Effective Science Communication Begins With Collaboration

Carnegie Mellon University’s Baruch Fischhoff says the key to communicating scientific research is simple: Collaborate.

“Communicating science effectively can require an unnatural act: collaboration among experts from professional communities with different norms and practices,” wrote Fischhoff in his paper “Evaluating science communication,” published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. “Those experts include scientists who know the subject matter and scientists who know how people communicate. They include practitioners who know how to create trusted two-way communication channels and practitioners who know how to send and receive content through them. They also include professionals who straddle these worlds, such as public health officials managing pandemics and climate scientists defending their work.”