part of the public as well–so we’re talking to this group of people, maybe at a planetarium–what is the next step after that to make sure that we actually are effectively communicating science?

Dr. Maktoufi: Sure. So first of all, there is also diversity of strategies, right? So like when I say this and this and this, it doesn’t really mean that this is, like, all the steps we need to take. These are the things to be aware of when we’re communicating, right?

And I would say probably especially coming from academia, something we really need to learn is to listen, right? Being able to ask questions and just listen is such an amazing skill. And it’s such a hard skill to have. And it would help us be not only more empathetic, just as, like, a moral duty that we have as humans, but also opens up a lot of doors for conversation.

I think we need to change our mindset of, “Hey, in this conversation I’m going to persuade you to do something.” I think we need to think about, “Hey, in this conversation we’re going to have a conversation. We’re just going to talk. And I’m going to listen to you. And I’m going to make you feel more comfortable talking to me, and maybe do something so that when I say something, you wouldn’t block me out immediately. You would listen, and then we’ll continue having conversations.”

So I would say listening is a great skill that we need to learn. And that would involve asking questions. Asking those “Why?” questions? Why are you worried about, you know, this new climate change stuff? Why is it concerning you? What are the kind of questions do you have? What kind of things have you heard? Because also, we want to know our audience. We want to know what kind of communication we want to have with them.

[program music]

Regina [post-production]: This is Spark Science, and we’re talking with Dr. Maktoufi, a science communication researcher, about cultural awareness when sharing science.

[music slowly fades out]

Regina: I think that we need to also be aware of the culture people are coming from. And I think you’ve already said that, but I want to kind of dig deeper into that. Because I know that you had done some science communication in Iran, as well, right? So what are you seeing in the different cultures that are maybe surprising or not surprising, the same, different, that kind of stuff?

Dr. Maktoufi: Definitely, yeah. It’s been interesting having to balance those things when I worked in Iran and now that I work in the U.S. So for example, when I was working in a hospice in Iran, communicating things about, you know, grief, and how to grieve, and talking about death and cancer is something that you always talk to the family about, right? Yes, I know in the Western medicine, the patient is the person that you always talk to. But in Iran, you talk to the family. If you talk only to the patient without telling the family certain things, you have lost the trust of the family. Which means you lose some of the privileges of being able to tell the family certain things so that they can give the patients certain freedoms.

So for example, if the patient doesn’t actually know how progressed their cancer is, it’s not great practice to go and tell them that without talking to the family as well, right? And you could say maybe in Western medicine that no, this is the patient’s right. You should tell them. Yes, it is their right, and you should tell them. But if you want to build your relationship with the family so that the family keeps, you know, letting the patient take a certain medication, let the patient stay in the hospice for longer, different kind of things, you need to keep that communication. You need to keep those doors open. By deciding that I’m going to tell the truth right now and be done with it, you’re closing a lot of doors. And the future kind of communication that you want to have with the patient will be all gone, right?

So for example, this is something like completely different in the East than the West, right? They’re like, “I need to know my audience. I need to know who I should talk to. I need to know how I should talk to them.”

Someone that taught me a lot about these cultural considerations is Monica, Monica Feliu-Mojer. And she talks about even examples that we use in science communications are so different, too. So for example, she talks about if you want to talk to people about this helicopter seeds and you’re in North America, you can talk about maple trees. But if you go to Puerto Rico, you want to talk about African tulips, which is another plant that people are more familiar with. So how do you adjust your examples so that it matches your audience too, right?

And as a scientist who wants to communicate, you have to learn those examples, too. And you will not learn those if you don’t spend time with the community or if you don’t read about the things that they read about. So it’s a lot of work, but also it will build trust and it would make things more tangible and accessible.

[program music]

[program music in background]

Regina [post-production]: I’d like to thank Dr. Reyhaneh Maktoufi for speaking with me about the science behind science communication. If you’d like to know about her work and her art, follow her on Twitter or Instagram at TheCosmicRey. That’s R-E-Y.

Spark Science is produced in collaboration with KMRE and Western Washington University. Today’s episode was recorded in Bellingham, Washington, in my house, and on my computer during the 2020 statewide homestay order. Our producers are Suzanne Blais and myself, Regina Barber DeGraaff. Our audio engineer is Zerach Coakley.

If you missed any of the show, go to our website, sparksciencenow.com. And if there’s a science idea you’re curious about, send us a message on Twitter or Facebook at SparkScienceNow. Thank you for listening to Spark Science.

[program music outro]