For those of you who don’t know, the Center for Science Advocacy at Penn State is affiliated with a larger, national organization called the National Science Policy Group (NSPG). For the past couple of years NSPG has organized a congressional visit day in which a few members of each group can go to Capitol Hill and meet with the the offices of their representatives to advocate for science. By “past couple of years,” I really mean a couple: this past March was the second time NSPG has done this. Like the CSA, NSPG is very new. But the amount they’ve accomplished in the few years they’ve been in existence is inspiring.
I took the opportunity of a cheap rental car and a friend’s place in DC to participate in NSPG’s second Congressional Visit Day as an NSPG member and representative of Penn State’s CSA. The two-day event was exhausting, busy, fun, and one of the best experiences I’ve had in grad school so far.
I learned SO MUCH during this trip, too much to distill into a blog post, but here are a few things that stuck with me:
It’s generally accepted that scientists are bad communicators. But I think this is an easy problem to fix. As easy as a few hours training on messaging and communicating science to general audiences. This is NOT to say I am now a communications expert. But taking a few minutes to make a 30 second “elevator speech” that anyone can understand on what I study, and why it’s important made my work instantly more appealing to others…like the people who decide how and if my work will be funded. It also gave me a confidence boost. I’ve definitely struggled in trying to explain my work: in trying to preserve precision and accuracy in my explanations, I tend to get too detailed and lose my audience. Now I can accurately sum up my work in a way that is simple yet meaningful.
You have to think outside your lab. A lot of the times I forget that my work is publicly funded. This means ordinary people pay for my work through their taxes. The specific, hyper-focused thinking that makes you an excellent researcher might not be the best for convincing the general public to use tax dollars to fund science (i.e., your job). Some offices we met with were strong supporters of science, and the coolness factor of science was enough for them to throw their support behind science funding. But these people were not the ones we had to convince, and they were the minority. The people we had to convince were focused on budget deficits, job creation, and lowering taxes. Talking about how cool my microbiota/vitamin D project is will not land well. But this again is a really easy problem to fix. Instead of talking specifics about your project, talk specifics on how many jobs are created because of science in your state. Simply take a step back from the nitty-gritty of your research and remember why you do it in the first place.
If you can learn enough to go to graduate school or do a post-doc, you can learn the skills to do anything. This is something I still have a hard time accepting. How special is it really that I’m getting a PhD; everyone around me is either getting one or already has one, big woop. Everyone around me is pretty much a hardworking genius. But the truth is, if you can handle grad school, learning messaging tips is a cakewalk. Personally, I have a lot more “OH MY GOD I DON’T KNOW ANYTHING ABOUT ANYTHING!!!” moments than “Eureka!” moments. But I learned that regardless of my impostor syndrome, I’m the expert on my project. I know best why it’s important. And as a body of scientists, we are the experts in our fields. If we can learn enough to do scientific research, we can learn to have the confidence to apply those skills to anything, including science advocacy.
If you’re on the fence about what your next career move should be, try to find an experience like this to help you decide. When I do think about what I want to do next, it’s ultimately a stressful experience because I don’t know. I don’t want to be a professor, but should I still do a post-doc? Should I do an academic or industry post-doc? How do I leave research altogether if all I know is research? Should I go back to school for a different degree? And so it goes. I end up feeling stuck, confused, and anxious about the future. Not only about the future, but it leeches into my current position and I end up unmotivated about my research. I’m a very goal oriented person, so if I don’t have an end game I have a hard time getting motivated to complete tasks (and getting a PhD with no further direction after that doesn’t do it for me). Taking part in NSPG’s Congressional Visit Day gave me a snap-shot of a “non-traditional” career in a way that listening to a speaker on the subject could never do. I left encouraged about my future, and focused on using the time I have in grad school wisely.
Don’t back-bite other fields. We all know funding is tough for science right now. Open your Facebook and see all the depressing funding and job articles. It’s really easy to think “My project is more important, the NIH needs more funding and I don’t care where the money is coming from.” But if you take that approach with non-scientists, it makes us look divided. And if you take that approach with policy makers, they’ll think it’s as simple as taking money away from the NSF and giving it to the NIH. But it’s not that simple. I can’t do my NIH-funded work without developments in programming, physics, and engineering supported by the NSF. Sociology addresses different problems than biology can solve. In-fighting among scientists distracts from the real message: that science as a whole improves the human condition, has a high return on investment, and is immeasurably valuable.
Everyone thought what we are doing is really cool. Democrats and Republicans alike were intrigued that young scientists cared enough about scientific progress in the US to share our concerns with them. While advocacy groups for organizations like the NIH, or other professional societies lobby policymakers for funding or specific asks, I didn’t get the impression that our representatives ever heard from our generation of scientists. And they all seemed pleasantly surprised by us and our message. They also recognize that our jobs contribute to the economy and the US’s competitiveness, but our concerns as early career scientists had not been voiced until now.
Overall, the trip was a blast and I absolutely recommend it. The days were packed, but it was great to meet so many other young scientists who were passionate enough about science policy to travel from all over the country to advocate for it. That’s really what it all came down to. All the trainings, messaging tips, and talking points boiled down to one thing: conveying the passion you have for science to others.