PULLMAN – Talking about science to a general audience, either in person or in print, isn’t easy.
“It’s something that you really have to work at,” said WSU neuroscientist David Rector, speaking to the Graduate Women in Science meeting Thursday in the Smith CUE. “You have to practice at it and you can’t be scared of it.”
Rector, who speaks often at academic conferences as well as at numerous student recruitment events, said it’s important to find an appropriate balance between scientific accuracy and grabbing the lay person’s attention.
“Usually, the most scientifically accurate description will bore most people,” he emphasized after the talk. “The scientist must make it accurate, exciting, relevant and interesting. This is the most difficult part about communicating science.”
Rector was giving “The Scientist’s Perspective” in a two part-series on communicating about science. On Monday, Roberta Kelly of the Murrow College of Communication will give “The Communicator’s Perspective,” also at noon in CUE 518.
Being able to talk effectively about science is important for a couple reasons, Rector said. For one thing, it helps people outside academia understand the importance of research and, more than that, understand how science affects their lives in innumerable, practical, immediate ways.
For another thing, those who can communicate effectively about their research have a much better chance of getting grants.
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Annual Kids Judge! event |
By presenting high-level concepts in neuroscience to grade-school students, rather than to peers who already know the material, students get useful experience in making science both understandable and interesting, Rector said.
As part of the project, his students do independent research on some aspect of neuroscience. Then they write a paper explaining what they want to communicate to the fourth-grade students and how they plan to present the material.
During the Kids Judge! event, fourth graders hear the presentations and rate them on how interesting they are, how understandable and whether the presentations made them want to learn more. The fourth-grade students also are asked to explain what they’ve learned, both immediately after the presentation and then again a week later to see what they’ve retained.
If his students can communicate effectively to fourth graders about science, Rector said, they’ll be fairly well prepared to talk to most general audiences.
While speaking to fourth-grade students requires thoroughly understanding the subject and then being able to find everyday metaphors and analogies that students can relate to, writing grant applications also requires understanding the material thoroughly and then being able to distill what is truly important into a few well-written, concise pages.
The National Institutes of Health receive about 80,000 grant applications each year and fund about 2,000 of those grants, Rector said. The average grant reviewer evaluates 200-300 grants in a session, so researchers have only a few minutes to make their case.
Even if the grant application is 25 pages long, he said, most reviewers have formed their impression, and assigned a preliminary score, within the first couple pages.
“Long-winded introductions can get people lost,” he said.
Writing grants is an art form, Rector said, and it’s never too early to start learning it. Five years ago, it would have been unusual for a graduate student to write a grant, he said, and even beginning faculty were given a little time to get acclimated.
But as the state continues to cut funding to higher education, he said, the university depends more and more on federal grants to fund research and support graduate education. In this environment it has become much more common for graduate students to write grants to help finance their graduate studies, he said – and it also looks great on a resume.
