All communication is a form of storytelling, from a peer-reviewed article to a conversation with a child about what you do and why you do it. This is a good thing, because stories are amongst our oldest forms of communication for good reason: they are engaging, memorable, and uniquely human. As scientists, we are curators of some of the most fascinating, inspiring, and human stories of how we got to the present moment and where we might be going, and these stories need to be shared. Looking inside, the messy stories of how we came to know what we know can inspire and motivate us as scientists, improving our research and actually pushing science forward. Looking outside, we all are essentially ambassadors for science, and sharing the stories of science to justify what we do and why it matters is a crucial (yet often overlooked and under-taught) part of our job description—a form of our social contract. All of these matter more than ever today, and the price of miscommunication can be catastrophic. While global trust in science is high, trust in actual scientists is waning. It doesn't have to be this way! So, what can you do about it? In this brief talk, we go over practical, actionable things I have learned over a decade of my parallel night job as a professional storyteller and director of the Lab Tales science storytelling program, from the raw power of a “story” as an information structure to how to find common ground on a polarizing topic. I certainly do not have all the answers, but there are some (science-backed) approaches we can all benefit from, both within our own labs and in our interactions with the rest of the world.
Daniel Cohen (Sun,) studied this question.