“You don’t come to science because you’re close-minded. You come to science because you’re creative”, says Dr Laura Lindenfeld, who’s helping researchers communicate their work in unconventional ways.
When Lindenfeld took a leadership role at the University of Maine on a large federally funded research project, she was surprised to see how challenging it was for researchers to collaborate across disciplines. “They didn’t understand each other,” she recalls. “I didn’t realise how far apart they were.”
Searching for ways to foster better connections between teams, Lindenfeld came across the Alan Alda Center for Communicating Science (‘the Alda Center’) at Stony Brook University in New York. She was blown away by the methods they taught. “I thought, ‘Oh my god, these guys are using theatre improv to help scientists communicate like human beings,” she says.
As a communication researcher, the approach made total sense to her. “Communication is about a relationship we craft,” says Lindenfeld, who has a PhD in cultural studies. “When we are more genuine, that builds trust, and trust is critical for people to be able to absorb and believe new information.”
Lindenfeld’s admiration of the Alda Center didn’t just inform her work at the University of Maine – in 2016, she was recruited as the Center’s new director.
From treading the boards to communicating science
The Alda Center is named after the actor best known for his iconic role in the popular American series M*A*S*H. He had a lifelong passion for science, and made his mark on the industry by hosting an educational science programme called Scientific American Frontiers for more than a decade.
At the time, Alda described how interviewing scientists with pre-prepared questions often led to “canned and unnatural” responses, so he decided to switch things up and focus on having a conversation with his guests, allowing his genuine curiosity to take the discussions in new and interesting directions.
“They would tell stories, you’d see their humanity and their passion come out,” says Lindenfeld of Alda’s interviews.
This prompted Alda to think about how he could help scientists to explain their work in more engaging ways. Trained in improvisation by Viola Spolin, whose 1963 book, Improvisation for the Theater, revolutionised the way acting is taught, Alda wanted to bring the same principles of spontaneity and adaptability to science communication.
He took his idea to multiple universities, eventually finding a home in 2009 at Stony Brook University. They started with only a few workshops a year. “By the time I came in 2016, they were doing about 85 workshops a year,” says Lindenfeld. By the time the COVID-19 pandemic hit, we were doing 180 all over the United States and in different parts of the world.”
Since 2009, the Alda Center has trained more than 20,000 scientists.
The Alda technique
Improvisation is a technique that allows actors to play their parts without written dialogue, using only a minimal amount of pre-planned activity. Using the principles of improvisation, the Alda Center trains scientists to engage and listen and respond to fellow participants, encouraging them to be open and vulnerable.
“We spend a lot of time teaching them how to listen, how to hear, and then they spend some time trying to be responsive in their communication, rather than preformulating it,” says Lindenfeld.
What people walk away with is the idea that communication isn’t simply about the words I put out there to the audience, it’s about the relationship we shape with each other. It’s about the ability to listen and hear and respond in such a way that the message you wish to convey lands with that person.”
The core of the training, says Lindenfeld, is Alan’s perspective that “communication is the genuine willingness to let the other person change you”. This means that scientists must approach interactions with the public and other audiences with an open mind.
“When you walk into a room and you think, ‘Here’s what I’m going to say,’ regardless of who they are, you’re not communicating – you’re spewing information,” she says.
One of the things the training draws on is the idea of the ‘curse of knowledge’, which is where scientists understand a topic so deeply, they forget what it feels like to be a layperson.
“When you’re so embedded in your way of understanding things, it doesn’t land with other people, because you’re forgetting that they have their own perceptions and values and ideas and distractions,” says Lindenfeld. “It’s about building bridges – a commitment to listening and responding.”
Impact
Lindenfeld says scientists who undergo training at the Alda Center become more confident in how they communicate, feeling like they’ve been granted “permission” to try something new.
“We’ve seen people who used to feel really uncomfortable on camera be willing to do media interviews, even in hostile situations,” she says. “You don’t come to science because you’re close-minded. You come to science because you’re creative. What I love about this training is that it reminds people of why they were passionate to begin with. I think it serves as a kind of inspiration to rejuvenate their energy around their work.”
In 2022, Lindenfeld and her team at the Alda Center launched a masters in science communication post-graduate degree, with the aim to build a generation of scientists who can develop, implement and assess communications strategies for different organisations and scenarios.
“I’m not so naive as to believe that if scientists were to just listen to and understand people who disagree with them, it’s going to improve things such as climate and vaccine scepticism,” says Lindenfeld. “But if we don’t do that, we sure as hell aren’t going to solve the problem. There’s got to be some willingness to engage, rather than to put up our shields and push people away. The last thing we should be doing is making people feel stupid.”
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Story by Kylie Ahern