Time to Change Scientists’ Job Descriptions…

By Carol Schadelbauer, January 6, 2011

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It is encouraging to see how scientific and research institutions in the US and abroad are increasingly recognizing the importance of teaching scientists to communicate clearly and concisely to the public and other key audiences. And scientists are recognizing this as a responsibility too. Without this skill, science stays stuck in university laboratories never to be understood, or perhaps more importantly, appreciated for the value it brings to our society.

An editorial released this week by David Dickson, director and editor of SciDev.Net, (the Science and Development Network), agrees that scientists need to learn to communicate with the public, but he takes this point one step further.

Dickson talks about the fact that communicating science well takes work and commitment by the scientist, but he also says that,

“Just as importantly, scientific institutions must make the financial and policy commitments required to enable effective communication. These can range from employing professional communications staff to facilitate the relationship between researchers and the media, to providing career incentives to encourage scientists to communicate.”

Kudos to Dickson. My hope is that soon we will recognize that all academic institutions need to fund basic communications training by providing curricula in graduate school and continuing education to support such training throughout a researcher’s or engineer’s or clinician’s career. Without funding and the support of deans, administrators and department chairs this will never happen.