NATIONAL QUALIFICATIONS CURRICULUM SUPPORT
Biology
Scientific Communication
Student Activities
[HIGHER]
The Scottish Qualifications Authority regularly reviews
the arrangements for National Qualifications. Users of
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Learning and Teaching Scotland or others, are
reminded that it is their responsibility to check that the
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current arrangements.
Acknowledgement
Learning and Teaching Scotland gratefully acknowledges this contribution to the National
Qualifications support programme for Biology.
The publisher gratefully acknowledges permission to use the following source: Text Place
memory in Crickets by Jan Wessnitzer, Michal Mangan, Barbara Webb, p. 9915-921, 2008
http://rspb.royalsocietypublishing.org/content/275/1637/915.full.pdf © Text Place memory in
Crickets by Jan Wessnitzer, Michal Mangan, Barbara Webb, p. 9915-921, 2008. The Royal
Society
Every effort has been made to trace all the copyright holders but if any have been inadvertently
overlooked, the publishers will be pleased to make the necessary arrangements at the first
opportunity.
© Learning and Teaching Scotland 2011
This resource may be reproduced in whole or in part for educational purposes by educational
establishments in Scotland provided that no profit accrues at any stage.
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Contents
Overview
4
Introduction
4
Activity 1: The scientific research paper
6
Activity 2: The scientific poster
9
Activity 3: The oral presentation
10
Activity 4: Data sharing and the web
14
Activity 5: Summary section
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Student activities
Overview
The aims of this unit are:
 to introduce students to the various methods that scientists use to
communicate their work (the scientific paper, poster, presentation)
 to show students how to prepare their own scientific communication as a
poster
 to show students that the web is a hugely valuable tool for scientists as a
resource and a means of communication
 to show students how science is further communicated via journalists.
Included materials:




two research paper examples
annotated page one of the cricket paper
further explanation of Figure 2 in the cricket paper
an example poster.
Introduction
Being able to communicate scientific findings clearly and correctly is a
primary skill for a scientist. Accuracy, attention to detail and clearly written
observations and descriptions are essential. You may have to present your
work to a variety of different audiences so it is important that you are able to
convey the message in a suitable format each time.
For scientists the main way of communicating their work is via papers
published in periodical publications called scientific journals. The journal
system dates back to the 17th century, forming to meet a need for scientists or
philosophers to publish and share their work. Thousands of these journals
exist today, ranging from highly specialist publications (eg Journal of Motor
Behaviour) to more general ones such as Nature, Science, Cell, Proceedings
of the National Academy of Sciences and Public Library of Science which
publish scientific research across a range of fields. The majority of these
publications now also publish their contents on the internet and some (such as
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the Public Library of Science journals) are freely available for anyone to
download.
In addition to journal papers, scientists communicate their work in a number
of other ways. These include regular oral or poster presentations to their
laboratory and department, and often to their colleagues on the international
stage at conferences. Conferences are organised according to field or subject
and can have as few as 30 attendees or as many as 30,000 (Society for
Neuroscience, Chicago 2009). Early on in their careers scientists will often
have communicated their work by writing an academic thesis (ie a BSc, MSc
or PhD thesis), which then may lead to a journal publication.
These methods of communication are how scientists share their work with
each other. It is equally important that they share their findings with the
public, the press, the government and educational institutions. Companies,
research institutes and universities often have marketing and communication
departments who are responsible for informing the press about recent
developments or new publications. Many scientists also work full time as
science communicators, informing the public via society publi cations, blogs,
websites, news articles, podcasts and social media.
The advent of the internet has revolutionised scientific communication and
data sharing. We now have a large volume of scientific information at our
fingertips and an easy way to distribute information. Websites such as
YouTube allow experiments to be captured and viewed all over the world,
databases such as GenBank hold vast amounts of biological information that
can be uploaded and accessed by anyone. The scientific journal paper is stil l
the most recognised form of communicating a scientist’s work but online
databases are now a vital tool.
This unit aims to introduce the various forms of communication used by
scientists to report their work. It uses a scientific journal paper as an example
of how this is done. You are not expected to understand the intricate details
of the paper, but only how quantitative and qualitative information is
presented and the logical structure in which the paper is written.
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Activity 1: The scientific research paper
Activity 1a: The structure of a scientific research paper
The aim of a scientific paper is to clearly and concisely inform the reader of a
piece of original research and present it such that the experiments can easily
be repeated by someone else. In order to maintain the standards of the
scientific community, research papers are usually set out in a standard format.
 Title.
 Author(s): List of all authors who contributed to the paper .
 Abstract: A short summary of the main aim/hypothesis, results a nd
conclusion of the paper.
 Introduction: An overview of other work in the field and aim of the study .
 Materials and Methods: Resources required and how the experiments were
conducted.
 Results: Detailed description of observations , usually with figures, and
results.
 Discussion: Reasoned discussion of results with reference to the existing
scientific papers and future work.
 References: Bibliography of other papers mentioned in the text (citations).
This standard format makes it easier for scientists to read and understand
papers. (In some journals the materials and methods section is placed after
the discussion; both formats are demonstrated by examples here.) This
structured way of presenting scientific research is common to all means of
communicating scientific research, whether it be a research paper, an oral
presentation or a poster for a conference.
To demonstrate this structure two sample papers are provided. It is not
necessary to fully understand the papers, but try to pick out the main aims
and results and see how the paper is set out:
1.
2.
Wessnitzer J, Mangan M, Webb B (2008) Place memory in crickets.
Proceedings of the Royal Society B 275, 915–921.
Penn JKM, Zito MF, Kravitz EA (2010) A single social defeat reduces
aggression in a highly aggressive strain of Drosophila. Proceedings of
the National Academy of Sciences 107(28), 12682–12686.
PDF versions of both papers are available for free online. They can easily be
found using paper repositories such as Google scholar
(http://scholar.google.co.uk/) or PubMed
(http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/PubMed).
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Take a look at the first paper, ‘Place memory in crickets’, and the
accompanying annotated version of the front pa ge. The paper is logically set
out in the format mentioned above. At the top of the page are the details
about the journal that is publishing the paper, the issue, the date and the DOI
(digital object identifier), which is a unique identifier for this particular
paper. This is then followed by a relevant title for the paper and a list of all
authors who contributed to the work.
The abstract is a concise description of the background, aim, method and
results of the paper. Beneath the abstract are a set of keywords that best fit
the content of the paper. These allow the scientist to read a summary of the
work and decide if it is relevant or sufficiently interesting to him/her to read
further.
Activity
1.
2.
Write three additional keywords that could be inclu ded in the list for
the cricket paper.
Write a 150 word abstract on a recent laboratory project you have done
in the same style as the one in the sample paper. Include a relevant title
and set of keywords.
Activity 1b: Presenting results
The results section should give a clear, detailed description of the author’s
observations and present the results as figures. A figure can contain graphs,
diagrams, photographs or images (ie microscopy images of tissue samples)
and should summarise the data in the paper. Each figure is always
accompanied by a figure legend, which is a short section of text explaining
what you are looking at in the figure. The legend often contains details of
statistical tests, the number of samples used (e g n = 12) and any abbreviations
used in the figure. Figures are one of the most important parts of a paper and
useful if you need to ‘skim read’ a paper; you can focus on the abstract and
the figures first.
Take a look at the figures in the cricket paper. These figures neatly
summarise the paper.
Figure 1: Explains the apparatus (arena) used and is split into three parts :
(a)
(b)
Shows a cut-away side view and an aerial view of the arena that the
cricket will be placed into.
Further explains the setup in diagrams, showing the position of t he cool
spot and demonstrating how the arena wall moves.
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(c)
A photograph showing the wallpaper on the inside of the arena .
Figures 2–4: Graphs and drawings showing the results from subsequent
experiments.
Look at Figure 2. The three graphs at the top of th e page (a) show the time
taken for crickets to find the cool spot. Each graph represents a different
visual cue (indicator) situation given to the cricket to assist it in finding the
cool spot. This type of graph is called a boxplot and it is explained fu rther in
the supplementary materials to this unit. Boxplots are a popular way to
display data because they summarise the spread of the data accurately.
The data in the first three graphs in Figure 2(a) ha ve been summarised as one
graph below in Figure 2(b) using the mean value for each boxplot. In this line
graph, each line represents the mean time to locate the cool spot for each
group of crickets per trial. The three lines represent the three visual
conditions (i, ii, iii) and therefore three different g raphs.
Several other types of graphical presentation formats can be used to present
data, eg bar charts, histograms, pie charts, scatter plots and many others.
Which one you use is often up to you as long as it displays the data
accurately and is straightforward to interpret.
The final section of a paper is the discussion section. This is where the
authors explain their results and propose conclusions based on the evidence
from the results. In addition, the authors discuss not only their own work but
how it relates to other research papers in the field. This is also an opportunity
to propose ideas for future work.
The discussion section is followed by a reference list detailing all of the
research papers cited in this paper. The citation of other work in the field is a
critical part of scientific writing, not only so readers can follow up related
work but as a means of crediting the work of other scientists. Before a
scientist embarks on a new study they first read the relevant literature
(papers) in the area so that they are as fully informed as possible. This
background reading will shape the study, reveal tried and tested methods,
advise on resources and spark new ideas. It also prevents someone doing the
same study twice (although this still happens sometimes so two groups will
publish a similar study at the same time). In summary, scientific papers are
the primary method for distributing scientific research and informing the
world of new advances.
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Activity
1.
2.
What is the purpose of a figure in the r esults section?
Draw a graph showing a set of data from a recent lab oratory experiment
you have done or from a textbook. Try to use the same data that you
wrote the abstract for in Activity 1a. You can either draw the graph or
use a computer.
Activity 2: The scientific poster
Poster presentations are quite common in the sciences as a way of
communicating work prior to publication. They are usually used to display
unpublished work at a conference or a university department event. Some
large conferences attract thousands of posters so it is important that a poster
is designed to stand out and be noticed. Usually the author stands beside their
poster to answer any questions, explain their results further and discuss their
work.
A poster should be:




visually attractive (use colour, diagrams, graphs)
concise and informative
spilt up into sections (abstract, introduction, methods, results, conclusions)
clearly labelled with the author’s name, email address and place of study .
Activity
1.
Design your own poster for a recent laboratory project/practical using
the abstract and figures you made in Activity 1a and b. The poster
should include:








a title
your name
your school logo (optional)
an abstract
introduction
methods – a diagram describing the method(s) used
results – containing graphs
conclusion(s).
An example poster layout is provided, but you can design your poster
any way you like.
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Further reading
Ten Simple Rules for a Good Poster Presentation , Thomas C. Erren and
Philip E. Bourne:
http://www.ploscompbiol.org/article/info%3Adoi%2F10.1371%2Fjournal.pcb
i.0030102.
This article is open access, ie available to anyone with connection to the
internet.
Activity 3: The oral presentation
Oral presentations form a big part of science communication, but delivering a
good talk – whether it is to an audience of five or one of five hundred – takes
practice. This section will get students thinking about what makes an
effective presentation and offers students some advice and tips for preparing
their own talks.
Activity 3a: Comparing different presentation scenarios in
science
Scientists encounter a range of situations where they might be required to
give a presentation so it is important to think about what factors should be
considered when preparing a talk in different situations.
Activity
For the three scenarios below consider how presentation content and style
might differ. What is the purpose of each presentati on? Also think about the
target audience. What is motivating them to attend? What background
knowledge do they have and what are their expectations?
1.
University lecture
The majority of teaching at university is done in the form of lectures,
with the lecturer standing at the front of the lecture theatre presenting
information students need to help understand a particular topic they are
studying.
2.
Public engagement talk
University lecturers are often asked to communicate exciting ideas in
science to the general public. They might talk about their own research
or highlight a particular topic that is currently receiving a lot of
attention.
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3.
Conference seminar
Conferences provide scientists with an opportunity to present and
discuss their work with colleagues from all over the world, and speakers
invited to talk usually present recent findings from their own
laboratory.
Target
audience
Purpose
Audience
background and
motivation
Style and
content of talk
University
lecture
Public
engagement
talk
Conference
seminar
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Activity 3b: How to prepare an effective presentation
There a many situations where giving a talk can be useful, and not just in
science. The more experience you have of giving presentations the easier and
more enjoyable they become.
Planning
Research your topic and prepare an outline. Organise your material and
establish a logical structure. Think about time and don’t try and cover too
much material. Select the best structure for the topic and the audience, eg
presenting a laboratory report to your classmates might be broken down into
introduction, methods, results and conclusion. Think about your key points,
and if necessary use examples to illustrate what you are trying to get across.
Preparation
An introduction should include an outline to your talk and some relevant
background covering the topic. The main content of the presentation should
be concise and focused, and follow the outline. Provide your audience with a
clear summary and make it obvious when you have reached the end of your
presentation. Emphasise the main points before providing an opportunity for
questions.
Visual cues can make a talk more interesting and understandable. Microsoft
PowerPoint can be used to produce support slides for your talk (see below). I t
can also be useful to prepare a handout for your presentations to reinforce
your key ideas. A reference list and suggested further reading are helpful too.
Practise your talk. Go through it a few times, trying to recreate the speaking
situation and time yourself.
Presentation
When delivering your presentation look around the room, make eye contact
and smile. Speak clearly and loudly enough for everyone in the room to hear
you. Use notes or cue cards, but don’t read directly from them – speak to the
audience.
If you’re using PowerPoint to support your talk avoid blocking the view.
Look at the audience and not back at the screen.
At the end of your talk there may be an opportunity for the audience to ask
questions. Listen carefully to the question an d keep your answer simple and
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short. Questions are a good thing – they show your audience are interested
and listening, and can provide good points for further discussion.
Using PowerPoint for presentations
Microsoft PowerPoint has long been the standard software for creating visual
support for presentations. It provides anyone with the need to present
information creatively and professionally with the ability to develop
presentations quickly, easily and effectively.
Top tips for producing slides:
 Use a clear, easy-to-read typeface and keep words to a minimum, with
only a few points on each slide.
 Aim for a slide every 1–2 minutes, so a 10-minute talk should have no
more than 10 slides, including introduction and summary slides.
 Give the audience time to take notes form the slides, but don’t cram the
slides full of facts. They should be listening to you, not reading the slide.
 Use colour, pictures and graphs to make slides more interesting –
sometimes it is easier to remember a picture rather than words describing a
particular fact or idea.
 Don’t spend more time producing slides full of fancy graphics than on the
talk itself. A simple set of slides and a well -thought-out talk is always
best.
Top five tips for effective presentations
1.
2.
3.
4.
5.
Be prepared – know your talk inside out.
Be organised before you begin – order your notes, sort handouts, check
computer/projector.
Don’t rush through just to get it over with quickly. Slow down and
make use of natural pauses (eg at the end of a point or changing slides)
to take a breath or a sip of water.
Stick to the suggested time limit – people lose interest and stop paying
attention when talks run over time.
Finally, a bit of nervousness is good – adrenalin helps you to focus and
perform well, just don’t let it take over from the presentation.
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Activity
1.
2.
What are the advantages and disadvantage of using Microsoft
PowerPoint for presentations? Discuss your ideas in small groups.
Prepare your own 5–10-minute presentation.
Further reading
Ten Simple Rules for Making Good Oral Presentations, Philip E Bourne:
http://www.ploscompbiol.org/article/info%3Adoi%2F10.1371%2Fjournal.pcb
i.0030077.
Activity 4: Science, data sharing and the web
The revolution of the internet
Although the internet was officially invented in the 1960s by the Arpanet
project in the USA, it didn’t reach the public until in the 1990s. The advent of
the internet has facilitated access to scientific data, papers, lectures and other
scientists, and it is now the first place most of us turn to for information. This
is mainly advantageous but it is important to be aware of the source of the
information, especially in science as it is often misreported or misi nterpreted.
As we saw earlier, one of the most valuable sources o f information are
scientific papers. Prior to the internet papers were accessed via journal
subscriptions and using libraries such as the British Library or university
libraries. Copies of papers would be painstakingly photocopied or read on
site. Today, large databases such as PubMed
(http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed) and Google scholar
(http://scholar.google.co.uk/) exist that allow us to type in a subject, title or
author name and return a list of all relevant scientific journal publications
with links to the paper via the journal’s website. This allows the scientist to
find and download an electronic copy of the paper within seconds, saving
them the trip to the library. The internet is revolutionising scientific
publishing, with new open-access publishing (no subscription fee so
downloading an article is free), meaning that anyone in the world with an
internet connection can access the latest scientific findings for themselves.
The internet has also reduced the time taken for a research paper to be
published. Although the conventional print publishing model still exists,
papers are now also published online immediately after they are accepted by
the journal, thereby allowing scientists to get their work out faster. The use of
social media such as Twitter, Facebook, FriendFeed and LinkedIn give
scientists a platform to promote their work to intereste d parties and allows
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them to receive direct feedback on the paper. In addition several scientists
now write highly regarded blogs.
Scientists have access to a range of official databases , such as GenBank
(http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/genbank/), where they can upload genetic
sequences as soon as they are known. This allows scientists to share their
data immediately with others all over the world and acts a large storage area
for biological information. There are now several databases specialising in a
variety of areas in the sciences that are used daily all over the world.
Considering new media as a tool for communicating science
Public awareness and understanding of science is important, and research
scientists are often encouraged to promote or communicate their work to
wider audiences.
The internet is an essential resource for communicating science. Over recent
years new technologies have developed innovative applications that are
quickly becoming important in the communication of science.
Collectively known as ‘new media’, sites such as YouTube, Facebook and
Twitter are changing the way scientists communicate with each other and the
general public.
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Activity 4a: Defining new media in the context of science
communication
We all know and recognise Facebook as a personal social network, but it can
also be used as a communication tool in science.
Consider the University of Edinburgh’s Facebook page below as an example.
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Activity
1.
How would you describe the University of Edinburgh’s Neuroscience
Department Facebook page? In small groups, produce a list of key
words explaining its purpose and how it might be useful.
2.
What are the advantages and disadvantages of using new media, such a s
Facebook, to communicate science?
Activity 4b: Tweeting a piece of science
Read the following abstract modified from a real scientific research paper and
have a go at writing an accompanying tweet.
This is harder than it sounds. You only have 140 cha racters to get your
message across, which means your tweet has be concise and compelling –
difficult in science.
‘The contribution of genetics and the environment to fighting behaviour in
Drosophila is unclear. To address this issue we bred hyper -aggressive flies by
selecting winners of fights over several generations. Males of this hyper aggressive strain initiate fights sooner, retaliate more often and regularly
defeat opponents from a non-selected strain. However, if an aggressive fly
experiences a defeat against a fellow aggressive it looses its competitive edge
against a non-selected opponent in a following fight. These flies, once
capable of engaging in high intensity patterns of aggressive behaviour,
showed reduced lunging and retaliation, suggesting that a single loss is
enough to lower aggression in flies bred to be hyper -aggressive. Furthermore,
females were more likely to copulate with males from the non -selected strain
than with hyper-aggressive flies.’
Abstract modified from the scientific paper: A single social defeat reduces
aggression in a highly aggressive strain of Drosophila. Penn et al. (2010)
Proceedings of the National Academy of Science 107, 28.
Useful links
http://schaechter.asmblog.org/
A retired scientist turned blogger.
http://scitalks.com/index.php
A website hosting a range of videos covering many scientific fields .
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http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/social/
NASA uses a variety of Facebook and Twitter groups to inform the public
about its missions.
Activity 5: Summary section
1.
Make a table of the common sections that can be found in these three
different scientific communication formats: a research paper, a poster
and a presentation. Compare the three formats and include a section
detailing the advantages and disadvantages of each (eg time, detail,
references).
2.
In a group, imagine that you have just published a paper on the same
topic as the poster that you designed earlier. Make a list outlining a
strategy that you would use to publicise this paper. Would you use
social media, make a video, local/national newspapers, a personal
website/blog, a conference?
3.
Name two officially recognised sources of s cientific information and
two unofficial ones. For each discuss who the audience for the
information could be.
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