Scientific Journalism: How to be Engaging (or at least not boring)

Scientific journalism is not like typical journalism; the information in scientific journals are often relevant to a large group of people, whether its advancements in medicine, the spread of disease, major environmental shifts, or simply the discovery of a new bacteria, the list goes on and on. Other forms of journalism, such as political journalism, are usually not spreading information that has a direct impact on the people, unless the president is getting impeached or something like that. Science journalists constantly juggle accuracy and precision with engagement. They get continuously criticized for leaving out information, exaggerating claims, or being boring. The solution to the accuracy dilemma is simple; don’t make stuff up and give credit where it’s due; it’s not that complicated. The engagement issue, on the other hand, is a bit more complex. There are multiple ways science journalists can engage with their reader. The purpose of this guide is not to teach you how to be a science journalist, but to simply suggest ways to make your writing more engaging so that you can connect with your reader and effectively deliver the information without feeling like you have to exaggerate, fabricate, or alter the facts. And also, to not be so damn boring.

Ray Anderson’s Rhetoric and Science Journalism (1970) elaborates on what it means to be engaging in scientific writing and why it is important. Anderson identifies this when quoting Hiller Kreighbaum, the author of Science and the Mass Media (1967). “‘Taking a specialized technical language or environment and translating it, with a minimum loss of meaning, into the speech of the intelligent laymen unversed in the particular jargon and hopefully, into the speech of the typical men in the street,’” this quote essentially consolidates what it means to be an effective science journalist (Kreighbaum 1967, as cited in Anderson, p. 359). Anderson took this idea and developed it into “finding the common ground” between the journalist, the topic, and the reader. (Anderson, 1970, p. 361). But how exactly is this done?

Hooking the Reader

Before you find the “common ground”, you have to get your reader to actually want to read your article. This is done by hooking the reader. This is a simple concept that we were all taught in middle school, but if it’s not done well, you’ll lose your reader before they even know what you’re writing about. No reader wants to open up a magazine or online article and see that the entire first paragraph is on the molecular details of how a bacterium has multiple open reading frames on one gene so it can code for various lactate enzymes to fuel glycolytic metabolism. Your average reader would stop reading this article instantly; they’re likely thinking they just opened the most recent textbook edition of Genetics: From Genes to Genomes.

You have to convince your reader to read your article. Pose an intriguing question. State a crazy fact. Introduce a dilemma. Do any of these things, but don’t jump straight into the details of the science. A great example of hooking the reader is Jennifer Ackerman’s (2012) “The Ultimate Social Network.”

Researchers who study the friendly bacteria that live inside all of us are starting to sort out who is in charge — microbes or people? (p. 38).

Here, Ackerman opened her article by presenting an intriguing dilemma that leaves us wanting more. Notice how she doesn’t dive straight into the science, but instead presents a clear, interesting and comprehensible hook. This lays the foundation and tone for the rest of the article, while also initiating a conversation.

Word Origin

Finding the common ground starts with word choice. If your reader can’t understand a majority of your words; or they do understand but it takes time and is mentally taxing, then how are you ever going to be able to communicate valuable scientific information to them? Your writing most feel natural to the reader, and that starts with word origin.

Take a look at the table below. I want you to quickly glance at these columns of words and ask yourself which of these columns is easiest to interpret.

Now, look at the columns. As you can see, each column of words has a different origin.

(Fahnestock, 2011, p. 31)

If you found that the old English core column was the easiest to interpret and came to you the quickest, then you’re not alone. The words come from old English and old German, and they make up our core vocabulary, or the vocabulary that we use in everyday conversation (Fahnestock, 2011, p. 23-41). Old French tends to be a bit more difficult to interpret and words don’t come quite as quickly, but the words do have an appealing aesthetic quality. The Latin and Greek words, on the other hand, are pretty gross. Not many people off the top of their heads know what the word “magnanimous” means, and virtually no one uses a word like that in everyday conversation. Your reader does not want to have to read your article with a dictionary beside them. Try to avoid words with Latin and Greek origin; they will likely frustrate your reader and turn them off to your article.

Of course, this is science journalism, and nearly all scientific terms originate from Latin or Greek (Fahnestock, 2011, p. 23-41). You can’t get rid of all of these words, especially important nouns, or you will significantly impair the accuracy. But you can get rid of unnecessary descriptive terms. Look at the two sentences below and think about which one feels more welcoming and is easier to understand.

Replication protein A (RPA) is a heterotrimeric, multi-functional protein that binds single-stranded DNA (ssDNA) and is essential for eukaryotic DNA metabolism (Daughdrill, 2001).

But soon after the body ramps up its production of T cells, it also starts producing so-called regulatory T cells, whose principal function seems to be to counteract the activity of the other, pro-inflammatory T cells (Ackerman, 2012, p. 42).

If you felt that the second sentence was easier to interpret, it is likely due to the fact that the second sentence uses the old English core to connect ideas, while the first sentence has a heavy concentration of Latin and Greek terms. The use of old English core feels natural and is an excellent way to find the common ground with your reader. It makes the reader feel like you are having a conversation with them rather than lecturing at them.

Metaphor

One of the best ways to find the common ground and engage your reader is through metaphor (Fahnestock, 2011, p. 104-107). From my empirical study on Great Science journalism articles, I found that biology articles rely heavily on metaphors to explain dense complex biological processes and systems. If you find yourself writing on dense natural science topics that often require an understanding of complex processes, then metaphor is your best friend. Below is an example of an excellent metaphor in scientific journalism.

Over the eons the immune system has evolved numerous checks and balances that generally prevent it from becoming either too aggressive (and attacking its own tissue) or too lax (and failing to recognize dangerous pathogens) (Ackerman, 2012, p. 42).

Here, Ackerman, a master of scientific metaphors, uses checks and balances to essentially explain how an immune system works. This is an incredible feat because entire textbooks have been written on the immune system; she essentially consolidated it to one metaphor. The government’s system of checks and balances is well known to the intelligent layman, while the ends and outs of our immune system are not. Ackerman avoids getting into the dense details of how cells interact in our immune system while still explaining the function. Metaphors like these are essential for scientific journalism because they can make or break your reader’s understanding of a concept. These metaphors also bring the wiring down, similarly to the use of the old English core, to find the common ground with your reader, and to allow them to engage with the topic.

Personal Experience

Another powerful way to find the common ground is to share a personal experience. Science tends to not be that personable, so, using personal experiences allows you to insert yourself into the topic to help develop a connection with your reader and to effectively deliver your message. This works because personal experiences suddenly make the topic very real and human, while also demonstrating to your reader that you have actually experienced the event you’re writing about, not just read about it in textbooks. Sharing a personal experience builds trust with your reader; it makes them more inclined to listen to what you have to say, which is the point of scientific journalism to begin with. From the same empirical study on great scientific journalism, I also found that psychology articles rely heavily on personal experiences to introduce a topic. This was especially true on topics such as, mental health, to demonstrate that they had dealt with the topic firsthand by either discussing it with friends, discussing family members who had experienced the issue, or their own personal engagement with it.

I attended a conference…[story about a chemist’s son who has OCD and was not accommodated]…This anecdote provoked a startlingly sympathetic response around the table: most of us, it turned out, identified with the chemist’s son (Groopman, 2000).

This example from Jerome Groopman’s (2000) “The Doubting Disease” demonstrates how to appropriately use a personal anecdote to engage the reader. Groopman sharing his experience discussing OCD and relating it to himself establishes a strong connection with the reader. He is being somewhat vulnerable, but this makes him human which establishes the common ground with the reader.

Thoughts

These are just a few strategies that could be effective in engaging your reader. You don’t have to use all of them, and not all of them are appropriate for specific moments in your article. If you write with these strategies mind, or simply writing with the purpose to communicate with your reader, then you will deliver great scientific journalism.

Also, from the examples, it is clear that no scientific information was exaggerated or came off as misleading. It is entirely possible to be engaging without loss of accuracy. Remember who you’re writing to, remember why you’re writing, and remember why you think your reader deserves to know this information.

People have a right to know what is going on in the scientific world whether it is an advancement in medicine, a new epidemic, or even the discovery of a new microbe. It is your job as a scientific journalist to deliver this information accurately and effectively, so your reader has a true understanding of what is going on in this world. But for this to happen, the writing has to be accessible, and the common ground has to be found.

References

Ackerman, J. (2012). The Ultimate Social Network. Scientific American, 306(6), 36–43.

Anderson, R. L. (1970). Rhetoric and Science Journalism. Quarterly Journal of Speech, 56, 358-368.

Daughdrill, G., Ackerman, J., Isern, N., Botuyan, M., Arrowsmith, C., Wold, M., & Lowry, D.

(2001). The weak interdomain coupling observed in the 70 kDa subunit of human replication protein A is unaffected by ssDNA binding. Nucleic Acids Research, 29(15), 3270–3276.

Fahnestock, J. (2013). Rhetorical Style The Use of Language in Persuasion. Oxford University Press.

Groopman, Jerome. (2000, April 10). The Doubting Disease. The New Yorker. Retrieved from https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2000/04/10/the-doubting-disease

Hartwell, L., Goldberg, M. L., Fischer, J. A., & Hood, L. (2018). Genetics: from genes to genomes. New York, NY: McGraw-Hill Education.

Krieghbaum, H. (1967). Science and the Mass Media. New York University Press.

Louis, A., & Nenkova, A. (n.d.). CATS: A Corpus for Analyzing the Text quality of Science news articles. Retrieved from https://www.cis.upenn.edu/~nlp/corpora/scinewscorpus.html

Louis, A., & Nenkova, A. (2013). A corpus of science journalism for analyzing writing   quality. Dialogue & Discourse, 3(2), 87–117.