Neil Andrews, MS, MA, is executive editor of the Pain Research Forum and its companion website for the public, RELIEF. He is a veteran science writer, journalist, and editor, having produced and edited news articles, feature stories, podcasts, interviews, and more, covering a range of topics in the biomedical arena. Andrews also leads the PRF Correspondents program, a science communications program for early-career pain researchers. At the fourth North American Pain School, which took place June 23-28, 2019, in Montebello, Canada, Andrews took time to talk with Tayler Sheahan, a postdoctoral fellow at the University of Pittsburgh, US, as well as a former PRF Correspondent at the 2018 World Congress on Pain in Boston. In this interview, Andrews discusses the origins and development of PRF, his goals for PRF and RELIEF, the PRF Correspondents program, and more. Below is an edited transcript of their conversation.
How did you become involved with PRF?
Before PRF, I worked for a nonprofit scientific society that published a website very similar to PRF, only the focus was on skeletal biology and osteoporosis. Like PRF, it was a site for researchers that provided news, features, and interviews; hosted webinars; and had a literature review feature akin to the PRF Papers of the Week.
After working with that society for a long while, I saw a job posting at Harvard Medical School, PRF’s original home before we became part of IASP in 2017, for a co-executive editor position at PRF. I was co-executive editor with Pat McCaffrey, who was the founding executive editor of PRF, for a couple of years and then, after she decided to move on from that role, I was promoted to sole executive editor. Skeletal biology was much more interesting than I ever would have thought. But pain neuroscience? Come on, it's just so much better!
Can you explain what PRF was modeled after and what your role in its development has been?
PRF was inspired especially by a site called the Alzheimer Research Forum, known as Alzforum. PRF is very similar to Alzforum—Alzforum has news coverage, Papers of the Week, webinars, research resources, and other content—only their focus is Alzheimer's disease. So there was precedent for a website like PRF, and we aspired to be something like an Alzforum for the pain field. In terms of online forums targeted toward researchers, Alzforum has been around the longest, and they are extremely successful and influential in their field. I hope PRF can reach that level of success; we are not there yet, but we are doing very well.
PRF launched in 2011 but there was lots of work developing the site that took place before that, so I came on after all the initial hard work was finished; I joined PRF in 2012. Since then, my focus for PRF has been on developing content, especially growing the news, interviews, webinars, and Papers of the Week, for our worldwide readership of pain researchers. More recently my attention has especially been on the PRF Correspondents program, and on developing content for RELIEF. I also want to stress that I aim for PRF, as a publication of IASP, to bring as much benefit as possible to the IASP community around the globe, so that is a big current focus of mine as well.
Speaking of the Papers of the Week, how are the Editor’s Picks selected?
That’s a good question; it’s asked a lot. For an original research paper, what we're trying to do is focus on work that represents a significant advance in the pain field. One way I think about it is to ask whether we would do a news story on that paper for PRF—does it reach that level of significance? If so, it’s an Editor’s Pick. But there are often papers that we might not cover in the news that are designated Editor’s Picks nonetheless because they are still important, exciting, and, most of all, will get the PRF community talking. Also, a really beautiful, comprehensive, state-of-the-art review will often get chosen as an Editor’s Pick, as will a paper that describes, say, important new guidelines or initiatives in the pain field.
What is your overall vision for PRF?
I want PRF to be the most trusted, authoritative, and definitive source of pain research news and other content for everyone interested in pain—the gold standard. I think we've gotten there, but if not, that’s what we are constantly striving for. It’s not easy to do and maintain that, and although we make missteps along the way, that’s the goal.
As an example, if someone first reads an article about pain research in a non-PRF outlet, my hope is that the reader goes, “I really wonder what PRF thinks about this,” and then goes to PRF to find out. We are not the only word—the more outlets and people that cover pain research, the better—but the aim is to be the definitive, most trusted word. That is the vision for the site. That's what PRF focuses on.
In what ways would you like to see PRF grow?
I mentioned being the gold standard for pain research news and related content, and that's important. But our mission—to help speed the translation of new knowledge into new treatments for pain—is even more important. At PRF, we're not doing research ourselves, but rather, we’re covering the research. So how does a site like PRF advance pain research and speed translation?
There are a number of ways you can do that. A webinar is a good example. We had a webinar recently and there were such great questions from the audience that the presenter said that she was going to use those questions to help guide her research. The moderator also offered to be a collaborator, which I thought was a great thing. If a PRF activity, such as a webinar, can help guide research directions and spur collaboration, that's how PRF can advance pain research. This is where I would like to see PRF grow further, whether it’s with webinars or other types of content.
We would also like to develop new features and resources for pain researchers. Honestly, I don't always know what those should be, and that’s where feedback from the PRF community is crucial to make PRF better, since we are here to serve the research community. That’s also the case for making small improvements to our existing content. For instance, PRF now includes preprints from bioRxiv in our Papers of the Week. We also created an itch category for the Papers of the Week and have more itch papers than we used to. All the credit for that goes to a pain researcher, who suggested both of those tweaks. Growing the website based upon feedback from the PRF community of pain investigators—it doesn’t get any better than that.
Along those lines, what is your overarching goal for RELIEF?
What I want is for anyone who comes to RELIEF to be able to understand all of the content, especially people who have no background in pain or even science more generally. When we first started RELIEF, we weren't getting it right―a researcher told me that it was still way too complicated for a general reader. And so we've worked really hard to make RELIEF accessible to people without science degrees. If people can understand the content, that will help everyone participate in and elevate public discourse about pain, which will raise public awareness of pain and rally support for more research—that’s our mission at RELIEF.
Moving on to your work with the PRF Correspondents program, what do you hope will come out of it?
The goal is for early-career researchers to improve their science communication skills and be able to disseminate their knowledge of pain research much more widely—beyond the small number of pain researchers in their specific area—to reach all pain researchers and, most of all, to reach people with no background in pain research at all, especially patients, by providing content for RELIEF. I want the Correspondents to feel comfortable writing in different formats and for different types of publications beyond the scientific journal per se.
Writing for different audiences via the Correspondents program could also potentially improve a pain researcher’s career in other ways. For instance, I've heard feedback recently from a former Correspondent that the Correspondents program, by improving writing, editing, and other skills, can be very helpful for researchers when they write grants and papers, for teaching purposes, and for establishing a network with other researchers—something that can be really useful when launching a career. Honestly, I never even thought about such possibilities until I heard that feedback. It was eye opening for me to learn that the Correspondents program could be valuable in those other ways.
The other important thing is that when you're in the Correspondents program, you're really a journalist for a period of time. There's a lot of mistrust that scientists have toward journalists, but when a scientist sees what it’s like from the other side, that might help overcome some of that mistrust—that’s my theory at this point. And so maybe being a science journalist for even a brief amount of time will encourage pain researchers to be more willing to talk to a journalist in the future, since they will now know a bit about what it’s like to be in a journalist’s shoes.
Also, while there are many notable exceptions, I think it’s fair to say that most experts, including scientists, are terrible at communicating their research, especially because of jargon. There's a big language barrier. When you think about the problem of chronic pain and how large it is, to me there is no area of research more in need of experts communicating their science. That's why I’m a big fan of the Correspondents program—because we are providing communications training, and trying to overcome the language barrier is a big part of that. It would be great if we had more people effectively communicating what their pain research is all about to the public and to other investigators who aren't in their specific area of research.
What aspects of your training in science journalism do you find most important to pass on through the PRF Correspondents program?
I want the Correspondents to enjoy the program and see the best aspects of science journalism. For instance, one of the best things for me as a journalist is when I talk to a researcher and have a good interview with that person. When that happens, you have made a meaningful connection with someone. It’s just so great to have a nice, thoughtful conversation with a scientist. In terms of developing interview skills, teaching the basics is really important. For example, I emphasize asking open-ended questions rather than questions that can be answered with a simple "yes" or "no."
In terms of the writing, well, writing is painful. It requires multiple drafts, and it's not easy. Trainees probably already know this because they have to do multiple drafts of papers and grant proposals. But writing for the public or for the PRF audience also takes multiple drafts, and you’ve really got to work at it. I want trainees to get a sense of that. I also try to beat jargon out of them as much as is humanly possible. I do that all the time.
You now have a few dozen “alumni” of the PRF Correspondents program who are published on PRF and RELIEF. How has the PRF Correspondents program shaped the voice of these publications?
The Correspondents program has shaped the voice a lot. The voice we have is increasingly the voice of a younger generation of researchers because the Correspondents program, as you know as a former Correspondent, is for early-career investigators. It’s the rising stars who know the science, who are experts coming from so many different backgrounds—from cellular/molecular neurobiologists, to pain psychologists, to physical therapists, the list goes on—and getting all those different voices to contribute is great. I love that the Correspondents program gets people's names out there and has them communicate their expertise.
What advice do you have for aspiring science writers and journalists out there?
For someone who wants to go into science writing, my message would be that it's not the easiest field to find a job, but you can do it. You have a much better chance if you're open to working in different settings. It would be great to be a star reporter for The New York Times, but that’s probably hard to get. But if you're open, so many different people and settings need science writers and editors. Nonprofits, universities, research institutes, hospitals, governments, pharmaceutical and biotech companies—they all need science communicators. If you’re flexible, there are a lot of opportunities. I must add, there are also opportunities to write for PRF and RELIEF, so if people reading this interview are interested in that, they should definitely get in touch with me.
Tayler Sheahan, PhD, is a postdoctoral scholar at the University of Pittsburgh, US.