PMB has been fortunate to attend several talks in a series at Oxford University called 'Storytelling Science,' the premise of which is that scientists give 30-minute science talks, usually about an aspect of their own research, pitched to a general audience. After each talk, the audience is encouraged to ask questions from a variety of viewpoints (lay and specialist alike).
The series is great for a number of reasons, not least of which is that, even among those whose delivery or presentation is lacking, virtually every talk covers material that is absolutely fascinating. And, given the composition of the audience, the talks seem to be engaging for specialists who can relate to the material on a more sophisticated level, specialist academics in non-science fields, and generalists and nonacademics as well. Beyond the immediate benefits of the talks, communicating science concepts and research is important because...science concepts and research are often important (as is generating public interest in science, and encouraging youth to engage with science)! Further, when done well, the process of demystifying any kind of specialist knowledge for non-specialists is a rewarding exercise unto itself. For these reasons PMB is an avid supporter of the Storytelling Science series, and other endeavors like it.
Nonetheless, after hearing a number of 'generalist' science talks, PMB has a few observations, and some advice, for scientists engaged in public outreach projects like Storytelling Science.
Consider, firstly, the following phrases (as quoted), used recurrently by scientists at Storytelling Science talks, and beyond:
'Taking a skeptical view--because that's what scientists are, we're paid skeptics...'
'As a scientist I have an analytical mind.'
'And this part is quite technical--it's science, so it's quite difficult...'
'As a scientist it's often quite difficult to explain to people what I do.'
This is just a small sample of comments, the likes of which many of you will have heard before. Generally, comments of this nature presuppose several things about science and scientists, including: scientists, especially if not exclusively, are skeptical, analytical, work with more intrinsically difficult material than do non-scientists, and work with material that is inherently more difficult to explain than that of non-scientists.
There is considerable truth in all of these assumptions; however, all of these assumptions also contain a great deal of falsehood, and not without tinges of condescension and self-satisfied mystification. Put simply, when a scientist makes comments like those listed above, it's not without some genuine and wholly innocent sense that scientists are special people, and science is the work of the intellectual equivalent of the elect, work that is above and beyond non-scientists. Further complicating this innocent but not innocuous belief is the fact that it often takes the form of genuine self-deprecation. 'Nerd,' and, especially, 'geek,' are badges of honor, proudly and sometimes smugly worn, almost always self-assigned, yet proudly passed off as soft commentary on one's allegedly antisocial preoccupation with the the rigorously technical. A 'geek' interrupts your unscientific conversation with a snippet of specialized, peer-reviewed knowledge, then excuses himself as a geek, someone whose social awkwardness in the given moment is but a small price to pay for intellectual superiority (at least, that's the sine qua non of geekdom).
Sometimes, with respect to the complex economics of scientist identity, PMB protesteth too much, and he knows it. On one end of the scientist identity spectrum is certainly the simple sense that after amassing tons of detailed, technical knowledge, the task of teaching a non-specialist seems especially daunting. In the middle is the sense that without science there can be no skepticism, no questioning of the apparent and the given, and no use of 'scientific thinking' by non-scientists outside the realm of 'doing science.' On the extreme end of smugness is the belief that scientists are, as such, simply smarter than everyone else, and are, as such, humanity's last hope.
For the purposes of science communication, wherever one sits along this spectrum, the first step toward demystification of science research and concepts--the first step toward good communication to the lay audience--is a genuine belief that your audience is capable of understanding what it is you want to say. Thus, the most important thing for good science communication is the purging of one's mind of all of these myths about the supreme difficulty of science and the heightened understanding of scientists. PMB has seen excellent scientists do just this, opening up to a generalist audience aspects of fascinating scientific research that otherwise might not have seen the light of day (at least, beyond regular readers of specialist science journals).
The fact is, all specialist knowledge is difficult to explain to non-specialist audiences (the literary scholars reading this might well have experienced the difficulty of talking to a lay audience about a novel, even, and maybe even especially, if all members of the lay audience have read the novel). Just as well, of course, no one will be able to teach the sum of specialist understanding to a non-specialist in a 30-minute talk, whatever the subject matter. But the task of the specialist in non-specialist communication is not to understand such communication as 'dumbing down' and proceed from there, but to maintain in the talk a strong sense of the real complexity of the topic while framing that complexity in non-jargon or non-specialist terms--to communicate in clear and compelling metaphor, in other words. The best Storytelling Science talks use metaphor and analogy to bring the minute to the level of the general without losing too much complexity, just as the best literary generalist talks bring the esoteric and abstract to the level of the concrete without losing too much complexity. The material itself--be it a convoluted process at the intracellular level, or an explanation of why sometimes plagiarism isn't plagiarism--is not the thing. The thing is giving enough credit to your audience that you expect them to understand, and enough credit to yourself that you can understand your own research enough on a conceptual level to teach it without falling back on the specialisms--the jargon, the notation, etc.--that make what you do sound to the layperson a lot harder and more intimidating than it really is. This is absolutely central to the art of storytelling, which, despite its childhood connotations, ain't as easy as it sounds.
Addendum: It's a shame that colleagues in literature departments haven't come up with a parallel lecture series called something like 'Storytelling Stories,' given the difficulty and awkwardness with which most of us seem to discuss our work with non-specialists.
