Assistant Professor of Geology Callan Bentley spoke on reducing confusion and overcoming misunderstandings about climate change among the general public at a symposium held 16 April. (Credit: Eric Villard)

People can misunderstand the science behind climate change, which in turn can lead to skepticism, said scientists and communicators at the fourth annual Climate Change Symposium, held 16 April at Northern Virginia Community College. They shared ideas about how to correct the often-misconstrued data about Earth’s changing climate.

Callan Bentley, an assistant professor of geology at the college and author of the blog Mountain Beltway on AGU’s blogosphere, explained how misunderstanding the science behind climate change can lead people to doubt its causes and impacts. One common misunderstanding comes when someone confuses weather and climate — the former being short term changes in atmospheric conditions and the latter being long term weather patterns and trends. One unseasonably warm day in winter does not equal climate change, Bentley explained; likewise, one day of snow or a frigidly cold day does not mean there is no climate change occurring.

“Climate is what you expect, weather is what you get,” Bentley said, quoting author Robert Heinlein.

Another misunderstanding can arise if people cherry-pick data, he said, using only specific bits of research studies to prove a point while ignoring the rest of the research. Those who do this may reach a completely different conclusion than those who read the whole study. In the case of climate change, Bentley said, skeptics often point to downward trends in temperature over a short span of years while ignoring the overall rising trend that the data shows when taken as a whole.

Anyone disbelieving climate change, Bentley said, is ignoring four facts: that the burning of coal, oil, and other sources generates carbon dioxide, that carbon dioxide in the atmosphere reflects heat back towards Earth, that concentrations of carbon dioxide are increasing in the atmosphere of the planet, and that the average temperature of Earth is rising.

“The logical conclusion that naturally follows from those facts is that human burning of fossil fuels is warming the climate of the Earth,” he explained. “That’s the conclusion – it’s an interpretation, you can argue it, but it’s logical and it’s based on fact.”

Juliet Eilperin, an environmental policy reporter for The Washington Post, talked at the symposium about how politicians interpret climate and how it affects policy. In 2008, Republicans and Democrats in Congress agreed that climate change was a real and present threat, she said, and opponents John McCain and Barack Obama had very similar stances on climate change in that year’s presidential election.

Recently, however, climate change has become a heavily partisan issue. It’s gotten to the point that any bills introduced into Congress mentioning climate get killed without much thought from policy-makers, she said.

It’s important to inform the public about key climate change issues, such as the Keystone XL pipeline, she said, because it is the public who elect the legislators. The pipeline is an extension of the Keystone pipeline that originates in Canada, and it would carry crude oil as far south as Houston, Texas. Opponents argue the pipeline would damage the surrounding environment. The pipeline would also provide more fossil fuels to be burned, pumping more carbon dioxide into the atmosphere.

Informing the general public requires prominent coverage of science in the media, Eilperin said, coverage the pipeline has not really received.

“If you don’t have politicians caring about an issue and you can’t provide evidence that the public is caring about an issue…then it’s very difficult to argue that something deserves front page coverage,” she explained.

-Eric Villard, AGU science writing intern

Professor and AGU Fellow Richard Alley presents "Earth: The Operator's Manual" at a 19 April screening at the American Association for the Advancement of Science. Joining him on stage were writer-producer Geoff Haines-Stiles, left, and Cliff Etheredge. (Credit: Sasha Haines-Stiles)

Geologist, glaciologist and AGU Fellow Richard Alley came to Washington, D.C., on Thursday, 19 April, to preview the newest segments of his PBS series “Earth: The Operator’s Manual.” AGU Public Information Manager Peter Weiss attended the screening to see the new programs and speak to Alley about what it’s like to be a scientist taking on television and book-writing on such a grand scale.

It’s nothing new for Richard Alley to be “out there” when he communicates about science – just take a look this video parody of Johnny Cash he performed to illustrate subduction and the Pacific Ring of Fire.

But in recent years, Alley, a professor at Pennsylvania State University in State College, took on a public communication role on a massive scale with the launch of a project called “Earth: The Operator’s Manual.” As part of the new effort, Alley stars in the PBS series of the same name that focuses on climate change and how people can deal with it.

With two new segments of the series about to launch on Sunday, 22 April—which, by no coincidence, is Earth Day – Alley came to Washington, D.C., April 19 to preview the programs for a live audience and to fire up interest, screening the shows at the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS). To find out when the “Earth: The Operator’s Manual” programs will air Sunday in your local area, you can look up the times here.

One of the two new segments, called “Powering the Planet,” tells of successful development of wind power in two contrasting places – a verdant Danish island popular with tourists and a parched brown West Texas farming community. The other segment, “Energy Quest USA,” looks at grassroots energy conservation initiatives in five different communities across the United States.

PBS aired the first segment in the series a year ago, presenting the scientific evidence that human-generated greenhouse gases are warming the planet. Alley also wrote an accompanying 479-page book as part of the “EARTH: The Operator’s Manual” project.

Going public in such a major way has had its costs, Alley told me when I spoke briefly with him after the screening.  He recalled a period of intense work on the book, and waking up repeatedly at 2 a.m. too agitated to sleep or do anything but write. To avoid distressing his wife, Alley ended up moving temporarily into their guest bedroom.

And his academic job can’t be neglected. “I have a whole briefcase full of term papers that I brought with me to grade,” Alley remarked with a laugh — and a groan.

But the rewards of this massive communication project have been great, Alley said. While it’s not like doing scientific research, “it’s more engaging than you’d figure,” he noted.

And, because of the project, he’s gotten to know many people who are passionate about addressing climate change, but from very different walks of life than himself. A couple of them, who are also both subjects of the films – Cliff Etheredge, a cowboy hat-wearing Texas farmer who promotes wind-energy development in his region of Texas, and Robbyn Lewis, who goes door-to-door encouraging energy conservation in her Baltimore neighborhood—spoke at yesterday’s event.

As if this project is not enough, Alley is also active on other communications channels. One timely example: An op-ed piece he penned about severe weather ran in USA Today the day of the screening.  Alley is also a contributor to The Huffington Post.

Reaching out the way as he has, Alley noted, “you learn amazing things, and meet amazing people.  … It’s been hugely empowering for me.”

- Peter Weiss is AGU’s Public Information Manager

Julia DeMarines, of the Denver Museum of Nature & Science, uses a Frisbee as a model of the Milky Way to show where planets supporting life might be expected to form within a galaxy. Photo by Mary Catherine Adams, AGU.

Prove you’re the next Carl Sagan in three minutes or less. Now, go! That’s what young scientists, engineers and aspiring PhDs in the United States are being called to do – move an audience the way Sagan could, but in three minutes or less. Friday morning, a group of young speakers gathered at NASA headquarters in Washington, D.C., to give it a try.

Standing on a stage in front of four judges and facing an audience, twenty-four competitors responded to the challenge of making a complex scientific subject – like advanced mathematic equations and RNA analysis – tangible to a broad audience. On either side of the stage, tall posters asked “Are you the next Carl Sagan?” No pressure.

The communication competition – a bit like mini, all-science TEDTalks – is called FameLab Astrobiology and is part of a larger, international competition called FameLab. In the U.S., NASA and several other organizations host an astrobiology-themed competition to select a speaker to move on to the international finals, where any scientific topic is game. Each competitor prepares two three-minute speeches about any astrobiology topic, one for the morning heat and a second for the evening heat to be used if they make the cut. Props are the only acceptable visual aids, and competitors cannot use slides, video, charts, printed images, or any other kind of electronic media. “NO powerpoint allowed!” shouts a banner on the FameLab Astrobiology web site.

With his three minutes, Joshua Stern, a graduate student of synthetic biology at the Georgia Institute of Technology in Atlanta, used the analogy of packing the family van before a vacation to explain Monte Carlo simulations – computer-based ways of solving problems. Dad could sit down with paper and pen to find the best arrangement, working out each of many ways the suitcases could be turned and stacked like life-size Tetris pieces. Or he could stand behind the car and use trial-and-error. Trial-and-error, Stern said, was the way to go. Forgoing complicated systems of equations in favor of a little elbow grease is a lot like a Monte Carlo simulation: Try one method and use what did or did not work to improve the next attempt. Rearrange the suitcases a couple of times until you get the best fit.

“Life,” Stern said in the last few seconds of his talk, “is like a 3.8 billion year Monte Carlo simulation.”

It was hard preparing for the short speech, Stern said, but tips from an undergraduate theater class helped him with memorization. “The speech shouldn’t sound memorized but it still needs to be remembered,” he said. “That’s the really tricky part – remembering it and being able to improvise on the delivery.”

While Stern relied on his energy and the visual of a family cramming luggage into a 2001 Chrysler minivan for his talk, other speakers included props. Julia DeMarines, assistant to the curator of astrobiology at the Denver Museum of Nature & Science, used a Frisbee as a model of the Milky Way Galaxy. Pointing to the center of the Frisbee, DeMarines explained that stars at the center of a galaxy are clustered too closely, causing too much chaos, to support life. At the edges, she said while touching the rim of the flying disc, there is too little interaction to sustain life. The region in between is where scientists expect life to exist, in an area called the galactic habitable zone.

Becky McCauley, a PhD candidate studying astrobiology at Pennsylvania State University, used a skewer and a small ball to illustrate how the movement of the Earth’s axis – the imaginary line running through our planet’s core – affects climate and causes seasons.

Walking out on stage with the skewer in her hair, McCauley drew it out during her talk, threading the sphere onto the stick as she introduced the term “axis.” Though the judges applauded her for having a great prop, they cautioned that the long stick protruding from her head when she first walked on stage was too distracting. You could have the greatest sportscaster of the century on TV, said judge Bill Margol with National Geographic Television, but if his tie is crooked that is all people will see.

After communications training in the afternoon, the judges announced the ten finalists who would compete in the evening heat at the National Geographic Society headquarters in downtown Washington, D.C. There, one overall winner, Noah Hammond, a research assistant with the Carl Sagan Center at the SETI Institute in Mountain View, Calif., was selected to move on to the national competition at the Astrobiology Science Conference (AbSciCon) in Atlanta this April.

Three more overall winners will come from two additional regional competitions and an online competition held on YouTube. Six additional “wild card” competitors from the preliminary competitions will join them. Of those ten competing in Atlanta, one will be chosen as the national winner and will compete against competitors from 20 other countries at the FameLab International final in the United Kingdom this June.

By Mary Catherine Adams, AGU Public Information Specialist

Photographer and AGU member James Balog urges scientists to “show us the cool stuff” when communicating with non-scientists. Balog, the subject of the documentary film “Chasing Ice,” premiering Jan. 23 at the 2012 Sundance Film Festival, stopped by AGU headquarters in Washington, D.C., in early January to talk about the challenges and rewards of being a scientist-communicator.

Seven years ago, photographer James Balog was struggling to fulfill an assignment for The New Yorker magazine: How to bring the story of climate change to the world. His journey from that first glacier shoot to a five-year project recording glacier change and loss is the subject of “Chasing Ice,” a documentary premiering today at the Sundance Film Festival in Park City, Utah.

Convinced there was a story in the ice but unsure of how to capture it for The New Yorker, Balog headed out to photograph a glacier in Iceland, trusting that if he committed himself to telling the story, the creative muses would make it happen–and they did. That story led to another, more involved assignment: National Geographic’s  June 2007 cover story on glaciers, “The Big Thaw.”

James Balog at Ilulissat Isfjord in Disko Bay, Greenland. © 2009 Extreme Ice Survey

Moved by what he witnessed in those assignments, Balog founded the Extreme Ice Survey (EIS), a project which uses time-lapse photography in Greenland, Alaska, the Himalayas and elsewhere to bring to audiences of every latitude the story of how glaciers around the world continue to change.

“Visual imagery is so powerful,” said EIS team-member and U.S. Geological Survey research ecologist Daniel Fagre. “People don’t even have to have any data to understand what’s going on.” Fagre helps train park interpreters at Glacier National Park in Montana. He and his park crew carry cameras to photo-document much of what they do, making their data visual instead of just numbers.

Not every scientist with a story to tell can offer obvious eye candy like EIS does, but any scientist can communicate better in any media by following one rule, said several EIS team members: Keep it simple.

“Just get to the point. It’s not to your benefit to overwhelm the audience with information,” said Jason Box of EIS and the Byrd Polar Research Center, and a geography professor at The Ohio State University in Columbus. “You have a limited time with your audience and a limited amount of information you can convey.”

Try to “think about [your story] from the point of view of the person who is very unfamiliar with what is going on” — and make it succinct, said Tad Pfeffer, a professor in the Department of Civil and Environmental Architectural Engineering at the University of Colorado in Boulder.  Being compact and direct is not something scientists may be accustomed to, but practice makes perfect, he noted.

Pfeffer, who screened “Chasing Ice” for scientific accuracy, acknowledged that walking the line between simplicity and scientific accuracy is difficult. Journalists, such as documentary filmmakers, and scientists “come at this whole business of communicating from very different perspectives,” he said. Journalists want to find a compelling story while scientists are busy thinking, “Is what we said correct? Are we saying enough? Are we open to misinterpretation or misunderstandings?”

Balog urged scientists to go a step further and make their story personal.

"Chasing Ice" director Jeff Orlowski at the Greenland Ice Sheet in June 2009. © 2010 James Balog/Extreme Ice Survey

“In the science community, guys don’t like to…talk about the dramas they had in the field – the storms, the helicopter crashes or problems, the equipment breakdowns, the headaches about trying to understand what was going on,” Balog said. “But lay people like to hear that stuff. They want to hear what’s under the hood of all this. It brings it alive. It makes it human. It makes it personal.”

Balancing the “Chasing Ice” story and its science was “one of the hardest things about making this film,” said director Jeff Orlowski, reflecting on the 5-year odyssey. Although the film is about climate change, it plays a lot like a narrative featuring Balog as the protagonist and science as a supporting character, he said.

Even before its premiere, “Chasing Ice” has made a stir at Sundance. Its five screenings sold out over two weeks ago and the film, along with five others, was selected from more than 90 films to be pre-screened by the festival’s volunteer staff.

To Balog, Sundance represents “a huge new forum for telling the story of climate change as seen through the glaciers.” It “gives us an amplification and a leverage into new audiences that we didn’t have before. I’m thrilled about it.”

By Mary Catherine Adams, AGU Public Information Specialist

Dione Rossiter, 2011 AGU Mass Media Fellow, spent her summer in the Voice of America newsroom in Washington, D. C.

After four busy summers studiously measuring the minute details of clouds, I spent my last summer as a graduate student in a newsroom, far away from the cockpit of a cloud-probing airplane. It was not just any newsroom but Voice of America’s politically charged newsroom in Washington, D. C. Almost overnight, this ­California-​­for-​­lifer was living and working amid the hustle and bustle of the nation’s capital.

As a half researcher–half science educator and wanna-be science writer, I had long dreamt about working as a science reporter for a summer. I had spent the past 5 years as a graduate student at the University of California, Santa Cruz in the Earth and Planetary Sciences Department working on my thesis research on the microphysics of summertime marine clouds.

Then, last fall, knowing I had the chance to be away from my atmospheric research for a couple of months, I applied for an American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) Mass Media Science and Engineering Fellowship. AAAS runs the fellowship program, and AGU supports a fellow each summer to work as a science journalist for a media outlet somewhere in the country. This gives young Earth and space scientists the opportunity to hone their communication skills and learn what it is like to be a reporter, while at the same time giving some lucky media outlet such as NPR, CNN, or Newsweek some much needed science expertise in its newsroom, albeit for only a brief time. It was not long before I had put my thesis on hold and moved across the country to begin my ­10-week stint as a science broadcast journalist.

I gave voice to issues ranging from the dangers of binge drinking to threats to deep-sea ecosystems. I spent my days researching possible stories, interviewing scientists, writing radio scripts, and then recording, producing, and editing my stories (all skills I have yet to master). I spent my nights enjoying everything Washington has to offer in the summer.

I loved every minute of my experience.

My favorite part of the science writing process was reading about the coolest and most influential science that was being published around the world each week. Topics spanned a broad range of fields, some so different from my own I would have never been exposed to them otherwise. The most challenging part was reading my stories aloud. I sat for hours with Voice of America voice coaches repeating myself over and over again until each word was up to broadcast quality.

The most notable and unique opportunity I had was attending the ­AGU-​­sponsored congressional briefing on Capitol Hill entitled “Severe weather warning—The nation’s weather satellites…your life may depend on them.” Going to the briefing was already exciting enough, but the topic was right up my alley. As an atmospheric scientist, I am quite naturally a weather geek.

The briefing did not disappoint. The panelists were engaging and eloquent, and they included personal anecdotes from their experiences with severe weather events such as the series of tornadoes that touched down on 24 May in the Oklahoma City area. I was moved by the briefing and I wrote a story about it; it ended up being my favorite piece from the entire summer.

Back at school, surrounded by scientists and working hard on my thesis again, I have begun to reflect on my summer, which seemed to fly by way too fast. I realize I am less of a wanna-be science writer these days and more of a science enthusiast who has been successfully exposed to the art of science communication. Since I have been back in Santa Cruz I have been asked to speak in classes about my experiences over the summer, my peers are coming to me for advice and edits on their written work and presentations, I have been asked to write for an informal blog, and I have been asked to write an opinion piece for a ­well-​­established think tank. As you can see, I have begun to implement the skills I learned over the summer in my own career and to disseminate those skills to other scientists who, like me, are interested in science literacy, scientific progress, and science advocacy.

By Dione Rossiter, 2011 AGU Mass Media Fellow

This article originally ran in the Nov. 29 issue of Eos.

Improve your video-making skills! (Credit: Wikimedia Commons)

Note: This post is being re-posted from The S Factor blog, a blog dedicated to The S Factor video workshop, taking place at the 2011 AGU Fall meeting, that’s written by filmmaker and temporary consultant to AGU Dan Curl. There, three Hollywood filmmakers will share their video-making expertise, critiquing ten videos created by AGU scientists in front of a live audience. Don’t miss it! For more secrets behind successful scientific video storytelling, be sure to check back on The S Factor blog!

Excerpt from “Documentary Storytelling” (2007) by Sheila Curran Bernard:

“Who is your intended audience? Many documentaries, whether produced independently or in-house, are created with an audience in mind. It’s always possible that the film you thought would only reach your immediate geographic region will be a break-out hit, but in general, you should have some idea whom you want it to reach: age, geographic area, educational level, etc. This doesn’t mean that you shouldn’t try to also reach a wider audience, just that you’re likely to approach MTV’s audience differently, for example, than Discovery’s, or that you hope to reach public television not only in the United States but also in the United Kingdom and Germany. …Keep in mind, though, that in the end, you still want to reach people with a subject and story that grab them, hold them, and-ideally-stay with them long after the lights are back on.”

Over the next few blog posts, I will be sharing some tips to aid our up-and-coming scientist-filmmakers in planning, developing, and executing better video storytelling. Some of the tips will be theoretical in nature, while others will focus on the technical craft of filmmaking. Today, we will discuss a critical component to developing effective media: Targeting an Audience.

Television stations strive for high Nielson ratings, a measure of audience size and composition, ever seeking to attract the coveted 18-49 adult demographic. Movie studios are constantly on the hunt for scripts that can “hit all four corners”; men and women, young and old. While creating media that can reach a wide audience is paramount, it is most beneficial to a filmmaker to target a specific core audience. These are the people who will be the most receptive, most passionate, and most vocal about supporting your work.

A great example of targeting an audience with great success is a show titled The Guild. The Guild is a comedy web series that revolves around a group of extreme video gamers who attempt to lead normal lives outside of their gaming world. When the series was first created, they only had enough money to produce three episodes. The episodes were finely crafted to appeal to a core set of demographics and were an instant hit. Fans overwhelmingly supported the show, going so far as to donate funds through PayPal to complete the first season. With such profound success, Microsoft took notice and offered a deal to broadcast the series on their Xbox Live and Zune platforms for a small rental fee. Sprint got involved and allowed the series to be viewed free of charge. The show is now in its fifth season and has won numerous media awards.

As the example of The Guild illustrates, sometimes reaching a broad audience requires a gradual buildup, but the buildup must begin with a firm bedrock of loyal supporters. You should be asking yourself who your supporters are going to be from the outset of producing your media. Who do you want to watch your video? Are you producing media for fellow colleagues? Undergraduates? High schoolers? Is it a topic that directly affects men? Women? Children? Are there other media that address your topic? How did they present their findings or argument? How will your media be different than theirs? All of these questions should be answered before beginning any form of production. Knowing your audience will help you to finely hone your message and drive the direction of your story.

For more information on creating scientific media, I strongly suggest you check out Bernard’s Documentary Storytelling. It is a well-written, solid overview of every step that goes into making compelling documentary films, and can be ordered from online bookstores.

By Dan Curl, Consultant to AGU

NASA officials talk to members of the press. (Credit: NASA)

If you’re going to the upcoming AGU Fall Meeting and are interested in communicating easily and skillfully about science, here’s an event you might want to sign up for:

On the Sunday (12/4) before the scientific program begins, AGU is hosting a free, all-day training event for scientists wishing to become more adept at communicating with the press, the public, policymakers and other non-scientists. The event includes both a panel discussion about science communication and workshops where you will get to exercise your skills. Plus we’ll feed you lunch!

Space is limited and sign up ends Mon., Oct. 31, so don’t delay in letting us know of your interest. To learn more, read below and/or check out the ‘Communicating Your Science: Panel and Workshops’ website here.

Here’s a preview of what to expect:

The event starts at 10:00 a.m. on Sun., Dec. 4, with a morning panel that includes USA Today science reporter Dan Vergano, ocean scientist and book author Ellen Prager, Dan Kahan, a Yale University expert on how people’s values affect their perceptions of science, and more.

In the afternoon, attendees will have the option to go to two of four workshops. In the first workshop, Communicating with the News Media, newspaper reporters Dan Vergano of USA Today and Steve Connor of The Independent (U.K.) will give scientists tips on how to talk to reporters. The workshop will also include opportunities to do mock interviews.

Callan Bentley, a veteran science blogger and geology professor, and John Cook, creator and author of the website Skeptical Science, will lead the second workshop, called Using Social Media. Bentley and Cook will engage you in how to use social media (like blogs and Twitter) to take part in online discussions about science.

Susan Joy Hassol, the director of Climate Communication, and David Hosansky, head of media relations at UCAR/NCAR, will host the third workshop, Communicating Climate Science, where you will find out about and practice ways to more effectively convey accurate climate science to people from many walks of life.

In the fourth workshop – Delivering Your Message: Lessons from Stand-up Comedy – Brian Malow, the Science Comedian, will demonstrate how scientists can become effective storytellers by using humor and by drawing on their own strengths. Attendees will be asked to participate in an exercise on crafting messages about their research.

Free lunch will be served between the morning panel and the afternoon workshops. Training is limited to 100 scientists and sign up ends Mon., Oct. 31. To learn more about the training and to sign up, click here. AGU will let you know by Nov. 1 whether or not you are on the list of attendees.

– Mary Catherine Adams, AGU Public Information Specialist

Scientists and the public can have different definitions for the same words (Source: Physics Today)

The first day of organic chemistry, my professor warned us that we were about to start learning a new language. He wasn’t kidding, and ‘stoichiometry’** is still one of my favorite words. But the different definitions that scientists use for everyday terms can lead to confusion, and scientists should make sure they’re speaking the same language as their audiences.

On our sister blog Mountain Beltway, Callan Bentley posted this table outlining some common examples. It’s from an article by Richard C. J. Somerville and Susan Joy Hassol in Physics Today (behind a paywall).

The list illustrates just how simple it is for science to be misconstrued, and has generated lots of attention in the blogosphere – posts on Boing Boing and Bad Astronomy generated dozens of comments, and Southern Fried Science created its own list and started a Google doc for people to add other alternate science definitions.

What science translation errors have you found?

**Click here for a definition of stoichiometry, which is not only fun to say, but still comes in handy for all those times I need to convert grams per liter to ounces per gallon.

– Kate Ramsayer, AGU science writer

Journalists rated the Obama administration on transparency and access to information in a recent panel at the National Press Club. (Credit: Ed Brown, via Wikimedia Commons

Federal scientists should be more accessible to journalists, reporters said last week at a National Press Club event in Washington, D.C. The panel discussion “Access Denied: Science News and Government Transparency” addressed whether or not the Obama administration is living up to its promise to make science more transparent and accessible. And several journalists on the panel said there is still a ways to go.

Data access alone is not enough, several panelists said. Felice Freyer, journalist and director for the Association of Health Care Journalists, stressed the importance of being able to speak firsthand with a federal scientific expert. “[Press officers] need to understand the importance of a conversation,” she said.

In a survey on government access and transparency that was conducted by Columbia Journalism Review and ProPublica, the one area that the Obama administration has seen marked improvement was in the provision of data. Curtis Brainard, science editor for the Review, said at the panel that this was largely due to the Open Government Directive and sites like data.gov.

But that isn’t enough, he added. “Data doesn’t speak for itself … you want to talk to people who have collected this data, who are responsible for analyzing data, and implementing it in some way,” he said.

Reporters often are not able to have the kind of in-depth interviews they want with federal scientists, Freyer said. They can be hampered by a lack of response from the press office, or because their interview requests are sent up a long, time-consuming chain of command.
Nancy Shute, president of the National Association of Science Writers, said that this delay can impede a journalist’s ability to cover a story – even one free of controversial policy implications.

“You call a scientist, they say you have to go and get clearance through the main office,” Shute said. “Days, weeks go by, nothing happens and there goes your story.”

Media relations policies can vary between different federal agencies, several members of the panel noted. One agency that drew praise for its handling of press was the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS). “I cannot say enough about USGS in terms of media callbacks and media accessibility,” said moderator Seth Borenstein, science reporter for the Associated Press.

How well agencies use social media also varies considerably. Joseph Davis, editor of the TipSheet and WatchDog news alerts from the Society of  Environmental Journalists and a member of its Freedom of Information Task Force, said that the Environmental Protection Agency was one of the agencies using social media well.

The journalists gave some tips for both press information officers and fellow journalists seeking access to federal scientists. Press officers should respond to journalists quickly, said Borenstein, and if they can’t provide information they need to give an explanation of why. When press officers do come through with what journalists request, give them some credit, added Davis. Journalists should acknowledge government transparency with positive recognition.

– Allie Wilkinson, AGU science writing intern

I’ve found that if I bring a science reporter to teach the workshop with me, these attitudes change. In follow-up surveys, workshop attendees say they now understand much better how journalists work and feel less hesitant about talking to them in the future. So I approached three top-notch science reporters who agreed to speak on-camera about their craft and how to improve collaborations between scientists and the media.

Without further introduction, here’s what these journalists had to say.

Seth Borenstein (Associated Press)

Dan Vergano (USA Today)

Alexandra Witze (Science News)

(NOTE: This is this blogger’s last post, since I’m changing jobs. You can find me on Twitter at @mjvinas)

– Maria-José Viñas, AGU science writer