Effective Science Communication is Just Good Communication

Science has an isolation problem. I tend to think of scientists as contentedly living on a deserted island, where we’ve established a means of communicating new discoveries amongst ourselves, but we lack sufficient bridges to carry them to a neighboring island. 

That might not seem so dire — technically, we’re still able to carry on uncovering the mysteries of the natural world — except that those neighboring islands are saying unsupported and harmful things like vaccines cause autism, Tylenol threatens pregnancies, and raw milk is safer than pasteurized. No matter how much we shout from our island, our message will always get lost in the wind.

We’re not trained to think about reach. So much of the standard practice of scientific communication is situated within a closed loop system. We write grants to be assessed by other scientists for funding. We publish papers in journals that often sit behind paywalls or require institutional affiliations. We attend conferences and present seminars to colleagues working within the same hyper-niche field of research. 

A scientist who performed only these three tasks would be suited for a long and successful career, as there is currently no incentive nor imperative to communicate our findings to a broader audience. Yet, if we claim any responsibility for the public perception of science, we must consider what bridges might get us off our island.

We especially need to work on our PR if we want any hope of maintaining — let alone expanding — publicly funded research. I recently attempted to put my time where my mouth is by going to Sacramento to advocate on behalf of my research in support of a California Health and Science Bond that would fund research in the wake of NIH cuts. 

My union, a sponsor of the bond measure, organized a “science fair” with California legislators to showcase research that was vulnerable to the Trump Administration’s attacks on science. I made a poster explaining the ways that my research impacts Californians to convince our politicians that this work was worth funding.

While my hopes were that this would build a bridge between researchers and policymakers, it felt more like I’d traveled via rowboat to another, equally isolated island. 

For the majority of the event, I shared my science only with fellow participating scientists. A few reporters and political staffers made their rounds gathering sound bites for their coverage, but they never made it over to our corner of the room. Only much later did we hear speeches from politicians who were already authors and co-sponsors of the bond measure. 

Ultimately, I was just a body in the room. And while there is value in demonstrating that I was willing to show up for my science, it did highlight a lack in avenues for true communication.

Beyond engaging policymakers, the few mechanisms we have for communicating science to a more general audience tend to be unidirectional with little opportunity for follow-up. 

Outreach programs, for example, can be an extremely valuable way to get kids excited about science or teach them about potential career paths, but if there isn’t consistent curriculum support then the impact can fade. Social media, on the other hand, can provide a platform of continuous science education, but it is inherently one-sided and, in the current climate, susceptible to misinformation and algorithm bias.

Then what are we left with? How do we build a bridge for scientists to effectively share cutting edge research with a largely distrustful or under-resourced public?

I once sat in a science policy lecture at an immunology conference where, after detailing their experience with several policy structures, the speaker ended by saying that the most important part of rebuilding trust in science is to remind people that we work for them — that, ultimately, our study is in service of people’s health and well-being. 

As though to test me immediately, the Uber driver taking me from the conference to the airport wanted to discuss their reasons for doubting the theory of evolution upon learning that I’m a scientist. While my instinct was to shut down the conversation with scientific proof, I forced myself to ask questions and try to understand where they were coming from. By the end of the ride, they thanked me for not making them feel judged, and we landed on some middle ground where maybe their religious belief and scientific evidence could coexist. 

In a more biased example, I have a grandma who tries to understand exactly what my research is about. She is college educated, but when she thinks about protein she thinks about a steak rather than functional molecules expressed in an immune cell. 

Over the years I have explained my experiments over the phone, and while she might not understand the intricacies of flow cytometry, she has gradually learned enough about immunology to approach Facebook videos with skepticism and to feel comfortable asking me layered health questions. 

Importantly, our openness of conversation has also created a space where I can say I don’t know the answer and it doesn’t change her trust in the system of science.

Conversations with the people around us may be the only true bridge that offers bidirectional transfer, which strengthens research as a whole. When we’re open to perspectives outside academia and allow them to inform our science, we’re in turn able to more effectively translate what we learn in research to people who stand to benefit from its findings.

In that way, there isn’t just one solution to our isolation problem. Or rather, it’s one solution with a lot of potential implementations. 

If we treat every interaction as an opportunity to show how science can serve people instead of saving that effort for audiences we are trying to persuade, we make it accessible to everyone.