The Science of Science Communication

Researcher(s)

  • Arianna Mason, Medical Diagnostics, University of Delaware

Faculty Mentor(s)

  • Lydia Timmins, Communication, University of Delaware

Abstract

This project focused on communicating student research by interviewing students and presenting their work. As science communication is a complex field and there are many different techniques that communicators use in their presentations, the main objective was to use various methods to communicate biomedical research to lay people and researchers of other disciplines. In using these methods, we have found that they differed greatly from the typical ways that researchers use to communicate their findings. In many instances, they use complicated language and far too much jargon. Fortunately, there are ways to quickly and easily improve a scientist’s communication abilities, including by removing details about procedures, using analogies, and reducing redundancy.