 Thank you all for tuning in to this event. I am Andrew Welton, a professor of civil, environmental, and ecological engineering at Purdue University. In co-moderating this event today, is professor Caitlin Proctor, also at Purdue University in agricultural, biological, environmental, and ecological engineering. We're thrilled to be here today with these amazing three individuals. They have expertise in journalism, communication, policy, and just downright amazing life experiences that they're going to thankfully share with us today. The goal of this event is to provide attendees and participants some better perspective about journalism, policy, and science communication in today's environment. This event is supported by the US National Science Foundation. This project is that was awarded to Purdue focuses on better understanding, building water safety, but also helping scientists better communicate with journalists, policymakers, and getting their results out into the public domain. Some of today's audience includes university and college professionals, whether they be students, staff, faculty. Many of them are conducting their own studies right now on water safety and buildings, testing, building water systems, looking at policies, understanding exposures. But what's really awesome is that we also have leaders of industry on the phone too, listening in. So we have people that manufacture products that sell products. We also have government officials on the line listening in too. People at major government agencies that deal with water, policy, and health are listening in too. And so, and finally, something that really surprised me, which is pretty cool, is that we have multiple countries represented. So listening in right now are people from the United States, Canada, Italy, Switzerland, and Finland. So the discussion that we have today will have global reach. And with that, I'd like to see if Dr. Proctor would like to introduce the panelists. Of course, before I introduce panelists, I just want to briefly remind listeners of a few things. So you guys are encouraged to submit questions through the Q&A, and that can include technical questions if you have any issues. The chat feature has been disabled, but we will be monitoring those questions closely throughout the event. To provide some substance for this discussion, we're honored to have three accomplished guests that I hope you can all see using Gallery View. First, I'd like to introduce Ken Ward, Jr. Ken is an investigative journalist whose in-depth coverage of the coal, chemical, and natural gas industries in West Virginia is exposing the true economic, social, and health impact of industrial abuse on appellation residents and communities. After working more than 25 years for the Charleston-Gizette newspaper, Ward co-founded the new nonprofit investigative newsroom, Mountain State Spotlight, and is a distinguished local reporting fellow at ProPublica. Welcome, Mr. Ward. Next, it's my honor to introduce Debra Bloom. Debra is a Pulitzer Prize-winning American Science Journalist, columnist, and author of six books, including The Poison Squad from 2018 and The Poisoner's Handbook from 2010. She is a former president of the National Association of Science Writers, was a member of the governing board of the World Federation of Science Writers, and currently serves on the board of advisors of the Council of the Advancement of Science Writing. Bloom is co-editor of the book, a field guide for science writers, and in 2015 was selected as the fourth director of the Knight Science Journalism Program at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Thanks to Debra for participating today. Finally, we have Seth Siegel joining us today. Mr. Siegel is the author of New York Times bestseller Let There Be Water, Israel's solution for a water-starved world, now out in 19 languages and available in more than 50 countries. Seth is also the author of Troubled Waters, What's Wrong with What We Drink. His essays on water and other issues have appeared in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, The Los Angeles Times, and in leading publications in Europe and Asia. He is a senior policy fellow at the University of Wisconsin, Milwaukee School of Fresh Water Sciences. His newest book, Other People's Words, comes out this coming May in May 2021. Seth, thanks for joining us today. Pleasure. These individuals are truly leaders in their field and we thank all of them for joining us. Right now, I'll turn it back over to Dr. Walton to get this conversation started. Thank you, Dr. Proctor, and thank you all for joining us today to share with us your thoughts and insights. I must say, last night, I had pins and needles a little bit. So excited about this event today, and I was trying to make sure that we had questions from all the listeners that had sent them in to make sure that they were formed the right way. If I stumble a little bit, it's okay to laugh and answer the question. Thank you so much. This meeting is being recorded. A copy of this meeting will be posted at PlumbingSafety.org in the coming weeks. In advance of this event, we did receive a lot of questions from listeners from the types of individuals that I mentioned before, and we've tried to fashion them into questions. We do encourage listeners right now to post their questions in the Q&A box, and what we will do during this event is weave them into this discussion. So please do post your questions. With that, let's move on to Karen from some of our panelists. For the panelists, much of our audience, as I mentioned, are science and engineers and public health officials who either investigate and try to solve complex problems, and then try to translate that data into policy, right, to improve people's lives, whether through technology or processes. And many of them have questions about journalism and policy, right? These words are generally not taught to science and engineers in the roles that you all are familiar with, right? So can you maybe each introduce yourself and share with us just a little bit about your role in the communication of knowledge with science or with the public and policymakers? Maybe Deborah will start with you. Thanks, and thanks for having me on this panel. I'm really happy to be here. So I'm director of the Night Science Journalism Program at MIT. I'm publisher of a magazine, Undark, which looks at the sort of push and pull between science and society. So it tends often to be policy focused because that's been in my long experience as a science journalist. One of the things that we've tended not to do always that well is to connect those two dots. For myself, I think of myself as a science journalist who is interested in science in our everyday lives. And I think of what I do is trying to provide readers. I'm a word journalist rather than an audio journalist or a video journalist, but to provide readers with some tools to navigate the world around them, I guess I would say, according to science. I think one of the things that science journalists can do really well once you think of the audience you want to reach. And for me, it's often the non-science literate audience, the audience not around the science campfire. How do I reach that audience? And how do I give them the tools they need so that they can see and feel comfortable with using scientific knowledge in the way they make their decisions? I mean, we all do that anyway, but I think there's some resistance to it and some science fear out there. So my job is to get across those bridges and try to establish essentially a conversation in which people feel more comfortable with science. That's awesome. And the words, science campfire kind of gives that emotional connection to sharing knowledge and experiences. So thank you, thank you. Ken, would you like to share with us a little bit about your perspectives? Sure, thank you. And thanks for having me as part of this panel. Very interested to hear all of this discussion. I guess I'll start by, we all hate social media, I guess, sometimes, but it was really something this morning when I just checked to see, is there anything going on in West Virginia I need to know about? And that, this thing you may have heard of is called Facebook, had one of these memories for me. And the memory was, Dr. Welton will recognize this, perhaps the memory was February 11th, 2014. And it was a quote, the scale of chemical contamination in the drinking water in Charleston, West Virginia has been unprecedented. There is so little data available, many federal and state agencies could not and still cannot answer all the questions West Virginians are demanding to be answered. And that was a quote from Dr. Andrew Welton about the chemical spill that happened at the Freedom Industry site in my community. And it's really something that's been, well, first of all, it's hard to believe it's been seven years. Sometimes it seems shorter and sometimes it seems longer, but it really captures like kind of where my role intersects with what we're talking about here because I'm not, I'm absolutely not a scientist and I'm not even really a science journalist. I don't think of myself as a science writer. I'm an investigative reporter. For many years I was a beat reporter, but my beats covering coal and chemicals and natural gas in West Virginia intersected so much with science. Unfortunately, many times intersected with science because of something really bad that happened in one of those industries that hurt a lot of people. And so one of the more difficult things often to explain is all of the things that science doesn't know for sure. In this particular incident, there've been hardly any testing of the chemical in question here. So despite the best efforts of a lot of people in the public sphere to tell my neighbors, there's nothing here to worry about. No big deal, don't worry, everything's fine. It turned out when a scientist who wasn't connected with all of the bureaucracy here started asking questions that gosh, there weren't a lot of answers. And so that became a really important part of science to communicate is what we don't know. Often in science, in the fields that I write about, there are things we do know very well. We know what causes black lung disease and we know how to stop it. So the decisions about that that society makes are not scientific ones. They're public policy and economic ones. So one of the most important things for investigative reporters to do is to be able to parse out what is the science here versus what is the economics versus what is the societal value. So one of the things, one of the points I think that my work has to do with and that I hope we talk a little bit about is scientists and journalists working together to be transparent with the public about what we know and what we don't know. And that brings in lots of complicated questions about risk and who's risk and who wins and who loses. But understanding what science knows and what science doesn't know is really an important part of journalism. And so I was just astounded that that quote happened to pop up on my Facebook feed first thing this morning. That is amazing. Thank you. Thank you for sharing that. We will get to the question about science and journalists working together in conflicts of interest and all sorts of other things too. So thanks for bringing that up. Seth, many listeners have questions about policy while there's the journalism component, there's sometimes this disparate policy action that takes place and into a lot of people, policy is just a nebulous word. In your experiences, what would you have to share about the role of policy in communicating knowledge or receiving those communications and interpreting them? Thank you. Thank you, Professor Welton and Professor Proctor for having me here. I'm honored to be on such a prestigious panel. So thank you very much. I'll just take a word since the others had a chance to introduce themselves, let me take a word to introduce myself as well and I'll answer your question then. So I have had an interesting and polyglot business life or professional life. Currently in the last many years, I write books but I still don't consider myself to be a writer. And that is because I'm using the books as a tool. My writing is intentional. I'll back into your question here. I write these books as a means of provoking, responsibly provoking with fact and information but responsibly provoking a public interest and a public response. I began my professional life as a lawyer. I then after about six years working in a law firm, I became a business person. I had an idea for a business. They called them an entrepreneur I guess and I did that for quite a number of years. I then had a very successful and happy exit from the business world when a large corporation bought my company. But those 24 years in the business world also gave me an appreciation for the needs of business people and the interactions with hundreds and maybe thousands of interactions with other business people came to understand their culture. Upon the sale of my business, rather than going back into business trying to make more money, I decided to devote the rest of my life to the quote, the not-for-profit world or the policy world. That, I didn't immediately start writing books. I spent about 10 years learning and that led me to then start writing. And here's what I think about policy piece to get into your question now. I think that first is that we need to understand that we need to have all hands on deck. We live in a very polarized society and I am not part of that polarization process. I refuse to be labeled. I refuse to label other people because I think if we're gonna solve society's problems, pointing fingers and making people bad guys, even people who do things that are socially irresponsible, pointing fingers does not really get you anywhere. Obviously if somebody commits criminal act that's something different and they should be punished for that. But you need to have academia, you need to have the scientific community, you need to have the business community, you need to have journalists, you need to have people at large, the political class, you need all of them to understand what the issues are, what the needs are, the concerns are and when they do, if each of them is given the proper motivations, electoral officials being reelected, business people being sure that businesses aren't destroyed and that they have profit opportunities, academics getting grants and getting tenure and being able to teach students. I mean, each has their own prompts, their own incentives, their own motivations and you need to work to those motivations. But ultimately the way policy gets changed in America is not from on high down. It is a very rare time when you have a very dynamic public official, a Franklin Delano Roosevelt say, who comes to office and says, we need to change this many different things to create a new society. What generally happens is a highly incremental process and that incrementalism starts with a public demand for that change. And so what I try to do with my many, many, I mean, I've given literally hundreds and almost 400 now speeches to audiences since I started this endeavor of being a public educator. I try to educate people for the purpose of getting them motivated, not just to passively take in information, but to say to them, what do you wanna say to your public officials? What do you wanna say to your local journalists? How do you wanna change your civic conversation? And when you have that conversation, suddenly it will percolate downward and upward and it will create a demand for change. In the process of writing, particularly my newer book, Troubled Water, but also in the research for Let There Be Water, what I discovered was fascinating to me, which is almost every major change in water, certainly in the United States only came about after there was either a crisis that politicians responded to, which is a way of saying they responded to the public, or there was a groundswell of grassroots demand for something which led to that change. You know, we sort of speak politically about soccer moms. Soccer moms change society more than any conference of professors that you have ever seen. And that is because the fact that the political class, the journalist class, the business class, all will respond to those people and responding in one way or another to their needs. And when they are motivated, when they care about the contamination of the drinking water, when they care about the effect of this on their fetuses or on their newborns or their grandchildren, that's when you're going to see the ultimate change. Great, thank you for sharing with us your background. And one of the reasons why you are here is because of your diverse business experiences and the advocacy for policy. And also at the time, you didn't mention that you spent in DC talking with these elected leaders and policymakers to kind of figure out how they think. I did not say that, but I have had the opportunity to speak with, I mean, I've had now thousands of conversations for 15 years. I budgeted three to five days every month to spend in Washington DC, where I befriended politicians, elected officials of both parties and of all regions of the United States, senators, congressmen. And what I came to learn is that anyone who thinks that you can affect change by meeting an elected official a single time or thinks even that that's lobbying, citizen lobbying, not the bad lobbying, you know, corporate lobbying, you're crazy. It takes months or even years of month after month meetings, them to come to know you and trust you and trust the information you're giving them before it's likely that they will ever move or either sponsor a dear colleague letter or sign on to a resolution or best of all introduce legislation. It takes a very long time, but I personally find it to be a very valuable use of time. If you have the ability to do so, I'm very blessed to be able to do so. Great, thank you. Thank you. So, you know, just kind of start the broad discussion today. We throw around the term journalist, we throw around the term journalism policy, but, you know, many of us in the science and engineering community don't get exposed to that, right? The way we get exposed to it is that a meeting somebody invokes that. You know, I'm a journalist. That might be the first time where you get an email. I'm a journalist and I'm interested in this or I'm looking for somebody who's an expert in this. Can you help me? And so we wanted to go to maybe Deborah first to start this off, you know, as the director of MIT Night School of Journalism, you educate professionals that ultimately are and then maybe not yet, but then become journalists. So you have a very unique perspective and you also were a journalist and you were at the SACB and some other places around the country. So I guess if you were explaining to a scientist and engineer, public health official, so what's a journalist, but what would you say to them? To me, journalism is independent inquiry. So I, and I think that the core of it is both the independence and the integrity of the question in which you ask it without prejudice, I suppose, right? You may have a idea of what your story is going to be, but what you're really doing is exploring an issue without allegiance to your sources. So I have been a journalist a long time. I got my grad degree in science journalism from the University of Wisconsin. I went back there and was a journalism professor there. Here at MIT, I am not a professor. I am a director of a fellowship program. So I work with mid-career science journalists from around the world and the sort of focus of our program is to try to raise the bar in good science journalism. And that's one of the reasons that we started publishing this magazine. But I start with the idea that journalism is independent inquiry. I want to know how this works. And I want to do this not in the service of my sources. I've been a science journalist a long time. I have long, deep relationships with scientists in different areas that I've covered from primate research early on to toxicology for more than about a decade now. But when I'm doing a story, they're not who I'm working for. I don't work for my sources. My allegiance is to my readers and to try to open up this issue for them in a way that they can both understand it, which goes back to my earlier point about sharing information in a way that people are comfortable with and try to make their own decisions about what happened here, right? My job is not to tell them how to think, but my job is to explore the issue in a way that they can try to make an intelligent decision. And I want to close that up by saying, you know, I don't have any patience for people who have contempt for their readers. I spent a lot of time, both as a journalist and as a book author going on book tour, talking to all different kinds of people. And I like to think of my readership as being smart enough to get it. And if they don't get it, it's because I let them down. It's not because they're not smart enough. So, you know, to me, those are at least some of the fundamentals in the way I think good journalism works. And that would be true, I think, not just for science journalism, but for journalism in general. Okay, great, very, very insightful and a lot of experience, definitely. Ken, do you want to weigh in here? Sure, I mean, I agree with so much that was said there, especially about who we're working for and not working for sources. I used to tell editors and the people that own the newspaper where I worked that contrary to what they thought, I didn't work for them. I worked for the readers. I don't know, maybe that explains why I'm not working there anymore. But I think that there really is a, especially among local journalism, there's a lot of talk about local journalism today. There's really a bond between communities. I've lived in West Virginia my whole life and cared deeply about the place and the people here. And I think that idea of working for your readers is really important. I guess it's been attributed to Orwell many times. I think, perhaps inaccurately, that journalism is printing what somebody doesn't want to be known. All the rest is PR. And I think there's a lot of truth to that. And I also, this kind of discussion makes me think a lot about my father who passed away a few years ago, but was a high school science teacher for 33 years. And used to tell me when I was talking to him about how I wanted to go work for a newspaper that I should take more science classes. It turns out he was right. And preached to me that reporters should use the scientific method. And try to have an honest inquiry. And, but the part that I liked the best was it's okay for a journal, like a scientist, it's okay for a journalist to have a hypothesis when they start reporting. And to think, I think this is what's going on here. But you have to look for evidence of it. And most importantly, journalists need to look for the contrary evidence. Is there something out there that tells me that my hypothesis was wrong? So I think the idea that journalism is honest inquiry and that it's not in the service of sources and it's not PR, and it's aimed at helping people to understand the world around them. And I think also, by the way, when we start talking about not pointing fingers and how public policy gets made, it's also important for journalists and for scientists also to understand where power is. Because the power to make change based on science is not distributed equally in our society. Some people have more than others. And so part of the job of a journalist is to lift up voices that otherwise might not be heard as clearly. And I think actually part of the role of a scientist is to lift up ideas that might not have been heard before that are important parts of public debate. And that value about transparency is something that I think journalists and scientists share. And despite all of the ways that journalists and scientists kind of often don't mesh well together, if we can find that shared value and talk more about it, I think journalists and scientists will both be better off. Great, thanks for that insight. And just staying on the topic of journalism was a couple of terms that came up from listeners. One was, if somebody asked me to go on the record, what does that mean? And if somebody says, hey, I'd like to record this conversation, what does that mean? And then maybe do journalists record conversations and don't tell you, like what, how do things go like this? As a scientist listening in, this might be the first time that they have these experiences with people and they don't necessarily know what to expect. Deborah? I mean, I think those are great questions and it's a reminder of something that I do when I'm doing an interview, which is to try in the way that Ken was talking about transparency, to be very upfront about what some of the rules of engagement are. Because a good interview is a good conversation and you have to have some kind of level of mutual trust and understanding. And on either side, you can ask for that. So I think you should, when you're going into an interview, have a clear understanding of what off the record means to the journalist you're working with because it can mean different things to different journalists. And your fixed idea of what it means is not always right. I've known journalists for whom off the record meant I can use this information, but not your name. I've known people who thought it meant you won't use this information at all, right? I've known people who think I'm gonna say off the record and the journalist is not gonna use that in another interview even. So you want to really say, if the journalist, if you say off the record, you stop and say, what does that mean to you personally? It doesn't mean the same thing to every journalist. You have the right to ask that question. And I think you also have the right to try to get some sense of, I'm gonna tell you now that when I'm doing a story, I don't always put all my cards on the table about where I'm going. Sometimes it's because I don't know where I'm going. I mean, going back to the idea of a story as a hypothesis, I'll come up with an idea about the story but the interviews are evidence gathering. Does this hold up, right? And in the course of doing the interviews, my idea of what the story is gonna be often will change. So you'll find a lot of times, I'll find a lot of times when I'll do an interview, the last thing I say is, is it okay if I have any other questions if I come back to you? Because one of the things I know is I may be four interviews down the road, realize that the way I wanna tell the story has changed and I want to be able to go back to that first scientist and say, my vision of this has changed and can we discuss it now from this angle? But all of that involves a give and take and a knowledge of the reporter and an ability to set those kind of comfort levels. And I think scientists often don't realize that they have some ability to have this back and forth and I think they should know that and I think they should use it. Okay, thank you. Ken, can you maybe share with us just a little? I know you've had probably thousands of interviews or engagements with people on the record, off the record or whatnot. For let's say a new scientist coming out and they have a really important study that maybe slips something on a TED or goes and shows that there may be an issue that policymakers maybe need to consider and they go on to an interview, I mean, what advice would you have for them? I think Debra gave the best advice, which is to, if you were the scientist, to be very clear and ask what is off the record, what is on background, what are all these things mean to you? Because I know just in the newsroom I used to work and the newsroom I work now, everybody's got a little different ideas about it. And so I think it just needs to be clear, what are we talking about here of and what do you mean by those terms? And I think that from a journalist's point of view, I think journalists, especially young journalists that I run into, they give away off the record or on background too easily to people who are public officials or corporate officials or people they're trying to hold accountable. And I think that's very dangerous because if I'm interviewing Dr. Andrew Welton about the water in West Virginia and he says, well, can we talk off the record about this? And then he says, guess what? We just found this and it's really awful, but we really don't wanna tell anybody because it's gonna scare the crap out of everybody. Well, I'm kinda, I'm really screwed then because he told me this thing that's incredibly important, but I've agreed that I won't share it with anyone. And so I think that that's a really sort of dangerous thing. And I think there are kind of different spheres of this for scientists, you know, if you're, there's a lot of scientists who are on the public payroll to work at public agencies who are public officials whose job it is to protect the public, whether it's water quality or car safety or what have you. And I think that those folks have a responsibility to talk on the record to journalists about their work. And there's a lot of things that go on, obviously, with political appointees over the, it's getting worse, it started getting worse under President Obama, I think where there's lots of these blockers that keep people, keep scientists from talking. We obviously saw tons of that during the previous administration remains to be seen if that will get better under the Biden administration. But I think it's just really important for everybody to be clear about it. And it's okay for it to be a bit of a back and forth. It has to be okay if the scientist is like, I really don't wanna talk on the record. And it's okay for me as a journalist to then talk to them off the record and then say, hey, but this thing that you said, is why can't we have that on the record? Let's talk about why that has to be off the record. And at least I, and it's important for scientists to understand a good journalist is always going to be trying to pull those things that even if you're agreed to talk off the record, the journalist is always going to be trying to pull some of them out into the public record because that's our job. So I just think, I think there's the look, I go back again to this, what should be a shared value about transparency. And on the scientist side of that relationship, scientists need to understand that if they're doing work in the public sphere that the public needs to know about, they need to be transparent. By the same token, journalists, one of the reasons scientists don't wanna do that and lots of people don't wanna talk to journalists on the record is because too many journalists are looking for some gaffe or they're looking for like conflict for conflict's sake. And that leads people to be worried that if they trip up where they don't say something exactly the right way, they're gonna get just really nailed. So I think that's kind of dishonest of journalists to work that way. So I think we both have both sides that the conversation have to try to find better ways to communicate. Okay, thank you. And along the lines of journalists and scientists, Seth, policy makers clearly pay attention to the news and what's written and said, in your experience, how where have policy makers been sometimes when discussing a water safety issue? I mean, do they know, do they watch or read certain things? Do they get most of the information from the constituents? You know, where do they get their information? I think there's two separate elements here. First is I think you would be quite startled as to how little most elected officials know about water issues of any kind unless either A, they started out as one US Senator was the state water commissioner prior to running for US Senate. So they know very, or if they come from a district where they themselves were a farmer or they have a district that's mostly agricultural and therefore irrigation is a key issue. But short of that, I think most people would be startled to discover how little most elected officials know about water. And even when you get to the local level where water you think would be even more important, oftentimes startled to the degree to which state legislators, people in the governor's office and even in the mayor's offices are largely unaware of water contamination issues, water safety issues, water infrastructure issues. They maybe know about budgeting around water, but that's about it. Number one, number two issue is that water is, we have a very dishonest relationship with water in the United States. And that is because we don't have a market-based system. We have a system where water is either highly subsidized or water pricing is significantly higher than it should be, but not because you're getting better water, but because the municipality is using those water fees as a way of balancing the budget. They steal money, they take money from water and sewage fees, sometimes as much as five sixth of the total billing that goes into other municipal functions. And when you have that as a phenomenon, you can't have that with privately owned because they're under a rate commission, but municipalities, which is 85% of all US water utilities can get away with that. And they do get away with that because it's a cheap and easy way to not pass a tax increase, but to increase local revenues, particularly when there's a falling tax base in the community. And so there's a lot of that. And so elected officials, again, other than a budgetary connection, really know very little about water, which again goes back to my point about troubled water, which I wrote it as a primer, the average citizen to use it as a guidebook for educating their elected official. The final thing I'd like to say, and this, I bet, I'll bet a nickel that both Ken and Deborah will say, yep, my experience too, is that because I'm not a journalist, I don't interview these elected, I've interviewed lots of elected officials for my books, but those are much longer types of conversations that go on over a period of sometimes weeks or even months, and I do go back and forth and back and forth. But I think that the public would be surprised to note that elected officials are traumatized by the rare time when they are honest and confessional and let their guard down with the journalists and how badly they've been burned. Not every time. I mean, sure, Ken and Deborah are extremely, I have high levels of integrity, but there are so many journalists today who are not focused on telling the facts to their readers who don't really respect their readers who are ideologically driven or who are in search of a big prize so that they can make waves by, I think Ken or Deborah mentioned this, sort of a gotcha kind of interview. And therefore what has happened is we've not a dumbing down of a conversation, but a robotization of the conversation. And so when I speak to an elected official privately and we develop a relationship, they are funny, they are smart, they are engaging, they are sort of conversationally risk takers. And then you see them, sometimes I'll be with them when they're, you know, they'll have to take a radio interview or, you know, I'll be with them when they go for it because I've become friendly with quite a number of them. They go for an interview and I'll sit in on it. It's shocking. They speak in complete robotic phraseology. And when I say to them afterwards, what was that about? And I don't even ask anymore because now I know, what was that about? You kidding me? Give them the stump speech. Give them nothing that can get me in trouble. It doesn't matter if I convey information properly or not. And there's an old quotation, which I have in my new book, Other People's Words, which is it's a great political speech is basically about nothing. And it's harder to achieve that than you would imagine. And so that carries through to the way they talk to journalists and the way they engage oftentimes with their publics as well. It's risk minimization, which means it's information deprivation. But that's really interesting. And I've heard that too. Does Deborah or Tan want to share some perspective on that? On the way that people talk to journalists, especially if they have their political lives at stake, they're careful, right? And I don't blame them. I mean, I will say this and it's frustrating to me. I never defend all journalists, right? We're a human profession like any other profession and mixed into the profession are gonna be people who behave just as Seth said, they're looking for the gotcha story or the clickbait story in our digital time. They are thinking about how they're gonna advance themselves. I don't think that's anything out of the norm. I mean, I am a long time science journalist. I've been a working science journalist now for most of my life actually, right? Which is kind of a horrifying thought. It's frustrating to me to see the entire professor of journalism tarred with that, however, because I know it's not true. Most of the people that I work with want to get a story and they want to get it right. And they're trying to do their best to convey complicated issues of science. You know, obviously this is my community to the general public. And they're looking for people who are gonna talk to them about that with honesty and take some time to really explain it well and acknowledge the consequences as in one of the points of our conversation is that science doesn't exist in a vacuum and can inform policy and should inform policy in fact. And so you run into this kind of buzz saw of hostility, this oversimplification of the idea that all journalists are out to get you, right? This unwillingness to talk to even people who are really trying to put across a good story, this fear that people are going to, you know, get it wrong or make you look bad. And that's not only politicians, that's just about everyone. And so the information doesn't get shared the way it should. And good journalists who are really trying to tell the story, well, don't have the information they need to tell the story the way it needs to be told. And so while I want to acknowledge that those factors exist in journalism, you know, if you go back to the deaf and I don't consider some of the agenda-driven people who call themselves journalists necessarily journalists, they have an agenda, you know, a good reporter operates on a different function and it's very difficult in this age when I think people are even confused about who a journalist is to try to sort through to the point that you can just say to people, I really do want to tell an honest story here and I'm not going to be able to tell it unless you give me honest information, right? And that just tends to collide all the time in ways that going back to, you know, the reader that I want to serve, the ultimate victim of that is the reader. By the way, Deborah, I want to make clear if I can just jump in. I was not defending the practice or even suggesting that it's good for democracy and good for society, quite the opposite, I think it was implied, but I just was simply reporting on my behind the curtain interactions with so many, again, Democrats, Republicans, all regions of the country, young, old women, men, although I would say that it tends to be that the younger the elected official, the more likely they are to be, they haven't been burned enough yet, so they're still a little bit more open, but the more veteran elected officials tend to be even more careful. But I do agree with you, but I do want to make clear that I wasn't endorsing it, I was simply reporting on the phenomenon. Yes, and I think you're absolutely right. I mean, I see it all the time and I will say, I mean, it's interesting. When I talk to very media savvy scientists, right, they do get all of the stands and they're very smart about, I actually had a behavioral geneticist one day to me and this was in a sort of scandal involving behavioral geneticist. He said, I'm going to send you this letter. You have to get it from someone else, right? You can't even use the information, you have to find the existence of this letter from someone else, but you need to know it's out there, right? And so I think, and I did get it, right? One of the things, my favorite things about being a journalist, and I think actually it's one of the reasons that I've been in the profession as long as I have is I really love the process when someone throws up an obstacle or a roadblock, I love the process of figuring out how to get around that, right? I mean, a no is like a bait flag for me, come this way, right? And so, I am going to, when people, as you say Seth, act self-protectively, which I think I understand that perfectly, right? And I'm not saying that you're arguing that it's a good idea. I'm just saying that it's frustrating, but I also think that if you're any good as a journalist when you run into that and you recognize you're getting part of the story, you don't stop with that non-answer, right? And you go further, that's on us. To accept a non-answer would be, you know, irresponsible journalism. Then it becomes like Ken's comment whether attributed to Orwell correctly or not, I don't know, but that it's no longer journalism, it's comes PR. Because all you're doing is becoming a reprint service for the stump speech of the elected official. And I think if I can jump in, I think one of the other reasons that you see older, more veteran politicians who perhaps are even more cautious is they are often, they have reached a point in their careers where they're better funded. So they have more consultants. And, you know, if we, look, there are some really good like PR people that work in science journalism fields and lots, and I've had tremendous help over my career from really good communications officers. But there's also an awful lot of really bad things that just kind of get in the way. And that's kind of what happens here. But, you know, there are a couple of other things going on here that are really important. I mean, everything that Seth said is exactly right about why it is that people often in public life just don't wanna deal with journalists. But some of these problems are really structural about our society and they've gotten worse. You know, the one is while the internet and things like WordPress are great for leveling the playing field for people who couldn't get their voice out before being able to, it also means that lots of people who aren't really journalists can kind of throw something up that master raises journalism. And while activist groups who have their own blogs occasionally commit acts of journalism, they're often not really always journalists. And, but who, but, but, but, who do we want to write the definition of who's a journalist under the First Amendment and who's not? Well, if I get to write it, I'm fine with that. But anybody else, I might disagree with them sometimes. So I don't, you know, we can't get into like defining that in some way that freezes people out. But, you know, some of these kinds of problems that you see, I think most frequently with science, with reporting about science are things like both sidesism. Well, gosh, you know, I need to write a story about climate change. So I got a Sierra Club spokesperson and I got a coal industry spokesperson. So I have covered my bases and plenty of editors that I've worked for would say, oh, well, that's a fair story. We have both sides. What actually really there's, they're in most stories that involve science, there's number one, lots of different points of view and sides, but number two, there's actually what science is found and known to be provable at this point. But one of the reasons that kind of journalism happens is that it's important for scientists to understand too, as members of our societies, there really is a crisis in journalism, in funding journalism. You know, the newspaper where I used to work went bankrupt. One of the reasons I left was we were seeing empty desks all over the room and we didn't have the resources to do the stories that our community needs us to do. Scientists at University of North Carolina have produced some work about how many news deserts there are in the country. And there's lots of social science about what happens in those news deserts when they don't have vibrant local journalism, including vibrant local science journalists, somebody at a local newspaper who understands a little bit about science or who even can calculate percentage change. One of the things we have to decide is a society that scientists can be part of, of helping society make good decisions about is, are we going to have quality journalism or are we gonna have two different news networks that basically are people yelling at each other or are we just gonna have a bunch of activist blogs? Because if we're gonna have good journalism, we have to fund it. And if you, you know, I've watched one of the reasons we have like armies of PR people and armies of political consultants and whatnot that kind of diffuse the truth for us and block the truth is that a lot of places in this country, you can't make a living being a journalist. You can't pay your student loans, you can't pay your mortgage, you know? So this is a huge problem that we face and it's something that scientists need to understand and there's plenty of ways that scientists can help to try to fix that. Oh, I think he's just said. So we actually have a lot of questions about that and how scientists can help. So scientists, as scientists were in a field with a lot of uncertainty, a lot of variability and there were a number of questions about, you know, do you have strategies for us to communicate that uncertainty while maintaining our credibility? We don't wanna sound like we're hedging, like we're trying to play both sides, but we do need to communicate that uncertainty and variability to the journalists so that they can communicate that widely and be transparent. So maybe I'll throw it to Deborah first to see if you guys have any strategies that we could utilize. Sure. And you know, and this gets to what I've always thought is one of the sort of culture conflicts between science and journalism which is that science is a process, right? And so when you're publishing a paper it's usually part of an, speaking of inquiries it's often part of an ongoing inquiry into a particular question. It's not the endpoint whereas journalism is an event-driven medium, right? And so we'll often write about a scientific finding this is especially true with a single paper single source kind of stories which I personally hate as if it is like the end point, right? A total rev and that's very misleading. So one of the things that we're now having quite a few conversations about in the community of science journalists is how do we better like put the context allows people to see this as just part of a process. It's not the ultimate answer. It's a finding as we explore this issue and that is something that I think we can do better as journalists but I think it's also something that scientists need to actually recognize that we are thinking about these issues and trying to figure out ways to do them better. In the same way I think Ken mentioned earlier the climate change problem of what we call false equivalence or false balance, right? We have Dr. A here, we have Dr. B here but they're not equal and in fact only one of them may represent the scientific consensus. So one of the other things we're trying to do now as at least I hope as science journalists is to say, well, what is this? Where is the weight of the evidence? This is not a two-sided issue. Climate change would not be frankly one of the big other services I think we've done as journalists is to try to false balance vaccinations for instance, right? And look at all the problems that's ended up in so that we're in a position now where we say here's the weight of the evidence, right? And we reported from that position and again I think in terms of scientists I think the most important thing there's probably two layers to this. One is gonna be talking to journalists and one is gonna be direct communication, right? And I think in terms of what scientists can do of course what I want is for every scientist to say yes, Deborah, you're working on a story on the evils of soy formula, which was a story I did that led to all kinds of interesting interactions. Let's talk about that honestly. Here's what we know, here's what we don't know and I'm going to talk to you about both of those things so that when you write the story you can put it in that context. Here's what we know. Here's what we don't know. Here's what we're trying to understand. And I think really when you're talking to a journalist those three kinds of goals, what we know, what we don't know, what we're hoping to find out are really important in a good interview with a journalist who's trying to understand what's going on. And there's also the issue of scientists communicating directly themselves which I happen to think is important. If I not, you know, as Ken pointed out the number of journalists in this country are shrinking and they're not everywhere we want them to be but there's a lot more scientists than there are journalists out there. There's about, if you look at people who are self-described as science journalists we number about 10,000 in a country of well over 350 million. That's a very small eye of the needle to get all scientific information through. So scientists also have to believe and I don't think this is necessarily, you know I'm taxpayer funded and therefore I'm stuck with communicating to the public. Scientists also have to believe that part of what their job is is sharing information. You know, their work is interesting. It's important. It matters in people's lives. With that comes some weight of responsibility to want people to understand that. I don't really care who you're funded by but that guiding philosophy that my information informs people's lives and they have a right to hear it. And I don't follow the mid 20th century ethic of real scientists only talk to other scientists. I'm the daughter of a mid 20th century entomologist. There was a period of his career that you couldn't have paid him to talk to anyone who wasn't a scientist, right? So I know that ethic is there and I think we're still overcoming it. I'd like us to redefine the way scientists think about their jobs and not think about this kind of talking about science as outreach which is layered onto my real job. I want them to think of it as part of their job and I want the community of science to reward them for doing it too. That's my soapbox answer to your question. No, that's great. Kind of do you have something to add there? I mean, I agree with all of that. And I think now I've been very fortunate to learn a lot from scientists that's informed my work. I think every now and then something that I write raises questions in some scientists mind that leads them down some rabbit hole that ends up in a really interesting sort of discovery. And so I think there's a lot of back and forth there to be done. I think one of the questions I like to ask scientists especially if it's a topic I'm still kind of struggling with understanding is ask them what they read and not just like what obscure journal they read but where are they getting their news? What are they, there's been some great stuff on Twitter over the pandemic where it's been like what science writers do you follow and seeing some of the other journalists and scientists weighing in. I've heard of journalists I never heard of before that are doing really amazing work. So I think that that's to the extent that like journalists don't ask scientists that. I think that that's a good thing for scientists to say is, hey, do you follow this? Even if it's like, do you follow this person on Twitter or do you subscribe to this magazine? And I think another really valuable thing, especially if you're talking to Deborah, some of these things aren't as important but if you're at a university and the local TV station contacts you, chances are while sort of generalization that the journalist you're talking to doesn't necessarily know what the key journals in your field are and probably doesn't have easy access to them. But one of the things it's, and they certainly don't understand different kinds of articles they're done but one of the really fantastic things is is to say to them, hey, two years ago so-and-so published a survey article about this topic that gives you a rundown of kind of the state of the science on this issue. And here, I'm gonna email it to you. I don't know if you have access to the university library here but I'm just gonna pull it down and send it to you because this will really help you understand what you and I are talking about. And if you get a journalist that's just like, yeah, I have time to read us. I don't have time for that. That's probably the sort of journalist you wanna be a little more careful in what you're talking about with. But I love it when somebody says, hey, sends me an email and says, hey, this other person at this university, I just saw that they published this and it's a really good kind of primer on the topic. And so I think that that's a really important thing that scientists can do, especially for journalists with not as much science background. It's just say, hey, here's a real simple paper you should read that'll tell you what the state of the science is. That is great advice. So for scientists when we're communicating with journalists who have the time to go in depth, give them more resources to look at, tell them what you know, what you don't know and what you're hoping to find out. But if we're ever given the opportunity to talk to politicians, we're only given 30 seconds. So I was wondering if we could maybe shift to Seth to ask a little bit if he had any strategies for as scientists, if we're trying to affect policy change, how can we approach our policy makers or are there other avenues that we can pursue for that? Okay, I think that I think it's a wonderful question. I think it's an important one. And that's the role of the scientists in society. And that is are we, I'm not a scientist but I'll speak for a moment as if I was, are we thinking of ourselves as an appendage to some other entity? Are we an appendage to the fundraising department at the university? Are we an appendage to a major donor who has a relationship that the university or the institution wants to deepen? Or are we part of an organization that's trying to pass ideas and agenda? Or finally, are we equal citizens in the society? And I would just argue that to the extent that you get those 30 seconds with the elected official that you just referenced, Dr. Proctor, then you're just an appendage. And as I said, unrelated to the question I wasn't expecting it that if you think that you're gonna lobby just one time and you're gonna develop relationship or have impact, you're almost out of your mind. You have no idea what you're talking about. It really takes a long time to develop that process. And so I would say in your capacity as a citizen, whether it's with your local mayor or local city council person, or I mean, go as granular as you wanna go. Cause it's easy to get to these types of people. It's easy to develop relationship with them. Just take your time and to develop those relationships. And since politicians know other politicians that Jane will introduce you to Susie and Susie will introduce you to Sam. And over time, although each of them sort of wants to guard both their source of funding and their source of information, over time they will welcome you into their circle and that will benefit you in terms of sharing more information there. The other thing I would like to just say one other thing is that very few politicians, very few elected officials have either a scientific background or technical background, even the ones who are extremely well educated. And therefore, since most scientists, and this is something that I in my research for the two books suffered from at first, scientists also speak English, but it's a different dialect of English. And so I would urge you when you have that conversation, whether it's with a journalist, whether it's a person doing a book, or whether it's a politician, not dumb down what you're saying, but de-jorganize what you're saying. And I mean like really de-jorganize it. Make believe you're talking to your next-door neighbor, second-grader, and assume that they have absolutely no technical knowledge or insight whatsoever, because these are smart people or many of them are, and they can learn, but don't assume that they have shared vocabulary. And what happens is it's like when you're speaking a foreign language, if you have any foreign language capability and suddenly somebody says a few words that you don't understand, and you're frozen, you're sort of in the translate mode, and then by the time you get back into the conversation, it's gone, and I would just suggest that there's a high value in making sure that you, one of the, neither Deborah or Ken said that, if you fail to tell the story right, it's not on the source, it's on you. I think the same thing is true here. If you fail to convey the information, it's not because they're dumb or uninterested, but it's because of the fact that you were not able to step out of your scientific conference vocabulary. Great, this is fantastic. This is awesome information. So there was a question that just came in along the lines of another question. So in the academic world, at least, there's this mentality sometimes of publish or perish. So if you don't publish something, if you don't publish enough, then maybe you won't continue, you won't get grants, you won't get money, you won't get tenure or promoted. And so that's sometimes the mentality of people working in this space, the academic sector, but then there's this also paywall. So we have paywall in the academic world, right? We submit a journal publication, maybe it gets reviewed and accepted, and the journal says, would you like everybody in the world to see it? If not, don't give us $3,000 to $4,000. And so many of the faculty have to make decisions about, well, am I gonna pull $4,000 out of salary or something else to pay for this, or is it okay? Do you know if in your experience has the inability to access information about scientific studies, has that influenced journalists' stories or maybe policymaker decisions or those by staffers? Maybe we'll start with Seth then. Yeah, well, in my research for, I am with the University of Wisconsin School of Freshwater Sciences, University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee School of Freshwater Sciences, and therefore I get sort of an oil you can eat past all the academic journals in the world. I don't have no idea if the university pays forward or if it's a cooperative, we let you look at ours and we'll look at yours. I don't know how it works, but as a result of that relationship, and that's, by the way, one of the very best parts of that relationship, there are many, but that's one of them, is that I get free access. But before I had that access, I faced oftentimes the issue of, do I wanna spend $250 to get to read this piece? And so, because it was behind the paywall, it's not as a very expensive paywall. So it stymied me, but then it ultimately liberated me and I'll explain why very briefly. And that is, it's amazing to me how scientists are really hungry for contact with the outside world. They really want people to call them. And so it's really kind of easy. Just Google their name and their academic affiliation and you can find you their email or their phone number in about like nine seconds and either write them or call them. And with one exception, one exception who took me about 30 emails and 20 voicemail messages left to get her to return my message. And then we developed a very warm relationship. Other than that, everybody calls you back right away. It's like, you really wanna talk to me? Great! What do you wanna know? So, yes, the paywall to the article is a problem, but I don't think that should be a roadblock to the relationship because before you get to the paywall, it tells you the name of the author, the subject matter, generally there's the pre-see at the front, the abstract at the front. And so that tells you what you need to know. And then you can really have that interesting conversation with the journalist. I'm sorry, I said the journalist could have it, or the researcher could have the interesting conversation with the scientist. That's what I meant to say. Hi. Thanks. I could follow up on that because I think that's a really good point. And it also reminds me of something I was going to say about doing your homework. So, I mean, I'm a very nerdy science journalist and so before I interview a scientist, I will look at them in either Google Scholar or PubMed or both and actually look at what they've published. And a fair number of articles, and I'm really evaluating where are they in the field and what have they published? And you can look at how many times their work is cited. And there are a reasonable number of papers once you do that and you're kind of exploring the back end of the scientists that are outside the paywall. And there's a fair number of journals, from the whole PLOS universe, but even Nature and Science are doing some publications that are out there that allow you to get at the essential information. And if you're a journalist and you're going through an organization like AAAS, and you register there as a journalist, you can get access to some of the big journals anyway and get at the scientific papers, right? And I will say that journalists like me who are based at universities will respond to the calls for help from other journalists who say, I can't get this paper, could you get me a copy, right? I see this also happen kind of behind the scenes all the time. The most important part of that for me, as a scientist working with journalists is to get some sense of whether the journalist actually is doing that kind of homework, right? I mean, if you're working with a journalist who hasn't even minimally looked at your background and what you've published, that is in fact to me a big warning sign of how you're gonna wanna deal with that journalist. You should definitely talk in common language English, right? One of my early editors at a newspaper in Georgia would say to me, what's this in English, right? And you need to start thinking that way. But there was a given take about this background of papers and scientists can learn something about the journalists too from whether they've actually looked at their work. And I will tell you one of my trade secrets is that I find I have a much better interview if I say to a scientist, I was looking at this review article you published, right? Which is a signal that I've done my homework. And I really advise all journalists to at least do a minimal amount of homework there. I've been in situations where I was embarrassed by journalists who had not trouble to actually do any of this. And I once was doing an interview at NIH with the head of their lung research program in the Heartblood and Lung Institute. And he canceled the interview because he had just done an interview with a Washington Post reporter who had started out by asking him where the lungs were in the body. Now, that's a really basic stupid example, but he was so angry. He's just like, I'm not talking to journalists, right? If they can't at least look at the basic biology of the body and have an idea of where the lungs sit, then you're not worth my time. Deborah, I had the good fortune of both my books myself being the subject of lots of journalist inquiry and have sat for lots of interviews, including I have a very favorite two stories. I'll only tell one of them. They're both equally the same idea, basically. I was invited to be on a 35 minute long nationally syndicated radio show. So it's Vast Reach, a name that you probably know. And I come on, they bring me down to the studio. I have the headset on. It's the big professional microphone in front of me. I sit there and we're about 30 seconds before going on air. And the host says to me, so your book is called Troubled Water. What kind of water are we talking about? This is sort of a 35 minute interview. What kind of water are we talking about? Plastic and sea water, drinking water, lake water. What kind of water are we talking about? So I said, Joe, that was the name. I said, Joe, I said, do you have my book in front of you? He says, yeah, it's right here. Why? Look at the subtitle. It's called, what's wrong with what we drink? Ah, drinking water. Okay, good evening. We have Seth Siegel here this night. He is an expert in drinking water. And off to the races for 35 minutes. Like, okay, I don't know how he did it, but he got his way through. But yes, that's the same thing. We're the lungs in the body. Right. And those are extreme examples, but I think when you're in this give and take between a journalist and a scientist or a journalist and a book author, that tells you exactly where you stand. I mean, to just throw one more thing in the mix here about the discussion of paywalls and things that I think is really important. And I had the experience. I did a really stupid thing and started a blog called Cold Tattoo that I wrote for 10 years or so. And one of the things I thought I would try was, let's have a comment section that is smart. That's not Facebook comments that is show your work, bring some evidence to the discussion. And sometimes it worked. We had like, you know, mining engineers and people talking about strip mining in really smart ways and sometimes it worked. But one of the stumbling blocks we hit all of the time was that there would be an interesting new paper about some topic related to coal. And yes, I had the paper because while I didn't have a subscription to that journal, I just did what Debra said. I called that scientist and said, hey, I see that you have this new paper. How could you send it to me? I've never ever in 30 years had a scientist say no to that request. Always they always send it to me. But I had it, but when I tried to post when I would post a link to the journal it was behind a paywall. So like commenters on my blog would say, hey, that's behind a paywall. I can't read it. And it costs $60 for that one article or it's $200 a year for the subscription or something. And so, information is power. And democratizing this process is really important. And I'm empathetic to the idea of paywalls having spent a lot of my time dealing with people who complained that stories where I work were behind a paywall. And I would say we need to support our journalism, subscribe to the journal, blah, blah, blah, blah. And in the end, that's really kind of a hollow response to the idea that information needs to be available. And that's why like new models of journalism I think are really pushing into everybody ought to have access to information. And we need to fund the journalism in other ways. And I think that that's something science is grappling with too. And some people are further along the idea of accepting that information wants to be free than others are. But particularly I think it is important when the public helped pay for the science in the first place, there's like a thing that average Americans find galling that we pay for the science. Why is it hidden behind a paywall at some fancy journal I've never heard of? So I mean, I think there's a lot of progress being made on that, but not nearly enough. But both journalists and scientists should be on the same side here because I want as many people as possible to read my stories. And scientists want as many people as possible to understand the value of their work. I 100% agree with that. And I think if you look at some of the big scientific publishing enterprises they're not struggling for money the way journalism is, right? I mean, Selvier and some of the other big publishers they're rolling in money, I say. So there's also that particular issue. You reminded me that when I was a blogger for Wired before I came to MIT and didn't have time to do this I was a blogger for Wired about chemistry but I did one story about a Virginia scientist who accidentally swallowed a nematode and then found it crawling around in the tissues of his mouth. If you went to Wired and you looked up this story how to read a scientific paper about a researcher with a nematode in his mouth. The scientist sent me the paper but the paper was paywalled at the Journal of Tropical Medicine. So I had to actually just put in the blog you're not gonna be able to read this, right? Here's the paywall. And that doesn't really serve anyone, right? I think we could go on all day about paywalls. It's a really hot topic in science. When you have to pay for an article we're not getting the money even though we did the research we have to pay to make articles open access. So that's a whole nother issue but I did wanna ask about a separate issue that we are grappling with especially in our subfield of drinking water right now. And that is how to communicate risk without trying to be a fear monger I guess and try to, you know, how do we walk that balance and how do we know if a journalist's what a journalist's intentions are with the information that we get of them. I know I feel like I've been trapped in interviews where they're just looking for that soundbite that sounds so scary. So, you know, how can we walk that with journalists and even with policymakers? You know, how do we walk that line? I guess, so I'll leave that open to whoever wants to jump in first. I'm gonna say kind of for you to jump in I would just say that I think it's really goes down to integrity and I'm a believer in the concept of the longer shorter way, which is you can have the shorter way is, you know, what did Deb say, clickbait? You know, the shorter way is getting yourself into the boldface column of some gossip sheet or whatever. But that doesn't really ultimately either enhance your career or really, it certainly doesn't affect systemic change. And therefore, while I believe that there is a very real concern and a very real problem with our drink and water in America and certainly around the world as well, but certainly in America, I am not going to give into hysteria or to a demand to say inflammatory things or anything that isn't proven by the science. And I have a wonderful publisher. It's one of the major publishers, St. Martin's Press and one of the meetings talking about the book jacket somebody throughout the idea of, you know why don't we talk, why don't we take the why don't we have the subtitle the poisoning of your children. And I said, I refuse. I said, so the woman said it will sell so many more copies. I said, I just refuse. I said, I said, I don't wanna go down that road. I don't care how many more copies it would sell. And I think the same thing is true for journalists and scientists and everybody in that world is be honest, stick to the facts. One of the best interviews I ever did, by the way, Ken, it was with a West Virginia scientist with the best interview they ever did. I asked him a question and I was trying to get like under the skin of just how bad something was. And he said, I'm gonna break this interview into three parts. He said, I'm gonna tell you what I know for sure. I'm gonna tell you what I don't know at all. And I don't think anyone will ever know. And he says that and I will tell you what I think is the case, but I can't prove. And I love that answer. I ended up giving a very prominent place in my book. I love that answer. I went back to him actually several more times for clarifying, not just his own interview, but other people's comments. And really I loved it because he was so clearly not going to give way to this inflammatory thing that we have at this moment of thinking that it's just about the moment and that it's rather a very long journey. And that's why I think everybody does well to keep their integrity to make sure that what they say is something that can be backed up. And when it's not, you simply say, this is what I surmised, but I can't prove it. Or there are things that you'll just say as the scientist said to me, there are things that we don't know and maybe we may never know. I think that's so great. And I think one of the things that political leadership, one of the places where political leaders often fail is that they're afraid to say, they're afraid for the answer to any question to be, I don't know. When often, when it's the accurate answer, it's like the one they ought to give. And I'm always super impressed when I get some form of the, I don't know or we don't know where science doesn't know yet sort of sort of answer. And I guess to kind of put this in a little bit of context, I think that for so many things that are part of everyday life that science journalists are charged with informing the public about, if the public knew how little we really knew and they would be scared and it is scary and they should be scared. Does that mean they're gonna drop dead tomorrow if they take a drink of their water? Well, of course it probably doesn't mean that in most places in the United States. But I think there's often too much of a focus on trying not to scare people and being worried about hysteria. And while I agree with everything that Seth said, and I agree with what Deborah said about, there's a lot of journalists that are sitting there looking for that particular situations version of how we're poisoning our children. And they're looking for that. They're looking, it's the 60 minutes interviewer asking the interviewee the same question over and over and over and over trying to get exactly the right really scary soundbite that they can show and then show the watch ticking. But I think that in our case, like in West Virginia, during the incident when I met Dr. Welton, people were shocked in West Virginia to know how few chemicals that might end up in our water have really been tested very thoroughly. And if they're shocked and scared, then they get to own being scared. I mean, I think that we as journalists and as scientists, families have the right to enough information to make decisions about their own lives and their families and their safety. And we have to be honest with about that. And so when you get into the question of, okay, let's make sure that we're only talking about what's proven by the science. I think we have to step back a little bit from that and talk about the precautionary principle. And in the example of chemicals, are they guilty? Are they innocent until proven guilty? Or are they guilty until proven innocent? Or from what framing are we looking at the basic question? And do we have to, that's part, that's, science can only inform the answer to those things. Politics is how we decide the answer. But when we get to that part of it, we have to understand who has the power. And so it's important to remember that we can sit here and rattle down example after example where the information, which is power was all in the hands of the asbestos companies, the cigarette companies, DuPont, on and on and on a government agency. So in trying to grapple with the issue of how do we explain risk in an accurate way, we have to remember that information that goes into some complicated risk assessment that maybe no average person is ever going to read or understand. The information that goes into it is power. So we have to democratize that information in some way. Power and money. So I've been a toxicology journalist for about 10 years now, which means I spent most of what I do right is about things that are bad for you. And I spend a lot of time therefore navigating risk, what you should worry about, what you shouldn't worry about, how to keep this risk in perspective. You get into situations where what I think of as poster child compounds that everyone obsesses about, BPA being one. BPA has some interesting effects on the female reproductive system, but it's not like a huge health risk to everyone, but it became one of those poster child kind of compounds and you need enough information to figure out, is this something I should worry about or not, right? And we don't always do that well. I agree that you also do a disservice by underplaying risk because you're so worried that people are gonna freak out that you downplay the danger and sometimes the danger is legitimately there. And one of the things I think is really important to think about when we look at exposure to toxic compounds and you're absolutely right if you look at the toxic substances inventory, the majority of the compounds that are registered in there have not been studied, right? And in the United States, if you look at the FDA and then I'm gonna get myself back on point, FDA follows something called the general you recognize as safe principle rather than the precautionary principle that they use in the EU and that doesn't always serve us well. And in fact, my final point is there are compounds in their compounds in drinking water and elsewhere that we actually know are dangerous. Asbestos is an example of something we know is dangerous. Lead is an example of something we know is dangerous. Arsenic in drinking water is an example of something that we actually know is dangerous. That doesn't mean that we regulate according to what we know, we regulate according to power and money. So even if you look at the 10 part per billion standard for arsenic in drinking water, which was up from the 50, it was 50 parts per billion in the late 20th century and under George W. Bush, it was lowered to 10 parts per billion. The recommendation was three, three parts per billion because inorganic arsenic at that part per billion level in fact does a lot of harm to the circulatory system. And if you go and you look at the actual documents regarding the setting of that standard, you see the calculation made by the US government for how many more people are gonna die if it's 10 parts per billion rather than three. But the reasoning is that water utilities couldn't afford to get it down to three. And the water utilities made that case. Yes, we know that it would be safer at this level but we can't afford to do that. And so you see this dance between power and money and knowledge. So even when we have, my point is that even when we don't have uncertainty, when we have a certainty that something is dangerous, we don't always act in the way that I think we should, I judge mentally think of course that we should put the protection of the average citizen first. But that's only one of the factors that goes into the decisions about how we regulate risk. And people need to know that too. That's great information. Can I just say one quick word on Debra's point is that when she says that she would put the protection of the public first, I would too by the way, and that's if Debra and Ken, Andrew, Andy, if you could send me Ken and Debra's mailing addresses, I'd like to give them both copies of troubled water. I think they would both enjoy it. I hope so at least. But I will say is that my point Debra is that you would put the consumer first, I would put the consumer first, I would bet most people would put the consumer first, but the consumer doesn't have enough information to even know that this is an issue right now. And the politicians will respond immediately as soon as they get the 11th phone call on a given morning from the public saying, we demand, I'm a mom, I want this or what am I hearing about that? And suddenly they're gonna, whereas they're gonna have no staffers who work on water issues, they're gonna have a key staffer who's gonna be briefing them every morning as part of the morning briefing meeting. That's how we make the transformation. Instead take it from our agenda to transporting this into a popular concern and popular awareness of what the issue is. Now, if the public then decides, I don't want my water bills to go up, I'm prepared to take a risk of getting cancer. Okay, that's an informed democratic decision. We can't protect ourselves against everything. And I think that those are all great points and I think that the only kind of observation I would make about it is that it assumes that those 11 calls carry as much weight as one call from a corporate CEO. And that's not always the case. And that's why people like me exist so that the time when the CEO outweighs those people from the community, that gets exposed. And like the hope is that there are enough people that are going to do what I do, then that office holder is afraid that, wow, if I don't listen to these people and I listen to this contributor who's a CEO instead, somebody's gonna find out I did that. And that's gonna come out. It's not just donations. I mean, donations are certainly a factor. It's also employers in the district. You become afraid that either they'll talk against you or that they'll close the factory and they'll hurt your local economy. So it's a lot of, again, I don't wanna just make it monochromatic that it's good guys against bad guys. There's a lot of competing interest always in these points. My point is only is let the public become well informed about these issues so that they can make a decision about it. And so that's, but I agree with you is that maybe it's not 11 phone calls that will flip the elected official. Maybe it's 13 or maybe it's 300. But what we do know for sure is that even devoted elected officials who are very devoted to a given industry association can be flipped as soon as the public starts thinking about it in a different way. And that's really what my life's work is about, I would say. Oh, can I just say one other thing? Since I'm giving Ken and Deborah free copies of the book, I see there's about 65 people on this call. So I'm not giving everybody a free copy. But what I would love to do is if anybody, I mean, maybe Ken and Deborah feels the same way. This really is my life work is reaching out to the public. If there are people who are out there who, I see there's about like 12 questions that I've been answered yet. I'd love, I mean, if I could just say, anybody visit me at www.sefmsegal, I'm like Mary Segal, S-I-E-G-E-L. You can email me, get to me. I answer all questions within 24 hours. If anybody'd like to have a dialogue in the same way that I have been educated by others, I am eager to pay it forward. And maybe if you are among those lucky few, yes, you too will get a free copy of the book. Okay. So I think that makes a great segue to trying to wrap up this event. As Seth mentioned, we have a ton of great unanswered questions and I'm sorry, we don't have time to get to all of them. We have some students who are interested in becoming science journalists on the call. We have scientists still interested in, how do we reach out to journalists and policy and make that effect? So with all that in mind, I would like to turn it to each of our three panelists to maybe say some final closing remarks before we wrap all this up and maybe I'll start with Ken. Sure, thanks. Well, this has been fun. I'll look forward to reading the book. Please do send me a comment. I'll get your mailing address. Thank you, not now though. The stack, the to read stack grows taller and taller. It's a quick read. You can read it in a week. I mean, I just, I wanna come back to something that I really think is important is, is there really is, I think a shared value between scientists and journalists that's about what Deborah talked about, an honest inquiry into something, but also about the transparency to what that inquiry is and what the answers are and what the basis for the answers are and what answer, what questions that are part of that we don't know the answers to. And I think that I've certainly learned a lot from scientists over my career who come at things with that shared sort of transparency. And I think that a lot of the other things of, well, what's off, what's on the record? What's off the record? Does this reporter actually read any of those stuff that is in the field that I'm researching? I think those are all kind of totally navigable issues that lots of people can continue to work on and as frustrating as they can be when they don't immediately get resolved in each individual situation. Coming back to that shared set of values about honest inquiry and transparency of the answers I think will help all of us kind of get to a better place. Great, maybe we can move to Deborah for her final thoughts. Yes, I loved what Ken said about the sort of shared interest we have and honest exploration of information because I think it's important for the people in the scientific community to recognize that we do have that joint wish to get good information out there to enable people to make decisions that are based on research and science and evidence. And so I really believe that that's one of the most important things that we do as journalists is that we're relentless in our wish to get the information out there. I used to say when I was teaching journalism that nothing good grows in the dark except maybe mushrooms, right? And that what we do as journalists is try to illuminate all of these different corners. That's gonna make some people uncomfortable and I think it's really important to recognize that that's part of the process too that sometimes as journalists we're gonna be shining a light in an area that some people are not gonna want that to happen. Some people are going to wish that could still stay in the shadows and it's our job in the interest of getting good information out there to not only illuminate the things that everyone happily wants to see shared but to illuminate the things that people don't. And for people to recognize what a service I think that is it's actually one of the things that bothers me most about the loss of local journalism. And I started out working for small newspapers in Georgia. So I feel really strongly about this because I know that things are happening in those small communities with city governments that people just don't know unless you have journalists who are trying to share that information. So I also hope that we recognize going forward how important this public sharing of information about science is. And that although we may have conflicts we're basically as Ken says on the same side in that goal. I'd like to say two quick things. First is very important to me to say a very big thank you to Andy and Caitlin for organizing this and making this all happen. I got to know Andy late in the research for Troubled Water and I really many times had wished that I had gotten to him as my first interview because I would have loved to have had him as my Sherpa guide through lots of other things that I was told by public officials and others. Caitlin, I don't know you very well. I like you already, but I don't know you very well but I just want to say a word of endorsement that Andy is like the dream citizen scientist as far as I'm concerned. He is passionate about public health and public safety. It doesn't want to cut corners and it really is eager to tell the story and tells it in a way that we can all understand it. And so for those, Andrew Welton was the co-moderator here but he very well could have been either the panelist or the model for the people who have tuned in today to this. So I just want to say thank you for putting this together and I feel very honored to be with Deborah and Ken. I know your backgrounds and it's really quite something, really quite amazing what you guys have, the honors you have received but also the work that you have done. So it's a pleasure to do that too. I just want to say if I may, a final very small word to the, not to the journalists on this call but to the scientists on this call and the administrators on this call. And that is that, we've been talking about this interview and that interview and this senator and that senator and I bet there are more than a few of you who are sitting there saying, what are you talking about? I never spoke to a journalist. I've never even met a journalist. And I think it's important for you to understand that your work is not just the way Deborah spoke of her father, which is just in the laboratory, just in the classroom, it does go any farther. I've been asked about the book writing process and I maintain that there are three parts to writing books. And I would say there should be three parts to your work as well. The first part for me is the research. The second part is the writing and editing. And the third part is the propagation of the ideas underpinning the book. And I think the same in some form is true for you as well. First is of course in the research, second is writing your scholarly papers and teaching your students. But the third is to make sure that the work doesn't just speak for itself and that it just sits there waiting for somebody to discover it. I would argue that every grad program should have at least a small course. And by the way, I'll volunteer to teach you a small course and how to get my ideas out there. And that is so important because journalists will be glad to speak to you. The public is eager to hear this information, but the scientists I meet are sort of stereotypically shy or they don't want to beat their chest or they don't want to have attention call to themselves. And you are not necessarily doing your own work or favor by doing that. Forgetting about career advancement, I'm just talking about the ideas. And I think that that's something that you should have carry with you, which is that it's a plus, not a negative for you to want to propagate your ideas to the widest audience possible, not just academics. I interviewed one professor who said to me, I'm excited if my article is read by 12 people. And I said, but why wouldn't you want it to be read by 12 million people? He said, well, why would I care about them? I will only care about scientists. No, wrong. You care about those 12 million people because those 12 million people who once are going to make your ideas, saying about grants and all that, I'll start from that, but to make your ideas turn into reality. So I'll stop with that in the interest of time. But again, thank you so much. I'm so honored to have been part of this. Same, and I do want to say to obsess point about the fact some of the questions answered that I'm absolutely happy for people to follow up with me. I'm easy to find at MIT. My email is dlblum at MIT.edu. And I would look forward to hearing from anyone who felt that they had an issue that didn't get addressed and wanted some follow-up seriously. And I also echo his comments about Andy and Caitlin. And Caitlin. So I think I met Andy when I was writing about the West Virginia water spill for Wired actually. And we've stayed in touch ever since because, and I will tell you this, good science journalists keep their good sources, right? Well, thank you everybody for the kind words and for tuning in today. And for panelists, thank you for taking the time out of your schedules to be here with us. We have, I have about 40 more questions that we prepared. And this has gone, we've been talking for an hour and a half. So I could suspect we could have a week long Zoom meeting. Of course, there's probably federal laws against that with OSHA and such. But thank you very much for the time that you've spent with us today. Questions came from listeners and people that are participating on the call. Many of these are young faculty, older faculty, accomplished individuals, as well as leaders in industry and government. And so thank you so much. We'll be posting a copy of this video at plumbingsafety.org and I'm going to share my screen with you right now. And so major funding was provided by the US National Science Foundation. The National Science Foundation is an independent federal agency created by Congress in 1950 to promote the progress of science to advance national fence and to help drive health, security and welfare throughout the nation. NSF supports basic research and people to create knowledge that transforms the future. Helping to drive the US economy and more information about them can be found at nsf.gov. Support was also provided by Purdue University and the Purdue News Service, the College of Engineering, the Wild School of Civil Engineering, Environmental and Ecological Engineering and Agricultural and Biological Engineering. And today we have Snow here at Purdue University. It's very beautiful. More information can be found at www.purdue.edu and I want to bring your attention to the you in Purdue. We do not make chickens here. So P-U-R-T-U-T. But you could. We could grow chickens, we won't make them. So thank you all for listening in and thank you again to the panelists for taking the time out of your schedule. We deeply appreciate your time and knowledge that you've shared. A copy of this event will be posted at plumbingsafety.org. It won't be tomorrow, but it may be early next week. And if you have any questions, please let me know. If you're looking to get in touch with somebody, please let me know well. So the meeting has ended. Thank you all for listening in and have a safe week.