Stories don’t just tell our history, they shape it. Scientists need to start telling better ones.

As I mentioned in an earlier post, I had the privilege of speaking to a big group of K-12 science teachers recently. One of the many interesting conversations I had at that meeting was with Kelly Melendez-Loaiza, who teaches at Mansfield High School in the southeastern part of Massachusetts. She’s one of a few teachers who have decided to tackle our current misinformation pandemic head-on, by inoculating kids against the threat.

Most people can write. Fewer can write well. Fewer still can write well on demand, day after day, at the rate and consistency required to make a living at it. A handful of people can do all that while also creating great works of art. As a result, writing carries both a well-earned reputation for difficulty, and a largely unjustified mystique. It’s the hardest part of my job as a science journalist, and the most over-glamorized skill I have.

Different types of journalism have different challenges. In investigative journalism, the reporting is hard but the writing is (relatively) easy; once you’ve finally wrung the facts out of folks who didn’t want the truth brought to light, all you really have to do is state what you found. Science journalism is the other way around: the reporting is usually pretty easy, but the writing can be extremely hard. Scientists love to talk about their work.

This is a lightly edited version of a keynote presentation I gave on 26 October 2022 at the Massachusetts Science Education Leadership Association meeting in Marlborough, MA. Thanks again to Liz Baker for inviting me, and the whole group for being such wonderful hosts. I really like the theme of this conference, “developing intelligent consumers of science.” I’m not normally a big fan of the term “consumers,” but in this case I think it makes sense.

When I started my journalism career 25 years ago, I had some major worries: how to expand my client list, how to keep paying the rent, whether I was even qualified to be doing this kind of work. Amid those existential concerns, seemingly minor issues of file organization didn’t even register. My workflow then was expedient, but not sustainable. I did all of my writing in a semi-legitimately acquired copy of Microsoft Word, saved the files on my Mac Powerbook in whatever folders seemed convenient at the time, and didn’t think the concept of an archive was relevant to my life.

I follow news about the science job market pretty closely, but perhaps the most reliable indicator I have of it isn’t in my RSS folder or Twitter feed. It’s my inbox. When graduate students and postdocs start to think their future is especially bleak, I start getting more notes from them asking about my choice of an “alternative” career. Many scientists have the naive impression that anyone with a PhD and a laptop can just take up science writing and make a decent living freelancing.

In a groundbreaking new study, scientists at Some University have discovered that a single molecule may drive people to perform that complex behavior we’ve all observed. Though other researchers consider the results of the small, poorly structured experiment misleading, a well-written press release ensures that their criticisms will be restricted to brief quotes buried near the bottoms of most news stories on the work, if they’re included at all. “This is a real game-changer for our understanding of this complex behavior, which has affected so many lives,” said Wannabe Famous, PhD, who directed the study.