Scientists, especially in academia, tend to treat science communication, or SciComm for short, as something “apart”. That is, writing a manuscript or a grant is something that does not start until the benchwork is finished. However, doing this creates the perception that a manuscript has to be written in one breath, which is a daunting obstacle. In truth, scientists often have to communicate unfinished studies to others. These opportunities represent a chance for scientists to develop their scientific communication skills in a more compartmentalized and manageable manner. They also give scientists a way to write their manuscripts bit-by-bit, and thereby analyze and assess their arguments and evidence on a point-by-point basis.
Recognizing Opportunities to Develop SciComm
Academic science tends to be assessed and measured in completed works—whether peer-reviewed publications or accepted grants. However, science is filled with opportunities and even obligations to communicate incomplete projects, especially as a trainee. Seminars, posters, and conferences, for example, are meant to give scientists a way to solicit feedback and spur discussion in a more informal manner. As such, they are also situations where scientists are well within expectations to present a scientific story that is more of a work in progress.
On an even more informal level, lab meetings or even conversations with peers also provide an opportunity for scientists to see how their message—and especially the way that it is presented—resonates with their audience. If they keep scientific communication in mind, they can process and interpret feedback in terms of recognizing knowledge or data gaps and identifying where points may not have been presented with the necessary clarity or emphasis.
Evaluating and Growing SciComm Proficiency
Keeping scientific communication in mind mid-study means thinking about how the data will be presented as it is being collected. What are the data points most crucial to the question that one is trying to answer, and are these points emphasized clearly enough in the text or in the figures? Scientists must be careful that the crux of their argumentation is not buried in a list of numbers, either in the text or in a figure. In the same way, are these data points supported, in an easily understood manner, by the necessary controls and secondary data to give the main point of investigation rigor and legitimacy? It is not ideal, for example, to make a reader hop within a figure from panel F to locate the controls for data presented in panel A.
A good way to evaluate the effectiveness of science communication is to talk to people with different levels of background information. For example, a person should compare and contrast the number and type of questions received after a lab meeting presentation, a departmental seminar, and a conference. Often, the audience asks basic questions, misinterprets study details, or requests more clarification as the presenter moves further away from their own research group. This might mean that the presenter should present more background information or tweak their argumentation in their next talk to accommodate a piece of knowledge that they had taken for granted. Similarly, a researcher could ask someone from outside of their research team to look at a poster or a figure without any external guidance or explanation. If they cannot identify and understand the main points in the absence of a guide, the poster or figure may need to be re-designed. Finally, presenters should make a mental note about whether their presentations generally proceed forward from start to finish or if they have to jump back and forth between slides. If it is the latter, the audience might have been surprised by a point that was not properly introduced or set up.
Incorporating SciComm Training into the Day to Day
In addition to being mindful of scientific communication when designing and delivering presentations, scientists can try new communication exercises as part of their normal lab routine. For example, creating figures with a knowingly incomplete dataset could help scientists not only visualize how to arrange the figure, but also identify what data points need to be present in the final version. In the same vein, writing mini-abstracts or short results section paragraphs can accomplish the same thing—helping scientists find logic, knowledge, or data gaps in their argumentation as they are piecing together their study.
The best part about making scientific communication an everyday practice is that it can no longer be an “all-at-the-end” event. As scientists make preliminary graphs, sketches, and images, they are putting together the final figures bit by bit, panel by panel. As they write summaries and abstracts on individual experiments or assays, they are writing the final manuscript paragraph by paragraph. The final manuscript is no longer something that needs to be created from scratch, but merely assembled—with some added fine-tuning and polish—from all the work already done during data acquisition and analysis. In that way, incorporating scientific communication into the day-to-day routine of a laboratory scientist is not about creating more work, but redistributing it into a more manageable package.
Looking for more information on scientific writing? Check out The Scientist’s TS SciComm section. Looking for some help putting together a manuscript, a figure, a poster, or anything else? The Scientist’s Scientific Services may have the professional help that you need.