Summit Research Repository (Simon Fraser University)

Chan, Chi Chung

English

Privacy-preserving human action recognition with joint edge-cloud computing

Ayyagari, Akash

Comparative Study of Model-based Lateral Controllers with Selected Deep Learning Methods for Autonomous Driving

Lin, Qiushi

Learning cooperation for partially observable multi-agent path finding

Green, Emma

How movement across landscapes mediates species-resource interactions

Nickchi, Payman

Linkage fine-mapping on sequences from case-control studies and goodness-of-fit tests based on empirical distribution function for general likelihood models

Zarkalam, Shervin

Soft machines: Kettle logic and the Gale maze

Episode 1 of the Telling Science Stories podcast

Metcalfe, Jennifer

Fleerackers, Alice

Merriam, Connor

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TRANSCRIPT GENERATED BY OPENAI'S WHISPER AND EDITED BY CONNOR MERRIAM
LINK TO FULL EPISODE: https://anchor.fm/tellingsciencestories/episodes/Telling-Science-Stories-
Episode-1-Scicomm-Models-with-Jennifer-MetCalfe-e1u56lr
Hello and welcome to Telling Science Stories. Once a publishing course at Simon Fraser University, 
this show is all about what makes good science communication. From journalism to YouTube videos, I 
speak with experts in the field about the techniques and theories they use to tell better science 
stories. I'm your host Alice Fleerackers, and this podcast was originally recorded on the unceded and 
traditional territories of the Musqueam, the Squamish, the Tsleil-Waututh and Shishalh Nations. 
Today's special guest is Jenni Metcalfe, who is a senior science communicator who loves to find, 
tell, and share people's stories, help scientists use the right communication strategies to truly 
engage people, and train and mentor scientists and others involved in science to communicate. Jenni 
has been operating her own science communication consultancy, and is currently the president of the 
International Scientific Committee for the Public Communication of Science and Technology Network, 
which I should know how to pronounce better because I'm also a member of that committee. Thank you so 
much for being here today, Jenny. It's really a pleasure having you on this show. 
It's a pleasure, Alice. And before we start, I should acknowledge the traditional owners of the land 
on which I am currently on, which are the Yagara people who have lived on this land for many, many 
years, and I pay respects to the elders past, present, and emerging.
So to get started, I wanted to just cover some basics that students or other sort of new science 
communicators might not be familiar with. And the first is this idea of the science communication 
model. I see this written about a lot in the research, and you know, there's a lot of debate, which 
I'm sure we'll get into, but my first question is why? Like, why do we care about models? What is the 
value of having a model when we are trying to communicate science? 
I have been so immersed in models for a long time. It was in fact, the focus of my PhD, which I 
completed at the beginning of 2019. Models have been around in my mind for a very long time. And so 
your question made me stop and think, what in fact is the value of a model to a practitioner? And so 
I really like that question. And I think in many respects, you can do a really good communication 
without any model. So I've been a communication practitioner for some 36 years now. I'd like to think 
that I had, before I even knew about models, that I was doing good science communication. However, I 
think what models adds to my practice is a way to organize how I think about what I do. And so as we 
explore models a little bit more in this conversation, hopefully that will become apparent. But when 
I'm planning science communication, for example, I try to include a mix of different types of 
objectives that reflects a number of different types of models. And I think that mix makes for good 
science communication. 
Got it. And the model that I see written about the most in research is actually a model that seems to 
be going a little bit out of fashion, the deficit model. Can you briefly explain to people who are 
not familiar with it what that model actually is? 
Well, this is a one-way communication model where knowledge goes from scientists to the public. Now, 
it's called the deficit model because researchers theorized that the public had a deficit of 
knowledge that needed filling by scientists, which is, I think, a big presumption. I actually don't 
think there's anything wrong with this model of communication. I don't think it should be thrown out, 
like many people say, because there is a demand for knowledge from scientists. Just look at COVID. In 
the last couple of years, the public have really wanted to know the best possible science about the 
virus and about the  ways to treat it, deal with it, and more recently, the vaccines that are around 
it. So I don't think I prefer to call it the dissemination model because it's a one-way form of 
communication, which may happen through mass media and may happen through public lectures. It may 
happen these days, of course, through the internet and social media. Even though it's called social 
media, it's often still a one-way form of communication. 
So you've mentioned that this model has kind of... Some people feel we should throw it out, that it's 
become less popular. Why is that? Why is it that researchers think that this model needs to be either 
done away with or revamped? 
Well, it's not the only form of communication, and it's not always the most effective form of 
communication because scientists providing facts and information doesn't actually necessarily change 
Telling Science Stories. Episode 1: Scicomm Models with Jennifer Metcalfe. January 28, 2023.
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how people think or how they behave. So other forms of communication are also important, which 
doesn't discount the importance of what I call the dissemination model of communication, but it just 
means that it's not enough by itself. And certainly, there's still a dominance of that sort of type 
of communication. So we need to look at other forms of communication if we're to create real positive 
changes out there. 
Got it. And so some of these alternative models, these other ways of communicating, can you tell me 
about sort of what these newer models are? What's replacing or sort of complementing the deficit 
model today? 
Well, there's been what researchers often refer to as a bit of an evolution of the thinking about 
models, and I certainly had my own personal evolution in that sense. The next model to commonly come 
into vogue was what's called the public understanding of science model or dialogue model. And that 
actually is where there's a two-way conversation between scientists and publics. And in this 
conversational model, it is presumed, and not always the case, but it is presumed that other forms of 
knowledge other than science are acknowledged, valued, and potentially even used. And that includes 
Indigenous knowledge. It also has the idea that if scientists can better understand the people they 
communicate with, then they may be better at communicating with them, which of course is true. This 
sort of conversational style of model was really important. But a lot of people talked about the 
dialogue model reinventing the deficit model and being an excuse for doing the deficit model better. 
And in some ways it was because it was still directed by scientists, science institutions, science 
communicators. So from that there arose, about 20 years ago, calls for a more participatory form of 
communication where various people were encouraged to be part of the communication and part of even 
the research, to even perhaps direct what researchers do, which is a whole different change in the 
power dynamic of the whole situation. 
I always find it challenging to differentiate between these in practice, and we'll get more to the 
paper you did that's quite relevant to that. But if you could just give some examples for students, 
like what would you see as a deficit, sort of traditionally deficit model, a dialogue model, and a 
participation model? 
Okay, so the sort of activities that are typical of, I'm going to call it dissemination model, are 
our lectures, our articles in the media, our lectures, our lectures, our lectures, are those sort of 
one way types of communication, even doing a demonstration is one way from the scientists to the 
public. Dialogue on the other hand, it may be that scientists go out to science communications go out 
and they ask questions of people. What do you think about this new technology? Do you have any 
concerns about it? What would you like to know about it? What's your situation? What's your context? 
Do you have any information or knowledge that might be useful in dealing with this problem? It could 
be a debate, it could be a conversation, it's some form of interaction, and that's dialogue. In terms 
of participatory science communication, well, we've seen a huge rise in citizen science, and that's 
one form of participatory science communication. At its very basic level, it's helping to gather data 
for scientists. But to me, that's just gathering data for scientists doesn't realize the whole 
potential of participatory science communication. So there are short term things like consensus 
conferences, citizen juries, where citizens come in and they hear about the science and then they 
make decisions based on those sorts of things. 
And you mentioned earlier that in the dialogue model, it might be more useful because there's some 
listening, you know, you're trying to understand what the audience or the public you're speaking with 
cares about what they already understand, and then it's better for your communication or for your 
message. But why is the participation model sort of seen as useful or valuable? Like, what is it 
bringing to the table that the dialogue or dissemination model isn't quite able to get at? 
The participatory model is hard to do on a large scale. So it's usually with a smaller group of 
concerned, often called the concerned group. And what that can really do, what that can really 
achieve is this is a deliberation about science, it can change attitudes and opinions, it can, if 
it's done over a longer period of time, a lot of it is just short term, but I've been involved in 
longer term participatory programs. And it can develop relationships of trust, where various groups 
of the public, you know, I've worked with farmers, start to trust the scientists and they form 
friendships and relationships. And the really interesting thing about that that I've found is that 
once those relationships of trust happen, dialogue happens in a much better space. And that 
dissemination of information within that so called deficit model also is far more effective because 
publics are trusting scientists and scientists are trusting the public. 
That's really nice. It's like the key to the all the other forms, which is maybe a good segue for the 
next thing I wanted to ask you about, which is this paper that you wrote, I think back in 2019, that 
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I think about all the time when I think about models, where I think it's called comparing science 
communication theory and practice and assessment and critique using Australian data. So I'm just 
wondering, can you tell us really briefly what actually inspired you to write this paper or to take 
up that research? 
I was involved in 2012 in a national project in Australia. The interesting thing is that they didn't 
define what engagement was, but we defined it as being anything to do with science communication, 
actually. And so the purpose of that was to get a snapshot of the sorts of activities that were 
happening in the science communication space in Australia. And from that would inform our national 
government about the sorts of things they might put into their strategies to roll out after that 
time. So we did that project and it was really interesting. We looked at, I think we managed to 
gather in over 500 different activities and we wrote a report about those activities. The same time I 
started my PhD, it was very much part time because I didn't finish it to 2019. I thought, wow, we've 
got all this data. It would be really interesting to see if I can work out what sort of model was 
dominant in these activities in terms of the deficit dialogue and participatory science communication 
space. So that got me intrigued. And that's why I did this research looking at this data to look at 
how these theorized models were actually playing out in practice. 
I'm wondering, so what was sort of your key finding? What did you get from that project? 
Probably the two most interesting findings. The first one is that most of the activities, despite 
considering themselves to be about science engagement, were very firmly situated in that deficit, 
simple dialogue space by far. There were very few activities that were designed to be participatory. 
That was the first interesting thing. But to me, perhaps even more interesting was that I discovered 
it was actually hard to classify an activity as being just deficit, just dialogue and just 
participation. And I found that many activities had elements of all of those things. So while an 
activity might be mostly about demonstrating to school children the fun of science, there may be an 
element of discussion there where the demonstrator talked to the students and had them ask questions. 
So the dialogue model was coming in. They may have even got some of the students to come up and help 
with their demonstrations. So very simple participatory coming in. They were all mixed up. They 
weren't necessarily separated out. 
That's really, really interesting. What does this mean for people who want to do science 
communication? To you, what is the big implication or takeaway for practitioners like yourself? 
Well, for me, it means that we need to try harder to build in more sophisticated dialogue into our 
communication practice. And we need to look at ways to be more participatory in what we do. Now, 
participatory science communication can be very expensive, and it can be very challenging. And I 
think that was one of the reasons why it wasn't happening in practice. And in fact, we actually ran 
some focus groups for science communicators in Australia. And there was certainly a clear aspiration 
to do more of these sophisticated science communication activities in the dialogue and the 
participatory space. But clearly, they weren't getting the resources that they need. The challenge 
that I think is to find low cost ways of doing it, one, and two, to find resources to do it properly, 
particularly on important issues. Like for me, important issues include things like climate change, 
waste management, achieving a circular economy with zero waste, and the concept of waste not even 
part of our language. Those sort of issues, I think, really require that more participatory approach 
to communication. 
And what kind of resources do you think people need? 
Certainly I think the biggest barrier, and I'm sure anyone involved in communication anywhere in the 
world would probably say this, is that lack of institutional support. If you're working for an 
organization, often they don't see the value of communication. Or, even worse, that their perception 
of communication is a brochure. It is a website. It is those more one way forms of communication. 
They don't actually acknowledge that dialogue, that participation can be part of that whole space of 
science communication, and in fact, need to be part of that space in science communication. My own 
personal mission is changing that mindset. One step at a time. And as I said, I've been doing it for 
36 years, and it's not an easy thing to do. 
Well, hopefully this interview helps. I guess the last question I have is if you have any other piece 
of advice or guidance that you would like to offer someone who's just getting their feet wet in this 
wonderful world of science communication. 
Well, I think the most important science communication skill is the ability to listen. And none of us 
are particularly good at it. We always want to jump in with our own ideas, our own thoughts. And 
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that's where I think good dialogue, good participation can really happen when you as a science 
communicator step back and listen. Listen to other people's thoughts, their ideas, their values, 
their new innovations, and a whole lot of things can change when we listen and when we listen 
actively. And that includes people involved in science communication practice listening to 
researchers and researchers listening to practitioners, because it will improve what we do on both 
levels. I mean, I'm lucky in that I'm both a practitioner and a researcher, but I learn all the time 
from other practitioners and other researchers. 
That's really, really great advice. And I have to say, I learned a lot from this dialogue with you. 
So thank you so much for being here virtually from across the world for making time to share your 
knowledge with us. 
Thank you so much, Alice. It's a pleasure.


Telling Science Stories Episode 1: Scicomm Models with Jennifer Metcalfe: Transcript

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Privacy-preserving human action recognition with joint edge-cloud computing

Comparative Study of Model-based Lateral Controllers with Selected Deep Learning Methods for Autonomous Driving

Learning cooperation for partially observable multi-agent path finding

How movement across landscapes mediates species-resource interactions

Linkage fine-mapping on sequences from case-control studies and goodness-of-fit tests based on empirical distribution function for general likelihood models

Soft machines: Kettle logic and the Gale maze

Telling Science Stories Episode 1: Scicomm Models with Jennifer Metcalfe: Transcript

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