As scientists, most of us keep our heads down for years, maybe we publish a few papers, present at conferences (like AAPS) but do not expect any recognition of our work beyond that. So, what do you do if all of a sudden, your work goes viral, and you are inundated with requests from the media? The following are some recommendations based on my own recent experience.
Viral Paper
In 2021 I was invited to present at a scientific conference (Spiez Convergence) that specializes in how technology can be misused. In our case we demonstrated how the AI software we were using for drug discovery could also be used to design chemical weapons. This gained some attention at this small meeting and resulted in us writing up the work with a couple of experts in technology dual use and submitting it for publication. After over 5 months the work was published in March 2022 [1]. The first I knew it was published was a week or so later when I saw an article on a blog (In the Pipeline - https://www.science.org/content/blog-post/deliberately-optimizing-harm). That kickstarted the article going viral, as the same day I had journalists reach out to interview me or set up interviews. It has been an interesting year and half since, which is perhaps an understatement as you will see.
This was all quite a departure from my normal job because by that point I had been writing and publishing papers since 1995 and in that time none of them had gained any attention like this. I had not had any media training so I had to do the best I could as the situation developed. I also came in for a fair bit of Twitter and LinkedIn attention. Of course, if you are a private person and not interested in anyone knowing anything about you or your work, this would be the last thing you would want to happen. You do have some degree of control though as you can decline these requests or arrange them to fit your schedule. For example, you can propose when to talk or not to talk to journalists.
Answering their questions honestly, whether by email or in real time is obviously the best policy. Some interviewers will send you their questions ahead of time, others will record you. If you want you could also record yourself in case you are unhappy about being misquoted in the future. Zoom interviews seem to be quite common and convenient and this presents you with an easy way to record them as well. Journalists may also send the article as a courtesy to check quotes afterwards. Another exciting opportunity arose as I was invited to record podcasts and radio interviews by different groups. Most of these were obtained via computer while in one case I was able to go to an NPR studio while in Philadelphia and be recorded for RadioLab, which was quite an experience. Having a professional quality microphone makes all the difference and you can tell when you listen to the interview because of the clarity.
You may also get interest from local TV stations. For me this only happened very recently. In this case an interviewer reached out to see if I would be interested in being interviewed, then we set up a time for them to visit the lab with cameraman in tow. They recorded for about an hour or so after scouting locations. Fortunately, we had a conference room in our incubator space which was a reasonably quiet location to be recorded and interviewed. It definitely helps to have somewhere you can go where you will have a good sound and it looks professional. At this point it is probably also worth mentioning that wearing business-like clothes is a good idea too. Being interviewed for TV is like being interviewed in any other context except it will get edited to a minute or two to fit into a broadcast. You may think few people watch TV anymore, but even my neighbor was surprised to see me on TV! Occasionally such programs may also compile their news at weekends and rebroadcast those interviews from earlier in the week so more people can see it then.
Within a couple of weeks of our article going viral I was approached by a producer who was interested in interviewing us for a documentary. This was much more involved than the interviews. For this we had to sign a contract with the production company. They scouted locations on the university campus where our incubator space is and had to get permissions to film there for a day. Ultimately, they filmed us in the lab, and they had a full production team of lighting, cameraman, various runners etc. We were also filmed in the University library on campus in a room they had spent hours setting up. A month or so later I was flown to Boston to be interviewed for a podcast which was also filmed. Then a month later I was filmed again for a day while on location at the Hague for a presentation to the OPCW. They had a production crew on location there as well and it turned into a long 12h day of shooting in many different locations around the Hague. I thought this would have been enough filming but by September 2022 they were back to film us on campus for 3 days including a day of filming at my house and using drones for overhead shots, as well as filming while driving. So, by this point we had been filmed for 6 days in different locations. The film then went into production and the next we know the documentary was released on Netflix in July 2023 and is called Unknown: Killer Robots. Of course, while we were filming, we had no idea what else was going to be in the film, along with about 10 minutes of our filming there were many other interviews. So be prepared for 99.99% of the filming you do to go unused. In readiness for the film release I was involved in a media interview that was organized by the film production company and was pre-approved by them. This was with the New York Post. This interview went smoothly and was chaperoned by a representative from the production company. The newspaper article also turned out to be a fair representation of our discussion. I would have preferred a more highbrow newspaper, but you really do not have much say in who will pick up things like this.
Why would you possibly want to participate in any of these publicity-raising events? There are several motivations. One is to put your science out there, as too often scientists are derided as poor communicators, unable or unwilling to share their science with the public. You do not need to be a science celebrity to be able to do this in a way that is both authentic and gets the message across. Another reason is to get visibility for what you do to raise awareness of your group, company, or team. I am not sure that being on the radio, TV or in newspapers is the same as a scientific publication citation but it is certainly something you can add to your CV.
What was interesting in our case was that we were raising issues around generative AI, long before the likes of ChatGPT have caused even more controversy. Our publication and the subsequent press helped bring it to the attention of various members of congress and it became a part of their justification to hold discussions on whether AI should be regulated. All of this stemmed from an innocuous invitation to a scientific conference.
Here are my tips:
- Always check that the interviewer is legitimate (whether for a newspaper, TV, podcast etc.) and from a news source that you are comfortable with being mentioned on.
- If it does not work for you just decline it promptly as they may be on a deadline so they can interview others. Alternatively suggest one of your colleagues if they would be willing to do it instead.
- If you can ensure that when you are recorded you have somewhere where you are comfortable, that will help you focus on the questions.
- If the interview is by Zoom, ensure you have a good microphone / headphones.
- I prefer email interviews where you are asked the questions and can just respond with an answer. This is a very low stress way to do an interview.
- If you are filmed for a documentary, you may have a contract or release to sign. It is important you read this carefully and if you do not agree to it send it back for edits. Once you have signed it you have to stick to it.
- When you are on camera make sure that you are ‘you’ and not some other persona. This is real life; you are not acting so just be your normal self. Be authentic.
- Answer questions truthfully, if you do not have an answer, just decline. Remember they will edit the film later to make it seamless. They may just use your audio over stock footage or film of the lab etc.
- News makes its way around the world so be prepared for interviews from outside your own country. These may of course be in different languages as well.
- Make sure that you leverage any of the media attention, such as post it on your social media channels in my case that’s LinkedIn. Track your media attention (I add it to my company website) and highlight it in your CV and NIH Biosketch.
References
[1] Urbina F, Lentzos F, Invernizzi C, Ekins S. Dual Use of Artificial Intelligence-powered Drug Discovery. Nat Mach Intell 2022;4:189-191. doi: 10.1038/s42256-022-00465-9