Is it because they look like this?

While putting together a report from a public involvement event, a colleague lamented that the photos were so boring. The camera couldn’t capture the energy and enthusiasm in the room. I wondered if the audio would have been more interesting…

As Duncan and I discuss in our recent article, involvement in research might be best described as a conversation between researchers and the public. It’s what gets said and who learns from it that matters. Thinking about involvement this way leads to different ideas about how to prepare for it, evaluate it and report what happened.

A more accurate picture of what’s actually going on might look like this: