Probably unpopular point of view: I hate the phrase “science communicator” & always have. We don’t have history or policy communicators - just historians and policy experts who can share their subject. Saying science needs a “communicator” just serves to isolate it as a weird hard thing that needs special magic powers to access. It implies that communication isn’t a normal part of science, but it is (or should be). Also, it undervalues teachers, who communicate science all the time. #science
@helenczerski I'm not certain which of the following you're saying:
1. Science communicators don't (presently) need to exist, because scientists can do that job.
2. Science communicators wouldn't need to exist if scientists trained on and valued communication properly.
3. You agree that a specialization in science communication is necessary, you just don't like the term "science communicator".
4. Something else entirely.
I read your post as number 2, but I'm not positive that's right.
@helenczerski If I do take your meaning to be that science communicators are not needed, I disagree.
Firstly, I think the premise that other fields like public policy and history don't have communicators is false. I believe, for example, that there are numerous people who basically make a living out of making public policy accessible to the public (e.g. the folks on the Vox podcast The Weeds).
Secondly, I think STEM fields are dissimilar from fields like history (to use your example) in three ways that increase the need for communicators:
1. STEM concepts tend to build cumulatively as some things are understood and used as the basis to explore new areas
2. Communications between STEM practitioners often use math as a fundamental component. This is essentially an entirely different language that the general public is much less comfortable with.
3. STEM often deals with situations very far from human experience, e.g. the microscopic or subatomic, galactic scale, or compounds or processes that only exist under conditions incompatible with human life. So not only are the theories unfamiliar, but the very constituents under discussion are unfamiliar (and often unintuitive in behavior).
Finally, while scientists do have to communicate their findings, it's generally to colleagues in the same sub-field or program managers for grants in that sub-field, and communicating to someone whose perspective is already almost the same as yours is the easiest case. Communicating to someone coming from a different perspective, especially engaging them if that person is not even sure they're interested, is a very different skill. In my experience, the latter skill seems to be largely uncorrelated with the ability to do research.
But I feel like you must know all of the latter very well from your own experience, so perhaps your point was something different.
#science #scicomm
