Sharing Science Through Shared Values, Goals, and Stories: An Evidence-Based Approach to Making Science Matter

Scientists in and beyond academia face considerable challenges to effectively sharing science, including lack of time and training, systemic disincentives, and the complexity of the modern media/attention landscape. Considering these constraints, 3 achievable shifts in mindset and practice can substantively enhance science communication efforts. Here, we provide evidence-based and experientially informed advice on how to center shared values, articulate science communication goals, and leverage the power of stories to advance our communication goals in connection with the values we share with our stakeholders. In addition to a discussion of relevant, foundational principles in science communication, we provide actionable recommendations and tools scientists can immediately use to articulate their values, identify shared values between stakeholders, set science communication goals, and use storytelling as a means of building and reinforcing relationships around shared values, thereby working productively to achieve those goals

Removing Systemic Barriers to Equity, Diversity, and Inclusion: Report of the 2019 Plant Science Research Network Workshop “Inclusivity in the Plant Sciences”

A future in which scientific discoveries are valued and trusted by the general public cannot be achieved without greater inclusion and participation of diverse communities. To envision a path towards this future, in January 2019 a diverse group of researchers, educators, students, and administrators gathered to hear and share personal perspectives on equity, diversity, and inclusion (EDI) in the plant sciences. From these broad perspectives, the group developed strategies and identified tactics to facilitate and support EDI within and beyond the plant science community. The workshop leveraged scenario planning and the richness of its participants to develop recommendations aimed at promoting systemic change at the institutional level through the actions of scientific societies, universities, and individuals and through new funding models to support research and training. While these initiatives were formulated specifically for the plant science community, they can also serve as a model to advance EDI in other disciplines. The proposed actions are thematically broad, integrating into discovery, applied and translational science, requiring and embracing multidisciplinarity, and giving voice to previously unheard perspectives. We offer a vision of barrier-free access to participation in science, and a plant science community that reflects the diversity of our rapidly changing nation, and supports and invests in the training and well-being of all its members. The relevance and robustness of our recommendations has been tested by dramatic and global events since the workshop. The time to act upon them is now

Finishing the euchromatic sequence of the human genome

The sequence of the human genome encodes the genetic instructions for human physiology, as well as rich information about human evolution. In 2001, the International Human Genome Sequencing Consortium reported a draft sequence of the euchromatic portion of the human genome. Since then, the international collaboration has worked to convert this draft into a genome sequence with high accuracy and nearly complete coverage. Here, we report the result of this finishing process. The current genome sequence (Build 35) contains 2.85 billion nucleotides interrupted by only 341 gaps. It covers ∼99% of the euchromatic genome and is accurate to an error rate of ∼1 event per 100,000 bases. Many of the remaining euchromatic gaps are associated with segmental duplications and will require focused work with new methods. The near-complete sequence, the first for a vertebrate, greatly improves the precision of biological analyses of the human genome including studies of gene number, birth and death. Notably, the human enome seems to encode only 20,000-25,000 protein-coding genes. The genome sequence reported here should serve as a firm foundation for biomedical research in the decades ahead

Community fosters resiliency and growth in plants and scientists

Climate change and environmental degradation resulting from anthropogenic activities disproportionately affect vulnerable and marginalized populations. Yet, these same populations are often excluded as participants and audiences from science communication and engagement efforts. Thus, we must provide resources and opportunities in science communication spaces that are accessible, inclusive, and co-created in collaboration with vulnerable communities. As a lesson learned from plants and microbes, we must work in partnership with marginalized populations to truly understand and develop effective systems of change to combat the effects of climate change. Plants do not respond to a change in the environment in isolation—microbiomes that contain mutualists and pathogens are ubiquitous in nature. The influence of such interactions is poorly constrained in our understanding of ecological and evolutionary responses of plants to climate change. To investigate how plant-soil microbiomes and drought interact, I conducted a greenhouse experiment with two California grassland plants, Stipa pulchra and Phacelia parryi, exposed to soil inocula collected from a long-term water manipulation experiment in a natural setting. In a greenhouse, we varied soil moisture and hypothesized that the long-term history of drought provided by soil inocula results in “drought-tuned” soil microbial communities that alter subsequent plant growth under water-limited conditions. For my first chapter, we found watering treatment and soil treatment interacted for S. pulchra, such that plants exhibited greater drought tolerance when grown with drought-tuned microbes than with microbes associated with ambient water availability. No significant interaction was present for P. parryi, but plants exposed to high and low water treatments both yielded reduced total plant biomass when grown with drought-tuned microbes. These results help us better understand how the plant-soil microbe interactions can direct plant growth patterns and highlight the importance of appropriate eco-evolutionary contexts to be considered in understanding species response to climate change.Similarly, marginalized identities in STEM cannot navigate academic spaces in isolation. To support and empower people from marginalized communities in STEM, it is critical for universities and scientific societies to consider how to make their science communication and policy training spaces accessible and engaging to broad audiences, including to scientists with a wide array of educational backgrounds and social identities (i.e: race, ethnicity, sexual orientation, immigration status, disabilities, etc.). To create inclusive training spaces, and truly foster a sense of community within STEM, it is critical to go beyond simply acknowledging or accommodating people of different backgrounds, and instead, intentionally create training spaces that are designed to be accessible and attainable to everyone from the outset. Therefore, I co-founded Reclaiming STEM, a workshop centering science communication and science policy training specifically for marginalized scientists (LGBTQ+, POC, femmes, disabled people, first-generation, etc.). For my second chapter, I present our workshop model grounded in evidence-based practices, present the main themes and key takeaways from the past five years of the Reclaiming STEM workshops, and share lessons we learned from attendee reflections. For my third chapter, I analyzed over 700 applications for our workshop to understand how marginalized populations use their identities in science communication. I found that based on applicants' experiences in STEM, they wanted to foster a sense of STEM belonging to their own communities through using emotion and identity centered styles of science communication. These findings highlight a critical need to overhaul current science communication training programs to account for marginalized participants' needs and communication goals

ReclaimingSTEM: A healing-centered counterspace model for inclusive science communication and policy training

The dominant U.S. cultural norms shape science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM), and in turn, these norms shape science communication, further perpetuating oppressive systems. Despite being a core scientific skill, science communication research and practice lack inclusive training spaces that center marginalized identities. We address this need with a healing-centered counterspace grounded in the key principles of inclusive science communication: ReclaimingSTEM. ReclaimingSTEM is a science communication and science policy training space that centers the experiences, needs, and wants of people from marginalized communities. ReclaimingSTEM problematizes and expands the definitions of “what counts” as science communication. We organize ReclaimingSTEM with intentionality, emphasizing inclusion at every part of the process. Since initiating in 2018, five ReclaimingSTEM workshops have been held in multiple locations, both in-person and virtually, reaching more than 700 participants from all over the globe. In this paper, we share our model for ReclaimingSTEM, reflections of workshop participants and speakers, barriers faced during organizing, and recommendations for creating truly inclusive practices in science communication spaces

Removing systemic barriers to equity, diversity, and inclusion: Report of the 2019 Plant Science Research Network workshop "Inclusivity in the Plant Sciences"

A future in which scientific discoveries are valued and trusted by the general public cannot be achieved without greater inclusion and participation of diverse communities. To envision a path towards this future, in January 2019 a diverse group of researchers, educators, students, and administrators gathered to hear and share personal perspectives on equity, diversity, and inclusion (EDI) in the plant sciences. From these broad perspectives, the group developed strategies and identified tactics to facilitate and support EDI within and beyond the plant science community. The workshop leveraged scenario planning and the richness of its participants to develop recommendations aimed at promoting systemic change at the institutional level through the actions of scientific societies, universities, and individuals and through new funding models to support research and training. While these initiatives were formulated specifically for the plant science community, they can also serve as a model to advance EDI in other disciplines. The proposed actions are thematically broad, integrating into discovery, applied and translational science, requiring and embracing multidisciplinarity, and giving voice to previously unheard perspectives. We offer a vision of barrier-free access to participation in science, and a plant science community that reflects the diversity of our rapidly changing nation, and supports and invests in the training and well-being of all its members. The relevance and robustness of our recommendations has been tested by dramatic and global events since the workshop. The time to act upon them is now.This article is published as Henkhaus, Natalie A., Wolfgang Busch, Angela Chen, Adán Colón‐Carmona, Maya Cothran, Nicolas Diaz, Jose Pablo Dundore‐Arias et al. "Removing systemic barriers to equity, diversity, and inclusion: Report of the 2019 Plant Science Research Network workshop “Inclusivity in the Plant Sciences”." Plant Direct 6, no. 8 (2022): e432. doi:10.1002/pld3.432. Posted with permission.This is an open access article under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs License, which permits use and distribution in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited, the use is non-commercial and no modifications or adaptations are made