1Veritasium pulls it off in this little video,  asking “how far apart are the moon and the earth?”. Along the way he sends a message about some pretty complicated subjects–the concept of scale, the size of the universe, and why it is difficult to use images alone to capture the reality of distance.

The recipe starts with “man on the street” interviews. These set up the misconception and in the process send the viewer the empathic message, “hey, you’re not the only one.”  This is followed by a simple demonstration, using the long focus of the camera as an ally. Then simple graphics expand the idea and its implications. Finally, a 10 s summary: “The universe is truly bigger than we can imagine, and certainly bigger than we can draw to scale”.

Imagine a similar suite of videos on any difficult subject: enzymes, global warming, evolution. Imagine producing a suite of five or so on a science topic that interests you, posting them on your own Youtube channel. With your smiling face introducing each one. That’s one way to get noticed and to do a real service.  As a debunker of myths. As teacher of science.

Any great, short, science videos out there you want to bring to a wider audience?

If you have any such sites that you find indispensable, by all means leave a comment.

In the process, I stumbled upon this oldie but goodie from Garr Reynolds at Presentation Zen. Reynolds advocates the Zen approach to presentations:

The Zen aesthetic values include (but are not limited to):

• Simplicity
• Subtlety
• Elegance
• Suggestive rather than the descriptive or obvious
• Naturalness (i.e., nothing artificial or forced),
• Empty space (or negative space)
• Stillness, Tranquility
• Eliminating the non-essential

But, in an inspired bit of teaching, he advances his thesis by comparing the style of Bill Gates

with the late Steve Jobs.

Now, I am not advocating that you present your work backed up a dark screen (though I suspect you’d learn a lot by trying). However, anyone interested in communicating science can learn from  Steve Jobs and Garr Reynolds.

But convincing someone, especially when it means dissuading them of what they think they know, is far more complicated. The folks at Skeptical Science have a great resource–a downloadable PDF called the Debunking Handbook–that lays out the science and sociology of debunking myths. A bit of summary below the fold.

1. Avoid stating the myth you are debunking , at least at the outset. In the Familiarity Backfire Effect you risk reinforcing the very idea you are trying to kill. You see this in politics: the minute you have your opponent using your framing of the issue, you have ceded much of the argument right off the bat. Solution:  Focus on the facts at the outset, then mention the myth and why it distorts the truth.
2. KISS–keep it simple, silly. You may be able to give an entire seminar on the subject, but you risk sounding like a bore and, in the Overkill Backfire Effect, confusing your audience. It pains me to say this, but if you can make your opening gambit in the form of a truly effective tweet, you are going about it the right way.
3. Choose your audience.  Due to Confirmation Bias–the tendency for the seriously convinced to ignore what they don’t believe (and thus don’t want to hear)–you are likely wasting your time arguing with such folks. It is tempting–Uncle Ed looks so smug sitting there across the table–but frankly, you won’t walk away from the encounter feeling all that good and, more to the point, you will likely end up reinforcing the p.o.v. of the person you were trying to convince. That is the sad truth of confirmation bias. Instead focus your efforts on those who politely disagree, and whose eye’s don’t dilate when you mention “global climate change”, “evolution”, or …

In the end, the Debunking handbook breaks it down this way. Every good debunking needs

• A concise statement of the core facts
• An explicit warning that what follows next ain’t true.
• A concise statement of the myth.
• Some explanation of how folks who accept the myth may have come to believe it.
• Graphics: go all multimedia. In the realm of good graphics, few are as good as the one they close the essay with.

“I’m going to bleed on the page and laugh at the blood. “

Creative types could do worse than to check out the podcasts of Marc Maron. The struggle to do something original, to have your voice heard, to make a difference. This is something we all share. Maron reveals the joys and neuroses of the creative life like no-one else.

Do it.

Ahh great. A brinicle.

1. Always keep your notebook on your person.   “Lester says Leonardo used to travel with a small notebook hanging from his belt, and “whenever something caught his eye,” he would make a note, or begin “sketching furiously.” “. One sure way to recognize a creative person is her ability to quickly record an idea.
2. Occasionally confront a blank page with a pen.  Sip a coffee, listen to some music, sit on a park bench. Just let your mind wander while your hand doodles. Words, phrases, lists, arrows, pictures. No rules. Just write.
3. Ask experts. While poring through one of Leonardo’s notebooks, Lester found a to do list for a week or month in 1490. Check out Krulwich’s post for the complete list, but what struck me was how many items on the list involved finding a local expert and asking his advice and counsel on a thorny issue. This was Leonardo, mind you. You get better by seeking the help of folks more adept than you. Be humble; be polite; but ask.
4. A little ADHD is good for you.  You can’t come up with a new idea unless you make connections, and you can’t make connections unless you think broadly, skipping from subject to subject. When you are having trouble focusing, perhaps that’s a good time to take out your notebook, brew a cup of coffee, and scribble for a while. A restless mind is a good thing.
5. But also be tenacious. You knew this was coming, didn’t you?  We see in Leonardo’s notebooks things that might have been– unfinished sketches, helicopters, and scary-ass weapons. But Leonardo has also seen through to completion canonical works of art and architecture. Leonardo finished things. One of the great personal challenges for any scientist is balancing 4 and 5, free association and knuckling down.

Speaking of which, time to knuckle down on a manuscript…

ht Christopher Buckley writing for the New York Times

See also On writing better–Kurt Vonnegut

Margulis is best known for her serial endosymbiosis hypothesis: that eukaryotes are collections of co-evolved bacteria; that our mitochondria  were once free-living creatures that served up their ATPs to a host cell in exchange for free room and board.

It is a measure of a scientist’s life the number of hypotheses that go from heresy to dogma. Often one only really notices this when teaching undergrads. I used to enjoy, years ago, trying to blow the minds of freshman and sophomores by spinning stories of ancient collaborations in briny seas; how life “self assembled” in a cooperative framework. I’ll never forget the one year in Principles of Ecology, in the middle of waxing on about this great evolutionary milestone, when I caught the looks on the faces staring back. Distinctly bored; more than a little impatient.

“Errmm, so you know about this stuff?” I think I asked. “Doesn’t everybody?” said a pre-med.

This was Oklahoma. Margulis had won.

I end with a quote from the NYT obituary, linked above.

“More than 99.99 percent of the species that have ever existed have become extinct,” Dr. Margulis and Dorion Sagan wrote in “Microcosmos,” a 1986 book that traced, in readable language, the history of evolution over four billion years, “but the planetary patina, with its army of cells, has continued for more than three billion years. And the basis of the patina, past, present and future, is the microcosm — trillions of communicating, evolving microbes.”