 We put out a call on social media you put out a what a call on social media to all these people out here To see oh, I saw that on Twitter So we'd have some questions prepared for you great So tonight we have Merity Jackson who has a question for you Merity. Are you here? Do you want to stand and ask Alan your question? Hello So As an actor what impact do you think that television can have in the public awareness of scientific issues? And how do you think that that can best be used to get issues across to the public? Well, first of all, if it weren't for Masha wouldn't be here We as a matter of fact bringing that show up is an interesting example that I realized as I say it we We learned in the first couple of weeks that we had to have a Professional nurse on on the set when we did the surgery because we were making these egregious mistakes We were going from one patient to another without changing our gloves Pete I mean the people we were operating on would have been dead within a few minutes so we had that we had a A doctor going over the scripts to make sure that everything was accurate It it doesn't always work that way The the role of an advisor to help keep you straight and keep you informed It usually works like this the advisor says, you know, you really shouldn't do it that way and the producer says thanks Thanks for your advice And that's it I think it can have an effect in a subliminal way if you show a respect for science and avoid stereotypes like the mad scientist and Show people solving problems in a rational way It's it's like what I'm always I'm always annoyed with on a on a detective show They completely left behind the model of Sherlock Holmes who was a rational person and picked up on clues and Now that you can't have a detective show without the hero saying I have a hunch about this and The hunch is what sounds the hunch is the beginning first thing then you got to test it out So I think it I think there's some value, but what do you think you think well You're more of an expert in this than I am It's that balance between drama the drama the needs of the storytelling and the time it takes You think something like CSI if we had to wait for those centrifuges to do their work We'd watch them It wouldn't be so interesting. So it's the needs of the drama I think that overtakes it. Maybe that's what the producers talking about, you know But one of the things we found I don't mean but I mean and One of the things we found was it takes more time to figure out how to marry the Truth of the procedure Scientific truth to marry that to the drama But if you keep looking you can see where the drama is in the truth and you don't have to bend the truth You don't have to leave the truth behind That's that's the opposite of saying thanks for your advice That's that's tell me more Here's how we tell the story. Can you help us tell this story? using the real facts that takes Then you then you need to somehow Get the people producing these shows to be to realize you get a better story if it's true And then there's the human side I think that's one of the things which is watching you today and the exercises in the classroom It's it's getting in touch with that human side Yeah And I think sometimes the technology for example becomes a distraction to the human side of the inquiry and the rationality that you were talking about Touching the human bit Well, it will probably get better communication between television shows and scientists as scientists Learn from your center and our center How to humanize the scientist the science for the benefit of the people without losing any Accuracy, you know like my doctor in Chile. He said it accurately, but he said in the language. I could understand It's really important that we're not That I don't want anybody to think we're asking scientists to dumb down their science Accuracy, I don't think science was ever hurt by more accuracy Absolutely Thank you very much for that question my good. What a good one Now we also have because it's International Women's Day We have a fabulous question here from Brydie Moy. She has a question for you about women in science Brydie. Are you here? Hi huge fan So as an Australian indigenous female who aspires to become a scientist What advice would you give me to successfully communicate the importance of women in science? Well be a terrific scientist and get the Nobel Prize You know, it's interesting, you know, I wrote a play about Marie Curie and I run it and when I've seen it presented I've run into a lot of people for whom Marie was a Hero and a model and the interesting thing is it wasn't only women who told me that She was a model to many male scientists She was a model to me while I was writing it because she's somebody who never gave up and You're gonna never you're gonna have to never give up too. You're gonna have to go through Fiery hoops that men don't go through. They don't have to there's a horrifying article in this past Sunday's New York Times about Mashed notes that women scientists receive from colleagues or from mentors, which is really scary people who can Hold them back by not giving them a good recommendation Letter the first letter is often very Similar that all these letters team seem to you you may have you saw that I saw that article The idea that the letters are typical the first letter is I have to tell you my feelings Well, who asked him for his feelings and then the feelings turn out to be that he's obsessed with her And she's gonna have to live with that. That's a horrifying position to be put in what do you complain or what? And I think the writer advises Her female scientists to complain right away straight away. Yeah That may be a whole separate course you teach You know it one of the hurdles is the stereotype that all women have everywhere I Talked with a scientist Who? Did one of these studies where I think there's been more than one done, but she told me about her study where She sent out resumes As if this person was applying for a job was the same resume to every department Half the resumes had a woman's name at the top and half had a male name and the ones with the women's names Were offered jobs less frequently Significantly less frequently and when they were for less money and when the question was asked Can do you think judging by this resume that this person is serious about science? Same resume the women got judged less serious. There weren't it wasn't the women. It was the women's names. So You you gotta you gotta know that's coming and you have to be prepared to fight it We all got to fight it. We got to educate everybody about that The other side of that of course is that I was talking to Christine about this over the week that Sometimes women hold them back hold themselves back From sort of doing any kind of emotional language you were talking about the immediacy of language and using emotive language to meet your audience and and Sometimes women scientists really avoid that trend so that they're not called emotional or they're not seen It should be and so you can kind of hold yourself back from those communication opportunities By giving in to that that kind of fear of being emotional one reason why I try to emphasize that We want to evoke emotion in the audience. We don't necessarily mean that you need to get emotional There is this real problem that women scientists have told us about that They don't want to lose authority. They're not they too often they come in because of the bias of the person Listening they come in with a perceived lower authority than they actually have but If I think it's still possible and we and we talk about really developing techniques to make this Clear and make it happen. I've seen plenty of women scientists who have Total authority but are warm and available at the same time The problem is when a man shows emotion he gets praised for it of a woman shows emotion They say well, she knows she must be having a problem But You can be warm and authoritative at the same time, and you know, that's why I always make that joke You don't have them a nervous breakdown. That's true for the men, too Thank you, Brydie. Thank you for that question So as part of our social media communication with everyone we we ran a little contest about what science experiment People would like to do with you Did you come up with one we've got we've got a couple suggestions here Quite a few people still like the Mentos and the Coke bottle now Mentos are those men Yeah, quite a few of you still like that A majority of the responders said that they would love to see you reconstruct the still That's funny We had a couple shout outs for your story on Alex the parrot Oh, yes. Yes, you know, you know it was interesting, but you know there was this parrot that was supposed to have uncanny human abilities to Recognize things recognize objects and things like so somebody had studied this parrot for about 20 years or more And the parrot finally died because I had interviewed the parrot on television. I Was mentioned in the parrot's obituary It's the first time I'd ever had that honor Alex was it. Yeah, very nice bird Not like that cockatoo this morning What is that? How does that rank as a mating call? Do they get a lot of action with that They must they must So do you have a favorite science experiment? Maybe one that you do with a grand kid or something you've wanted to do a favorite favorite experiment that I wanted to do Well, actually I funded an experiment. Oh, I shouldn't talk about it because it'll go out over the media It's gonna be in my book and I can't can't I'm still finishing up the book So you'll read my book you'll find out It's really fascinating Great experiment, okay. All right Got the pitch in Okay, so Renee Hamilton has a question about science communication a Question near and dear to our heart Renee. Are you here? Yep? Great. Hi, Alan. Where are you? Oh, hi What two or three events or issues do you see is our biggest failure in communicating science effectively I Missed to have that thing so what are what are the big issues? What are the failures? What are the big issues that make us fail? Well, I know you have global warming climate change here as well as we do do you have this problem with vaccination here? Sadly, yes, it must be worldwide because it started in London, I think and totally Disproved that that it that it leads to autism and yet it still hangs on the people Who it's an interesting problem the people who are telling the story that there's a problem with it? Have a more vivid story to tell It registers in your mind. You can see their child. You can see their emotion my kid They'll say was fine until the vaccination. It's a real story The story that it's been disproven by research is not as vivid as story. I think it can be made vivid if we Go to your center in my center indeed. I like that. I like that but that's a rid that that those are two examples that of Possibly communication now interestingly communication doesn't necessarily mean more information It means more how the information is conveyed because I've read about and I can't tell you may know more about this I've read about this vaccination problem Not getting better when people get more information. They sometimes dig in their heels in the face of information and say no I know what the real story is. So there's and that's really what's at the heart of what we do I think it's not just spraying information at people. It's getting in touch with them in a way so that you reach them. I while while Christine O'Connell From our center the associate director of our center was doing her workshop today I was hoping I wasn't interfering with your workshop because I was writing down things. She was saying Because I had never heard her say this before she said Writing a paper Isn't communication. It's getting them to understand it Reaching them with it Getting into the other person's head that's communication Rather than what I am always complaining about which is spraying information at them What do you think are the big issues that are? Well, I mean along those lines, I mean one of the biggest issues of course is trust and if you start from the position that Scientists don't want to communicate or researchers Are sort of in a different position from the audience right that radical kind of thing where scientists can't communicate The public doesn't want to know if you start with that expectation I don't think your communication future is probably very bright And so there's trust issues those social trust issues. I think are very important I was like, you know, you touched on risk Risk you touched on risk is an important issue and you know when once a risk is identified It's very difficult to kind of work around that so people think that they're putting their children at risk For example in the vaccination case. That's a very that's a big barrier to communicate around. There's another interesting issue of Modified genetically modified food From what I read as a total layperson I get the impression that there are concerns About that if you plant a field of something, are you sure it's not going to get to another field? But eating food that's been genetically modified. It seems to me that is there's no evidence whatsoever That it's going to do any but in fact as we always hear from the people who know We've all been eating genetically modified food for centuries. It just hasn't been done in a test tube But it's been done in the in the farm But what about so what so Mike my question? I'd like to hear your your feeling about it Mike Mike my feeling is it's an interesting subject because There may be questions that it's appropriate to ask I Want to hear the public posing the appropriate questions that are that do represent real risk I want to see the public involved in raising questions that science has to listen to and respond to it Really should be a two-way street because they're going to be using the science So they they need they need to be asking questions about do cell phones cause cancer But they need to be listening to answers that they can trust Absolutely, but you know one of the one of the things that puzzles me a bit It is the limited number of forums that that can happen in yeah, I mean so, you know We talk about long-form journalism in much of the New York Times or the New Yorker here in Australia we have a number of outlets Cosmos is a science magazine popular science magazine But as as those are fairly rare beasts Yeah, it's very difficult to see where the forums are where people can ask those legitimate questions and get the answers and even follow up Yeah, and now it's reached the point where In a five-second thing on the news. They say new breakthrough cancer will be over next week great and it's so rushed and so Inadequate so thin Yeah, I just remembered another thing which I did for another thing that's oh, you know what I think is a real problem That we then more communication will remedy is that The public doesn't think like scientists enough. They don't ask for evidence They don't demand evidence. They say you know what I heard and they hear it from a neighbor often and That's good enough for a lot of people one of the things I think good communication on the part of scientists will do is Without even without even making a big deal out of it will accustom the public to look for evidence to think To think rationally evidence-based decision-making That kind of thing is really lacking And we make poor decisions we go to war we went to war with no evidence We did So Alan know today we did a very interesting exercise with you and Christine say that again We did an interesting exercise today with you and Christine one of your improv Treatments, and I wondered if we could do a mass improv experiment Okay, which one do you have in mind? I think we should throw a ball. Oh sure. Okay, okay Can we throw it to the audience? I'm just gonna make it one ball and we'll show you how with the ball here Let's get off. Okay. We don't hurt ourselves. Yes. Yeah, here. This is a beach ball. It's a beach ball. Okay Now throw it back to me. Okay, throw it back to you first So the idea is the ball exists because we agree on the shape and the weight So it should take the same amount of time to go through the air is a real beach ball, and it shouldn't change sides Okay, pass it around the audience Good stand up pass it around here. It comes. Oh, nice one. Whoa. Look at that. We got beach balls everywhere It turned into 17 beach balls Thank you Thank you all for coming tonight, ladies and gentlemen, thank Alan all that