We’ve all had that one chemistry class where the professor stands in front of the classroom droning on about chemical bonding and acid/base interactions, without generating excitement or curiosity in the students. Scientists spend their entire educational training learning the facts, mastering the techniques, and critically evaluating the research.
The highly organized structure of the scientific method allows for good, reproducible science to be published. But on a larger scale, what use is science when it is not communicated effectively? When misinformation is being publicized to the community and influencing political leaders, it’s not just the science that suffers, the people suffer too.
I used to believe that facts were enough. But as I sat in a classroom trying to explain my scientific research to the professors and students from other science fields, they looked back at me like I was speaking a different language. Which I was. I was using so much jargon that I might as well have been speaking gibberish. I was losing the attention of my audience, and my science was lost in the process.
I came to realize that people weren’t interested in the facts, they were interested in the “why.” Why was I doing my research? Why should they care? Until now, my focus was never “How can I best get my message across?”, it was “How can I fit all this material that’s so important to my project?” By defining all the scientific terms I was using, I thought I was providing enough information for a listener to understand. But sometimes understanding is not achieved through more information, it’s achieved by better communication.
In 2017, New Yorker author Elizabeth Kolbert's article "Why Facts Don't Change Our Minds," highlights why people refuse to alter their beliefs when presented with cold, hard facts. People choose which facts to listen to and which to ignore, not based on the credibility of the source, but by what matches their previous deeply-held beliefs. In their minds, it's much easier to discredit others than to admit their own wrong.
But how can storytelling help a climate change denier believe in scientific facts? Everyone loves a good story. Better yet, everyone responds to a good story. In part, this is what makes sensationalized misinformation stick in people’s minds. It’s catchy and it appeals to emotions and shared interests.
Storytelling in science does not mean making things up. It means sifting though the gritty details and determining the take-home message. In conveying their research, scientists can create characters out of their subject content to make their research more relatable, or share the stories of scientists and their discoveries.
Sure, [Insert famous scientist] discovered x, but why were they interested in x in the first place? What were their failures, their redeeming experiments? Maybe they were influenced by a dream, like German chemist Kekule determining the circular structure of a benzene ring after dreaming of a snake eating its own tail. Storytelling shows that scientists are human, and that makes science personal.
When you hear the claims of public officials ignoring the warning signs of climate change or reinforcing conspiracies about vaccines, it’s easy to become frustrated and throw rocks of scientific facts. But when enacting a global change in the policies that affect us most, we need to first change how people perceive scientists and the research they produce. Changing people’s minds is going to involve more than shoving facts, it’s going to involve telling a story.
