‘Scientists can communicate’

Pricewinning British science journalist Tim Radford argues that researchers are not hopeless at explaining their work to a general audience.

“We all inherit the gift of words; the gift for words, however, is unevenly distributed. Even so, there are reasons why scientists, in particular, should be and often are good communicators,” Radford writes in Nature.

The miscommunication is partly caused by the general audience having such difficulty handling scientific uncertainties. “[…]alas, people in any case listen selectively, even to the best communicators, which might be why so many Americans think Darwin’s theory of evolution is ‘only a theory’. Scientists are not the only people to blame for a problem in communication.”