This week, graduate students in my course are learning how to write about science for the non-expert public.
For those of you who do this professionally, what tips would you offer?
The inverted information hierarchy is important! Scientists think a certain way because we've been trained to - the interested non-scientist absorbs information differently.
I cap myself at one (maaaybe two if they directly contrast) new pieces of terminology per article/chapter/podcast episode, which should be:
a) the term that is the crux of the whole topic, not incidental background jargon
b) concept/meaning/motivation FIRST, technical term for it AFTER
Concept first, jargon second is from a biology pedagogy study but I refer to it constantly doing scicomm for linguistics
(Note that acronyms and symbols also count as jargon)
pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/26537537/
Oh, also, a lot of academics think they have to do scicomm on their own cutting edge research, when it is often more useful/effective to do scicomm on more foundational concepts/other people's research/a broader and more practical topic than a single narrow research paper
As a frustrated reader of a lot of science communication, thank you. âHere is one interesting paperâ scicomm is only very rarely good journalism, no matter who does it. The unit of science publication is not shaped the same as the unit of newsworthiness, compelling narrative, or lay digestibility.
FWIW, science journalism isnât science communication. Youâre totally right that âlook at this whiz bang thing!â isnât usually effective SciComm!
Deleting a snippy reply that I regret and replacing it with this: Yes, youâre right. But the virtues of good journalism and the virtues of good scicomm (at least the ones I want to highlight) happen to overlap in this situation.
Every time they use a technical term immediately eliminate that term and replace it with a simple description of what the term means. They need to think of themselves as translators turning a foreign language into English.
Erin is exactly right on this. I got that feedback from my features editor 28 years ago, and applied it to nearly anything I wrote.
I realize that "features editor" is a term from the Long Ago, but this was a person who made your work understandable, not SEO tuned...
Doing exactly this (iteratively) has led me to describe my work as "poking cold, salty, wet critters and seeing what they do" ... it usually results in a chuckle but there might be a point where this process is no longer helpfulđ
Audience and no jargon are key. For a general audience, pick someone you know and have them be the person youâre writing to. A grandparent, friend, neighbor, etc. How would you explain it to them? Write with them in mind. If you canât explain it without jargon, do you really understand it?
Spell out all non-layperson terms* with the first use, then the acronym in brackets after it (if relevant), followed by a short explanation of what it means after that, if relevant. After that, the acronym can usually be used.
*Don't assume a layperson will understand anything that you do
I remember in my incomplete time in grad school for Chem trying to describe my undergrad work on adding functional groups to silicate sheet minerals to try and reinforce elastomers, and even among a crowd of people going for PhDs it needed a lot of establishing the basics of what that shit meant
As much as I hated my time working in the insurance industry, it beat a core skill into me of being clear about complexity and terminology. Especially given the number of times that the same acronyms referred to different things within the same company, and sometimes in the same department. đŤ
I got that education partly through grad school, but more intensely from a decade+ at a company big enough they have an online internal glossary of company acronyms and having to explain to groups we collaborate with how to format spreadsheets with DOIs so I can automate some of my work slightly
Assume every adult has an 8th grade level understanding of everything.
I worked at three different science museums after undergrad and itâs amazing how little high school science sticks. They might have a vague recollection of some of the words from high school, but not a solid understanding.
Just watch Republicans in Congress talk about âscienceâ. They dont have the grasp of a first grader let alone eighth. They compensate with arrogance and dismissive nonsense.
Sorry, what? Am I supposed to make non-political remarks only, to museum staff? Would you like me to show you a few clips of the Republicans on the Sci and Tech Committee to prove my point? They would be hilarious if they werenât absolutely contemptible and embarrassing to America.
I asked people who are professional science writers to offer professional advice to my students, and you're making unrelated political rants, and do not seem to realize that this is weird behavior.
Please stop or I will block you.
I'm always a medical oddity. 2 rare cancers. My blood type has a rare subtype so the tests show me as + or - depending on the test, etc. If I could never hear I've never seen this before... So I started reading medical journals. Had to learn, but I've learned self taught is unusual too.
Had a locally aggressive tumor on the arch of my foot. Surgeon the insurance Co paired me with had no experience. Wanted to just cut it off. I said it needed a wide excision w/clear margins. He went to do research & agreed. Not sure I'd get that now.
My course does this twice - one is a report to the City of Vancouver, and one is a letter to restaurant or grocery store explaining if their fish was mislabeled. #1 rule I give is target your specific audience. Adult non-experts? Kids? Stake holders?
One common pitfall I see is trying to explain way too much all at once. Take your first draft, see if there are actually 2-3 topics in there, and then pick just one to focus on.
Also, Joe Palca made a fun video about using vocabulary appropriate to your audience: youtu.be/G_pNZXLAO8s?...
Donât assume something is âcommon knowledge.â Experts often forget that what is foundational to them is unknown to the reader.
ID your purpose & stick to it. Imparting gee-whiz new info? Influencing behavior based on a study? Changing pre-conceived notions? Preparing public for upcoming discovery?
Give readers a reason to start reading and to keep reading. No one is obligated to read what you wrote, so you have to make it worth their while. Be intriguing, funny, useful, compelling, interesting - but be honest and hold their attention.
Donât even think of âdumbing it down.â If you think that, you may begin thinking your audience is dumb. Thatâs fatal.
Think instead of talking to a good friend who has a wildly different background. How would you talk with them about the subject?
Yeah that phrase needs to evaporate. Reinforcing the ivory tower. âSimplifyingâ means the same without the connotation. âCapture the essence.â âThe overall gist.â Being able to explain complex concepts in simple terms is HARD, and a valuable skill even when explaining things to other experts!
Same as I tell young journalists: presume the audience is just as smart as you, but you know something they don't. That way, it makes it less likely you come across as condescending.
My biggest takeaway point is that: science stories aren't really about science. They're about people. Find the people who are the center of your story, and fold the science in.
