Opening Session: When Science Becomes Your Beat

Speaker: Sue Halpern, Author, Can’t Remember What I Forgot: The Good News from the Front Lines on Memory Research. Scholar in residence, Middlebury College

Haplern was a science writer at Columbia, and was required to go on rounds. (“As a voyeur, I mean reporter.”) She soon learned the hallway discussions were more interesting and revealing than being in a patient's room.

She came to see a patient’s history as its own story, with beginning, middle, drama, heroes and villains.
There’s something really simple that most of us don’t think about: there are stories everywhere, waiting to be told, even in science. Of course you wouldn’t necessarily know that by the way science is taught. It is often alienating. It’s taught in a way that is stripped of narrative, and based on memorization and facts, and it ruins science for most people.

Science is really about the QUEST for facts, not just the facts. Science has movement and characters.

2 of 5 of Halpern’s books are about science – both are narrative. In "Four Wings and a Prayer," Halpern follows “monarch butterfly groupies” who are obsessed with monarch butterflies. Halpern was interested in monarch migration, but wrote the story of the people who follow the butterflies. The science is woven in and serves the story. In turn, the story serves the science.

Science has an inherent story built into it, we just have to find it.

About a year into reporting for her memory book, Halpern realized she was in the middle of scientists discovering the 2nd known risk factor for Alzheimer’s. New Yorker editor told her she had to find the story around that discovery.

Both of her science books started with a question. Why is it that so many monarch butterflies are appearing in my driveway every September, and then all of a sudden they’re gone? Where did they come from? Memory book question: Sue’s father was in his early 70s and getting progressively more confused, which made him angry. The doctor said he didn't have Alzheimer's. So her question was: If this isn’t Alzheimer's disease, then what is it? Is this normal? Is this what we’ll all be like when we get older? What’s the difference between normal memory loss and pathological memory loss? Those these were simple questions, the scientists themselves were perplexed.

The first day Halpern interviewed neurologist Scott Small, she knew he would be the hero of her book because of his research. She felt like he was telling her that science is a series of competing stories, and one eventually wins out. He had his story, and the guy down the hall had his story.

For about a year, she asked “fairly dumb questions” and read and read and read. Ultimately she could have a conversation with those guys that was as sophisticated as what they would say to each other. Then her job with the book was to translate it.

She became so entrenched with the researchers that people forgot she wasn’t on staff and asked her to take people’s pulse and administer neuro-psych tests! To get an even better understanding, she decided to become a research subject herself, had her brain scanned 6 times, took neuro-psych tests, drank “gallons of green tea and ate buckets of blueberries.”

That allowed her to experience how research actually works. "For better or for worse," she put herself in the story.

Q&A
Were there any mistakes you learned from? Not realizing the scientist might be using me to further their agenda. Got caught between 2 dueling scientists once. Naively thought it was one big happy science family. But really it was the jets and the sharks, each trying to discredit the other group. Had to learn who was telling the truth and who was spinning.

What if you’re working with a faculty member who only gives you one hour and a few follow-up questions via e-mail? Halpern tells story of a 1.5 hour interview she was supposed to have with Maria Shriver. Shriver forgot, called the next day and spoke to her for 12 minutes on her way to meet Barack Obama. She called again later and gave her 3 minutes. So she then had 14 minutes of interview on tape and had to fashion an interview out of that. "We’re actually lucky because faculty are sitting ducks." We can sit in on lecture, read their papers, go out to lunch, let a story idea cultivate and develop all year long.

Researching and Writing Tips

• Have a healthy dose of skepticism. Reporters often won’t doubt what the scientist is saying just because they know more.
• Learn the language.
• Substitute simple words for ultra-scientific ones to help yourself wrap your brain around the concept. (e.g. "The car is key to memory because..." rather than "Your hippocampus is key to memory because...")
• Go to the front lines – Sue was in the field, observing brain autopsies, looking over brain scans, visiting pharmaceutical labs and reading hundreds of scientific articles.
• Create drama, humor. Don't be afraid to include humor.
• Don't be intimidated! She found the scientists to be incredibly welcoming. They didn’t come to the table assuming she didn’t understand what they were trying to do. They seemed grateful that anyone was knocking on their door.

Side project - "How Did You Get Here?"
Sue started a project at Middlebury called “How Did You Get Here?” because she met students from truly diverse backgrounds and she wanted to create an audio archive of their stories. Decided to have students ask the question and decide who to interview. Did some basic interviewing and audio training. They found a student to compose music for the pieces. Went through several rounds of editing and feedback, hours in the media lab. They're playing on college radio station, posting on magazine web site. Could be useful as a recruiting or advancement tool, but they weren’t edited with that in mind. This is a huge amount of material about the college that might have otherwise been lost. 

It inspired one student to do radio journalism all over the world, collecting stories of people who live on islands.

She played a clip of a student who had lived in a homeless shelter and her parents were on welfare. Had never even hear of Middlebury, applied for a scholarship and put Middlebury as her third choice. When interviewed, she said she got interested in Middlebury “by accident.” Was accepted, full scholarship. Changed her life. She has worked so hard so that she never has to go to a homeless shelter ever again, and no one in her family ever has to go to a homeless shelter. Wants to put her mom through college.

Very moving - I think everyone in the room had tears in their eyes!