Mild calm has arrived once more … shoulders feel a little lighter. Your research turned up interesting results, and it is now — or will soon be — published. Another project finished. Time to move on to the next project.
But wait a minute.
You know your research will probably have a very limited readership, even within your field. Don’t you think other researchers and perhaps the educated public may be interested in the results of your 100’s of hours of work?
If your answer is yes, then you need to refocus your message to a different audience.
This approach to promoting research to a wider audience, either by experts (scientists) or non-experts (science journalists) is often called Science Communication. Do you want to raise awareness of your research, and perhaps even more importantly, increase people’s understanding and sense of wonder and appreciation about your scientific discoveries and arguments? If so, Science Communication is for you. But you will need to learn how to make good use of entertainment, humor, storytelling and metaphors.
If you are still reading this, your first step to writing Science Communication is to ask and answer these two basic questions.
Q1. How do you share your research with a broader audience who don’t read your field’s research journals?
Ans. Step back from the methods, data and technical jargon, look for the story elements, and tell a human story.
Q2. How do you turn your data story into a human story?
Ans. Find out by reading this article that analyzes a good recent example.
Effective communication
All skilled writers in research, fiction, journalism, and social media are effective communicators. They understand people and language. More specifically, they
- know what their audience finds value in, and
- deliver this message in a language and form that is easy to read.
For researchers outside your research field, or the educated lay audience, their interest in your research will depend on how closely you can relate it to human concerns and turn it into a story.
All stories are about people and a major problem or crisis. Movies and fiction can be reduced to this simple formula:
- a main character has a problem,
- struggles and suffers, but
- finally overcomes it.
So, successful storytelling needs to introduce a character and problem we can relate to. It is the same for Science Communication. This article will look at an exemplary piece of Science Communication that is a typical problem-solution research story, but with an entertaining, historical and dramatic twist. In short, it is a well-told human story.
John Cryan’s (2021, Aug 10a) story is about the “anxiety”-inducing problems of “aging”, like “cognitive decline”, “frailty”, and “brain inflammation”. The dramatic solution involves an “elixir”, “fountain of youth”, “rejuvenation”, and a “poo transplant”.
Are you curious yet?
The home of this article is The Conversation, an online newsletter whose tagline is “academic rigor, journalistic flair” and whose contributors must all be affiliated with research institutions.
Analysis 1. The storytelling
Cryan’s 800-word science communication piece is a story re-telling of his recent research on aging, microorganisms of the gut, and immunology. The Nature Science Alert article has the provocative title, “Scientists Reversed Aging in Mouse Brains With Poo Transplants From Young Mice.” (This is different from the original source, The Conversation, which has the title: “Gut bacteria rewind ageing brain in mice” [2021, Aug 10b].)
Now that Cryan’s title has caught our attention, the first paragraph throws the reader into the human drama motivating his research field.
| In 1895, on turning 50, Elie Metchnikoff became increasingly anxious about aging. As a result, the Russian Nobel prize-winning scientist, and one of the founders of immunology, turned his attention away from immunology and towards gerontology – a term that he coined. |
Cryan does two interesting things with this introductory paragraph, or lede as it is called in journalism. He connects his current research into a historical lineage that dates back more than 120 years, and he also reveals the all-too-human motivation inspiring Elie Metchnikoff’s research: anxiety about aging and death. He also resurrects the hero of the story, Elie Metchnikoff (hereafter EM), in a grainy black and white picture to emphasize the human-side of his research story-telling.
But the real hero of the story is the research line that started and then stopped with EM. Like a detective story, Cryan spends the next two paragraphs describing EM’s research story that faded into obscurity.
| He was fascinated by the role that intestinal bacteria play in health and disease and suggested that people from parts of eastern Europe lived longer because they ate a lot of fermented foods containing lactic acid bacteria. Although popular at the time, this theory linking gut microbes to healthy aging was largely ignored by scientists until relatively recently. We now recognize the importance that the trillions of bacteria, known as the gut microbiome, have in regulating health and disease. |
EM’s potentially fruitful research was “largely ignored … until relatively recently”, when scientists like Cryan rediscovered it. Enter the archaeologists who discover an ancient, long lost secret manuscript. Cryan now connects his recent research investigations into brain aging and the immune system to this long lost research line started by EM.
| Evidence has been accumulating for almost a decade that the microbiome composition changes with age. In 2012, research by my colleagues at University College Cork showed that diversity in the microbiome was linked to health outcomes in later life, including frailty. But we still didn’t know much about the effect of the microbiome on brain aging. In 2017, we revisited Metchnikoff’s ideas, putting them in the context of brain aging, and showed that aging induced changes in the microbiota and immune system, and was associated with cognitive decline and anxiety. However, this study, like many in the field, only showed an association between aging and these factors. It did not prove that one thing caused the other. In a subsequent study, we went a step further in showing that a microbiota-targeted diet enriched with the prebiotic inulin (a prebiotic feeds the beneficial bacteria in the gut) could lessen the effects of aging in the brains of middle-aged mice. Yet it still wasn’t clear whether the microbiota itself caused the slowing of brain aging. In our latest study, we show that by taking the microbiome from young mice and transplanting them into old mice, many of the effects of aging on learning and memory and immune impairments can be reversed. Using a maze, we showed that this fecal microbiota transplant from young to old mice led to the old mice finding a hidden platform faster. |
At more than one third into the article, Cryan has finally arrived at his recent study, which is what this article is designed to promote. Cryan’s article then goes on to give a brief, plain English explanation of brain aging and a specific immune cell that has “ironic” connections to EM’s research.
| The immune connection Aging is associated with an increase in inflammation across all systems in the body, including the brain. It is clear that immune processes play a key role in brain aging, with a growing emphasis on the role of a specific immune cell, the microglia. Ironically, these are the same class of cells that Metchnikoff visualized down the microscope, albeit in other tissues, in the late 1800s. We now also know that the activation of these cells is under constant regulation by the gut microbiome. |
In the next two paragraphs, Cryan has shared the results of his recent research on mice which “show conclusively” that some aging effects can be reversed by transplanting microbiota, or “poo”, from young to old mice.
| So the next part of the puzzle was to see if the negative effects of aging on immunity are also reversible by transplanting the microbiota from young mice to old. Indeed, a lot of the inflammation was lessened. Finally, we showed that chemicals in a region of the brain involved in learning and memory (the hippocampus) were more like that of young mice following the microbiota transplant. Our results show conclusively that the microbiome is important for a healthy brain in old age. |
These findings show that EM was on the right track, but more research is needed to better understand the mechanisms responsible for these rejuvenation effects. Raising awareness of future directions of research is a mainstay in the formal research article, and so it is with Science Communication: the current research is important, but there is still so much more important work to do!
| Was Metchnikoff’s step away from immunology premature in understanding the secrets of ageing? Indeed, the relative contribution of the immune changes seen in the mice receiving young microbiota to the overall rejuvenation effects deserves further study. But two big questions remain. What are the exact mechanisms at play? And can we translate these remarkable findings to humans? |
And just like the formal research article needs to state research limitations or caveats, the same is also true for the Science Communication article, especially for non-technical readers. Mice, after all, are not humans!
| Mice aren’t humans Working with a controlled situation of mice – which have very defined genetics, diets, and microbiome – is very different from looking at humans. We need to be careful to not over-interpret these findings. We are not advocating fecal transplants for people who want to rejuvenate their brain. Instead, these studies point towards a future where there will be a focus on microbiota-targeted dietary or bacteria-based treatments that will promote optimum gut health and immunity in order to keep the brain young and healthy. Such strategies will be a more palatable elixir indeed. |
Finally, like any good satisfying story, Cryan ties his research story back to its beginning with EM and his human desire to find a fountain of youth.
| Metchnikoff’s overall tenets appear to be correct: protecting your gut microbes may be the secret to the fountain of youth. With advances in healthcare, longevity has markedly increased. And although we cannot stop the march of time, we can develop treatments that will protect our brains from deterioration and we have more than a gut feeling targeting the microbiome may be one such way. However, much work is still needed, though, to better understand how gut microbes are able to press rewind on some of the hallmarks of an aging brain. |
Finally, we should note the importance of metaphors and playful turns of phrase, the most important linguistic tools of the storyteller. Cryan liberally uses these language devices to
- Entertain – “we have more than a gut feeling”
- Titillate – “protecting your gut microbes may be the secret to the fountain of youth”, and also
- Translate technical concepts into more relatable concepts – “press rewind on some of the hallmarks of an aging brain”.
Analysis 2. The elements of effective science communication
As we said at the beginning of this article, effective Science Communication will depend on
- knowing what your audience finds valuable, and
- delivering this message in a language and form that is easy to read.
Let’s expand on these two points.
Knowing your audience
For the first, Cryan highlights the problem shared by everyone, at some point in their life: the onset of getting old and the anxiety it causes. The research story revolves around this widely shared problem and uses EM as the hero and vehicle of the story. Cryan knows his audience concern follows the following story checklist to make his research as relatable as possible:
- The article is human-focused (EM is the character and his research motivation and anxiety about not being able to “Stoop the march of time” are shared by audience)
- EM is the main character of the story to make it relatable and accessible
- The story starts 1. “in media res”, or in the middle of EM’s research story, with 2. a problem (getting old) and emotion (anxious) to hook reader (like many movie storylines)
- The black and white photo of EM makes the story more vivid and visual
- The story ends by returning to EM
- Science forgot about EM’s potentially fruitful research direction, but Cryan’s team are like archeologists making a re-discovery
- Cryan’s team’s research story picks up where EM’s left off, to make one continuous narrative (EM + 2012 + 2017 + subsequent study + latest study)
- The EM-Cryan story seems to be leading to a climax – a possible “secret fountain of youth”
- The story isn’t finished yet … there is the promise of a sequel: mouse experiment caveats mean that the research story needs to continue with human research subjects.
The narrative structure of Cryan’s story reflects the birth, motivation and evolution of this research line and sheds a human light on science and scientists and instills the sense of wonder and curiosity of science.
Using the right language
If the first requires a sense of storytelling, the second is more technical and involves language use. The most challenging aspect of science communication for most scientists is the reduction of jargon. To make science communication as accessible as possible for the widest possible audience, the concepts need to be general and the language needs to be plain.
This is why The Conversation, the science news website that published Cryan’s Science Communication article, has a stated editorial policy of “no jargon and accessibility to a wide audience” (Wikipedia, The Conversation (website)). It is a not-for-profit organization that publishes its articles under a Creative Commons license and is available in more than 90 countries, in 23 languages, and read more than 40 million times a month (Waiting, 2019).
Regarding the language used in the article, we can see several strategies to deliver a message in the language that catches attention and that is easy to read by a general audience:
- The length is short: 800 words (under 1000 words is a quick read)
- The headline is catchy
- There are 2 section headings in the article
- The sentences and paragraphs are short, like journalistic style
- The tone is conversational
- Questions are used to guide the lay reader to main discussion points
- The English is plain and simplified
- There are humorous (“have a gut feeling”) and incongruous/eyebrow-raising turns of phrase (“poo transplants”).
Conclusion
In summary, this successful example of science communication storytelling has a few basic takeaways. The formula involves embedding the main research points of the original research (method + results + implications) into a narrative structure that contains a hero with a problem and struggle that pays off with a happy ending, or at least a light at the end of the tunnel.
So, if you want to write an effective research story like Cryan’s, reach a broad audience and increase your research visibility, you can try this six-part template:
- Immediately set the character/emotion/setting,
- Immediately state the relatable problem,
- Tell the story over a timeline,
- Create a rising action toward the climax – positive results from research,
- Set up a cliffhanger ending with caveats and/or implications for future research (story sequel) – possible light-at-the-end-of-the-tunnel solution
- Use the right language.
And now, all you need to do is write your story.
References
Cryan, J. (2021, Aug 10a). Gut bacteria rewind ageing brain in mice. The Conversation. Gut bacteria rewind ageing brain in mice (theconversation.com)
Cryan, J. (2021, Aug 10b). “Scientists Reversed Aging in Mouse Brains With Poo Transplants From Young Mice. Nature, Science alert, Scientists Reversed Aging in Mouse Brains With Poo Transplants From Young Mice (sciencealert.com)
Waiting, Chris. “A new home for The Conversation”. The Conversation. Retrieved 18 November 2019.
Wikipedia, The Conversation (website). The Conversation (website) – Wikipedia. Accessed Aug 29, 2021.
