The locations of scientific meetings matter

Tags

conferences, diversity, LGBTQ

I think it’s fair to say that in the last week, there’s been quite a shift in the scientific community, or at least certain parts thereof, particularly in the United States. Yesterday’s Executive Orders restricting immigration, though temporarily stayed as of this writing, have rightly caused consternation among many. In research circles, this has meant difficulties for students, faculty, and staff who were travelling overseas, and restrictions on nationals of seven countries from entering the US. The growing anger within the US at this action has resulted in several scientists, many of whom I respect greatly, suggesting that professional scientific societies move their conferences and meetings to venues outside the US, or for non-US researchers to boycott meetings in the US. While these suggestions come from good intentions, it’s rather flawed and, if I might say, a tad hypocritical.

Regardless of where a meeting is held, there will be scientists who cannot or will not, for immigration reasons or reasons of conscience, attend. Hold meetings outside the US could mean some US-based researchers who are not US citizens might not feel safe or comfortable going, for fear of being denied re-entry upon their return. Hold it in the US, and scientists from those seven nations could be unable to attend. Damned if you do, damned if you don’t. But this is hardly something new.

I have a list of just under 80 countries where I will not travel, for work or pleasure. Places where being LGBTQ is illegal. Unlike nationality, though, an immigration officer can’t look at me or my paperwork and decide whether I’m queer or not. But the fact remains that, regardless of whether its enforced or not, it’s illegal for me to be me in a sizeable chunk of the world. So if your conference is in Indonesia, Kenya, or Barbados, it’s a non-starter: I’m not going.

Last summer, I wrote about how the Animal Behaviour Society passed a resolution to not hold meetings in North Carolina in response to that state’s anti-trans “bathroom bill”, but at the same time the world’s biggest marine science conference, the IMCC, announced that it’s 2018 meeting would be in Malaysia *, which is on that list of 80 or so countries. Yet where was the concern? The showing of solidarity with scientists who would be affected by holding a scientific conference in such a location?

Some have argued that since these laws aren’t (apparently) enforced, or often aren’t (apparently) applied to foreigners that it would be ok for queer folk to go to conferences in some of these places. F&$# off. Unless you’ve ever had to hide who you were for fear of detention or physical & mental harm – often for years or decades – you have no idea how idiotic that sounds, and how unhealthy it is. Everyone makes their own decisions affecting their personal safety and based on their personal values, and I’ve made mine.

Rather than relocate meetings, societies need to ensure that all of their members can participate. Why, for example, is it still so difficult to allow members to participate by video-conference? It’s 2017 for goodness sake.

No matter where scientific societies hold their meetings, there will be scientists who will not or cannot attend. The sooner we recognize this, the sooner we can work towards a more equitable culture, in science and beyond.

— —

*The folks at IMCC have engaged on this issue, indeed far more than any other conference I’ve heard from, but the fact remains: being gay is illegal in Malaysia.

Scientific meetings and diversity

Tags

conferences, LGBTQ

At the end of the day, science is people and their interactions, whether that’s face-to-face, through a journal submission system, or by email. And having a diverse array of people present a diverse array of views and doing science in a diverse set of ways is a Good Thing. And as the scientific community gradually comes to the realization that the diverse scientists in its midst put up with a heck of a lot of diverse crap in their day-to-day lives, especially those from minority groups, women, and the financially insecure, for example, there’s been what one might call an evolution towards considering people when thinking about science.

One of the major ways scientists interact is at conferences or meetings, united by a common research area or theme, and it’s at these meetings where some not-that-good stuff can happen, which has prompted many organizations (though still a small minority) to establish codes of conduct for attendees. Huzzah progress! There are also things you can do to be an ally at conferences.

It was with this floating around in my noggin that I was very interested to see the tweet below from the 2016 Animal Behavior Society:

Passed unanimously. Sends a strong message to students about ABS values. #2016ABS pic.twitter.com/vTSyD4l9id

— Courtney Fitzpatrick (@clynfitzpatrick) August 1, 2016

HB2, or the Public Facilities Privacy & Security Act is a large piece of rubbish that discriminates again transfolk by preventing them from using the toilet of their gender. Like I said, utter rubbish. So it was rather heartening to see a scientific society taking a stand on a social and legal issue that affects some of its members.

So it was with some sadness that, 2 days later, the 5th International Marine Conservation Congress announced its location:

… Aaaaand #IMCC5 will be in ….. Malaysia (Sarawak, Borneo) #IMCC4

— Craken MacCraic (@Craken_MacCraic) August 3, 2016

 

Malaysia is rather unfriendly to LGBTQ folk (to put it mildly), and even depictions of them in film must show “good triumphing over evil.” Good grief. So needless to say, I won’t be attending. Which is sad personally, and professionally. And while I do understand the international nature of science, and the need to engage with a diverse range of scientists from across the world, I wonder if the topic of LGBTQ attendees even came up.

Is it the job or the purview of professional scientific societies to consider all these various factors when choosing their meeting location? Or should their goal be to be as international as possible regardless of the social or legal conditions of some of their members? Societies are of course welcome to have their meetings wherever they wish, but I think they should also think about what message that sends (be it positive or negative) to the full diversity of its membership.

 

Why the #LGBTSTEMinar succeeded & was needed

Tags

conferences, LGBTQ

I’ve just returned from a conference, but it was unlike any other conference I’ve attended. The attendees weren’t drawn together because we share similar research interests, or work in similar places, or are from similar institutions. We had physical chemists, medical physicists, medical geneticists, engineers, mathematicians, and conservation biologists from academia, industry, and NGOs. What drew us together was that we were all (or >90% of us were) LGBT* scientists attending the LGBT STEMinar

I’ve written before about the need for LGBT scientists to make links, the challenges we share, regardless of discipline, and how conferences can help that. Which is why, when Beth Montague-Hellen raised the idea of a conference targeted specifically at LGBT scientists, I was quite keen to see how it would turn out.

The actual event in Sheffield on Friday blew me away.

There were more than 80 LGBT scientists attending from all over the UK (and one from Sweden!), plus a few expats living in the UK, such as myself. In addition to amazing high-quality science, it was a chance for us to, frankly, be ourselves. Never have I been to a conference with such a wonderful sense of humour, camaraderie, and palpable excitement among those attending. We didn’t have to worry about awkward coffee break small talk about partners, reactions of colleagues, or be guarded about which pronouns to use. All of these coping mechanisms that hide our true selves are exhausting, and the sense of liberation around the room was infectious.

We opened with Dave Smith’s talk ’No Sexuality Please, We’re Scientists’, based on some of the research he did (and that I highlighted) a few years ago, on the lack of visible LGBT science role models. It was an excellent primer for the day to come, and a video will be up on Youtube in the near future is on Youtube.

What followed were around 15 oral presentations from other scientists, ample time to socialize during long coffee breaks / lunch, and an opportunity to view about a dozen posters.

The day wrapped with an inspiring talk by Elena Rodriguez-Falcon, who highlighted the challenges many LGBT folk in STEM still face – the feeling that by being ’out’, it might impede career progression. But the message that I took away was much bigger. A number of surveys have revealed that even though departments of workplaces may be accepting, though not overtly so, LGBT staff and students still feel a lack of support. It’s not good enough to be accepting, we have to be encouraging.

I’m of the belief that by being an out visible LGBT scientist, it will, in however small a way, be useful for others to see. Not everyone is necessarily comfortable with this role, but I’ve chosen to own in a bit. And since I started blogging about being an out gay academic back in 2013 (though I’ve been out in my personal and professional life for more than a decade), several other LGBT scientists have gotten in touch to discuss the challenges we face as a group, or their own personal journey. I don’t necessarily have all the answers, but the starting point for the conversation is further ahead than many, or all of their straight mentors.

So bringing together all these LGBT scientists who would otherwise not encounter each other (or at least not in nearly so large a number) is a Good Thing.

One of the other most amazing things about this conference is how Twitter-driven it was. Many of us knew each other via Twitter, though had never met in real life. Before Friday, I had only met 3 or 4 other out LGBT scientists. I can now add so many more. More than a few people commented at the end of the day how many new Twitter followers they’d received simply though other attendees. I’ve added as many as I could recall to the QueerSTEM Twitter list, so follow along if you’re interested (or let me know if you’d like to be added!). The conference hashtag apparent trended during the day, and there were more than 500 tweets (which will eventually be organized into a Storify).

There were also many other LGBT scientists (both in the UK and elsewhere) following along on Twitter, and many expressed a wish to attend such a conference. My advice is to just do it. It’s a non-trivial amount of work to pull off, and is likely more challenging in Canada or the US owing to distances between universities, but it is so, so worthwhile. And Beth (and her wife Kate, and all other other helpers from Sheffield) pulled off an amazing day.

Following the official wrap-up function, several of us headed out for a drink and bite to eat. Now, everyone has their own journey when dealing with their sexuality, and had the conference happened during my MSc 10 years ago, I likely wouldn’t have been too $%!&-scared to attend. And many folks live or go to university or work in places where there aren’t that many other queer folk around so the idea of or ability to go out socially with other out LGBT people isn’t possible. So this was clearly a case where the non-science part of a conference could be equally important, and highlights, at least in my mind, the importance of being out and visible.

Lack of diversity in science is a hugely important issue, and our conference was by no means an exception. The vast majority of attendees were white, most were male. I have no idea how this reflects the population of LGBT scientists in the UK, or UK scientists in general, but as we move forward to discussing both visible and invisible diversity, it’s something that we need to keep in mind.

It looks like this might become an annual-ish thing, so I hope to see more of you at the 2017 LGBT STEMinar.

 

*A shorthand, I admit, for any non-straight person

The high price of scientific conferences

Tags

conferences, funding

As a student, I quite enjoyed going to conferences. My first was the Society of Canadian Ornithologists in 2005 in Halifax, a gathering of about 100 people from universities, government, and the private sector in one hotel conference room for 2 days. If memory serves, I think I paid $50 (or rather my supervisor did), and we all drove the 5 hours from Fredericton. I met lots of great folks there, and learned a lot.

But lately, I’ve become rather frustrated with conferences. It seems to me that conferences are increasingly becoming less about the science, and more about the conference. As someone who’s spent many years producing local theatrical productions, I recognize many of the same things: promotion, venue, sound/lights (AV equipment), catering, … all of which can be had on a sliding scale of cost, but which are increasingly costing more and more. And then there are the conference add-ons that really have little to do with the actual science: the often-accompanying tote bag/swag from various sponsors, and the bar service (often during the poster session evenings).

Now, some of these costs are imposed by the venue. If you want alcohol served, there’s usually a minimum purchase, and you’ll also pay for serving staff, for example. But there are some steps that people organizing conferences can take to reduce what is becoming a burdensome cost. Do we really need those posh biscuits at the 10am tea break? Swanky tapas during the poster session? I’d argue not.

Here’s a quick spin through some of the ornithological conferences just to see how much they currently cost (assuming early-bird registration for a non-student, and not counting travel & accommodation):

British Ornithologists Union 2016: £235 members / £440 non-members

American Ornithologists Union/Cooper Ornithological Society 2015: $320 USD members / $395 USD non-members

North American Ornithological Congress 2016: $499 USD

Pacific Seabird Group 2016: $285 USD / $330 USD

International Penguin Conference 2016: R4500 (roughly $300 USD)

And some general ecological ones thrown in to boot:

Ecological Society of America 2016: $342 / $510

British Ecological Society 2015: £350

International Marine Conservation Congress (2014; 2016 price not yet posted): $462 / $624 USD

 

And again, this is exclusive of any travel, accommodations, or food. The PSG meeting, for example, is in Turtle Bay, Hawaii (an hour’s drive from Honolulu at a $300/night resort… though more ’affordable’ accommodation is likely to be found within 15-30 minutes’ drive).

Given that we’re often asked, as scientists, to show value for money, and budgets are ever shrinking (or at the best, not increasing, which is a decrease in real terms), we need to start asking whether it’s good value for money (often public grant money) to attend these expensive meetings. Sure, they’re fun, and a good chance to catch up with friends and colleagues, but is that enough for 1-4 days’ of listening to others talk about their research? Or at best, spend 15 minutes talking about some recent work of our own?

Yes, it costs money to run a conference. As a former producer, I’m only too aware of how much it costs to rent a venue, host a website (let alone one with online registration/payment), and coordinate a herd of cats group of scientists. But could we not all bring a brown-bag lunch one day? Plan meetings in more affordable cities near major airports? Forego the complementary drinks at the bar?

While most conferences offer a discount for students, the number doing so for postdocs or scientists who haven’t been visited by the magical funding fairy is much lower. To say nothing of scientists who spend money from their own pocket to go these shindigs.

There are of course also the ethical arguments about the potentially large carbon footprint of flying all over the place (and as an aside, we also have a carbon budget here at the RSPB).

I’m not arguing that we do away with conferences. I think they provide valuable time to interact with colleagues, network, and I very much enjoy attending them. But we need to make scientific conferences more affordable, or worth the ever-increasing prices.

Being out or an ally at scientific conferences – UPDATED

Tags

conferences, LGBTQ

The Ecological Society of America is holding its 100th annual meeting this week in Baltimore (congratulations!), and they’ve added something that I think is fairly unique (at least I’ve not seen it before) – ribbons to append to your name tag that identify you as a council member, session chair, or, interestingly, a rainbow ribbon with “ally” written on it.

 

I have name tag envy #ESA100#BronESApic.twitter.com/dYekVk2jX9

— Joshua Drew (@Drew_Lab) August 9, 2015

 

This got me thinking a bit about LGBT participation at scientific conferences. Some organizations/conferences have an LGBT section (mostly informal), and occasionally I’ve seen notes pinned to the conference notice board for “OutGroup” off-site get-togethers (OutGroup being a rather tongue-and-cheek pun for out LGBT attendees).

I should say that I’ve never been at a conference with any sort of official (or unofficial… at least that was broadcast to attendees) LGBT event. So when I saw Josh Drew’s ally ribbon, I thought that could be an interesting idea, especially at a conference like ESA, where there are 8000 attendees or so.

Back in 2005/6, I ran a campus “Safe Space” program, running workshops and distributing safe space stickers for students to put on their dorm doors, and less frequently for faculty/grad students to put on their office doors. Our biggest concern was that the program be genuine, and participants be somehow vetted. We accomplished this with an hour-long workshop and some take-away literature.  The ESA ribbons can be obtained at the registration desk, and I suspect that given their public display (alongside attendees’ names) that the lack of vetting won’t be a problem.

Conferences and scientific societies are increasingly becoming aware of the social issues around their meetings, and many now put in place codes of practice (you can see the ESA’s here, which includes discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation and gender, but not gender expression, which needs to get fixed).  I couldn’t easily find the equivalent document for the British Ecological Society.

Most of the conference I go to are much smaller – a couple hundred people at most. Consequently, they don’t have codes of conduct, or rainbow ribbons, or an OutGroup get-together. That makes me sad.

So, here are a few rambling thoughts on what scientific organizations (and their conferences) can do to support their LGBT members:

Have an LGBT section

Putting LGBT scientists in touch with each other is huge. I didn’t (and still don’t really) have any LGBT scientific mentors that I can look to for professional advice or mentoring.  I think having LGBT mentors is incredibly important, and there are some organizations that are going down this road – the National Organization of Gay & Lesbian Scientific Professionals (NOGLSTP), for instance, but their representation in ecology & evolution and outside the United States is small/non-existent.

Even if this is something unofficial to start, societies encouraging their LGBT members to get together will make those members feel welcome, and hopefully more likely to be more active in other aspects of the organization.

 

Have an LGBT event

This is, of course, much easier if there are already active LGBT members who can aid in organizing it. Networking is a major aspect of scientific conferences, and people I’ve met at conferences have become friends, collaborators, and close colleagues. Most, if not all, of these relationships have been forged at lunch/dinner/the pub/wandering around the poster session and not sitting in a lecture theatre listening to a talk.

Some conferences have informal groups (I think the Evolution conference had an “Out Group”, but can’t find the link) where folks met for drinks one evening.

If the society has other “interest groups” for subsections of the discipline, or other groups, follow the lead of what they do. If not, start something!

 

Be mindful of LGBT members when planning meeting locations

This is particularly important for international meetings. There are 75 countries where homosexuality is illegal, mostly in Africa, the Middle East, and South/Southeast Asia. Everyone decides for themselves what their comfort level is, and for me, these 75 are right out.

 

The ally ribbon

The experiment at ESA is intriguing, and I’ve asked folks to let me/teh internetz know what sort of reaction/interaction it elicited, if any.  I’m genuinely curious. I see this as being a potentially useful thing at larger conferences, like ESA, where there are many more nameless faces.  Even if no one comes up to say anything, having them visible can be incredibly valuable. Like the Safe Space program I coordinated, just having the stickers on the doors can send an important message, and is very important even if no one explicitly comes in looking for a safe space.

 

In a perfect world, though, we wouldn’t need any of these things. But we’re not there yet. And like I said, these are just my thoughts.  Things that I think would be useful to my professional career, and that I’d like to offer other early-career scientists. Not everyone would find these useful/relevant, and that’s ok. We’re all products, at least partially, of our time and culture, particularly when it comes to LGBT issues, and have different needs/wants/challenges/solutions. But let’s start somewhere.

Have you been to a conference with any LGBT events/groups? What else would you like to see at both big and small scientific meetings?

 

Update – 12 Aug

This tweet from Ms. Dr. Joseph Simonis indicates that she was mis-gendered when introduced for her talk by someone wearing an ally ribbon. Not cool. The ribbons were freely available at the registration desk, apparently, so there appears to have been no vetting/training/standard-setting for those sporting them. Also not cool. When tags like “ally” are given away with no level of quality control, they are self-ascribing someone’s status. Being an “ally” means different things to different people, and it’s clear from the case above that the expectations from the LGBT* community differ from what some self-described allies think. This is a dangerous mix, and throws the utility of the ally ribbon right out the window.

When I ran the safe space project, we made sure those sporting the sticker on their doors met some minimum level of competence and shared values. This is immensely important, or else the trust just isn’t there and it’s a make-the-ally-ribbon-wearing-folk-feel-good exercise more than anything else. And that’s dangerous and unproductive.

It would be great to get some LGBT* folk involved with the ESA to run/help run a workshop pre-meeting if these ally ribbons are going to make a repeat appearance. I, for one, am free for early August 2016 in Fort Lauderdale. Let’s chat, ESA.

What science can learn about engaging audiences from a radio program

Tags

conferences, debates, lectures, plenary, powerpoint, slides

There’s a CBC Radio program called Ideas that’s be around for 40 years (it’s on at 9pm on Radio 1 [9:30 in Newfoundland and parts of Labrador] if you’re interested).  One of the things I look forward to each year is the Massey Lectures, a series of 5 public lectures on a topic.  This year, Lawrence Hill presents “Blood: The Stuff of Life“.  Ideas also airs the Lafontaine-Baldwin Symposium, the Dalton Camp Lecture in Journalism, and excerpts from the Munk Debates (which regularly fills Roy Thomson Hall in Toronto, and has featured Tony Blair, Christopher Hitchens, and Henry Kissenger among many others).

Why am I talking about a radio show?  Because science (and I’ll talk specifically about ecology) needs more of this:

Today in grad seminar “What is the fundamental unit of ecology?” The niche (Shahid Naeem) vs. The species (Joel Cracraft) cc @duffy_ma

— Joshua Drew (@Drew_Lab) October 8, 2013

And so, I will present three suggestions to all those organizers of symposia, workshops, annual meetings, and conferences.

1. Make the formal parts of conferences more interactive

One of the things I really like about he Munk Debates is that there’s an audience poll before and after the debate on the question at hand.  I’ll use the tweet above as an example.  Imagine yourself at a large (>200) ecological meeting where the question was put: what is the fundamental unit of ecology? Attendees vote using clickers at the start of the event, and then Shahid and Joel take the stage, debating back and forth about the relative merits of their approach, the evidence to back it up, etc.  At the end, the audience votes again, and the results show up on the screen.  How cool would that be?

The goal wouldn’t be to resolve the Big Questions in ecology, but to have an engaging discussion of different points of view.  Take the recent back and forth (and back again) on the intermediate disturbance hypothesis that Jeremy Fox at Dynamic Ecology was involved in.  Both sides advocated a view, and in the end, readers will make up their mind.  Likewise, the atmosphere shouldn’t be adversarial, but collegial.

Not only would this serve to highlight the current debates in ecology as a discipline, but I think they would be much more engaging than listening to an hour-long navel-gazing plenary.

Obviously one challenge will be to arrange suitable panelists, but I think the payoff would be well worth it.

Edit: The American Society of Naturalists (publishers of American Naturalist) are doing just this very thing at their meeting on 13 January 2014. Their debate: “This house believes that species richness on continents is dominated by ecological limits” Proponent: Dan Rabosky, and Opponent: Luke Harmon. (ht Raphael Maia)

2. Plenary talks shouldn’t use slides

Most scientific meetings have some form of plenary address, whether this is the MacArthur Lecture at Ecological Society of America meetings, the President’s Award Address at Canadian Society for Ecology and Evolution, or the Rigler Award Lecture of the Society of Canadian Limnologists.  But what’s the purpose?  Plenary lecturers have a unique opportunity to tell a story, use exposition and other narrative tools to weave the fabric of their message to the rapt audience.  But often, it’s wasted on poorly-designed PowerPoint slides with too much text or blurry tables & figures.

What makes the Lafontaine-Baldwin Lectures, the Masseys, and the like enjoyable is that they tell a story.  There’s no discussion of p-values, Akaike weights, or small text in the bottom corner telling the audience which of the presenter’s papers s/he was talking about.  There’s a story with a narrative arc.

We suck at narrative arcs in science.

In undergrad, I took a few humanities courses where professors lectured (sensu stricto).  That is, they gave a 50-minute lecture with very few aides. There were certainly no powerpoint slides (unless it was to display, for example, a piece of artwork we were discussing).  I recall in particular one class on Canadian Studies, where the professor would, for 3 hours a week, weave a narrative about the development of Quebec’s language laws and cultural distinctiveness, or the development of native art, or the concept the Canadian North as one of our national myths.  I like to think that it’s not just the subject matter – the evolution of birds is pretty compelling stuff, if you ask me.  But it does highlight the differences between what I was expected to retain from my humanities courses (ideas & concepts) compared to my science courses (more fact recall).  Yes, things are improving, and there’s lots of great advice about how to get students into that kind of higher-order learning.  So why do we shy away from it in our research (as manifested in conference presentations)?

3. Plenary talks should be recorded

Giving a plenary talk (or a named lecture, like the MacArthur Lecture) is a great honour.  But unless you happen to be in the audience, too bad, so sad.  It’s now relatively easy to find people who can record the video & audio of plenary addresses to produce YouTube videos, but also audio podcasts.  Would I like to listen to the MacArthur or CSEE President’s Award Lecture? Heck yes.  Even if I were there, I would likely listen to it again.  It could be assigned listening/watching to a class, and made more widely available.

This is especially true if my earlier advice (ditch the slides) is taken, since referring to “this plot here [points to bottom left figure]” doesn’t translate well to audio.  And before nay-sayers cry that audio is dead, consider some of the most popular podcasts – The Reith Lectures, This American Life, Radiolab, and TED Talks are all about using audio or the spoken word to tell stories, and have millions of downloads each week.

I consulted a friend of mine who does audio / video editing, and he quoted me < $500 to take the raw footage and raw audio track, match them up, put in title cards and credits, render & upload the video.  Pairing with a professional (with a partner YouTube account) also means the video can be uploaded in one go (non-partners are limited to 15-minute videos).  In the grand scheme of conference budgets, that’s not a lot to ask.

The bottom line here is that plenary addresses by the best and brightest in the field, and engaging debates over the questions we grapple with as a discipline are fantastic opportunities to increase the communication of science and what we do within the scientific community (and outside it as well).  The 2012 Massey Lectures were by noted physicist Neil Turok, and covered cosmology, the origins of the universe, and quantum physics.  Surely if those can be made accessible, ecology can do the same.