 Your presence here today reflects your commitment to learning, sharing ideas, and fostering a collaborative environment. This workshop is being conducted under the auspices of the Round Table on Science and Welfare in the laboratory of welfare in laboratory animal use. And I'm honored to have such a distinguished group of experts and leaders here today to discuss the different aspects of effective communication of research that involves animals. I would like to begin by thanking all of our presenters for joining us today and tomorrow for what we have planned to be a truly interactive workshop. And to engage in what I am sure will be lively and robust discussions. I would also like to thank each and every one of the committee members in working to plan this workshop. In particular, I'd like to extend my thanks to Dr. Alice Wong, our chair and Dr. Margaret Landy, our vice chair. Before we continue, there are a couple of administrative notes. If you have a question at any point during the sessions, please use the Q&A to submit your question. We will make every effort to respond to as many questions as possible. We will answer questions during the Q&A portion scheduled at the end of each session and during the final Q&A, which is scheduled as the last session of the second day of the workshop. I'd like to thank you all for your interest in attendance today. Before we delve into the discussions ahead, it is imperative that we set the tone for a respectful and inclusive atmosphere. The National Academy stands firmly against any form of harassment, bullying or hate speech. We believe in the power of constructive dialogue, where diverse perspectives contribute to a tapestry of ideas. It is through this diversity that we can achieve a deeper understanding of the methods of effective communication about research that requires the use of animals. We cultivate an environment that encourages innovation and mutual respect. Now, without further ado, I'll turn it over to Alice. Thank you very much, Nia. And thank you to all of the National Academy staff who have just been amazing in helping to get this workshop together. To start, I'd like to just talk a little bit about what the goal of the workshop is, and that is to provide scientists with information and tools for communicating more effectively with the general public on topics that are important to understanding what scientific research with animals involves and why it's done. So for convenience in this workshop, we're going to use the term scientists as shorthand to refer to specifically the subset of all scientists who are involved in scientific research that requires the care and use of animals and want to communicate effectively about it. And that's including all of the people who provide support to that research, so taking care of the animals overseeing it and so on. Now, there are a number of topics that often elicit concerns, and for which effective communication is needed. This includes topics like why are research studies designed the way they are. What are the characteristics of animal models that make them especially valuable? What non-animal models are available and how do they compare with animal models? How meaningful are animal models for understanding human biology? What are the ethics of working with animals and if not working with animals? So this workshop will touch on some of these, but the focus of the workshop is on the how to communicate effectively about what you want to communicate. It's not necessarily that the focus of the workshop is not necessarily about what you communicate about these topics. We are aware that a lot of work has been done on broader topics that are highly relevant, how to communicate effectively in general, how to communicate effectively about science, how to communicate effectively in a polarized society. We're not going to try to address those or even summarize all that in this workshop, but we hope to add a small piece to that conversation by focusing on the aspects that are specifically important to communicating effectively about research that involves animals. When you apply what you learn, what we hope you will learn in this workshop to communicating with any particular individual or group of individuals, we expect that you will have to do so within the context of those more general principles about effective communication. And we also expect that you will have to customize it for the specifics of your situation, which include things about the nature of the research you're communicating about the species of animals involved and the perspectives of the people you will be communicating with. Now, why is it important for scientists to communicate effectively with the general public about research with animals. Many scientists want to communicate with the general public about the research, but they're concerned about being misunderstood. If we don't do it effectively so that's why it's important to have a workshop on communicating effectively. It's also important to communicate at all because for people to make informed decisions about whether to support research with animals. It's crucial for them to have access to accurate information in context that addresses their individual concerns and reflects understanding of their individual values. So what makes communication effectively generally, the more it becomes a true two way dialogue the more effective it's likely to be. This requires that both parties, then listen actively to understand and engage in the dialogue to be understood. That both parties expect to learn from the communication and to refine their own understanding in response to what they learn that both parties have mutual respect for each other, and that both parties recognize that complete agreement is not necessarily the goal. The planning committee recognized that the individuals involved in these communications bring a spectrum of diverse perspectives to the conversations. Just within the planning community itself. We had a huge array of different perspectives, different different perspectives based on ethnicity, faith traditions, age, family background. You know how many generations have you been in years has here family been in the United States, education and expertise, personal relationships with animals, all of those things and we expect that the array of perspectives among you the attendees is probably even bigger. So, although it's it's crucial in any individual conversation to take into account, each individual's personal perspectives, it's beyond the scope of this workshop to address all of those. So we acknowledge the differences, but the focus here will be on the perspectives that are shared. The members of the workshop planning committee and we presume most of you participating in the workshop share a common interest in improving how effectively scientists communicate with the general public. We identified some stakeholder groups with whom scientists would like to communicate more effectively and whose shared perspectives are important for scientists to understand. We chose to focus on communication with three of the groups, each with a different set of shared concerns and priorities about animals and research. Private individuals who are not scientists involved in research with animals. Those who are regarded by private individuals as reliable sources of information. So that includes journalists, veterinarians, community leaders. And then the third group is those in leadership positions in the institutions where scientists work. This would include not only the the official leaders of the institutions but also the communication specialists who implement the communication interests of the institution. So you can see from the bios of the planning committee members and the presenters something of our individual perspectives. So now we'd like to get a feel for the perspectives of the people participating in this workshop, and we're going to ask a few polling questions. Each question will appear on your screen with a number of response options. Please click on as many of the options as you think apply to you and then click submit. You may not be collecting any information about who chose what, and you are free to not answer if you don't want to. We recognize that there may be more than one person attending under a single registration. If that's the case, you can combine the answers in your group. However, it seems appropriate to you. This is just to get a rough idea of where we're all coming from. So if you could post the first polling question please. So that first question is, what do you consider to be your major role or roles related to this workshop that includes scientists conducting biomedical laboratory research with animals, scientists conducting wildlife research, conducting research for agricultural purposes, journalists, leaders of institutions where research is done with animals, research animal care specialists, veterinary specialists, and other there might be other ones that are not listed so just click however many apply. We'll give you a minute or so to do that. Okay. Okay, looks like it's slowing down so let's go ahead and close the poll and take a look. Right. So, we have a pretty good mix here. Fair number of scientists, mostly connecting biomedical research but some conducting other kinds of research involving animals. A few journalists, some leadership some people who were involved in supporting the research, and then a fairly large number of other. So that's interesting. But it's good it shows us the spectrum that we're talking we're working with today. Okay. Now if you could put up the next polling question please. Now, whatever your roles happen to be with whom have you ever tried to talk about research with animals. So, have you tried to talk with members of the general public and this would be specifically members of the general public who are not involved in research with animals. Have you tried to talk with members of the press. Have you tried to talk with institutional leaders, or community leaders or government official. So please click any or all that you have tried to talk with successfully or not. Okay, let's go ahead and close that. So, this is perhaps reflecting the fact that you have tried and are interested in doing it 97% have tried to talk with someone in the general public, and then a fair number have tried to speak with each of these other groups. So that's, that's very encouraging. And then, if you could post the third question please. And this is, this has to do with how successfully, you feel that the talk went. So with whom have you talked or not successfully but that you've done it enough with whom have you talked about research with animals often enough for it to feel familiar. And this would be members of the general public if you just done it once standing in an airplane airport security line or have you done it a lot members of the press, institutional leaders, community leaders and government officials. Just click as many as you think apply to you. And we'll take a look at where we are. We'll close that and show you the results. So, again, so 97% of the people who responded have tried to talk with members of the general public and 82% have tried often enough for it to feel familiar so that's very good. And we have a fair number of people who are comfortable or familiar I shouldn't say comfortable but familiar with talking with the press with institutional leaders quite a few have tried to have gotten familiar with talking with institutional leaders with community leaders and government officials. So thank you very much. We appreciate your choosing to participate in this workshop and we hope you will find it interesting and useful. And that you may gain some new understanding of how to communicate effectively with the general public. Now I'm going to turn this over to our Vice Chair Margaret Landy, who will say a few words. Hi everyone I just have a few words before we start because we're all anxious to kick this off. So this is a very unique design to a workshop. And the planning committee has worked very hard, and we're very optimistic that it's going to work we expect maybe a few technical difficulties because we've made it sort of a state of the art for us type of workshop, but it is unique. And I do want to mention the fact that while there's a number of topics they're not in order of priority. They all work together so just because once first or one second, don't think of that as a priority listing. And as Alice already did in the I want to thank Alice extraordinary as the chair and all the members of the panels and the committee have been really working considering big holidays come up in a very few short days from it from many of us. So with that, I'm going to be introducing very quickly because you have their bios. I understand in your in your packages so I won't read what you already have, but we're going to have Joe Newsom and Sally Thompson, your Tony talk about the survey results sounds very bland but this survey through the round table is what sort of kicked kicked all of this off. So Sally and Joe. Thank you Dr landing. I'm going to be brief here but I was asked to give a little background on why we did a survey. And I think what happened is the membership of the round table on science and well for an animal research in mid 2022. And what was considered was concerned that misinformation for science when animal research is warranted was also a problem that we could address and our survey of members said this was a top priority. Luckily, we were working with the Johnson and Kavita burger and the rest of the NASA team, and they worked with the academies to establish a workshop to discuss and share tools and approaches to improve our communication about scientific research related to working with animals. What happened is, we decided that it would help us frame this workshop by providing some background on where is the state of the art of understanding on certain topics as it relates to animal use in wildlife and animal use and conservation animal use and laboratory research, even in zoos so anywhere that animal research is appropriately warranted. So, we were lucky enough to have the academy set up a contract with echelon insights. And I don't know that's the next slide Sally. Please. So, echelon insights is a nationally known survey team. And basically, they ran for a one week period, a survey that matches the general US population survey metrics and 2028 adults completed the survey. And there was a very little sampling error on this and what we did is ask and broke down the survey questions that were reviewed by the membership of the round table to help set the survey on what we wanted to discuss in light of us being a part of Baskar going forward. So, I'll do the next slide there Sally. So one of the big things was what demographic questions you ask in a survey and this, these two slides show that we asked about education. We asked things about age we asked thing about animal ownership experience her friends health or use of medications. It's a very large survey and you know, Sally is going I'm going to hand it over to her and she's going to give a very, but I should say a very 30,000 foot overview of some of the surveys but we have a very strong working group that is working on a white paper to summarize this and we will include that in the workshop proceedings when it gets published after this workshop. So that's our goal. And at this point I'd like to introduce Dr Sally Thompson here Tony Sally take it from here. Have this on is it working. Okay, so thank you all for being here today as Joe mentioned, we're going to do a high level overview of the survey results from this survey that was done by echelon insights so as I present this data there's a lot of graphs and a lot of information and you're not expected to get all the detail from looking at these slides they're going to be available. There's going to be an amazing workshop report that's going to go into more detail. What I'm going to try to do is we tried to bring out the highlights and these highlights are important information as we go forward for the next two days and getting this information and thinking about what do we do with this information and that's all we're doing is providing the results we're not trying to interpret anything in this initial presentation. If as the days go on you guys decide that you want to think about how we might be applying some of these results and thinking about them how they might impact how we communicate with different groups. So that's the information we're trying to get from the survey. How does it influence how we communicate and how should we be communicating with different individuals because we all taking information differently. So it's really important to think about that so this slide just shows what we're going to talk about today. The numbers just so which slide we're starting on to talk about the different topics so this is really just a content slide. One thing I do want to mention we did ask some additional questions about wildlife that we're not going to be able to go into detail on this morning. So there is some additional data will definitely come out in the workshop report but it's not in detail. There's we're just touching on it here. A lot of what we're talking about today is research conducted in a laboratory setting. The next I don't know. OK. The next slide. So this is the one slide I'm going to spend a little bit of time on because I want to just set up the stage for what the information is that you're looking at here. So this is the question that was asked. Please indicate to what extent you personally believe it is acceptable or unacceptable for humans to use animals in the following ways. And these are the questions that we asked raised livestock for meat to eat hunt animals for meat to eat have animals in zoos conduct scientific research on wild animals in their natural habitats use animals and scientific research conducted in laboratories use animals for for or skin to make clothing use animals to test the safety of cosmetic cosmetic products for humans or hunt animals for trophy or sport. So those are the questions that are asked the categories were acceptable in most cases acceptable in all cases. And we kind of lump those together in a lot of our output that we're presenting today. There's also the category of unacceptable in most cases and unacceptable in all cases. And then there's also this middle not sure. So what I'm going to focus on again as I mentioned is this use animals in scientific research conducted in laboratories. And what do our results show here. And as you can see along the right here I kind of divided this out. Our results show that when we interviewed when these participants took this survey what they found was that there was 44 percent of the participants found that it was acceptable in all or most cases for scientific research conducted in laboratories to use animals. OK. That was the result. Forty eight percent felt that it was unacceptable in all or most cases. And there was seven percent that were unsure. Now one thing I do want to point out if you look at conducting research on wild animals and their natural habitats. This actually where it was 67 percent felt that it was acceptable in all or most cases. Again I'm not going to go as much into those details. We're going to talk more about this area of using animals in scientific research conducted in laboratories. So that like I say went into a little more detail on that because you'll see some similar things as we go through. We'll talk about how these how these results were influenced by different parameters when we looked when we broke it out. So what what did we look at when we looked at these participants who chose the different things that acceptable or unacceptable. So one of the things that we tried to distinguish here was based on ideological differences. If the participants self identified as conservative or liberal did influence how they felt about scientific research conducted in laboratories. And actually this is one thing that it didn't seem to matter. There was around forty eight forty nine percent whether they were liberal or conservative had specified that research with animals was acceptable in all or most cases. You can see that the other uses that we talked about there actually was much more of a split except for again in the wildlife. There was more put acceptable in all in most cases but it was a higher percentage. This graph on the bottom actually shows its break out broken out by gender. And this is just gender men. They identified the participants participants identified as male or female and then how they felt about these research uses. And what you can see here is again a very big split men. Fifty three percent felt that the research conducted in laboratories was acceptable in all the most cases. Women were at thirty four percent acceptable in all in most cases. This is one of the biggest divides except for the use of animals for fur skins to make clothing. In general men were more accepting of the use of animals across all of the categories. But there was one of the biggest differences in this one of use of animals in scientific research conducted in laboratories. So really want to distinguish that there was a nineteen point difference on that parameter. When we broke this out by educational attainment. This was just looking at how the participants identified their own in for their own educational level. So when we looked at this as we mentioned we did the gender and then college versus non college. I do want to mention college versus non college was divided into whether people had a high school or less or whether they had any college any college level of attainment. And there's some interesting data here. College participants you can see here where 60 percent felt that research conducted in laboratory with animals was acceptable in all the most cases. People that identified as non college. It was at thirty six percent. So there's a very big difference here. Another big difference that was found if we look down here at this table is that if high school or less or people that had self identified as having an associate's degree were around the same and anybody with a bachelor's degree or higher actually showed a higher level of feeling that it was acceptable to use animals and research. Also interest people who identified that they were very interested in science in general across all of the categories had a higher level of identifying that it was acceptable in all the most cases to conduct research and laboratory animals. So when we just asked them OK. So what is your background knowledge. How much do you actually feel like you know about animals in these different environments. The questions were how much do you know about the use of animals and scientific research conducted in laboratories and how much do you know about scientific research conducted in animals in a natural habitat. Again this kind of touches on the wildlife question. And people felt in general that they knew just a lot or some about research in both of these environments. They did not feel that they you know it was fourteen percent had a lot thirty nine percent. It was very similar in both the laboratory environment and in the wildlife setting or the natural habitats. And then there again this difference between college and non college people who identified as having college level of educational attainment felt like they had more knowledge about what these natural settings looked like for both the laboratory and the natural setting. This is a really busy slide. So I'm just going to overview what you're not. Again this is when you're not expected to get all this information because there is so much to it. And as we've been looking through this data and looking at where do people get their information. So those people who said they know a lot about what this looks like and a lot about what these different environments look like. Where did they attain the information from. And there are so many sorts of information. You can see all of these are over a dozen sources that were listed here. Where do you get your information from. And we then divided this out as you can imagine as we're looking at all this data. It's so interesting and so fascinating. So it started producing graph after graph after graph because there's so much here to look at. As you can see these really colorful beautiful grass and we can we're not going to delve into them here but we did then break these out by gender age race education interest in science ideology geography. Whether they own animals and their experience within illness with someone close to them. When we look at all these things broken out. There are definitely some differences here that we need to tease out in where these different people get their information and what are our effective communication with these different sources. So we're going to talk a little bit about how this can tie in some with some other things further on again not going into detail but just saying that there are so many information sources and depending on many factors determines what information sources you might be relying on. This is a really interesting slide. Who do you trust. Who do you trust to give you the best information. This was how much do you trust each of the following to provide accurate information about the use of animals in scientific research conducted in laboratories. So if you ask all these participants who they trust veterinarian scientists and medical doctors were at the top. This is a big responsibility right they trust you to give them really accurate information about this. So what are we doing to make sure that these people who are trusted actually have good accurate information to share and not trusted government officials social media accounts and elected officials were chosen as not trusted. Now where does this put us actually this has some really interesting information about this because one of the things that we have to think about is when we look at where we get our information versus who do we trust. I'm going to spend a little bit of time on this slide because there's a lot even though they're simple graphs there's a lot of information here because we source of information you go to documentaries podcast science focused social media. These are the most relied upon these participants chose these as the most relied upon sources of information. They rarely asked veterinarians religious leaders or publications or advocacy organizations. They don't use those sources of information anymore despite the fact that's who they trust. So they trust veterinarian scientists and medical doctors but they're not relying on them very much. And the people that they don't trust government social media and elected officials social media is one of the top things that people are actually using as information source despite the fact that we don't trust it. So again that doesn't surprise any of us because it's so accessible right these are really easily accessible information and that's where we get our information so I think these are really important points for us all to think about as we go through talking up to the next two days. This is something that will come up a few times. The other thing was how do they feel about humane treatment of the animals. When we asked different people have different ideas of what humane treatment of animals and scientific research conducted in laboratories should involve. So what would you say is absolutely necessary for the treatment of animals to be humane because I will tell you if you look and we even looked up a couple of different sources. How do you define humane treatment. It's very different depending on who's filling this out. Right. So what we found the participants in this survey they defined humane treatment. The top thing was enough nutritious food and clean water clean living conditions appropriate veterinary care living spaces with room to move around naturally Medication to alleviate or minimize potential pain environmental enrichment opportunities to socially interact with other animals and opportunities to spend time outdoors. These were all over 50% of what people would consider part of humane treatment. These are all things that we need to be communicating about how are they incorporated are they incorporated and what do they look like. So then we looked at qualifiers when animals are treated humanely. Does it change what people mark on that acceptable in all or most cases. So to what extent do you personally believe it is acceptable as we saw at the beginning of the survey. It was 44% acceptable in all or most cases overall. When we said when the animals are treated humanely. Is it acceptable when we use that qualifier to develop medication or treatment for animals 79% of the participants said it was acceptable in all the most cases. When we use this qualifier to develop medications or treatments for humans 71% felt like it was acceptable in all the most cases. And when we said to conduct scientific research in general, which means just your foundational research is 66% said that it was acceptable in all the most cases. So what we found here is this really important qualifier about what is humane treatment look like and are we doing a good job of communicating about what that looks like. Then we said OK so we believe that humane treatment is incredibly important. What do we actually what are the participants in this survey think is actually happening. So if you think each of the following usually happens or does not usually happen when animals are used in scientific research and conducted laboratory in lab when scientific research is conducted in laboratories. What do you believe is actually happening and we found that over 50% said that animals are housing cramped cages without enough space and animals are subjected to unnecessary pain, which they consider negatives but that's the message that they're hearing and that is what's being communicated. They believe that animals believe receive adequate food, water and veterinary care, which they consider we consider positive in terms of humane care, but again, more than half believes that their cramped conditions and animals are subjected to unnecessary pain. So and then this when we looked at participants who had marked on the initial survey that it was acceptable in all the most cases to use animals in research. They were more likely to believe the positive statements with a very big point spread there of how the care of animals goes out what the care of animals looks like in these environments and less likely to believe the negative statements about cramped conditions and unnecessary pain. Okay. Again, breaking this out by gender, while men remain more likely to accept animal research majority of women also say it is more acceptable when the animals are treated humanely. So this shows that just the men versus women, not the big 19 point spread that we saw in that initial survey result. They're very close now closely aligned women are more accepting again when the treatment is humane and men and women are more accepting when the research is used to develop treatment for animals. We've seen this communication over and over there's a much better understanding and appreciation when the treatments are used to develop when it's used to develop treatments for animals. And among those initially felt that research was unacceptable. It actually did influence their opinion if they felt that the animals were treated humanely. So 73% again said it was okay to develop treatment for animals 50% 8% if treat if treatment for humans and 51% per science in general. And again, this is broken out by the ones who initially said it was unacceptable in all or most cases. I know I'm throwing a lot of data at you. Everyone need a break. So regarding regulations, how do people feel about the current regulations that are underway to regulate the use of animals and research? So the questions were based on what you know about government regulation of use of animals and scientific research conducted in laboratories. Do you think there is and then it was not enough about the right amount or too much regulation or unsure. And then we also asked the same question about research in animals in their natural habitats. So regarding the regulations actually it was fairly similar whether in the laboratory or in their natural habitats about a third actually felt like there was not enough regulation and about a third think it's just right. And then it was kind of split not many thinking there was too much regulation, even though I know there's different philosophies about that. And a lot we're just not sure because maybe they don't really know what those regulations look like. And again, we this was fairly standard across the ideologies people feeling about the regulations about a third feeling like there actually is not enough regulation. Regarding species acceptability, are there certain species that people were more or less comfortable using in animal research? And this question was to develop medications or treatments specifically for humans. So looking at that and asking is it acceptable to develop to use these animals to develop treatment specifically for humans. The most accepted was use of rodents actually mice and rats at 25% in all cases and 43% in most cases. So very high percentage 67% in all in most cases. Next was fish actually was lower than rodents at 60% reptiles and amphibians rabbits cows and pigs at 56% cephalopods. We all know there's a lot of discussion about cephalopods right now at 55% sheep and goats going down to monkeys and other non-human primates was 55%. And it goes all the way down to cats and dogs, which are actually below 50% at 47% each. So I think again showing this degree is really important again for our communications about which animals are used and how they're used. We're going to talk some about NAMS a little bit later because this acronym is quite the acronym and it has so many different ways. But NAMS you can say novel alternative methods. You can say non-animal models. And I think you'll hear tomorrow there's somebody did a little metric on how many different ways this acronym is used. But just letting you all know that these are models that do not use animals. We're going to put it at that. Based on what you know about current scientific research methods, do you think the use of animals and scientific research conducted in laboratories can now be replaced in all cases? Can now be replaced in most cases? Unsure is still necessary in most or is still necessary in all cases? So when we asked that question, 47% felt like it could be replaced in all or most cases. Again, and then those when we broke that out by what they put on the first initial survey, did they feel that animal research was acceptable? There was a much lower percentage 34% felt like it could be replaced. And when we broke it out by those that found it was unacceptable in all the most cases on the initial survey, 62% felt that it could be replaced. So again, really important information when where and how we can replace the use of animals and utilize the NAMS. Because there's so many different definitions out there for that nice acronym. This again, I know you can't read all of these, but I am going to summarize them for you and they were going to make them available. What we want to get across here is that the messaging is so important. And that's part of what we're going to be talking about for the next two days. When we message things, it changes people's attitudes. When there were pro animal research messages shown to the respondents. And these included things like the joint benefit of insulin for both humans and animals. Insulin is an amazing story. It has shown that it can be used and effective and help treat both humans and animals. You get the most benefit. This is a very convincing argument for those that were found that the research was acceptable in animals. Talking about again, the animal benefit that there actually was no alternative. Interestingly, the COVID-19 argument was not as persuasive as some of the other arguments, the development of the COVID-19 vaccine, which I think with all the controversy around vaccine, maybe that would contribute some to how this would be interpreted. But positive messaging definitely was looked at as convincing and influential. Negative messaging. Negative messaging. The information taken for these quotes and these messages were actually taken from different sites that they gathered. And so the treatment of sentient creatures. So again, this talks about humane treatment. If the animals are not treated humanely, this is obviously something that's very convincing against the use of animals and research. Unnecessary that they can be replaced. Somewhat convincing and pointless was not quite as convincing, but there still was some convincing of the not using animals and research for that. So this goes now. What we did then is after participants took this whole survey and then we asked them the same question and to see if they changed their mind. So at the end of the survey, did they feel differently than at the beginning of the survey and they did. What we got was at the beginning of the survey, we saw that 44% said that was acceptable in all of those cases. At the end of the survey, 55% said that it was acceptable in all of those cases and attitudes. 10% more people found the use of animals in scientific research conducted in laboratories acceptable in most cases. This was the biggest shift from 31 up to 43%. And the doubt, the biggest decrease was actually unacceptable in all cases. So this seemed to be shifting. We don't know where the, you know, we can look at where the actual participants shifted from so many things to follow up on. Why did they change their mind? When we look to see why did participants change their mind because they felt the benefit for humans was important. They actually the survey caused them to think more deeply about the use of animals and research. They realized that it actually is the best option that maybe there aren't alternatives available. They also the benefit for animals had a big impact on their opinions, humane treatment and species dependent realizing the different species that were used to develop these treatments. Lots of data, lots to, lots to tease through. We're not going to tease through all of it in the next two days. But I think that hopefully you have an overview of some of the things that we saw and maybe we'll lead to more discussion. There's so much to do. We're hoping over the next year even to delve in more deeply to a lot of the topics that came out of the survey, because it does just make us think more about what this can look like. I want to give a shout out again to echelon insights who did this survey. They did an amazing job. I also just want to give a shout out to the whole round table and particularly our Wednesday morning crew with Nia and Mariah and Pat and Brianna and Nira, Joe and I on the Wednesday morning crew. We get together Wednesday mornings and go over the survey trying to get this white paper. We thought it was going to be in August. That didn't happen. But we're hoping with this amazing workshop, really sending this off that we're going to be moving that forward as quickly as possible. So I think now we have some time for questions. Great. Okay. If you could put your questions in the Q&A. You go over there, Joe, so we don't get feedback. Well, the first question is, will the slides be available from your presentation today? And yes, they will. Most of this is recorded and will be shared with the participants and the public in the future. Yeah, the slides will be available. And as we said, there will be an in-depth, you know, right up of all the information included in the workshop report. All right, Sally, I'm going to give this one to you. How do you explain the gender differences? I know we said we weren't going to do interpretations here, but it's an interesting question. I know we've been bantering about a little bit. Yeah. We have been really thinking a lot about how do you explain the gender, and I think that's something we actually should talk about over the next two days. And how do people take in information? How do we process it? And what do we do with the information? And I don't feel like I personally can explain the gender differences except that they're there. We're just presenting the data, as we said. And I think that really understanding why people actually feel so differently about this is something that we need to spend a little bit more time talking about. I, you know, obviously it's, you know, demographically, there's so many challenges. And so I think that thinking about what those could look like. Is there something, oh, you're getting up. Okay, sorry. Did you have any more you wanted to add to that? We have been talking a lot about it. We, you know, there's a lot of stereotypes of male versus female. So I think that we don't know how much of that we should like rely on. Are, you know, people saying females may be nurturing and this is having a bigger influence on them if they're worried about unnecessary pain or what things can look like. We can talk about that. We can think about that, but there may be a lot of other factors that are playing into this. And I want to be sure we think more broadly. Thanks, Ali. So one of the questions here is probably one I can handle very quick. Was there evaluation of members of the public view, trust, scientists and these and veterinarians when they actually dual share as elected officials and no, we did not get into that granularity in the survey. So that was something that we didn't do. One of these questions is something that we talked about that we should do. And that's part of our white paper about what we might do in the future for future surveys is, did you ask at all about transparency? In other words, did you get feedback about whether people in the survey would like to know more about what goes on in labs? We did not ask that question specifically, but we have so many. Like one of the things we found is that there's always things that we wish we would have asked that we wish we would have thought about in going forward in future surveys. As we all know, we also need to be very consistent between surveys as we, you know, you'd want a survey to be very replicable. So we can think about how we might want to add more questions, but we don't want to change questions if we want to compare longitudinally. This next question is, do you have any data on food animal use and research? So the survey did add questions both for food and fiber based research and also there's some data in there about conservation and zoo research that's required. So those details will come out forthcoming with the white paper. So question for you, Sally, do you think the ICOC specialists are missing category that the public needs to hear from? So the people that oversee the management and use of these animals and research, do they need to be a voice and explain to those what are the best practices and how they're reviewed? I would definitely say yes, particularly when you see the third of the participants in the survey said that we're not enough regulations. I think there's a misunderstanding about what those regulations are and how they're implemented and what that oversight looks like. So I think the more that the ICOC and oversight people at different organizations can speak out to that, I think it would be very helpful. So yes, I think that's a population that should be working and hopefully I look like a lot of them were attending. I saw a question when we were doing the polls at the beginning that maybe that was one of the things that people felt like we missed is that population. So really making sure that we recognize how important that role is. So this one's very interesting. How would you consider that you could communicate with kids and teenagers? They are the ones often that are bringing messages home, confluence, adult parents, perceptions on this subject. So I don't know if our survey dealt into this, but do you have any thoughts you want to share with everybody about getting the message out to the younger generation? Our survey did not ask that specifically, and I'm hoping that we get some more ideas over the next two days about how to properly bridge that because I can tell you for myself, my kids hold me accountable for something that is one of the biggest influencers for me is and when the next generation is holding me accountable. So I think that's something we have to really think about. We have to think about that messaging. We have to think about what we're doing that's accurate. That's really portraying how we're caring for these animals and how important the science is. So yeah, I think that there is an opportunity and I think we're going to hear more about that over the next two days. So looking forward to that. This questionnaire was interested in the gender gap and was wondering if that review of the survey questions at the end. Could that be parsed out a little bit about pre and post survey opinions? That is fantastic. Yes, I'm sure that we have it parsed out in a graph. We have 100 pages of graphs, quite honestly, I think. And so yeah, I think that's a great idea. One of the things I think that we're going to be looking at after this workshop is how do we carry this forward and even get more information from the survey results and some of the other things. And what does that look like? And so we're currently kind of talking about some plans for how we can move that forward. Well, this question is somebody that actually delved into the survey that was published. They want to know if we drop the Southern contingency out of this survey. Do any of the numbers change significantly? We did not do that analysis because we did as presented at the beginning, there was a larger Southern contingency of this 40% versus some of the other areas. I don't think that we do have graphs that have the different geographical regions. So we certainly could look at that and see how that influences things, but I don't remember that data off the top of my head. I don't know if you do, Joe. No, not yet. This question is how knowledgeable do we actually believe the public is about regulations involved with animal research? Can they even name the regulatory agencies involved? I'll take this one, Sally. You know, I think we saw that there was a gap in their knowledge and understanding about regulation. And maybe that what will get out of this workshop is that maybe one of our focal points going forward when we try to communicate about this topic. So that's my two cents on that one. On the role of teens, would the committee be willing planning to make the survey more targeted to teens in the future and get their opinions about this? That is a great idea that we can definitely take back to the round table. Well, I know there's a challenge to doing surveys of underage individuals and this was all done following normal human subject survey approvals. So if you're doing it for adolescents, there are additional regulations and sign off by parents and stuff to participate, but it could be something we consider. And I have one last one. I think we already answered that one. So, oh, the way to get here we go. I knew it was coming in. Given the dramatic differences in support of animal research between those with at least a bachelor's degree and those without. Is that indicative that the public's documented overall lack of scientific literacy is a concern with communicating when there's a need to use animals and research. So science literacy being a problem to get this message across. That's why we have this workshop. That's my best answer for that one. This is why we need to be talking to figure out what is effective communication look like for all backgrounds. Right. And this is something that we really need to figure out how we can communicate effectively across all of these different areas. And I know both Sally and I are very excited about what's going to come out of this workshop as well as the rest of the round table members. And we'd like to stop our session right now and we'd like to hand it back over to our chair. Dr. Alice one. Go ahead. That's the next speaker have slides. Thank you so much. Joe and Sally. There's obviously a lot of information to look at there for the attendees. The slides and what the report about the survey will be provided with the. The proceedings of the of this workshop so you'll get to dig into it more to your hearts content. So now we're going to move on to the first of four sessions that that are planned in this workshop to address specifically what scientists can do better on with regard to communicating effectively with different stakeholders. So each one of these sessions involves first a presenter who or a presentation about concerns that are common to one of the groups of stakeholders. So the survey showed showed some of the concerns that people have focused a lot on the opinions that people already have. And so now we want to dig into a little bit. What concerns do they have that scientists might be able to address better. After the present or mixed in with the presentation will have an illustrative role playing conversation between the presenter and scientists and they were given the following instructions. Both parties are supposed to be willing to engage perhaps grudgingly or impatiently or skeptically, but without animosity, and to focus on the information that's being communicated and not on the character the background experience etc of the other person. The presenter was asked to be difficult and challenge the scientists but not to the point of shutting the conversation down because we wanted to have something to look at. And then the scientist was asked to try to address the concerns that were mentioned by the presenter in the presentation. After that, we would have an analysis of that role playing conversation to talk about what went right, what went wrong, what was useful, what did they what were they thinking when they said one thing or another, what did they wish they had said all of that kind of thing. And then we'll have another Q&A session where the attendees will be welcome to submit questions using the Q&A button and we'll try to get to as many of the questions that are related to the topic of the session as we can. So for our first one of these kinds of sessions, our presenter is Mr. Paul McKellips. We asked Paul to participate in this workshop because of his training and many years of experience with communications in the motion picture industry and as a national TV correspondent and media and public affairs trainer focused on international diplomatic and military matters. In addition to that, he's also familiar with the issues related to scientific research with animals because of his experience working with the Federation for biomedical research. Dr. Matthew Rissette will play Rasset, sorry, will play the role of the scientist in the conversations for this session. Matt is a boarded laboratory animal veterinarian with over 15 years of experience in both academic and government settings. In this role, he has become familiar with both the perspectives of the research investigators he works with and the need for effective communication with the general public about their work. He is currently a veterinary medical officer working with the Department of Veterans Affairs. So, if we could show Paul next, we'll get started with this session. Good morning, everybody. Thank you, Alice for the introduction. Are we muted? Okay, I'm muted. I'm unmuted on my side. Wait, we can't hear you. They're working on it. Let me know if we're there. We can hear you very loud and clear. All right. Good deal. Good morning, everybody. It's pleasure to be with you. Before we play the first video of the role play, I wanted to make just three quick points. We're really talking about effective communication with the media, which is a sour point for just about everybody in biomedical research, especially those who use animals and research. We know that the media and the general public can be there can be some animosity, some skepticism and certainly lots of questions. But the first point that I want to make is about style. Oftentimes, I would say of all the folks that are listening and watching today, you probably have advanced degrees up to certainly masters, PhDs, MDs, all those kinds of things. And we typically want to communicate from that position of scientific literacy of that extended education. The first point that I want to make is that it's your personality that really drives your connection with the audience. It's not your education. People are not as excited about what degrees you have and what experience you have as much as they're interested in. Can you connect with the audience? Can you connect with me? Keep in mind, there's 8 billion and one on this planet. I added you so that we could get to a full 8 billion. There are 325 million here in the United States alone. There are more messages going out per millisecond competing for 325 million years, eyes, thoughts, emotions, hearts and minds. There are 8 billion of us that are competing and sorting through that chaotic morass of information that's out there. So keep in mind that your style must be your personality, not your level of expertise. The second thing I want you to understand is that at least in the realm of media, there is a preposition that begins, which is gotcha. I used to be a national TV correspondent covering the Pentagon, the State Department and the Supreme Court. And it was amusing to me that in the morning on the 4 a.m. call with the producer, I was told what the angle of my story was going to be. And so on one particular occasion I was sent to the Pentagon with the explicit purpose of bashing the Bush administration for their policy on Liberia. Now, I didn't know what the policy on Liberia was. I didn't know what the Bush administration had done incorrectly, but that was my angle. And I pushed back on the producer and I said, well, how about if I get an interview with someone who thinks the policy is correct and someone who thinks the policy is incorrect and then let the viewer decide what their opinion might be. And they said no. In fact, they didn't even want any interviews. They wanted me to stand up in the press room at the Pentagon and explain why the policy was incorrect in Liberia. So oftentimes when you get a reporter from the media that's coming to talk to you, their producer has already determined what the angle of the story is. So keep that in mind. The last thing that I want to point out is I've got a book here. It's on whiskey tasting. It is a thick book. The temptation is to explain to an audience how whiskey is made and distilled, how there's so many different varieties. There's so many ways that you should clean your palate before you taste any whiskey. Really, the mission in a media interview is to give me a very small taste so then I can determine what I want to look into that further. Sometimes we try to explain the entire book rather than just tempting somebody to read Tolstoy's war and peace. We want to tell them the whole story and it never resonates with the audience. Without further ado, before I go into the four techniques for doing media interviews, let's play the first role play that Matt and I did. And I got to tell you, for a cold role play interview of a reporter with a subject matter. Matt did an outstanding job. There wasn't much room for improvement. So if we can, let's queue up that video. Hello, Dr. Rassett. It's a good glad you could join me today. Just for a couple of questions. Looking a little bit at your research, and I see that first responders, veterans virtually any burn victim caught in a fire that can experience traumatic burn injuries. What are some of the challenges physicians currently face when doing skin grafts on burn patients. Thank you, Pablo. One of the big challenges that they face is that when you have a large skin defect, the skin sometimes doesn't close properly. What my team and I have done is we have found a way to engineer the person's own cells to overcome some of these difficulties and heal faster and with less chance of infection. Interesting. So what's the breakthrough that your research team has seemingly uncovered? What's different? What's different is we're able to take cells from an individual, change the way that those cells go about doing their day to day lives as cells using a revolutionary new technology called CRISPR. Once we've made that change, we're able to put those cells and deploy them in the actual burn site or the any defect site. It doesn't have to be a burn. And we're able to find some much more rapid healing and it's really a revolutionary change that we're excited to be able to bring and use to help patients. So you mentioned that your research in your press release, it says you use pigs. How did you go about burning pigs to simulate conditions that a human burn patient might be exposed to? It's an important question. In fact, we did not burn any pigs. As I mentioned, these skin defects that we're studying are able to be created simply by doing something called a punch biopsy. And it's a very small outpatient procedure that's normally performed in humans where the human doesn't feel anything. We did the exact same type of procedure in a pig where we used a skin block to basically take out a portion of the skin. So the animal didn't feel anything. We then basically later went back and created another set of those skin defects and used these skin cells from these pigs to test the concept that it would work. This is of course following on from years of research that we have done and shop and in the lab. I mean, obviously, human patients can describe their pain from burns or other melodies, especially from skin grafting. How do pigs tell you that your research hurts? How do they express to you pain? I mean, I understand you've done punch biopsies, but I would assume there has to be something else to test whether or not a skin graft is actually going to work before you try it on a human. Sure. So there's two important parts to your question. The first is how do we detect discomfort in the laboratory animals in the pig in this. The one of the ways that we do that is by looking at their faces. We can study what's called a facial grimace score and also we give a lot of care and time to these animals. We know them as individuals and we're able to tell in the same way that you'd be able to tell if your cat or your dog is off a little bit. So they're not eating their feed, they're not playing with their toys, they're not interacting with us in the same way and then we're able to bring that to the attention of the veterinarians. In terms of the second part of your question, trying to see how we translate that into human clinical trials, it's crucial that we start out in an animal model before we move on to human clinical trials so that we can really find out more information. The pig is a great model for this as it turns out. I guess using any animal and painful research is controversial, especially there in Minnesota. How do you justify putting these animals through that pain. Once your pain research is concluded, are these pigs just sent back to a farm or do they live forever in a cage in your laboratory or do you kill these pigs? So it's important to note, Paul, that what we do with these animals is tended to help the humans on the other end of it, but it also will end up helping many patients that are treated by veterinarians. And in terms of how we go about what happens to these animals at the end of the study, one of the key ways that we will know whether or not this has been successful and whether or not it's been safe is by looking at all of the different parts of the animal. And fortunately to do that we do have to humanely euthanize these animals. Well, thanks Matt. I appreciate your time and really appreciate you talking to us about your research. So Matt did a phenomenal job with that. And the next video that I'm going to show you here in just several minutes will be after I give him the coaching that I'm going to give you right now. And actually, he did a sensational job. There's four points that I want you to keep in mind with media interviews and really just talking to the general public that maybe does not have the scientific literacy that you do. The first one is attention span. Keep in mind that research has determined that goldfish have an attention span of 9.25 seconds. Microsoft found that interesting and over the last 20 years they've done research on the attention span of humans. And as of about eight years ago the attention span of humans is eight seconds. Goldfish are going to pay more attention to your messaging than humans are. And if you keep in mind that we speak at about 135 words per minute and our attention span is eight seconds. You've got about 20 words to hook, capture and hold someone's attention. And if you watch any kind of television news, if we were to have put Matt's interview on television, we're looking for an eight second sound bite. That's the magic number because the attention span of the viewer of anybody you're talking to is about that eight seconds. Why can't we pay attention for longer than eight seconds? I'm going to tell you it's real simple. This thing. Every time it buzzes, in fact, for those of you that are watching in your offices or at home or wherever you are right now, you're multitasking. You're doing something else even as I'm talking. Your phone is chattering. It's vibrating. And you have a Pavlovian response that says, who is it? What is it? What do I need to do? We are like that. Now multiply that times eight billion people around the world. And you can see why you can't be teaching the history of whiskey you've got to give them just a taste. If you want to hold their attention, give them the taste for eight seconds. And then the next eight seconds, you've got to re-win their attention. So our communication with the media, which is the public, has to be fast. It has to be short. It has to be insightful. And it has to hook them in to hold them for another second or two. So the first point, again, I want to make is attention span. The second thing is that you need to understand them before trying to be understood. The problem we often make in biomedical research is the same one we make in the military or in diplomacy or in any other organization where I've coached with media training or platform skills or just speaking to the public, public speaking. The problem that we do is we try to be understood before we understand our audience. If you want to understand the audience of biomedical research, of military, of diplomacy, you need to understand that we all have shared experiences. This goes back to that style, that personality. You see, if you try to tell me about your biomedical research and what you're doing with mice and the different biomarkers and all this technical, scientific, literate jargon, I'm not interested. It just doesn't appeal to me. It's not my thing. What I'm interested in is, I've got a friend who has a glioblastoma and they're suffering and what's going on. Somebody who has heart stents somebody who's got pacemakers I don't understand that somebody with with different maladies and conditions and it's the liver it's the lungs it's it's all those kinds of things. I need to understand how your work impacts the people I love. We never start with trying to be understood we start with trying to understand what is the human condition what are the shared experiences. In the case of Matt's interview on skin grafts. The end is people who have suffered horrific burns and skin maladies. The first responders the firefighters the folks in combat the ones that get caught in the house fire the ones that fried a turkey at Thanksgiving and it didn't work well. We start by understanding the shared experiences and wrap really is the third point. We always begin with the end did you get that begin with the end. Every time you're speaking in public or every time you're talking to the media, begin with the end. It's not where you are currently in the biomedical research process. It's where the human is in that condition and not just humans but animals are pets are livestock. What is the condition they're in in the end. That requires us to do what you're doing in the beginning. Getting a drug to market we can talk about the need for using animals and research, but that's not what the people are interested in the people are interested in is the ending situation that their loved ones their friends their colleagues are in. And when you can connect with that shared experience of beginning with the end and then walk that back to where you are. That's how we start to make the connection. But again, we have a limited attention span. If you start talking to me about basic biomedical research at the beginning of this process and then project it out to the end you've already lost me. You've lost the audience. We have to start with the end and then bring it back. We want to keep in mind number one, the attention span. Number two, we have to understand before trying to be understood and number three, always begin with the end. Before I go to my last point, let's read, let's redo the interview with Matt. If you'll queue up that video, let's go to that and see how he implemented some of the changes some of the coaching that I'm talking about. Well, man, that was a fantastic role play. So let me give you a couple of techniques. The attention span of goldfish is 9.25 seconds. The attention span of humans is now 8 seconds. Your first answer was 24 seconds. That's not bad. Second answer was 36 and then they got progressively longer as the subject matter got more difficult because obviously you could see I was moving in on the inflammatory language with with animal. That in mind is that the 8 second rule for, you know, obviously you're talking to a reporter, but it's the audience that you're going to be playing to, especially if it's a non scientific. If it's your local TV news, if it's some kind of other thing, if it's a local newspaper, these are typically not science writers. These are general interests. So keep your answers hithy. The thing that I want to tell you is always start with the end. In this case, it's the translational research. It's the human condition that requires us to do the research to figure out if it translates to the human condition. So use examples to start with of burn patients, first responders, firefighters, veterans in combat, or anybody with some kind of a skin issue that is the start. Start there, paint that picture. And then your research becomes a lot more palatable to the viewer to the reader. The third thing I want to tell you is obviously I use loaded inflammatory language. You did a terrific job of avoiding what I think is the worst word in the history of animal research, and it's called use. It's that dirty three letter word. If you substitute animal use with senior citizen use or children use, it's just a horrible word. Of course, we have institutional committees that have use in the middle of their words with an eye. So it's the one word that I that I would suggest we try to avoid at all points. The last thing is you get to answer whatever question you want. So at the end, when I say, I mean, do you kill these animals? How do you know they're having pain? You did this a couple of times. You say, hey, that's a great question. You go ahead and pivot to whatever you want to answer. When you get an inflammatory question nod your head. Yeah, that's a good question. And then you can say and the moon reflects dimly white light. You can say whatever you want to say, you are not obligated in any manner of fashion to answer that reporter's question. That is obviously a question. Oh, without further ado, let me run through those questions again with some of those thoughts. I think the rest of the spotters veterans virtually anybody who has been a burn victim pot in a fire experiences traumatic burn injury. Or some of the challenges physicians are currently facing when doing skin grass with those kinds of patients. Well, thank you Paul that those patients with those kinds of those kinds of conditions are really suffering horribly. And it's important that we find ways to treat them. You can remove that disfigurements and improve their lives considerably through this research. That's great. What is the exact breakthrough that your research team has seemingly uncovered. They found a way to change skin cells, so that they heal faster and better. Oh, you just went outside the park with that answer what a terrific. You mentioned in your press release that your research uses pigs how do you burn pigs to simulate the human condition that patients. That's a great question. It turns out that using pigs is a great way to simulate the human condition and it's important to note that these animals are very well cared for. And, and in fact, you know, are loved by many of the people who are working with their there, but they do not have to be burned in order to answer this question. And because of that, we don't do that, but enough for us to make a small skin defect in order to answer this question and we don't want to do more than we have. That's great. You did start off using the word you using. So just be mindful of that. Obviously, human patients can describe their pain from burns and skin grafting how do pigs tell you about their pain when they when you're doing research. That's another great question. We, we will basically take our knowledge of these animals and as individuals and find ways to to make sure that they're comfortable throughout this process. And finally, using any animal in what I would consider painful research is controversial, especially there in Minnesota. How do you justify putting these animals through that pain once your pain, painful research has concluded are these pigs sent back to farms pets. Did they live forever in your laboratory and some kind of a cold cage, or do you kill them. That's a great question, Paul. So we, it's really crucial to the research to helping these burn victims and these patients that we know that the techniques that we're using are safe. And so it's important to to take a look at the animal, once the study is completed. And so as a result of that, we do humanely utilize these. Before you end this, before we end this recording that's terrific. As you can, as you can tell, because of PETA and everything else, everybody's got some issues with regard to using animals. Again, you don't even have to answer that inflammatory question with even the humane euthanization at the end, because you circled back, and you talked about the human condition. And at that point, period, end of sentence, call it good. Thank you, Matt. Appreciate you role playing with me. Worries. Thank you, Paul. Well, there's a, there's a great example. Matt, the terrific job. You know, one of the things that I want to reiterate is, you don't have to answer the reporters questions, you can pivot. We see that all the time in a press conference in the White House, where a question is answered, asked, it's acknowledged. And then the talking point is reiterated with maybe a little flavor towards that question. But make sure that when you go into any kind of media interview, you know specifically what your talking points are, assume that there's going to be some got your questions, and then pivot to the answer you want. One of the, one of the things that as a reporter, what I see Matt doing in that is when he says, hey, great question. That's really a verbal pause that he knows is not going to make the edit, and it gives him an extra click, an extra second to formulate how he's going to respond to a question. So, you know, understand that you can play strategically against a reporter just as much as a reporter is playing strategically. The last point that I want to make the first let me just reiterate the attention span, we got eight seconds that's about 20 words. The second point you want to understand before trying to be understood. The third point begin with the end always go to the final condition whether it's humans, pets, livestock, whatever it is go to the end first, because that's how you're going to capture the attention. The last thing I want to convey to all of you. And I mean all of you. Everybody needs an elevator pitch. Absolutely every one of you needs an elevator pitch in Hollywood. I started my career there and that came from the notion that you might get on the elevator in a entertainment office complex. There might be the executive vice president of production and you've got this great idea for a script. Well, you've got one or two floors about 30 seconds to make your pitch. And if you captured his or her attention, they might invite you in for another minute or two. And if not, they would turn around and bid you. Everyone of us has neighbors on the block. Everyone of us has friends and colleagues that are not in biomedical research that are not in animal research. Every one of us probably gets on an airplane and the person sitting next to us turns around and says so what do you do for a living. That 32nd elevator pitch should be just rolling off the tip of your tongue. And let me tell you what the first word should never ever ever be. The first word of your elevator pitch should never be I. Just as a I am the last thing to connect with anybody else is the word I, the most powerful word you. Let me give you an example. You realize that there's human suffering everywhere. You've had loved ones who have suffered from cancers and cardiovascular issues. Diabetes, heart disease, all these different maladies. And we know at the end that none of us are getting out alive. We're all going to face death. We're all going to face that kind of suffering at the end. And that's why it's so incredibly important that we continue to advance our understanding of these conditions. And what I do is work in a laboratory to understand how can we minimize that suffering? How can we extend our life spans? How can we help treat people that have these cancers and cardiovascular issues? That's what I do. If you can formulate that in your own words for 30 seconds and remember that first eight seconds is going to keep them listening for the next eight seconds. Then you have found a bridge over that chasm between literary science and the general public that thinks, talks and feels usually at an eighth grade level. When you see the evening news locally, it's targeted for eighth graders. When you see the national news on television, it's targeted for 11th graders. We are not targeting PhDs and those who have defended a thesis in their master's program. So with that quick summary, it's the attention span, understand before you try to be understood, begin with the end and always, always, always have an elevator pitch that never begins with the word I. That's all I've got for you today, and I'll turn it back to Alice or whoever for any questions and answers that you might have. Well, maybe you've got the answers. Man, I've got the questions. I don't know. Thank you so much. This is on. Okay. Thank you so much, Paul. And thank you to, to Matt. I want to reiterate that the recordings we saw were role playing exercises, the research that Matt was describing was not his own personal. In fact, I think it was made up for the purpose of illustrating in this conversation. We are open now to taking questions from the attendees if you'll enter them in the Q&A function on zoom. And I would like to start with a question for Paul. And that is that you've described sort of the general role of what drives journalists and media representatives. But we know that there is a spectrum of them. Some are more interested in understanding than others. And how would you recommend that we figure out who's who and and adjust our responses accordingly. Yeah, Alice. One of the techniques I've been interviewed many times and there's a quick technique. Can you hear me? We good. One of the one of the techniques that I use is before an interview begins, I'll just simply ask the reporter. So tell me what's your interest in this, in this subject. They will disclose some hints. And, and that's off the record that's just before hey what's your interest. What what made this story sound compelling to you. And they might show their hand a little bit there so that's one thing that I'd recommend that you know the interviews coming up and typically do. You can ask in advance. You know what are the questions you plan to ask me, they may not tell you. Obviously, if it's the Journal of New England medicine, you know, if it's jam, if it's something like that, you're, you're probably in safe spot but if it's, if it's a mass media interview. Find out what their questions are if they'll tell you, and then, you know, if you've got somebody in your communication shop or you work your public fair shop. You're obviously going to do a little bit of research to find out if that organization has done previous stories. And what was their angle. Hi Paul, I have one from the audience. Can a question at the start of the of your elevator pitch help to get engagement. So starting with a question. Oh, absolutely. If it's provocative. Absolutely. And especially if it's a question that they're going to want to answer. And if you're not ready with an elevator pitch. You know, obviously you're you're looking at a rhetorical question because you don't want them to interject or there goes your elevator pitch. The question at the start of the of my elevator pitch. If I was a researcher might be, do you have family members who have suffered from diseases? Do you do you have loved ones that have already passed on? Clearly, almost all of us have experienced those kinds of losses. So yeah, as long as you're, you're moving quickly so that they don't interject and respond with an answer themselves. It's a rhetorical setup. It's a great technique asking a question that you really are not looking for an answer to but an asking a question that's going to hit him emotionally is great. Okay. I was looking in the wrong spot but it was still a good question. Sorry. When we deflect questions wouldn't that be viewed as something negative, possibly leaving the audience asking the question. You really didn't answer my question. What are you hiding. Yeah, you're, you're now talking about a press conference. It's a little harder to do. But if you're talking about a interview with a newspaper reporter or somebody else. They can air your entire quote or they can print your entire quote. It can't be completely off subject, but it doesn't need to respond directly. Again, you've got your own talking points. And you are not required to answer anybody's question exactly as they framed it. You are the one being interviewed. You are the subject. And, you know, right now we have a lot of people that don't respond fully because of intellectual property. And, you know, I use that as a fallback just as so many people coming to public parties are using coven now is oh I can't come I've got coven never is okay well I understand you can come of course. I think intellectual property can also be one of our pivots why we can't really fully go into that. So, I'm worried about misleading people by being as succinct as you're recommending, I mean science is in itself, a nuanced proposition. So, you know if we tell them, well there's this horrible problem and we're solving it that can get people than to be disappointed if they have that problem tomorrow, and the doctor can't fix it right away. How do you deal with the need for nuance when time is so limited. Alice. That question is accurate on so many levels. I have a great friend with a glial blastoma. I'm frustrated you all been working on on cancers for how many years. Why is it still about a one year death sentence. I'm frustrated as the general public. On the other hand, this friend of mine with the glial has gotten a new immunotherapy and now has almost come back to life the tumor still there and we're making progress. So what used to be for sure about a 12 month sentence is now turning into we're at 15 months. That's amazing progress but yeah I'm frustrated. We all have been doing research on these things for decades. And as the general public we get frustrated the moment it hits one of our families you know we might be completely this interested in biomedical research until my son has that condition or my neighbor has that condition or my mother has that condition. The challenge as you the first part of the question kind of stated is we don't want to mislead anybody. Well, the problem really is, is that scientists want to tell the whole story. They want to read you the entire thing. And this is one of the reasons that there's a disconnect between the scientific community and the general public is because in my opinion, and this might be controversial. In my opinion, scientists historically have had difficulty communicating succinctly because they want to tell the whole picture because the whole picture is the science. Unfortunately, the public doesn't have the attention span for the meal that you want to serve. We're looking for appetizers, and that makes it real difficult. I get it. I totally get it. There are other places for you to put the white papers to have the technical discussions to paint the entire picture. But oftentimes, that is not palatable to the general public. I wish it were different, but it's not. So would it be useful to say to say something, sort of acknowledge the frustration that we are frustrated to this is the direction we're heading with that be. Would that give us the end enough to be reasonable without promising falsely. Yeah, absolutely. I mean that goes back to the first thing about style is when we're communicating from our personality. I mean, a prestigious cancer researcher who gets a Nobel is equally as frustrated when his or her family member gets the same cancer. We are at our basic level. We're all people. We all have personalities. We all have herds and wants and needs and desires and dreams and goals. We're the same. Your audience is your community is much more educated than my community. I can't possibly understand all of the things that you know and what you're looking for when you're doing research. But at the most common level, we're still people. We fall down, we get hurt, we cut our finger when we're slicing onions, it bleeds. So to whatever degree we can communicate with each other about science in using our personalities, you will then connect with us. But the temptation, because you know the importance of having the whole picture, the temptation is you're going to try to tell me everything and then get frustrated with me because I didn't get it. And the reason I didn't get it is my attention spans eight seconds. Somebody else has got a different message for me about football. Somebody else has got a different message for the stock market today. Somebody else has a different message for what's going on in Israel and Gaza. You're competing. And what you want to do is to give me a taste so that I will want a little bit more. I can't tell you how many times I've watched a movie that just really grabbed me and I turn around and Google it so that I can get more information because it was based on a true story. That's really what we're after with the public and with the media is we want to get a little hook in there and then give them enough reason to go get some more information. And if they want to read the white paper, great. If they want to go to JAMA, great. Thank you, Paul. Sally, you have questions. Yeah, hi. Paul, this is Sally Thompson. I did have a question. One of the things I kind of share Alice's concern that, you know, maybe some of us when we're hearing some of these messages, we're thinking, you know, that may feel unauthentic to us. And how do we make sure that our messaging is succinct and authentic to our personalities as you're mentioning. And then, you know, to this eight seconds, I would say mine might not even be eight seconds, unfortunately. But that's also maybe why that, you know, those information sources are those social media, those very brief digestible things that even though we don't trust it, they're so accessible to us. So dealing with making these succinct messages accessible, but also feeling authentic and truthful to us. Yeah, I, you know, I would never put authenticity at risk. You want to be authentic, you want to be genuine, you want to be truthful. There's no question about that. To give you an example, when I was in Afghanistan, I was the public affairs trainer of the Afghan National Army and I was called on quite often when difficult subjects came up. And one in particular, we had two helicopters flying over a mountain and they came down and they looked down and they saw what appeared to be 15 members of the Taliban with rifles pointing up at the helicopter and they quickly responded and began firing. And it was 15 little boys out gathering woods like little boys do, and they were playing like they're shooting down the helicopters. We saw the same thing happen with Israel and Gaza the other day with three of the hostages with white flags waving, and yet they were still shot so I have never advised anybody to be unauthentic. I've never advised anybody to not tell the truth. The importance is to be concise without explaining too much of what is not going to be captured by the public. Those were negative examples. Another example is, you might be tempted to respond with a five minute answer so that you can be completely authentic. You can be completely genuine, at least in the world of media, you're going to get about an eight second sound bite. So as you formulate your answers as you formulate your elevator pitch, you want to think in terms of eight seconds of authenticity that is also at a language level with visual words that pulls your audience in for more. You're trying to win more seconds from somebody, but authenticity being genuine being truthful being honest. Absolutely all the time. Thank you. I appreciate that. Okay, so we have a question from the attendees, which is, is there a place in an interview on whatever your expertise is to clear up misconceptions that are not have not been directly asked by the reporter but are important for the message. Oh yeah, I think that's great. That would be the pivot. So if, if a reporter asks you one thing, you see this in White House briefings all the time, where the president will then pivot and say hey let me clear this up because there's a there's a misconception out there, a misperception of what really is going on, and then you acknowledge the first part of the question and then pivot to answer and clear up whatever you think is there. So absolutely, I think that's, that's a powerful technique. And I don't know if Matt is on the line, but he may have some thoughts on that as well, having done the roleplay with me. Yeah, go ahead, Matt. Sure. I am here and one of the things that I struggled with actually was trying to find a way to use something other than that's a good question as my pivot. It felt inauthentic to keep referring to that and so that's something that I'm going to take away from this is being able to, you know, practice practice practice and think about how to be authentic and sound natural and let my personality come to the fore when I'm making that kind of a pivot. Yeah, and match your personality wins the day. You did not come across as being inapproachable. You had energy in your voice you had all those kinds of things so I'm already captivated by the person that I'm interviewing. And, you know, again, when we did the second roleplay Matt your second answer was nine words and it was guaranteed, if not in the headline was guaranteed to be guaranteed to be a sound bike. And so, you know, back to Sally's question it's not about being inauthentic. It's about putting together a power line. It's about being first electrified in as few words and as few syllables because scientists love multi syllabic words. But, but in all that essence that captures my attention. Well, we have another question. I am struggling. Sorry, I'm struggling with the use of the term general public. How do we create success messages when there is such a diverse array of beliefs, attitudes, knowledges, identities, etc, etc. Yeah. Yeah. I used to have a, how should we say it, a more predictable general public. Now you're president of the United States if you can get 48% of the general public to pull the lever on your behalf. So yeah, I mean the foundation of the question is actually very very correct. But we all in the general public, we all have shared experiences. All of us, we all have lost a loved one to disease to tragedy. All of us, that's 100% of the general public. And so that's when I say, let's go to the shared experiences to start our answers, because then we loop in 100% of the general public. I think I think that's an excellent point. I don't have any questions here. Is there anybody present at the round table who would like to ask Paul a question. Yes. Introduce yourself and I'm not sure if they all could see you or not. Hi, Paul. This is Nicole Nevertil. And my question is how can we, how can we take control with the media so that we're not. We're not waiting for them to come to us but we're actually seeking out those interviews and seeking out the ability to tell our stories can you give us just a little insight on, and how we can be more proactive about that. Again, number one, you have to begin with the end. So the only way that you're going to capture the attention of the media is with a condition that their audience experiences. So they're not interested about what you're doing in your lab. They're interested in what the audience is dealing with. I did a TV show that focused on research being done at University of Minnesota with dogs that were dealing with the same kind of glioblastomas that humans were. And you know, I've got a golden retriever. So many of you have pets. We typically love our pets, perhaps more than we love some of our friends, family and neighbors, but that's beside the point. And we, you will grab my attention. If you mention a condition of my pet, and how what you're doing in a laboratory setting and research is going to help my pet. Same thing if it's if it's about a loved one, but you're right there. The ways we've got to do that. I mean, obviously you can do the press releases. If you send a press release to the local TV station. It's not an event that they need to cover. They put it on different boards so that if it's a slow news day, they might send a beat reporter out there to do an interview. But if you do that, and I talked with Matt about this, your institution needs to have B role, unless you're planning to take somebody down with the camera into your vivarium and to see what's going on. So absolutely every institution organization corporation needs to have approved vetted B role so that a story can take place. So if you're talking about in newspaper, they got to have a photograph they can use. The beauty of that is you choose what they're going to see in the B role and trust me, you know, I've done 360 of these speeches across the country. When I was running the foundation and a lot of institutions and oh no you're not getting any B role for my facility. Well, then good luck, because then the B role will be whatever people have in their own imagination. And that will be of course the images that beta has shown for years, or any other the animal rights organizations. So, yeah, I mean, you try the press releases. You can make phone calls. Everybody's looking for news. And in fact, you can also create your own and distribute it over. I was chatting with trying to mentor actually a vet tech who had tremendous research with rabbits and and encourage her to write a story and get it placed. And the problem was she wrote an 8,712 word story. And when the editor of the magazine said we love this, but we've got to cut it down. And she said absolutely not the whole story has to be told. Fantastic research, fantastic story very well written and never published. Great. I have one question for Matt. I'm assuming you're still there. And that is, when you were doing these conversations with Paul. What did you find surprisingly difficult to deal with was it I mean I imagine there must have been something. Or if there wasn't anything surprising at least what was the most difficult thing. And what do you have any thoughts about how to better prepare for that in the future. Clearly for me the most difficult part was not knowing what where he was going to go and what he was going to ask. I spent the better part of a week even knowing that he was going to be a friendly person. Sitting here going oh my gosh, what's he going to ask me about and I think that Pablo's mentioning that you should have. I'm going to start the interview with saying well what, what's your interest in this, or trying to get some more information about where they're coming from can be very helpful and sort of settling down your nerves and getting ready to go into that, because I think it is, it can be a nerve wracking thing. And I want to pivot I had a question for Pablo, don't mind. You've said not to start out your elevator speech with the term I one of the techniques that I have heard people use is to personalize why you're doing the research that you're doing. It would seem that those two things are somewhat in conflict how how would you bridge the two. Oh man I agree. I'm just saying go to your personal experience after you pull their personal experience into the chat. So have you ever had who is suffering from cancer I have a friend who's dying of glial blastoma right now, and we're trying to work on and so forth. Yeah, exactly. Just start always start with them before you go to you. Okay. Well, great. Thank you both so much for participating in this session. We really appreciate the insights that you've brought to us and demonstrated for us. I think we will close this session now.