As I thought about other influential forms of communication for microbiologists, or scientists in general, I considered conferences and poster sessions, where teams of researchers meet up around the globe to present their research. This is a formal setting, but the underlying communication going on is more informal and subtle, as individuals slowly work their way up into more elite and academic social groups that do all the "cool" or "big" research. In addition to conferences, there are grant proposals to be written, and letters addressed to those with enough money to fund our genius little experiments. Grants have a strict format with a lot of technological wording and explanation involved, so the best way to write a successful grant proposal is to make sure you know what you're talking about. The letters we send to request funding can be made a little more personal, allowing the more public side of rhetoric that ENGL 211, Rhetoric and Civilization, has been studying. But instead of solely addressing how communication and persuasion is used in microbiology to microbiologists, I'd like to focus on how that information becomes accessible to the public: in other words, communication and persuasion from microbiologists to you, the people.
Polymerase chain reaction, immunoglobulins, fecal floatations, enzyme-linked immunosorbent assays; have you ever heard of these things? I deal with them every day. And when I write a paper about the research I'm doing, the mechanisms I'm studying, or the accumulation of articles I have formed a review on, I use these words. Yet to the general public they could be gibberish, so how can my research ever reach a level where I am benefiting or educating the general public? Well, I have a filter: the news. When an article comes out, if it is significant enough that the national or local TV stations or newspapers think that you should know about it, they'll translate. They'll take out big words like "cell adhesion molecules" and give readers a more straightforward view to simplify. More often than not, I appreciate this filter as it allows the masses to gain insights and apply the principles I have worked hard to research and improve; yet there are times when the filter misbehaves, and what the public gets is inaccurate and potentially dangerous information. Tune in next blog post to learn more about the vaccine war.
I'd be really interested to read your next post about the vaccine wars. It's always been frustrating to me when people spread misinformation as actual information without checking their facts first. That should be the first step. Now it seems that people have it backwards: say what comes first and let other people factcheck for you. Things like this are pretty often inflammatory, so I'd like to know what you have to say about the facts of vaccines.
ReplyDeleteI bet it becomes frustrating when you see others speculate empirical reality when many questions can become resolved through just taking some data. What a novel idea! My hopefull career has little to no scientific angle and yet I will often hear outrageous claims that force me to ask "where is the data?"
ReplyDeleteClever ending! It's got to be tricky for the media to translate such technical language into something that the general world can understand--but it has to be done carefully, so as to maintain the concepts and ideas presented. I imagine that you use totally different styles of communication when addressing others in your field as opposed to the general public.
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