I recently had the pleasure of being interviewed for a new French fashion/beauty/writing magazine (thankfully, in English) about the practice of science journalism.
http://subtitle-magazine.com/issue-n2/
The full text isn't online, but the magazine gave me permission to publish it here:
STORYTELLERS - NICOLA JONES
Interview by Jessica Gordon Braye
As published in Sub(ti)tle Magazine, issue 2
After graduating highschool, Nicola Jones studied for a
major in chemistry and physics, however, she soon found herself swapping physics
for oceanography so that she would have to live near the ocean for the rest of
her life. A fact that’s ironic now that she lives in the mountains…
Eventually, though, and in a typically non-linear
fashion, oceanography would lead her to journalism. After spending time on a
research ship as an undergraduate (a rare opportunity for someone at her
level), working alongside scientists, sharing the excitement of scientific
exploration, Nicola found herself back in a lab, pressing the same button over
and over, taking measurements for the study. It was an important part of the
research, but not exactly thrilling…
While in the lab her mind would wander back to a
journalist who had been on the ship with the scientists recording their
experience. That is when she realised he had a more exciting job than she did.
He was able to go on adventures and then translate his observations into a
piece of storytelling before moving on to the next one. Nicola left the button-pushing
lab work behind and now writes and edits for SAPIENS, Yale E360, Nature, Haikai
magazine, the Pique newspaper and the New York Times (among others).
Could you introduce yourself and tell us how you would
describe your work?
I am a freelance science journalist, so I guess it means I
am part storyteller, part fact finder, part geeky explainer! I write and edit
stories across all the sciences from anthropology to quantum physics with an
emphasis on environmental and climate stories. The majority of the time I am
helping academics to write commentary pieces for the general public which is
often something they are not comfortable or familiar with. It's really
important to get the messages from experts across to the public in regards to
things like climate change. It's especially crucial in our modern world where
everyone is blogging and tweeting and the mediation of information is
disappearing a little bit. Everyone has access to speak directly to the public
but sometimes they need a little help or training in how to do that
effectively. Scientists are the ones who have the information, the first hand
experience and the knowledge but they are often less comfortable about
conveying it to the public.
So would you say the role of a journalist regarding
climate change is information mediation?
In the 90s when I was in journalism school, the main
discussion was about how journalists need to appreciate the value of data and
consensus. Stuff was presented as debatable matter and matters of opinion. It
was such a strong tradition in journalism at the time. The thought was that you
had to do science journalism as you would do political journalism, saying
‘so-and-so believes this’ and ‘so-and-so is of the opinion of that…’ But when
it comes to climate change our job as journalists is to say, ‘actually a vast
majority thinks this’ and ‘a tiny number of people, who often have some kind of
conflict-of-interest, postulate that’. So the whole discussion became about evaluating
expertise. The role of journalists is part getting the information across in an
understandable way, not just for the general public but also so policymakers
can make evidence-based decisions. And it is part storytelling. It's trying to
elevate the voices of the marginalised, of the people who have not been heard
before, both to understand the motivations for behaviour, but also to let the
stories drive policy.
I discovered your work through a TED Talk you did in 2019
called The dangers of a noisy ocean-and how we can quiet it down, why did you choose
that subject in particular?
Because of the research I was doing at the time, I had met
some interesting scientists including Rob Williams. He describes himself as an
acoustic prospector - which is just so lovely. His work consists of going
around the ocean looking for these quiet patches as if he was a gold miner
looking for jewels. I just loved how he spoke about it. We are so used to
thinking about pollution in terms of plastics or maybe ocean acidification. But
we don't often think about how all the ships in the ocean (and the numbers are
increasing constantly) are adding to the background level of noise. And how
that is creating problems, whales and even plankton are affected. We are such visual
creatures, we live above the water and rely on our eyes so much. I had this
personal experience as a child, my family and I went to Hawaii for the humpback
migration season, and we sat on the beach looking for whales. When we couldn't
see anything, we decided we might as well go for a swim. And when we put our
heads under the water, all we could hear was the whale song. It was so loud and
pervasive. You expect to see them and you just can't, it is such a new way of
thinking about the world.
You come from what you call a "hard" science
background, but recently you have been editing SAPIENS, an anthropology
magazine focused on archeology, biology, culture and language (3). What are the
links between “hard” sciences and social sciences?
This is really fascinating. I come from chemistry, physics
and oceanography and a lot of scientists, or western scientists who are trained
in the physical sciences can be a bit sniffy about social sciences. It is more
quantitative than qualitative in its nature, less data-driven. But social
sciences are so important and really go hand-in-hand with "hard"
science. For example, when it comes to research on climate change, in the 1990s
and early 2000s it was all about finding the data to support the fact that the
carbon dioxide is going out in the atmosphere. It was about proving the
connection between industry, human activity and changing weather patterns. Now
we are in a different world, this has been very firmly established, so the
question is more how do we alter our behaviour to change the trajectory of our
future? That's all about social science: why do people behave the way they do
and how do we make them behave otherwise? Social science has a huge part to
play in climate change.
To alter behaviours you have to understand them but also
communicate with people in a way that they will feel involved. You wrote a
piece for SAPIENS called Why ‘we’ isn't for everyone, how does representation -
whom we include in our discourse and in ‘we’ - affect the messaging as a
science journalist?
First I would like to explain that that piece around ‘we’
wasn't my idea. The editors of SAPIENS, in particular Christine Weeber and Chip
Colwell, who are both trained anthropologists and great writers, came up with
the concept. Chris was our sub and copy editor and she was always encouraging
us to not use the word ‘we’. My first reaction to that was, “what's the
problem? It's just a word!” But then we had these conversations and I realised
she's entirely right. If you say ‘we’, who are you talking about? Often people
use that word to mean the subgroup they are part of. It automatically excludes
other worldviews in quite a damaging way, and often excludes the people who are
already marginalised and don't have a voice in the first place. So I
volunteered to write a piece that would express that idea.
There's this thing called the “deficit model” of science
communication. It is the assumption that the only thing holding people back
from having the same beliefs as you, is knowledge. As in: "If you only
knew what I knew, then you'd agree with me. If you don't agree with me, it's
because you're stupid or don't have the right information". According to
this theory, fill the gaps and your job is done! A lot of people think this
way, but people don't believe something purely on the basis of facts. I can
hand you all the facts in the world but if you don't trust me, or if they don't
fit into your world model, then you won't change your mind. This, again, is why
social science is so important to the fields of climate change and pandemic
response. Journalists don't just fill knowledge gaps. They build trust. They
tell stories that make things relatable. They bridge gaps in understanding
between people with different worldviews.
How important is it for more minority voices to be
present within the fields of science and science journalism? And what would it
change?
It is extremely important. Science is just another human
endeavour. Who is doing it makes a difference to the questions asked, the
evidence found and to how the data is analysed. A lot of people don't
appreciate that, including scientists themselves. They say that what they're
doing is extremely objective and it's all about data, numbers and has nothing
to do with who they are. It is just not true, it has everything to do with who
is doing it. There is a classic example of this that comes to mind. Archaeology
was for a very long time male dominated, but in recent decades feminist
archaeology (1) has become a wave and it has really blown apart old
assumptions. For example, around the division of work between men and women in
prehistory. In paleo times, women were warriors, they were hunters. However, if
you go to a Natural History Museum, you will often see images of women holding
a baby or tending to a fire, whilst the men are out hunting with spears. That's
not necessarily the way it was. It took different people asking the questions, looking
at the same evidence to come up with alternative theories. That means there is
a disparity in the amount of knowledge we have and the way in which questions
are asked, answered and interpreted.
Another example could be drawn from the piece you wrote
about the role of Indigenous leaders regarding climate change (2). Did it
change in any way your work or how you look at science?
I live in a part of Canada that has a very large Indigenous
demographic, so I have been thinking about these issues for a very long time.
But often science journalism stories, which include or incorporate Indigenous
knowledge and voices, take the perspective that the western scientists are in
charge, they take the lead and ask the questions. The Indigenous expertise kind
of slots in and gets used to support the western view. That is a very biased
way of looking at knowledge and human interaction. The story I wrote shows how Indigenous
communities are taking the lead on climate change and how in fact they have
done more, and taken more concrete actions than other groups. Many Indigenous
cultures are actually better suited to the challenges of climate change, they
have this tradition of considering seven generations ahead and seven
generations behind: how ancestors dealt with issues and how our children's
children's children will be living in this world. That is not the way that the
westernised world is set up to think. We are attached to political cycles, it's
a very different perspective. The generational thinking is far better suited to
the larger questions we are facing.
Do you have any examples of when western scientists and
Indigenous communities have worked together in a positive and more
collaborative way?
In Canada we're in a real cultural moment of reckoning with
our past. We had residential schools here for more than 150 years where
Indigenous children were forced into forgetting their language and their
culture. And the abuse ran riot. A lot of these children died from disease and
ill-treatment. This last summer there was a big moment in the Canadian press,
it went worldwide, archeologists were helping Indigenous communities to uncover
unmarked graves of children in the school sites. The world really woke up to
this issue, which was interesting from two perspectives. First, it's not like
this wasn't known. There were Truth and Reconciliation Commissions and accounts
of thousands of children dying in the schools. Indigenous communities knew about
this, and have known about this for a very long time. The second thing is that
somehow the addition of “hard” science – the archaeologists with their machines
and the images they produced – made it real for a lot of people. It is sad that
it took western science to get there but it was also very impactful and a huge
moment in our history. The studies are done very carefully. All the archeologists
I have met who have worked on these projects are really dedicated. They are
investing the necessary time to understand what those communities need and
want. It's always the Indigenous communities who take the lead; the archaeologists
are working for them and with them not the other way round. There is so much
trauma involved. They need to be in charge of what questions are being asked
and how we answer them. There is definitely a growing appreciation in
archeology and anthropology around working with the affected communities. And
there is a lot more to gain than to lose.
This seems to be another thread in your work, questioning
our worldviews and how they impact the way we look at things. You wrote, for
example, on the concepts of universalism versus relativism (3), could you tell
us a bit more?
I don't have an academic background in social science so it
was very eye-opening for me to look through the anthropological lens when I
started writing and editing for SAPIENS. A recurring theme is that the things
you think are fixed, solid and “as they must be”, are actually not in so many
ways. For example, the nuclear family model that we have in North America and
in the West, is not the only way of raising children. And it is not the normal
way. Historically it wasn't the prevalent way and it may not be the best way of
raising children! Schools are another example. One adult standing in front of a
room, teaching a class of 20 kids all around the same age, is not the way that
the majority of people have been taught across history. And is not necessarily
the best way. We don't need GDP to be the measure of a nation's success, all of
these things we might consider as being a given are not. We don't need
dishwashers and cars, kids don't need plastic toys. A lot of the things that
have become standard ways of life, in particular in the wealthy parts of the
world, are not sustainable, but are also not necessary, not common and not the
only way. It's really important to recognise that when you're facing challenges
such as pandemics and climate change. These events shape society and force us
to think differently and learn from each other. It's so important to remember
that the way you personally believe things have to be done is not the only way
things can be done, nor is it always the best way.
Notes:
(1)The Untold Stories of Archeology’s Women, by Brenna
Hassett, Suzanne Pilaar Birch, Rebecca Wragg Sykes and Tori Herridge,
Sapiens.org, March 2021.
(2) How Native Tribes Are Taking the Lead on Planning for
Climate Change, by Nicola Jones, Yales E360, February 2020.
(3) Do You See What I See?, by Nicola Jones, Sapiens.org,
February 2017.
