Our Circular PR Firing Squad

Last week, a ragtag group of mostly self-proclaimed science communicators argued that a cookbook approach to public communication might turn the tide of misinformation — you only need to throw out an occasional sandbag against the flood of misinformation.

It’s almost quaint . . .

The team missed the widespread problems caused when the traditional media levee broke, leading to rapidly rising floodwaters all around us.

Here are a few of the big picture problems their essay doesn’t adequately address:

• Scientific misinformation is coming from the top of the US scientific establishment — the NIH, CDC, HHS, and White House. Politicians who are practiced at messaging with false confidence and sincerity are conning the public and claiming scientific authority they have by virtue of their positions but not because of any expertise they possess.
• Scientific misinformation is big business, especially in the MAHA era.
• Increasingly aggressive academic PR departments are often a source of friendly fire, working too often against sound science communication as they strive to score clicks and likes in the increasingly cacophonous attention economy.
  • Science by press release is a major problem.
• Science communication has become a performative free-for-all in an attention economy that rewards extremism while downgrading normal information.
• Scientists are notoriously bad at communicating with the public, and no cookbook approach is going to solve that.
• There’s a fundamental trap — public communication can lull the public into thinking scientific expertise is more accessible and attainable than it is, opening the door for pseudoscientists using similar tricks on a falsely flattered and overconfident audience.
• A lot of science misinformation is based on pay-to-play scientific papers or preprints, mainly in the health space. The authors make no gestures in these directions despite the obvious problems these sources cause.

I also have to say, the article is full of turgid prose, the kind that comes out of committee. Just read these first two sentences to get a feel for it:

Science communication offers immense value for fostering public trust and enhancing the quality of our modern information ecosystem. However, it remains under-prioritized and is rarely taught in the scientific enterprise.

As a reader, I’m absolutely spellbound — not.

Here’s a rewrite to consider:

People would trust science more if experts could explain it better, but we hardly spend any time teaching scientists how to do it well.

Their version is written for graduate students, and it ain’t great. My edit is written at the recommended 8th grade level. Which would you rather read? Which is clearer? Easier to read? More enticing?

C’mon, authors — lead by example.

The paper attempts to make communication formulaic, estimating time commitments, describing approaches, and so forth, but the examples are strained and seem irrelevant because to do public communication well, you have to do it all the time. You can’t just dabble. It takes years of work, learning, and adjusting, and underestimating the expertise needed and “knack for it” are common mistakes.

Their examples of effective public communication are also questionable and a little self-promotional — an article in the Atlantic, a commercial podcast with three reviews? Those aren’t getting millions of shares on Instagram, YouTube, or TikTok, where most public science communication is actually occurring. It’s not clear any of them have meaningful experience using those outlets.

Then there’s this — one of the authors is a founder of bioRxiv and medRxiv, which have been major sources of misinformation to the public. Yet, his ties to these and OpenRxiv are not disclosed in the article, and the author group proceeds as if misinformation isn’t something some members of their little author group have helped boost.

• The podcast promoted as a good example is by the founder of Roon, and he interviews a new convert to the MAHA movement and AI nonsense, the formerly reputable Ashish Jha, in a recent episode.

Even given the larger caveats above, this is the kind of article that works against its purported goals:

• It hides the role of misinformation promoted by some of its authors
• It mistakes effete communication outlets (specialized commercial podcasts and top-tier magazines) with outlets the public actually uses
• It uses sophistry and overly complicated language to communicate
• It makes science communicators seem stilted and Ivory Tower

Good Science Communication Takes Talent

My experiences trying to help scientists and physicians reach the public taught me a simple lesson — it takes someone with a knack for it, and that knack is rare. Very few scientists and physicians have it, a lot of PR professionals lack it, and those who have it need to put it into practice all the time to hone it.

Who has the knack currently among the younger set of science communicators, in my opinion? Jessica Knurick. Zachary Rubin. Katelyn Jetelina.

• Catharina Doria is the best public communicator about AI, by the way.
  • Ed Zitron is the funniest about the money furnace powering it.

Good, natural, accurate, and winning science communicators exist. They connect with hundreds of thousands of people, and speak in a way that is factual, understandable, and engaging. Don’t try to train up an amateur, part-time B-team to compete with them. Support those with the gift. And stop making their lives harder by controlling what you can control, including pay-to-play papers and unreviewed draft papers (preprints).

Good communication often means letting those who know how to do it shine, and staying out of their way.