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AGU Media ContactsCommunicating Science: Translation and Tangibility
Eos, Vol. 90, No. 8, 24 February 2009
Brian Johnson, AGU Mass Media Fellow, 2008
Until last summer, I thought communicating science was just a matter of translation. When my friends' eyes glazed over as I explained, for example, how a productivity crisis and planktrophism could have caused the Cretaceous-Tertiary mass extinction, I thought they simply needed these terms translated.
While cutting through potentially difficult terminology is a key part of communicating science to the public, I now know that it is only the first of two parts. The second part is making one's subject matter tangible. Finding that out was my most important lesson last summer as an AGU-sponsored fellow in the Mass Media Fellowship program run by the American Association for the Advancement of Science. Understanding this journalistic two-step has helped me become a better science communicator and comprehend more fully why the Earth sciences fascinate me in the first place.
I became a fellow not long after earning my B.S. in geology from Haverford College and Bryn Mawr College, Pennsylvania, in May 2008. For my fellowship experience, I interned at National Public Radio’s science desk, under the auspices of Intern Edition, NPR’s intern-run audio show. It was an exciting experience for me because I had never worked on radio. More important, however, I learned how to make my writing more tangible.
Here is what happened: I wanted to produce a radio segment about the practical applications of origami, the Japanese art of folding paper. After meeting numerous origami artists at a convention, I felt I had gathered a sufficient amount of information to illustrate the point that origami is not just a childhood craft but is also a serious art form that has influenced science and therapy. One origamist, for example, claimed that folding paper, and focusing on a final product more than on little details, had helped im manage his dyslexia. Another origamist had been hired by a U.S. government–funded laboratory to develop a crease pattern to efficiently fold down a football field–sized telescope lens.
Dutifully, I wrote a script about the people I had met. All my sources had done a great job of speaking in everyday language that someone unfamiliar with dyslexia, space engineering, or origami could easily understand. With the translation taken care of, I thought I surely had all the elements needed to tell the story.
But when I presented a draft of the story to an editor, she suggested I delete the dyslexia example and other material and concentrate solely on the space engineer. A science desk reporter agreed, explaining that the dyslexia example dealt with an abstract application of origami that was less tangible than the space engineering example. “I have a hard time imagining how folding origami helps a dyslexic person see the big picture. But that origami helped the engineer design a compacting method for a space telescope, I can see that,” the reporter said.
When I wrote a new draft, I realized my colleagues were right. Most people could probably understand how using origami as a tool for dyslexia therapy works, if I explained it. But when it came to conveying the power of origami to solve problems, the space engineering example was easier to picture.
After I discovered this second step of communicating science, I also took a look back at how I had come to major in Earth science. In high school, science was often presented to me either in the abstract or in the hypothetical. While I understood the value of my math exercises in learning basic skills, I longed for knowledge that I could wrap my hands around.
In college, Earth science provided that tangibility. During my first geology course, suddenly science was not limited to the realms of particles so small scientists only knew they existed on the basis of their effects, or values of X and Y that had no attached units. Now science was something I could see, touch, or even walk on.
Since completing the mass media fellowship, I have been hired as a reporter for EARTH, a magazine published by the American Geological Institute in Alexandria, Va., that brings geoscience to a mass audience. As a reporter who writes about Earth science, I often sense the tangibility of geology and how that helps me communicate the field to readers. But the fellowship will always remind me of the importance of helping scientists I interview make their work more touchable, imaginable, believable. I ask them questions like, “You said the planetary collision was massive. How massive? How many H-bombs might it be equivalent to?” or “If I were in Arizona during the Triassic, what would I have seen?” From their responses, I can add flesh to their science.
My aim these days is to offer readers the same tangibility I felt during my first college geology course. Creating that tangibility is something I enjoy, and now, as a science journalist, I consider it my job to help scientists take that leap too.
—Brian Johnson, EARTH magazine, American Geological Institute, Alexandria, Va.
E-mail: bfjohnso@gmail.com