I direct the Humane and Sustainable Food Lab at Stanford University. You can give me feedback anonymously.
Thanks for sharing this candid account of your journey, Seth! How fortunate for the HSF Lab that your path landed you with us. Even though the trip was roundabout, it gave you a breadth and depth of skills, and worldliness, that doesn't come rolled up inside a PhD diploma.
Start by doing work you're invested in, that you're proud of, and people may notice.
This is fantastic advice.
There's this in the abstract:
"Average weekly unit sales of plant-based products increased significantly (57 %) during the intervention period (incidence rate ratio (IRR) 1·52 (95 % CI1·51, 1·55)). Plant-based product sales decreased post-intervention but remained 15 % higher than pre-intervention (IRR 1·13 (95 % CI 1·12, 1·14)). There was no significant change in meat sales according to time period. The increase in plant-based product sales was greatest at superstores (58 %), especially those located in below average affluence areas (64 %)."
I think this is pretty bad news, actually.
Here we have an intervention that apparently increases sales of plant-based products by 57% and yet does not decrease sales of meat products at all. Unfortunately, this corroborates a growing body of evidence suggesting that plant-based products often fail to displace meat products, even when they gain their own (orthogonal) market share.
As an aside, even with the effects on plant-based products, it's also hard to attribute causation to Veganuary specifically, since it always occurs during a month that we know is associated with unusual recurring "shocks" (e.g., the end of holiday dinner parties; the beginning of New Year's resolutions).
Have you considered having an open, competitive process to submit talk abstracts, similarly to academic conferences?