Breaking the Wheel — A Science Communication Perspective
“I’m not going to stop the wheel. I’m going to break the wheel.”
It’s been a week since I attended MRS Fall 2023; the first-ever conference of my grad life. The proportion of MRS is, let’s just say BIG! While crossing that off of my grad bucket list feels like an accomplishment, that is not the purpose of this piece. As much as a conference of this scale serves as a platform for scientists, researchers, and scholars across the world to meet their fellows and share the experience, the purpose that is being often overlooked is how well it serves as a platform to have cross-disciplinary encounters. And to be hopeful for one step further, the awareness of the general audience.
I attended a few sessions of symposiums of a variety of themes ranging from data-driven materials science to fundamental aspects of materials. One of the things I noticed about the presentations in all of these sessions was that the speakers came with the assumption that the audience is generally aware of the concepts they’re going to talk about. To put it shortly, “I am talking to an expert audience.” This can only be far from the truth. While someone can be an expert of their own discipline, doesn’t mean they have a deeper understanding of another discipline. They might have enough awareness to relate it to their own work but, they may lack the conceptual knowledge. For example, I know I can use machine learning to predict morphologies of block copolymer systems that I work with but, I have no idea where or how to begin. Similarly, an expert in machine learning may not understand what is meant by block copolymer self-assembly.
This is where the sole purpose of “science,” nullifies. Science is not all about new discoveries, innovation, or invention. A new discovery is only worth it when people realize the potential of it. Not just a specific group of experts. But, in general. “How is this new material is going to make my mobile phone battery last longer?,” or “How is this new drug going cure my disease?”
Science communication has many layers. Unfortunately, for scientists uncovering all these layers is either difficult or they disregard it as a whole. I believe this stems from grad school. As much as grad school is about learning how to “do” research, it is also about how to showcase your research in many ways. Often times, we only communicate with a set of people who has some awareness of our projects. Our advisors, colleagues, and lab mates. So, it isn’t really difficult for us to make them understand something. To make them see something. I also don’t see a lot of initiatives that help grad students enhance their communication skills. May be there are but, how effective they are is the real question. How well do we reap the benefits of such efforts?
The result of all this is scientists that lack the skill to communicate better. And it might come as a surprise to you, but the majority of scientists take pride in communicating in “expert language.” That doesn’t sit well with the general community. The echo chamber of science, I call it. This gets worse in academia. A college professor’s task is to make students understand complex concepts. It requires great simplicity. I have only seen a handful of people who are capable of doing this.
One of the biggest challenges I see as a grad student is being able to adapt to my audience while explaining what I do. Over the past year, I had the privilege of learning that from the best and here are few things I think are important. Make it simple. It is all about analogies. You have to be a little creative to find analogies that translate well to your audience. Bring out the complexity of your science, and simplify it without losing its essence. Essence is very important in truly connecting to your audience. Always assume that your audience is non-expert. Start from there and build it layer by layer. At the end of the day, if you can make your grandma understand your science, you are a winner!
Being in academia, being a teacher requires an empathy factor that goes side by side with said communication skills. My personal opinion is that empathy is more important in this case. So for that, I always try to think of my first day as a researcher and how I felt about diving into an uncharted territory. That, combined with a little patience can go a long way.
To sum it all up,
I don’t like complexity. So, I try to simplify things for myself. That helps me simplify things to others too. So, rather than calling it a talent, I would say it comes from a weakness. I just try to help myself deal with it.
If you are a grad student reading this, I invite you to take communication a bit more seriously because, someone has to break the echo chamber someday. Science awareness not only helps the society connect with science but it also keeps the science from falling into wrong hands.
…this piece was inspired by a random conversation with Dr. Boyce Chang.
Photo: again, a random sunset from our lab window just because…
