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PolicyNet
Events
PolicyNet Meeting September 2003
 September’s
PolicyNet meeting saw Tim Radford, Science
Editor for the Guardian come to talk to us.
Although not a scientist, or engineer, Tim
has proved over the years to be expert at
communicating science to the public and was
therefore well placed to give us a few hints
on how to make our policy work more
digestible for the press and general public.
Getting scientists and engineers to
communicate better has been one of Tim’s
missions for a number of years and although
he welcomed the chance to give us a master
class, also said that he expected to have to
preach the word to scientists and engineers
again and again for years to come.
Some science stories hit the press and start
a huge bandwagon rolling; others just slide
into obscurity. Apparently there is no rhyme
or reason as to why two equally good stories
should fare differently, but Tim was able to
point to some best practice which would help
to ensure that a story is picked up by the
press in the first place. Of course even the
best science story will be wiped off the
front page by an unpredicted major disaster,
but a few tricks will give it an edge.
The popular press is all about stories.
Stories with a human interest which wraps
around the hard facts. Too often, our press
releases state a series of facts or even
quote from dry academic style papers.
Scientists and engineers are naturally
cautious about making wild claims and seem
to often forget their scientific language
will not be widely understood – indeed it is
often the case that other scientists and
engineers outside of a narrow field will
find it unintelligible as well.
Once the language has been made accessible
to press and public, the story aspect
becomes important. To illustrate this, Tim
gave two examples of science stories which
had the potential to be dull, but ultimately
had irresistible stories attached to them.
The first was about the finding of a huge
tapeworm which infests whales. On the face
of it, a story of interest to
parasitologists but few others. However, the
story of the scientist involved travelling
to carry out a post-mortem on a stranded
whale, having to abseil down a cliff with a
chain-saw, hack his way into the corpse and
eventually retrieve the worm made it a story
with a much wider interest.
The second involved the analysis of space
debris retrieved from a satellite that had
been in space with special panels to collect
whatever came its way. The finding of
micrometeorites, dust and residues from
other satellites was not enough to excite
even the most technical of journalists, but
the finding of minute quantities of urea
made a story. The speculation was that the
urea could only have come from the very
earliest days of space exploration when
astronauts threw the garbage “overboard” at
the first opportunity when opening the hatch
for a space walk. In essence, this urea had
been floating in orbit for decades giving a
tangible link directly to those pioneering
days. Which particular astronaut it belonged
to, we may never know.
We all like our work to make a splash in the
media now and again, and the insight into
how and why stories get picked up that Tim
gave us should help us in communicating our
policy work to a much wider audience.
Hopefully Tim will not have to bang his drum
at us for too much longer.
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