Gary and Nathan continue their conversation about leadership lessons from sports. Gary related this to his work for the U.S. Army on good training for situations that required adaptability. They discussed the value of learning to learn with and through peers on the job. They concluded by emphasizing the importance of collaborative learning in managing anxiety and observational acuity in extremis.
Read MoreIn this episode, Gary and Nathan talk about leadership lessons from sports that have utility beyond that industry. They speculated about the opportunity to view sporting events with the intent of consuming lessons about leadership as much as a source of entertainment.
Read MoreGary and Nathan record an episode "in the wild" while watching the NY Rangers and the LA Kings go at each other again with playoff consequences on the line toward the end of the regular season. Gary talks with Nathan about what has made the LA Kings a clutch team since Darryl Sutter became coach and why the NY Rangers have so much trouble with them. They discuss the psychological dimension of competition.
Read MoreIn this episode, Gary goes on location to talk with Jeff McCarthy, a personal trainer in downtown Boston. They talk about the motivations behind personal training and the psychological approach that helps individuals get the most out of it and stay with it for indefinitely long periods of time.
Read MoreIn this episode, Nathan talks with Gary about how he got into sports psychology. They also discussed issues that can be addressed uniquely by sports psychologists and the impact that they can have on individuals and teams.
Read MoreGary and Nathan follow their first season of "Science in the Wild" with an exploratory second season in which most episodes will be recorded outside the studio. In this introduction to the new show, Gary and Nathan discuss their intent for a more open conversation between scientists and non-scientists.
Read MoreAn audio file for this episode is no longer available.
In this episode, Gary and Nathan interview Justin Bastian, a social entrepreneur in the online games space. Justin’s journey began ten years ago when he first engaged the military-style, third-person tactical shooter genre of online games. These types of games require team strategy as well as precision hand-eye coordination under time pressure. Strategies are developed over the course of weeks with teammates in a broader community of gamers. The communication and leadership developed in such communities of practice often has an impact in the life of gamers beyond games.
As a leader in his game community, Justin gained a lot of experience iteratively developing processes and systems required for community organization and player development. He also accumulated a variety of experiences with significant interpersonal interactions among gamers in his community. These experiences gave him confidence that his skills could also be applied to business. After a couple of successful ventures with companies in other industries, Justin decided to merge his gaming and business interests and return to the online games space as an entrepreneur. In 2011, Justin launched SOF Studios with his business mentor and a retired US Special Operations veteran. He was motivated to do so by the gradual disappearance of the type of shooter gameplay he originally fell in love with and to honor US veterans.
His entrepreneurship centered on community, in particular communities of gamers who shared a prosocial consciousness. Collaborative innovation in his community was driven by the desire to make prosocial “cool.” Toward that end, they developed a constitution and bill of rights for their community to codify their values and make explicit their sense of shared purpose. This became the basis for a deep connection between Gary and Justin given the work that Gary and his colleagues had done with outcomes based training and education for the U.S. Army. Justin found this convergence of insight with the scientific community to be validating and highly motivating. He echoed the comments of Scott Flanagan, in an early episode, that scientists helped him understand and communicate what was special about his community and the expertise within it.
Justin also alluded to meaningful interpersonal experiences within his community that are being addressed in a TED Conversation about Community Organization and Impact in Online Games. He re-emphasized the importance of micro-experiences and relationships as the foundation for community. The untold story of community in online games is the basis for Justin’s belief that the games industry can lead a transformation in making prosocial behavior cool such as in social action through prosocial games and community play. Toward that end, Justin concluded by announcing his new initiative that he hopes will unleash the power of community play and raise consciousness about the deadly resource war in Congo.
The intent of Justin’s initiative in conflict-free electronics is to marshal the energy and interest of gamers, as consumers of electronics, by providing them with both visibility and opportunities for influence on efforts to end the atrocities. Justin stresses that one has to give consumers something they can actually do, such as in-game social action, to put social and political pressure on those who are contributing to this problem through ignorance or inaction.
Key Terms and Concepts
life of gamers beyond games
prosocial
constitution and bill of rights
sense of shared purpose
understand and communicate
micro-experiences
conflict-free electronics
In this episode, Gary and Nathan talk with Scott Flanagan, Partner at Sophia Speira (Greek for tactical wisdom). They provide service support and R&D in training, education, and leader development mostly for the Army. The conversation with Scott picking up on the prior conversations with Paige Brown about communication between scientists and nonscientists and on the conversation with Morgan Darwin about relationship building in a diverse community.
There were technical problems in the studio during this interview. Please excuse the sound quality.
Scott talked about the value of experts in a particular practice area working closely with scientists over an extended period of time. Scott’s scientific colleagues helped him define his approach training, education, and leader development. This helped him articulate it in a more comprehensive way to senior leaders how to train instructors and to be transparent to the instructors they trained. This was important because it wasn’t merely a particular skill they were trying to train.
The approach of Scott and his colleagues developed out of a need they consistently heard from senior leaders that transcended the specific objectives of particular programs of instruction. Leaders needed Soldiers to develop intangible attributes such as personal confidence, initiative, and accountability in ambiguous and changing situations. This need begged the question of how one measures such attributes. Scientists helped Scott assess such intangibles in terms of observable behavior. This made it possible to track progress toward achieving these intended outcomes as well as the broader objectives of the Army.
Scott emphasized the value of formative assessments that, as such, helped him with continuous improvement of his approach as well as its implementation in particular programs of instruction. While summative assessments such as grades provide feedback about success or failure, formative assessments indicate what can be sustained and what can be improved. Often, for example, formative assessments reveal lapses or critical paths in the process of achieving an objective of which the learner may not aware. The improvement, then, is not simply to execute a different procedure or to remember different steps. Instead it can promote a different kind of awareness that changes the way one thinks about a problem.
The value of scientists for expert practitioners generally pertains to definition and measurement of expertise and the paths to it, especially when actions can be taken with respect to the insights that are revealed. Experts typically are not aware of what makes them special because the skills or habits of thinking have become automatic. Moreover, experts who continually strive to increase their mastery are oriented more on what they can become rather than what they are. Scientists can help reveal the knowledge, skills, and attributes of experts from which others can benefit.
The conversation concludes with an emphasis on how a mindset of teaching can make a difference beyond knowledge and skills. Scott emphasized that all the interactions, including micro-experiences, between teachers and students matter in the development of individuals and relationships. Promulgating the sensibilities of a teacher and the art of teaching to everyone, not just to people who have that formal job description or responsibility, can be as important in business and life as it is in a formal educational setting. Translating values into practice is one way science can help bring a mindset of teaching and human development into any organization and its broader business ecosystem.
Key Terms and Concepts
communication
relationship
intangible attributes
formative assessment
awareness
mindset of teaching
values
In this episode, Gary and Nathan talk with Morgan Darwin, CEO of A&K Global Health (AKGH), a trans-national health care management firm that is promoting “a new idea in healthcare.”
AKGH is working in partnership with developing countries that are successfully striving to develop their infrastructure, most notably in healthcare. They currently are operating in ten countries around the world, mostly in East Africa and the Middle East. They are helping people and working with various organizations in these countries to find local and international solutions to their healthcare challenges. For example, they currently have 23 children from Iraq receiving bone marrow transplants in India.
Morgan described his pivot from helping the U.S. Army with leader development and training to trans-national health care management. The connection is relationship building in a diverse community, fostering more adaptable manifestations of authority, and helping organizations adapt to changing context and objectives. The genesis of his innovative work with the military prior to 2011 was the shift in mission from combat to humanitarian and civil operations.
Development of personal attributes that foster individual adaptability and organizational agility
Different preparation and a different mindset was required to address the fact that a military personnel could be involved in all three types of operation, even within the same day. To meet this demand, Morgan and his colleagues developed and promulgated an approach to leader development, training, and education for adaptive thinking and action based on developing intangible attributes such as confidence, initiative, and accountability.
The work of Morgan and his colleagues helped change the discussion points and priorities in various military organizations involved in leader development, (field) training, and (classroom) education. Conversations increasingly addressed issues, such as relationships and interpersonal influence, that had been considered to be abstract, fuzzy, or soft in the context of the serious undertakings of the military or that merely had seemed to be understood comprehensively in terms of observable actions by “good” leaders. Established military leaders such as Mr. Darwin teamed with a variety of scientists in a broad program of research and application to examine such assumptions and translate them into activities and impact of a service system that could be verified and validated.
With “the science team,” Morgan and his colleagues in the Army produced a monograph of their scientific investigation.
Morgan emphasized that science can help organizational leaders understand their requirements and the indicators of whether activities inside the organization are consistent with the broader objectives of the organization. Scientists serve a much more important role than what most science consumers expect inside or outside the military. They can provide more than answers, facts, or data. Science more essentially is about collaborative inquiry within a community, and it is more valuable in this respect.
Morgan’s collaborative inquiry with scientists in training, education, and leader development influences his business strategy and talent development as CEO of A&K Global Health. He emphasized that “the sum total of micro-experiences has more impact than a course on cultural awareness” in preparing colleagues for change and for historically unfamiliar opportunities. He indicates that meaning and sense making are important when living inside a culture, whether organizational or societal. Just as in his work with the military, he finds that relatively mundane everyday interactions, outside a script, can have significant impact on a consumer’s experience during their journey through an engagement with a service provider.
Morgan Darwin, CEO of A&K Global Health
The conversation with Morgan concluded by reemphasizing the importance of growing beyond the habits, practices, and traditions that led to success in the past. The world is becoming smaller, and this is bringing fundamentally different kinds of opportunities to many consumers, especially with respect to health care in rapidly developing parts of the world. Organizations must adapt to changing expectations of consumers. This requires a different kind of awareness, a different kind of action, and a different kind of leadership.
Key Words and Concepts
relationship building in a diverse community
confidence, initiative, and accountability
micro-experiences
meaning and sense making
interpersonal influence
customer journey
awareness
leadership
An audio file for this episode is no longer available.
In this episode, Gary and Nathan continue their conversation with Paige Brown, an established science blogger (“From The Lab Bench” blog at SciLogs.com) with scientific training and a doctoral student in mass communications at Louisiana State University.
Paige picks up where she left off in the last show by talking a bit more about her journalistic experiment for her article Nothing But The Truth. In that experiment, she wrote different versions of a press release that she made available online to public relations (or information) officers, science journalists, and scientists who, if interested, would fill out a survey that addressed the quality and newsworthiness of the press release. She talked about the unsolicited feedback she got from respondents about other aspects of the press release and the experiment. We discussed the implications of this feedback as a form of peer review, especially to the extent that it influenced Paige’s ongoing work.
Paige explained that individual communicators increasingly have multiple roles ranging from information officer and freelance journalist to blogger. We discussed the differences across these forms with respect to editorial review and peer review, gatekeeping and fact checking, and whether or not communicators are compensated for their work. This led into a discussion about the trustworthiness of stories, media, media outlets, and communicators themselves. Paige touched on the reflection and developing practices inside journalism in particular, and more generally with respect to the question of media literacy of the public, as traditional news outlets are given way to new forms and curtailing their own offerings.
Paige talked about evolving notions about the future of media in the field of mass communications, and she suggested some interesting considerations and developments. We talked about the special subset of the public, commenters in particular, who can provide high-quality feedback that is well thought out and that can help a writer improve her ongoing work. We discussed various needs, gaps, and potential solutions to incorporate this feedback as responsible peer review and collaborative inquiry. She cautioned that, while this innovation cannot remove the “social” from social media, comments do influence perception of the target article. There is attendant loss of control the original author has over the message delivered using social media. We may have to develop new forms of communication that perhaps look a bit more like formal collaboration in a broader community of interest, with quality control, that achieve a broader community of responsibility.
We concluded our discussion by addressing trans-media forms of dialogue between science communicators and the public. Twitter is emerging as an especially effective and accessible means of crowd-sourcing peer review or at least getting better intelligence on the meaning and impact of one’s original work. Paige concluded by emphasizing that a combination of online and offline communication (e.g., convening in shared physical spaces) will be important in mass communication with an impact, such as in social movements.
Key Terms and Concepts
quality and newsworthiness
editorial review
media literacy of the public
future of media
community of responsibility
In this episode, Gary and Nathan delve more deeply into scientific communication by exploring the role of scientific journalism and engagement of the general public in current scientific issues. Their guest is Paige Brown, an established science blogger (From The Lab Bench blog at SciLogs.com) with scientific training and a doctoral student in mass communications at Louisiana State University.
They devote the first part of the show to explaining how the work of science communicators like Paige relates to issues raised in the three prior episodes. In particular, the most relevant claim from episode 1 is that there is almost never a one-to-one correspondence between needs outside the academic community and disciplines inside the academy. The implication of this claim is that science translation and impact requires knowledge aggregation and sometimes requires individual scientists to journey across disciplinary boundaries.
The most relevant issue from episode 2 is the balancing act between internal validity (experimental control and precision) and external validity (relevance to people who aren’t scientists). Dr. Fred Diedrich, the guest in that episode, explained his two-pronged approach to this dilemma in applied science (federally-funded R&D). First, he brings scientists together with consumers of scientific research who often are not scientists themselves, essentially as co-investigators, in mutually relevant environments. Secondly, he strategically takes the long view by acquiring converging evidence across multiple investigations of different kinds.
Episode 3 began aggregating issues across prior episodes by discussing the critical importance of community in the conduct and quality of science. The essential activity of the community in science is communication and peer review that unfolds within a context of long-term relationships among scientific colleagues. The communication is, of necessity, a two-way interaction in that listening is as important as telling for any investigator who seeks advancement of knowledge and impact on a broader body of work. Listening and telling also is an important requirement of the peers with whom investigators have reciprocal influence.
In the current episode, we explore the implication that an additional channel of scientific communication may be required for science translation and collaboration between scientists and non-scientists. In this respect, Paige shares her experience, lessons learned, and emerging trends in journalism, blogging and science. The third-party reporting or reintermediation represented by Paige’s work enables collaboration in which scientists can be influenced by their lay audience as much such audiences can be influenced by scientists. The audience is not a passive recipient of the message, and the intermediary is not a passive channel for the message. They are participants in the development of new knowledge and its use and, as such, they should have inescapable accountability for such influence. Paige discusses the relevant issues in emerging forms of “participatory journalism” within and beyond science.
Key Terms and Concepts
knowledge aggregation
scientists together with consumers
converging evidence
listening is as important as telling
community
participants in the development of new knowledge
This is an example of episodes Gary and Nathan will intersperse strategically for knowledge integration across other episodes, to make connections among topics discussed with various guests, and to highlight important themes across these topics. In this episode, they focus on the theme of community in science to make connections between their interview with Fred Diedrich and future episodes that will address quality in science.
In a prior episode, Dr. Diedrich emphasized the necessity and difficulty of balancing internal and external validity (e.g., rigorousness and relevance) in field-based research. He shared the lessons he learned about balancing these quality criteria over time and multiple investigations in a variety of settings. In the current episode Gary talks with Nathan about the role the broader scientific community has in this strategic balancing act.
Gary discusses how the emergence of scientific quality can be understood in terms of the sociology and philosophy of science as well as in the broader programmatic reflections and strategic plans of the scientists involved in particular lines of investigation. He points out that, while such reflections on science can be quite esoteric, they also have very practical relevance and manifestations to which nonscientists can make substantive contributions. As an example of the latter, he highlights the landmark decision of the U.S. Supreme Court in the case of Daubert v. Merrell Dow Pharmaceuticals (92-102), 509 U.S. 579 (1993) .
Two aspects of peer review are critical in assessing scientific expertise in the law. One is whether the scientific evidence cited by experts in the courtroom has been reviewed favorably by peers in the scientific community. The other is whether the body of work by the expert is recognized and vetted in a scientific community of practice. Gary summarizes the criteria that are important in such broader notions of peer review in a scientific community over time: (1) dialectic by which claims are nonobvious and can be refuted in principle based on validity of assumptions, (2) falsifiability by which it must be possible in principle to acquire evidence that show that claims are false, (3) utility by which the research has a defined real world use such as in engineering, (4) generativity by which particular research stimulates creativity and insight beyond its own claims and evidence, and (5) generalizability enabled by sufficiency of description of both the attendant equivalence and variation.
The episode concludes with some examples that Gary provides from his own experience with scientific communities of practice in which both field research and laboratory research are utilized in balancing internal and external validity with attention to criteria for quality in scientific research. Nathan and Gary preview future episodes in which their guests will discuss such research issues.
Key Terms and Concepts
sociology and philosophy of science
dialectic
falsifiability
utility
generativity
generalizability
The audio file for this episode is no longer available.
Our first guest on Science in the Wild was Fred Diedrich, Ph.D., President of Aptima Inc., an R&D firm primarily serving the U.S. Department of Defense in problems for which technological shortcomings and human needs overlap and for which the capabilities of technology and people can combine for highly innovative and efficacious solutions. We are proud to note that we were the first to interview Fred after his promotion to President.
Fred and Gary started at Exponent in 1999, as their first post-doctoral experience in the commercial sector. They shared experiences about the pivot from academe at that time and ever since. The customers of Exponent expected first-tier scientific and technical expertise. In general, Exponent bills hourly for these services, thus Fred and Gary had to adjust to a professional environment in which there was inescapable accountability for everything they did, not just outcomes. They continuously had to be mindful of the value of their work to customers who generally where not scientists and with whom they were expected to interact on a regular basis. This was extraordinarily difficult and transformational.
When Fred left Exponent to join Aptima, he utilized the sensibilities of a consulting environment to influence the continuous development of Aptima’s culture and climate that are among its most important differentiators in the DoD marketspace. As Chief Operating Officer, Fred’s influence was significant in developing scientific talent for close collaboration with customers and stakeholders who often are men and women in uniform and not scientists. In our conversation with Fred, he was quick to point out that he gained as at least as much from his sponsorship of young scientists as they did. Here are some of the topics we discussed in what we hope is just the first of many conversations with Fred and his colleagues.
In today’s education landscape, going to grad school is the norm. Many Ph.D. candidates in particular look to find a position in academia after they complete their programs. But, with the sector saturated with highly qualified candidates, and it is not a guarantee for even some of the most accomplished graduates. Another option is to transition into business. Surprisingly, this may be an excellent opportunity for continuing development as a scholar.
During his first year in a doctoral program in Cognitive Science, Fred received a wake up call that hard work in graduate school often doesn’t lead to a career in academe. He and 14 fellow graduate students were told, “Out of the 15 of you, you’ll be lucky if two of you will become professors. You have to compete hard.” It was a significant emotional event that remains a strong memory for them. Fred talked with us about how, through circuitous routes, he was able to find other areas to utilize his talents and skills, but it begs the question: if universities know most of their students will not be going on to academic positions, why are there so few programs that train them for alternatives?
Fred offers some great insight for anyone who is in graduate school and is thinking of veering off into business. He learned that strong technical skills are not enough. To be successful you need to know how to (1) manage, (2) develop business and relationships, and (3) be comfortable and effective under less-than-ideal conditions for scientific investigations. There are extraordinarily difficult tradeoffs between methodological reliability and validity or relevance to a nonscientist. This is uncomfortable at first, but eventually you realize that there can be benefits to struggling with this tradeoff in ambiguous and uncertain environments. Innovation emerging from the field complements laboratory research, and it can be quite useful to the laboratory research of other scientists.
One lesson Fred emphasized was that messy conditions that one encounters in the field expedite an appreciation for converging evidence over time, across experiments in a variety of settings and utilizing a variety of methodologies. The relative large number of alternative explanations in field research can be winnowed down systematically by replications of the most important findings under diverse conditions. Fred also emphasized the importance of “ethnographic sensibilities” that educate the attention of the field researcher to nuances of meaning and relevance of an investigation to the participants and stakeholders.
Toward the end of their conversation with Fred, Nathan and Gary explored some considerations for the evolution of graduate education to prepare students for diverse paths of impact as scientists. Nathan and Gary will explore this topic in future programs because they believe it can be important in drawing more young students in Science, Technology, Engineering, and Math and in making STEM education more effective in business and more valuable in the U.S. economy.
Fred earned his PhD in cognitive science and M.S. in experimental psychology from Brown, and a B.A. in psychology from Hamilton College. Fred works out of Aptima’s office in Woburn MA.
Key Terms and Concepts
value to consumers
collaboration with customers and stakeholders
sponsorship
scholar
technical skills
reliability and validity
ethnographic sensibilities
STEM education
Today, more than ever, scrutiny is placed on the education you get in university and its payoff when you go into the workforce. If you get your degree in math, it is a natural assumption that you will get a job dealing with math. That’s why some of you were unsure about the value of your first two years in college, taking all of those general education courses, trying to figure out what you wanted to lock yourself into, you thought, for the rest of your life! Right?
In this inaugural episode of Science In The Wild, hosts Dr. Gary Riccio and Nathan Roman discuss their experiences in science and academe and how they have made the transition into non-academic settings.
Gary earned his Bachelors degree in electrical engineering and neurobiology from Cornell University because he was interested in prosthetic devices for people with sensory impairments such as deafness. In his exposure to the science and technology utilized in the development of conventional hearing aids, he learned about the power of engineering models and analyses of biological systems. He also came to understand the limits of such knowledge with respect to the experience of real people in real environments, individuals with disabilities in particular.
The scientific boundaries that Gary had to cross to understanding the use of hearing aids in naturalistic settings required a pivot into experimental psychology for his Doctoral training and education. Gary discusses this example as the rule rather than the exception when coming to the sciences from a well-defined need. There is almost never a one-to-one correspondence between consumer demand and scientific supply. Gary and Nathan thus spend some time talking about the implication that scientific aggregators generally play a disproportionately valuable role in conducting science in the wild.
Nathan’s experience also is filled with a diversity of experiences that called upon his ability to adapt and similarly to pivot early in his scientific career. After earning his first Masters degree in sport psychology, Nathan moved to Arizona to work for a non-profit, then the State Legislature, and lastly a for-profit online university (no, not that one) before moving east to work on another Masters degree in experimental psychology. It was during his time in Arizona that he realized he wanted to use the critical thinking skills, gained from his scientific education, in the “real world” setting of business. That interest and ability has enabled him to make his most recent pivot into a startup environment, here at the UR Business Network.
Gary and Nathan touch on various aspects of science, academe, and even sports to introduce the ethos of the show. “How does collaborative engagement affect learning?” “What does a holistic approach to sport or health care look like, and what benefits does it provide beyond being specialized?” These are just some of the questions that are addressed in the extemporaneous conversation.
Even as we write this summary, we already have received feedback from Arizona to Massachusetts on an informal release of the content. We will feature such comments in our future shows, and we expect that some of these participants may become guests on our show especially if these are people we hadn’t known prior to their comments.
Key Terms and Concepts
scientific supply and demand
experience of real people in real environments
scientific aggregators
collaborative engagement
holistic approach
As a partner or as a consultant, I deliver value by identifying, aggregating, and developing previously undervalued scientific and technical assets--people and systems, internal and external, public and private--for exceptional impact.
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