4 ms·
> Also, and again unfortunately, scientists are often not in the habit of presenting their results to the general public. It's not really part of our training,
by jefurii 4y ago
> Also, and again unfortunately, scientists are often not in the habit of presenting their results to the general public. It's not really part of our training, or something we're expected to do.
In my opinion, a professional who can't explain the work they do to a normal human is not really a professional. I've heard so many scientists complain about the quality of science reporting but they might be partly to blame. I know not every scientist can be a Carl Sagan of course.
- jjoonathan 4y agoOutreach has an unlimited ability to soak time away from doing actual science. Sometimes it's a net benefit, but sometimes not. See: scientists beefing with flat earthers, who will never be convinced of anything.
- impendia 4y agoIn my opinion, the explanation isn't the hard part. What's harder is: attracting an audience in the first place; being able to entertain them in addition to explaining the science; understanding how the media works; making the right connections; knowing how to pitch a reporter; etc.
- OkayPhysicist 4y agoThe amount of foundational knowledge it takes to make heads or tails of a lot of research is well outside what can be reasonably assumed of a lay person. For example, let's say you found something interesting in Particle Physics. You figured out the mass of the W boson to another 3 decimal places or some such. To make that result at all interesting to a lay person, you need to pile on enough background information to establish context. What's a W boson? Well it's part of a symmetry group in the Standard Model -> Symmetry Groups? Quantum mechanics? -> etc etc. Know what they call enough background information to be able to begin to appreciate the research in a given field? A bachelors degree.