 Our next topic is inadequately communicated topics, and we're very pleased to have Dr. Allison Bennett speaking to us on this topic. This is a little different. There won't be a interview type process per se. Allison's going to talk to us a while on this topic and then be open for questions. The goal of the topic is to learn more about topics that scientists commonly haven't been very effective in communicating with the public, with different parts of the public. Allison has a very, very outstanding bio, which you already have, but I want to point out that she's presently the Professor and Chair of the Psychology Department at the University of Wisconsin Medicine, and that she background is an experimental psychology. She's well known, published both in scientific journals and more of the public stream journals. I know I've used her speaking for research website that she runs with some other people. I think initiated in the UK for a lot of insight into how to speak about research. Without introduction, I think I'm going to turn it over to you Allison. I think you're going to be doing some polls, or some, I'm not sure exactly how you want to run this. There you go. There we go. Thank you. Okay. All right. Well, I'm delighted in everything I've learned from everyone so far, and to be here to share a few perspectives on inadequately communicated topics which I really hope I communicate adequately because the irony of inadequately communicating topics would be too much. So I'll do my best. And I think to approach this topic to think about, are we on? We will pause for a moment. There we go. That's not a great start on inadequate communication. So let's, let's think about what is it that is inadequately communicated. And if everybody in the audience thinks about their top topic, they might think of different things I would be willing to bet we won't even pull you for that. And why and when are they inadequately communicated. So I'm going to hazard a guess that things that may not be communicated well are things that are difficult to communicate right. Why does it matter? Why do we care? Why does it matter if we don't communicate everything perfectly or everything well? Sorry, technical difficulties, but we'll be right back. All right. Because it's frustrating, right? So it's very frustrating when things don't go well when something comes up that you're not sure how to handle. I think about inadequately communicated topics. I think about it this way. What is the goal of the communication? What is the goal of the audience and engaging in that communication? What is your goal as a communicator? What is your goal in partnership? Because communication is a partnership if we're doing it well. The goals that we often have when we're thinking about animal research are communicating in a way that can help inform public decision making. Thank you. Communicating in a way that can inform dialogue so that we have productive constructive dialogue that moves us forward. Because what we have to do as a community is navigate ethical dilemmas and navigate those dilemmas and those choices by thinking about what happens. What happens if I make this decision? So that's what each and every one of us is doing. Sometimes we think that what we need is simply more information. We just need to pile more information out there. I can tell you as a classroom teacher, this is not the case. And I can tell you in terms of US public research institutions, we've got a lot of information out there. So the US may lead the world in its transparency and freedom of information and open records. The amount of information out there about animal research and testing is quite a lot. But information is only, it's necessary, but it's not sufficient to accomplish goals that include understanding, understanding in a way that helps us to make decisions. Why is that? It's because for each of us when we make decisions, part of what we're doing is we're thinking about what's the consequence? What's the outcome? What happens if I take this medication, if I vote in a particular way? What is the outcome? And that means the decisions are informed by values, by interests and by ethical considerations. All of those require understanding, not simply piles of information. So what is it that we as scientists can contribute to this dialogue, to this communication? How can we contribute to understanding? I would argue one of the most important things we can do and one that's pretty difficult and often inadequately communicated is talk about the likely consequences of decisions. And that applies in terms of individual studies, entire research realms, broader policy decisions that we're making. So if our communication is goal focused and our goal is to inform public decision making, inform our dialogues, navigate ethical decisions, the take home here would be we need information that's accurate, accessible, timely and responsive, but also is able to connect the dots, whether that's at the level of a single study, a topic, an area of research or a broader policy or ethical consideration. So connecting the dots and connecting them in a way that's responsive to the audience interest because otherwise eight seconds ago was many, many minutes ago and we've already lost them, right? So connecting the dots, building understanding and focusing on what's of interest to the audience. I did start this by making a list of all the topics I think are inadequately communicated. And then I stopped because it was a really long list and it was super, super boring. I'm going to focus on some storytelling to highlight a way to approach what are the core issues I think are inadequately communicated, including things I've tried not to overlap with some of what we've heard and will hear about the nature of science and discovery, which actually is fascinating to people outside science, things like the interplay between human and human research, the interplay between ethical consideration of human rights and non-human animal research and testing. There are many, many topics and how we could adequately communicate about all that is almost unfathomable. Also identifying the audience with an interest in all of that might be difficult. What we can do though with our audiences is take a particular perspective and framework that I call seeing what is missing. So trying to view what your audience sees, what you know, what might be missing that would help connect the dots and build understanding. Now go through a few examples to kind of give the sense of how that works and illustrate. We'll start out with one, almost everyone's familiar with COVID vaccine. We know about that. Did this advance depend on testing with non-human animals? With humans? On research with non-human animals? It's a question we could use as a poll? It's a question you can use in conversation with your neighbor. Okay, where did that vaccine come from? What was involved? And there's an eight second answer. Animals and humans. Mice, ferrets, monkeys, hamsters, and humans all participated as test subjects to develop that vaccine. You know how long it took? It went really fast, didn't it? Even though when we were sitting at our homes without a vaccine, it didn't seem real fast, but it did. It was like a year and a half, two years. Well, that's really different than what usually happens if we look at traditional vaccine discovery. That could be 15 years or longer, a long time. So how did that happen so quickly might be the question? Well, because it built on previous research, it built on existing data. So someone might ask you, how long did it really take? How many animals and humans were really involved? What you can say is a lot longer than that. Because to have an mRNA vaccine, check this out, you have to know about mRNA. Well, how long that took? We go all the way back to the 70s. One could make a historical scientific argument that we have to go back further than that. And I'm not going to go through every line of this. I will refer you to a wonderful history lesson in animal research by my colleague Justin Vorlich at Speaking of Research, a narrative talking about how mRNA was discovered. It's a fascinating detective story and it highlights the use of ferrets, monkeys, pigs, mice, rabbits, and frogs in many, many studies over many decades that provided the necessary basis for that COVID vaccine. That's 50 years of work with many different animals, much basic science, animal research, animal testing that gave a benefit to people all over the world, but not just people to other animals. So that COVID vaccine was also trialed in zoo animals who were at risk of being infected with COVID. The COVID vaccine story, the narration I've just given isn't an isolated example. So in terms of effective communication, I think each and every one of us could choose a disease, a breakthrough, a topic of interest to us and trace that same kind of history. We could look at the polio vaccine. So sometimes people say polio is cure. That's ancient history. Why do we care in 2022? There are ongoing efforts to eradicate polio globally. Because remember that treatments are not only dependent upon being available. They're dependent upon economics, upon sociopolitical factors. And we can make the connection to other animals again. So the polio vaccine also benefited Jane Goodall's chimpanzees at Gombe. When those chimpanzees were threatened with polio, what did she do? She used the polio vaccine that was developed through animal studies to protect them. The story of COVID vaccine development mirrors other discoveries, other breakthroughs in ways that reflect what I would call the nature of science. The nature of science is probably one of the most important things to communicate because it helps us have a framework for thinking about decisions for identifying what we know and don't know and how it is we come to know it. We can choose other examples. We could choose diabetes. We could go from 1879 when hypothesis-driven science based on a clinical observation led scientists to remove the pancreas from a dog and determine that diabetic state ensued. Followed by, in 1921, insulin from healthy dogs injected into diabetic dogs, normal state restored, insulin extracted from cattle refined its dose, its purity tested in rabbits. And in 1922, the first human patient receiving insulin that changed the lives of all those who could benefit all of those humans. And that took place over a 45 year time period. And it didn't end there. So if we think about insulin, we know from 1923 to 1981, insulin was produced from animal parts, from glands of other animals, pigs, cows. In fact, 8,000 pounds of glands from 23,000 animals would create enough insulin to treat 750 patients for one year. But that changed. That changed in the 1980s when biosynthetic insulin was approved so that animal parts were no longer used. That's a 103 year process. That's a long time scale. That's not a couple years. And it benefited humans. People forget that before the discovery of insulin, patients with type one diabetes had an expected lifespan of less than three years. That's a fundamental change, resulting from that 103 years of scientific studies and developments. And it benefits not just humans again. When we talk with the audiences now, but you'll agree. People have dogs, cats, other animals that are being treated with insulin. This work benefits humans, it benefits other animals. So I've captured some concepts like time scales of discovery, the role of basic research in leading to advances, and the range of beneficiaries, which can't be predicted in advance. I want to turn next to another part of science that's a feature, not a bug. It's unanticipated results, unexpected discoveries. And for that, I will use the example of AIDS HIV. Have we cured AIDS HIV? No. Do people currently live with AIDS HIV as a chronic manageable illness? Yes. How that came about, how we changed from an average life expectancy of one year to a chronic manageable disease is antiretroviral treatments. The story on that is fascinating. And it goes back in time and to a place that seems unlikely, the National Cancer Institute, not infectious allergies and diseases. The National Cancer Institute, where scientists in 1964 were looking for a cancer treatment, they tested a compound, it was ineffective against cancer, it was shelved. Failure, right? No, because it was documented, it was shelved, it was in a database. And so in the 1980s, it was included in a screening program to identify drugs to treat HIV AIDS. And in fact, in 1987, AZT became the first drug to gain approval to treat AIDS. Failure? No. Unexpected, yes. We could go on with examples for quite a while. I'll finish with the examples part with one more. And here, I'm grouping together all kinds of diseases, disorders and areas of study that have to do with the brain. So things like treatment for paralysis, treatment for amputees, treatment for Parkinson's disease, things that have to do with the brain, mental health disorders like schizophrenia and depression. What do they have in common? What do they need from science? What underlies breakthroughs that made many of them treatable? Knowing what brains do. We have to know what brains do in order to understand those disorders and to generate new treatments. When I teach, I often put up a picture of the brain and I say, so that colorful diagram that tells you which parts are which and what they do, what their functions are, the brain doesn't look like that, doesn't look like that at all. That had to be discovered. The fact that the brain communicates with chemicals had to be discovered. And how was it discovered? Through studies in humans, but also in other animals, controlled, experimental, often invasive studies in monkeys, in dogs, cats, rats, mice, sea slugs or aplasia. So many different animals over a long period of time and not just studies of the brain, but studies of behavior. So if we want to know what brain parts are involved in memory, we kind of have to be able to measure memory. If we want to do that in other animals, we need to understand learning and memory, sensation, perception, emotion, and motor function in other animals. So behavior and the brain go together. So all of these examples illustrate some key points about what are probably inadequately communicated topics, but they're not boring topics and they don't have to be an entire novel. They're topics that we can convey, things about the nature of science, discovery, health advances, the interplay, the back and forth between human and non-human animal research. And also the fact that the benefits of science extend beyond borders, beyond national borders, beyond national investment. So it could be the case that you live in a country that declines to have animal research. You can do that being assured that the results of studies, the breakthroughs in other countries will probably benefit you too. So a recap. What's missing from the public perspective? So I've talked about some of the discoveries where they come from the nature of science. What is it that's being inadequately communicated from a public eye can be seen if we look at what's out there? So let's look at the headlines. Do we see animal research, basic research, animal testing in the headlines? Often not. How about the medicine labels? Do we see the animal research or animal testing in the medicine labels? And does anyone read them? Probably not. Where do we see animal research? Oftentimes in high-profile media campaigns by those who would like to end the use of animals by humans. End the use of animals by humans for any reason. Making claims like the reality is 90% of NIH animal experimentation is going nowhere. 95% of drugs fail. That's where we do see the animal research. So what we see is the headlines, but not the basic discoveries. Not what made it possible to get there. We see the headlines, but we don't necessarily see the basic science, particularly the work that NIH has supported since about 1887. That basic science has given rise to the necessary bits to create a new mRNA vaccine or to develop MRI or to understand how the visual system works. That's the part we don't often see. That's the great big pipeline that comes before that drug discovery pipeline shown on the right that produces new medicines. What we often don't see is the connection, but also the difference between animal research and animal testing. They're related. They are both necessary, but they are different. And the consequences of changing one will have an effect on the other. What could we do to communicate that more effectively? I would say one small proposal is we could label medications. We could label medications in a way that clearly indicates animal research, animal testing, animal safety testing, animal products were involved in the delivery and creation of this medicine. And I would argue we have an ethical responsibility to do that. Why? Because people want to make choices based on their values and beliefs. And how can they do that if they don't even know what work was involved in the vaccine or drug they're about to take? We can also convey that it's not all about just producing a new medication. So that basic research, that discovery of mRNA, the work in the 1970s, I don't think anyone was thinking about a COVID vaccine. So the nature of science means we don't know in advance. We're evaluating risk and outcomes based on potential. The same thing is true when we're thinking about who will benefit. It's based on potential. The number of people who benefited from insulin in 1922 was the number of diabetics in 1922. At this point, that's a much larger number. It has expanded to other animals. So I want to finally, and I'm mindful of time, link that to ethical consideration. So understanding the nature of science is relevant to ethical consideration. It's relevant to potential decisions. Public decisions about animal research and about animal testing are reflected in our public policies. I most certainly won't cover this timeline. It shows in red and blue relevant ethical codes, laws and regulations related to human in red and non-human animal research in blue. What you see by following those dots is an extensive history and they go together. And it's dynamic. Things continue to change. So in terms of what's often inadequately communicated when we talk about animal research is we have scientists and we have people opposed to it. In point of fact, who makes public decisions are the broad public and the broad public has decided. That's where our laws, regulations, standards and ethical codes come from. And those codes reflect a history of considering human and animal work as intertwined. If we look at the major ethical codes in human research, admittedly with the Western focus, what we see is a very close intertwine we see in the Nuremberg Code. Human experiments should be so designed and based on the results of animal experimentation. In the declaration of Helsinki, research with humans should be based on the results of laboratory and animal experimentation. Those came about through observation of horrific histories of violation of human rights. What that means is our ethical framework is inherently speciesist. It gives priority to humans, other animals first and then humans. You might be wondering what speciesism is. And I would argue that this core ethical dilemma is in fact, perhaps an inadequately communicated topic. Speciesism is a perspective that bigotry begins when categories such as race, age, gender, disability, sexual orientation or species is used to justify discrimination. It's putting species right up there with all of the characteristics of humans that have led to human rights violations. Knowing that perspective, I would argue is important because it's what's called a starting assumption. It's the idea that the benefits of animal research or testing are irrelevant. Animals simply shouldn't be used in research. That's a viewpoint. The viewpoint inherent in our system, in our laws and the work we do is that harm to humans and other animals from forgoing research is relevant and is important. Does that mean we don't care about other animals? No. So the other piece, the other core ethical principle is that both humans and other animals are recipients of moral consideration. They're welfare. They're well-being matter. And in fact, we see that throughout our regulatory system, throughout our IACUC decision making. So we use other animals when the potential benefit of the research is likely to outweigh potential risk and harms when there are no alternatives to achieve the purpose. And we ensure animal welfare standards. What we don't do is assign other animals rights. We don't assign other animals consent, autonomy, privacy and confidentiality. There are differences between the two. And I think that is a topic that we should be more comfortable and familiar in talking about because it has consequences. I'm going to skip here and say, why does it matter? Why do we care? Well, I think the reason we care is the future will hold continuing and new challenges to human, animal and environmental health. And what we can provide, what we know is research with other animals can address those challenges, challenges that affect us all and can benefit society more broadly. And I'm going to stop there. Okay. Sorry. So, I know Allison, what a fantastic conversation. We have two minutes so we'd like to take any questions. I'm not seeing any from the chat. Is there anybody here in the room who has a question for Allison? I think your approach to saying how it's hard to choose what's not adequately covered because you sort of started by saying it's hard to choose what topics are not adequately covered. Because if I understand it's like almost all of them are not adequately covered for a lot of, maybe for different reasons. Is that an accurate summary? I would say that we don't adequately cover how science works and how human and animal work go together over long time spans to produce discoveries that people care about. So I think to keep on time Allison, if it's okay with you there'll be panel discussion tomorrow, tomorrow, today, tomorrow. Sorry. And there might get questions there but thank you. Thank you very much for a very thoughtful presentation.