When it comes to sci-comm, seeing is believing

I've been thinking a lot about the importance of medium in science communication recently. Despite the fact that I love reading and writing about science, I don't read science journalism articles very often. I've often wondered why that is, and I think it's because good science communication, that really tells the full story, is very difficult to do well via the kind of shortform articles seen on 'popular science' news sites .

Let me explain. Sometimes, explaining a scientific concept (especially one that's new to you or your reader) can be extremely difficult through words alone, especially if it's complex or nuanced. I believe scientific communication should always begin with 'Why'... Why the reader should care, or why something is important, and it's far easier to do that if you can visually show the audience the topic first. Think of the popularity of Planet Earth, or Blue Planet: these are both excellent examples of showing the audience why they should care. Seeing a topic in context allows people to connect with it emotionally, understand its relevance, and relate to it far easier.

I admit, there is definitely an element of laziness involved. We're bombarded with so much information in our day-to-day lives, that I rarely have time to sit down and read an article if it's not directly relevant to something I'm working on. But can I watch a 10-minute youtube video on the topic? Sure, no problem.

I'm aware of the irony of writing this on a scientific journalism website! I think the reason I don't read 'pop-sci' scientific journalism is because it rarely provides the whole story. As a scientist, I find myself much preferring to go to the primary source for a piece of information, rather than reading about it filtered through somebody else's lens of interpretation. However, I know I'm probably the exception here: plenty of people worldwide enjoy reading popular science articles, I'd just imagine most of them aren't scientists.

When it comes to diving really deep into a topic, I think video is far better suited to the task. Video allows you to distill all the most important information in a much denser fashion. I particularly love the style of videos made by Destin Sandlin over at Smarter Every Day, where he makes incredibly detailed, hour-long forays into niche areas and people will watch!

I'd never get the level of detail I want just from reading a popular-science article. Much scientific journalism is published by people who aren't scientists or don't have time to put science into context, and this can result in headlines being 'technically' true, but still misleading to a non-scientist audience.

While I do read longform science articles (and love writing them!), sometimes the whole story is best told through the lens of a camera.