Episode Summary

With dubious news articles clogging the internet it can be difficult to know where to find information you can trust and that’s where the Nerdy Girls come in. A group of ten (and growing) female public health experts, including guests of The Sydcast Alison Buttenheim and Lindsey Leininger, came together to provide evidence-based information on the COVID-19 pandemic to the public. Using their “Dear Pandemic” social media profiles, the Nerdy Girls have gone viral for their fact-based answers to everybody’s questions about everything COVID. Prepare to feel better informed after this episode of The Sydcast.

Syd Finkelstein 

Syd Finkelstein is the Steven Roth Professor of Management at the Tuck School of Business at Dartmouth College. He holds a Masters degree from the London School of Economics and a Ph.D. from Columbia University. Professor Finkelstein has published 25 books and 90 articles, including the bestsellers Why Smart Executives Fail and Superbosses: How Exceptional Leaders Master the Flow of Talent, which LinkedIn Chairman Reid Hoffman calls the “leadership guide for the Networked Age.” He is also a Fellow of the Academy of Management, a consultant and speaker to leading companies around the world, and a top 25 on the global Thinkers 50 list of top management gurus. Professor Finkelstein’s research and consulting work often relies on in-depth and personal interviews with hundreds of people, an experience that led him to create and host his own podcast, The Sydcast, to uncover and share the stories of all sorts of fascinating people in business, sports, entertainment, politics, academia, and everyday life. 

Alison M. Buttenheim, PhD

Alison M. Buttenheim wants to understand how people make decisions about their health and focuses her research on the use of behavioral economics to increase the uptake of evidence-based care. Her work ranges from how households in Peru decide whether to apply insecticide to eliminate a disease-carrying insect to why parents in the United States request exemptions from child immunization laws. 

• Patricia Bleznak Silverstein and the Howard A. Silverstein Term Endowed Professorship in Global Women’s Health 
• Assistant Professor of Health Policy, Perelman School of Medicine
• Senior Fellow, Leonard Davis Institute of Health Economics
• Associate Director, Center for Health Incentives and Behavioral Economics
• Associate Director, National Clinician Scholars Program

Lindsey Leininger, PhD

Lindsey Leininger is a health services researcher who specializes in the health care experiences of vulnerable populations. Prior to joining Tuck, she spent a decade designing and managing advanced analytics projects supporting the Medicaid program. She pursued this work in both academic and non-academic settings, most recently as an associate director and senior researcher at Mathematica Policy Research. She has a longstanding interest in teaching and translating quantitative methods to professionals, and has taught and trained physicians, policy makers, and health care administrators.

• Clinical Professor of Business Administration, Tuck School of Business, Dartmouth College
• Adjunct Professor of The Dartmouth Institute

Insights from this episode:

• Benefits of using communication that is understandable by the general population to provide scientific information on a complicated subject to reach a broader audience.
• Details on the origin of the Nerdy Girls, how they curate and validate information, and how they are evolving.
• Strategies behind using social media to reach different audiences and age groups to disseminate accurate information.
• Secrets we can learn from how the 1918 flu pandemic was managed that can still help today.
• How to reduce your risk of becoming infected using “personal harm reduction” methods such as forming “pods.”
• Differences between Sweden’s approach to handling the COVID-19 pandemic versus the rest of the world.
• Benefits of wearing masks now more information has become available that highlights their efficacy.

Quotes from the show:

• On science communication: “I come with a lot of empathy towards scientists because their institutional rewards are not based on translation. They get rewarded for the grants that they get and the scientific publications that they write. I think it’s hard to expect scientists to be providing this service when their institutions don’t reward it.” – Lindsey Leininger
• On how COVID-19 is motivating scientists: “I really think there are a lot of people who are getting off the bench and into the game right now.” – Lindsey Leininger
• On using social media: ”I would say the climate change folks are actually ahead of the curve … on understanding the science, not just communicating science, but the science of communicating science.” – Alison M. Buttenheim
• On changing scientific terminology: “How you frame something is so important and climate change is a much, much more neutral name for something, global warming, it’s pretty clear what’s going on.” – Syd Finkelstein
• On comparing COVID-19 to the 1918 flu pandemic: “I think the context in which we’re living is different enough that it’s not unreasonable to be hopeful that we’ll have a better outcome.” – Lindsey Leininger
• On comparing COVID-19 to the 1918 flu pandemic: “The other interesting parallel is that there was fake news in 1918. It was just a lot slower.” – Alison M. Buttenheim
• On how to balance risk going forward: “That’s going to be the name of the game for summer is people figuring out their comfort level.” – Alison M. Buttenheim
• “It’s not that the mask is not going to help you, it’s your management of that mask that will reduce the odds that it’s going to help you. The mask itself is going to do a good job.” – Syd Finkelstein
• “I think the fight’s actually on three fronts. I think it’s on the vaccine front. I think it’s on the clinical protocol front, and it’s on the treatment front.” – Lindsey Leininger
• “I am hopeful. I really am hopeful on a vaccine and we have the best minds in the world working on this with a lot of resources.” – Lindsey Leininger

Stay Connected:

Syd Finkelstein

Website: http://thesydcast.com

LinkedIn: Sydney Finkelstein

Twitter: @sydfinkelstein

Facebook: The Sydcast

Instagram: The Sydcast

The Nerdy Girls

Facebook: Dear Pandemic

Twitter: @Dear Pandemic

Instagram: @Dear_Pandemic

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This episode was produced and managed by Podcast Laundry (www.podcastlaundry.com)