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Lessons learned from Christmas lectures

2016; Elsevier BV; Volume: 15; Issue: 9 Linguagem: Inglês

10.1016/s1474-4422(16)00008-9

1474-4465

Peter Ranscombe,

Family and Patient Care in Intensive Care Units

For most people, Christmas is a season for giving, sharing, and spending time with family and friends. For many scientists, Christmas is also the season for delivering public lectures and two recent events in Edinburgh, UK, illustrated some techniques speakers can use to engage audiences. Professor Craig Ritchie (Chair of the Psychiatry of Ageing, University of Edinburgh) delivered the Alzheimer Scotland Christmas Lecture at The Hub on Dec 3, 2015, and Professor David Porteous (Chair of Human Molecular Genetics and Medicine, University of Edinburgh) gave the festive address for Edinburgh Neuroscience, a collection of research groups that engages with the public, on Dec 10, 2015. Some 320 people gathered to hear Alzheimer Scotland's second Christmas lecture, building on the 280 who attended Baroness Susan Greenfield's speech a year earlier. Humour played an important role in Ritchie's lecture. After being introduced by Alzheimer Scotland chief executive Henry Simmons, Ritchie explained how Simmons had referred to him as a tornado during the recent opening of Edinburgh's Centre for Dementia Prevention. “I thought that was fantastic—tornadoes are powerful, forceful, influential, and have a high impact”, laughed Ritchie. “But then my wife pointed out it also meant I was noisy and disruptive.” The joke put the large audience at ease and set the tone for the session. Using humour—even with a serious topic like dementia—can help the speaker establish a rapport with a crowd. Ritchie began his talk, entitled Prevention: keeping it real, by defining his aim—to convince the audience that dementia is preventable—and stating for how long he would speak. Both are important steps to tell spectators what to expect and how long they will need to sit, especially for those with medical conditions. Audience participation was another method Ritchie used. He asked the audience to vote on whether certain factors had a strong or weak relation with dementia or were simply fantasy. He categorised age, family history, and gender as strong risks, with vitamin D and learning to play a musical instrument as having a weak relation with dementia. He surprised many by placing aluminium pans in the fantasy category, highlighting the need for scientists to communicate clearly with the media, so the media in turn could communicate clearly with the public. Ritchie used humour again by referring to the minion characters from the Despicable Me films. He explained that, although the yellow creatures all looked similar, by use of stratified medicine, doctors would be able to investigate the risk factors for individuals. He drew comparison with large-scale studies, such as the Innovative Medicines Initiative's European Prevention of Alzheimer's Dementia consortium, which could provide information needed to identify those at risk and speed up drug development. “Science is the easy bit,” Ritchie concluded, pointing out that the public needed to lobby policymakers for increased dementia research funding. Around 100 people attended Porteous' lecture in the more modern and intimate new Institute for Genetics and Molecular Medicine building at the Western General Hospital, Edinburgh. Porteous also began by defining the length and scope of his talk Rethinking mental illness: broken genes that break convention, although the topic did not lend itself to audience participation. Porteous highlighted the stigma that still exists around mental health and drew comparison with cancer in the 1970s before US President Richard Nixon launched his so-called war on cancer; most people are now prepared to talk about cancer because it is treatable. He contrasted UK Government spending on cancer (£1571 per person) with that of mental health (just £9·75 per person). While every £1 spent by the UK Government was boosted by £2·75 raised by cancer charities, government spending was boosted by just three pence by mental health charities. “We need to talk more openly about mental health,” Porteous claimed, highlighting, like Ritchie, the need to lobby policymakers. Just as Ritchie used the minions, Porteous used popular-culture references to Norwegian artist Edvard Munch's paintings The Scream, Anxiety, and Melancholy to illustrate schizophrenia, bipolar disorder, and major depressive disorder, which were the main topics of his talk. He, too, discussed the benefits of population-scale studies, such as Generation Scotland, which led his team to identify the DISC1 gene they believe is involved in mental health. Porteous also showed the next step for his research, through the Stratifying Resilience and Depression Longitudinally study, which is recruiting 3000 participants to have their brains scanned and mental health disease risks identified. Porteous' talk was Edinburgh Neuroscience's tenth Christmas lecture. Since 2009, the group has posted videos of the events on its website; high-quality recordings are a useful way to engage the public beyond the location in which a lecture is staged. By clearly defining the scope and timing of their talks and using techniques such as humour, audience participation, and popular-culture references, both Ritchie and Porteous delivered engaging lectures. Their speeches explained the current stage of research into dementia and mental health and illustrated the role population-scale studies and stratified medicine will have in developing treatments and promoting disease prevention. This online publication has been corrected. The corrected version first appeared at thelancet.com/neurology on February 3, 2016 This online publication has been corrected. The corrected version first appeared at thelancet.com/neurology on February 3, 2016 CorrectionsRanscombe P. Lessons learned from Christmas lectures. Lancet Neurol 2016; http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/S1474-4422(16)00008-9—The amount of UK Government spending on mental health should be £9·75. This correction has been made to the online version as of Feb 1, 2016. Full-Text PDF CorrectionsRanscombe P. Lessons learned from Christmas lectures. Lancet Neurol 2016; http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/S1474-4422(16)00008-9—The amount boosted by cancer research charities per £1 of government spending should be £2·75. This correction has been made to the online version as of Feb 3, 2016. Full-Text PDF