Writing for the Public: Scientific Storytelling

By Stephanie Robert

Storytelling is an ancient form of communication. Before written language existed, oral storytelling was the primary method of sharing knowledge and experiences between generations. For example, in this country, Native Americans developed a rich body of stories to explain everything from creation, birth, and death to the coming of the Europeans. Without written records, their stories entertained while informing, effectively creating a lasting memory that could be recalled and retold.

A common attribute shared by successful scientists is their ability to tell a story. As a biochemist, I am completing doctoral studies at the University of Alabama at Birmingham (UAB), focusing on the mechanisms of brain tumor associated seizures and epilepsy. One quality I most admire of my PhD mentor is his ability to paint a picture with words that captivate both fellow scientists and non-scientists alike. Believe me, I am taking notes on more than biochemical mechanisms.

I realize that effectively communicating research is fundamental to science; yet, to many of us scientists, creating a narrative with data seems foreign and unfamiliar. When writing for the public, this means rising to the challenge of getting on the average person's level. That is why the novelist John Steinbeck, in researching his naturalist's guide, The Log from the Sea of Cortez, wrote: "We have not known a single great scientist who could not discourse freely and interestingly with a child.”

Luckily, there are a multitude of online resources offering tips on effective science communication, however, I have found that the most valuable resource is learning from mentors who have themselves mastered this skill. Working together on many abstracts, publications, and oral presentations, my PhD mentor molded me into a scientific storyteller, and I encourage every young scientist to seek out a mentor that can do the same. This skill is not only important for grant writing and publications, but it is our responsibility to communicate effectively with the public and share our discoveries with them.

As scientists, we must learn to be storytellers. We must not only gather data, but also develop a narrative of what our discoveries tell us about the world. Science is our story, and it is incredibly important that we learn how to tell it, because it really is an amazing one.

A few resources:

12 Tips for Scientists Writing for the General Public 

http://www.americanscientist.org/blog/pub/12-tips-for-scientists-writing-for-the-general-public

Scientific storytelling helps researchers communicate their findings in a competitive publishing environment
http://www.scilogs.com/from_the_lab_bench/scientific-storytelling-helps-researchers-communicate-their-findings-in-a-competitive-publishing-environment/

Storytelling of Science (YouTube series with some of today's famous scientists)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GpeVWqjQEoc 

Writing for the Public: Crafting a Story

Posted by Lesley McCollum

There are plenty of issues to tackle for writing a journal article manuscript, but structure is not one of them. We are all too familiar with the IMRAD structure. If you want to write about your research for the public though, go ahead and throw those rules out the window. Academics read journal articles to learn information - it doesn’t matter the article is dull and tedious to read, its purpose isn’t to entertain. The rest of the public however, has plenty of sources for information, and will stick with one that is both informative and entertaining. So while a story for the public doesn’t have the rigid rules of the IMRAD format, structure is still key to a story’s success. Here are a few ideas for structuring your story:

Inverted pyramid

The inverted pyramid is the most traditional structure for news stories and can be applied to telling a science story. The style starts with the big picture, then narrows to more specific detail. It’s efficient for providing readers with the most interesting and important information up front, then expanding into further detail as the article progresses. It lets readers get the information they are looking for, then decide if they

want to learn more or move on.

Zig zag or Parallel stories

Reading about scientific research can be dense. Try alternating between details of a study and anecdotes from the researchers. Were multiple people working on the same question which led to an interesting collaboration or competition? Structure your article as two parallel stories that meet later on. You’ll hear more about incorporating narrative in a future post, but this style helps connect readers to your story and keep them interested.

Chronological

Writing a story in chronological order may sound boring, but it makes sense and is easy for readers to follow. This could be from a historical perspective, or the researcher’s individual story. Often in research, one experiment leads to another that ultimately leads to the findings that you are writing about. Or a conversation sparked an idea that led to the important experiments. Use that progression of events to structure your story.

What story structure do you find most effective for writing about science for the public?

[Image from Flickr user ClaraDon used under Creative Commons Licensing]

Writing for the Public: Alphabet Soup in the High School Classroom

Posted by Randall Hall

As a graduate student in the UAB School of Education and an English Language Arts student teacher, I am always interested in learning new strategies to improve students’ reading and writing skills. Back when I was in high school (at the end of the last millennium - which is not as long ago as it sounds), we were taught to simply read and annotate our (usually large and leather-bound) text and then organize our analysis into a five paragraph essay. Now that I am back in high school as a teacher, I can report that things have changed. In fact, in the modern ELA classroom, there are far more acronyms for “reading strategies” than there are actual books (which have been routinely replaced by handheld devices in many school districts).

Image Courtesy of Pixabay

Over the last year, I have personally guided students through the performance of an AIR, ANX, CTQ, DRA, DRTA, GIST, GRASP, IRI, ITI, KWL, LRD, RAFT, REAP, and an SQ3R. What do all these letters mean? Well, they are all acronyms for different reading, summarizing, and writing techniques that students are now taught in modern high schools. Educators have realized that each type of student (visual, auditory, kinesthetic, etc.) learns differently and that each type of text (informational, literary, audio-visual, etc.) should be read differently to be best understood by various learners. Thus, each of the acronyms I set out above is a different strategy aimed at helping a student comprehend a certain kind of text in a unique and specific way.

For example, a KWL transforms learners into active readers by asking students to analyze a text (usually an informational article) before, during, and after reading it. They do this by first writing what they “Know” about the subject based only on the title of the article. Next, they write “What” they want to know about the subject of the article based on its topic sentence. Finally, they write what they “Learned” about the subject after reading the entire article. Thus, the KWL activates their prior knowledge, draws on their past experiences, forces them to make inferences and connections, and eventually guides them to concrete conclusions about the information they have read while stimulating their curiosity about what they wanted to know but did not learn.

This Alphabet Soup approach to reading instruction may seem odd to the students’ parents who are not familiar with the manifold strategies or the principles underlying them. However, I have found them to be indispensable in helping students “make” meaning on the literal, inferential, and evaluative levels of learning. If you have any reading or writing strategies to share (including any with fun acronyms), please post them in the “Write Like an Educator” section of WritingInTheZone (a new wiki seeking to “tap into the real-world knowledge and experience of graduate students, post-docs, and scholars to help writers achieve daily productivity goals). I know these acronyms may seem strange, but students seem to find their use as easy as ABC.

Writing for the Public: Jargon Obviates Amelioration

Posted by Taylor Roberge

When I talk to my lab mates about my biology research, I often talk in a special code: “Malaclemys terrapin is a relatively small estuarine Emydid turtle that represents a possible keystone species. It also exhibits sexual dimorphism and TSD." But when I go home, and talk to my girlfriend, who is in the medical field, I code switch, or cut out the jargon, to make sure that she understands the importance of what I am doing and why I am late for supper again. Here’s a translation: "Diamondback terrapins are small turtles related to the common pond turtles you can get from the pet store. They live in salt marshes where fresh and salt water mix and are very important to the diversity of animals and plants in the marsh. Males and females are different in size and shape, and the sex of the animal is determined by egg incubation temperature and not the presence of a specific gene (e.g. X or Y in humans)." No matter who hears it, this explanation usually elicits sympathy for the turtles, and/or interest in my research, so I’m ahead either way.

Tower of Babel Jargon

Adapted from a painting by Pieter Bruegel the Elder at Wikipedia http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Pieter_Bruegel_the_Elder_-_The_Tower_of_Babel_(Vienna)_-_Google_Art_Project_-_edited.jpg

One of the biggest differences between scientific writing in the professional sense (e.g.  journal articles, grant proposals), and writing for the public is the avoidance of using scientific jargon. The Laura Diaz-Martinez of ASCB states, “Scientific lexicon, which is different even between physicists and biologists, is partly to blame for the divide that exists between the many amazing discoveries scientists make and the few that make it into the public sphere and get non-scientists excited about them too.”  It is difficult for us to explain complex ideas without using jargon, mostly because we get so comfortable using these terms in every day speech. However, I’m sure everyone has had to explain what they were working on to a family member that is not scientifically literate if only to explain why you don’t have a “real” job yet and are still in school. 

Reducing the use of jargon, or defining it will keep the audience engaged and reduce the chance that they will feel intimidated and stop reading. Just remember, next time you are writing about your latest research in the field of astrophysics to explain it like you were talking to your uncle (unless your uncle happens to be Neil deGrasse Tyson). For more information about avoiding jargon, check out the page on WritingInTheZone

Writing for the Public: What’s All the Excitement About? Communicating Science to Non-Scientists

Posted by Lesley McCollum

I think every graduate student can agree that we spend a lot of time writing and talking about our research. What we may not agree on though, is whether we feel it takes up precious time for experiments, or if we prefer to get in some quality writing time. For some, our goals for writing science go beyond disseminating research for peers to communicating it to the public. As the brilliant scientist/science advocate, Carl Sagan, said: "There are at least two reasons why scientists have an obligation to explain what science is all about. One is naked self-interest… If we scientists increase the public excitement about science, there is a good chance of having more public supporters. The other is that it's tremendously exciting to communicate your own excitement to others." What’s all the excitement about then? For me, a doctoral researcher at the Alabama Brain Collection (ABC), I am excited by doing work that may one day improve treatment options for those suffering from mental illness. At the ABC, we promote and encourage research using brain tissue donated from individuals who had a desire to contribute to scientific advancement after their death. What inspires you to communicate science with others? Do you think you would ever want to write about science for the general media or a blog? If so, check out the science journalism resources that I've collected for our wiki, WritingInTheZone. UAB does not currently have a science writing program, but as the interest grows here, so will the opportunities. Stay tuned for announcements about how to get plugged in here on campus.

Writing for the Public: The Pen Can be as Powerful as the Lab

Posted by Lesley McCollum

At the University of Alabama in Birmingham (UAB), as in academia as a whole, the number of peer-reviewed publications is often used to measure a researcher's success. With the focus on research writing, much less consideration is given to writing for the public, but maybe it's time to re-think this practice.With scientific literacy and research funding on the decline nationally, we should all consider learning how to write for a public audience, whether it is published in a general media source, such as the New York Times, Time, or Slate, or in a science focused outlet such as ScienceNews, Popular Science, or Discover. These types of publications aren't measured with impact factors or number of citations, but from a public policy standpoint, they are just as weighty. Scientific research is often inaccessible to the general public, whether it's hidden behind a paid subscription or dense scientific detail and jargon. At UAB, scholars like Dr. James McClintock are starting to change that with articles or opinion pieces for their city newspapers, consumer magazines like Scientific American, and books for the popular press, like Lost Antarctica: Adventures in a Disappearing Land.

My research focus is on mental health which is one area particularly in need of education for the general population, for many reasons in addition to improving public support and funding. But public awareness and support do play a strong role in research funding, and both can be improved through communicating our research through writing. Fortunately, popular journals like Psychology Today continue to bring the best science to the public. And science writers like Liza Gross, a freelance writer and senior editor at the biomedical journal PLOS Biology, are helping to change that. In a blog post for KQED Science, Gross writes memorably about a museum exhibit that shows how our concepts of mental health and definitions of "normal" have evolved over time. For today's scientist, the pen, not just the lab, is a powerful tool for supporting research.