Everyone who does science inevitably has “communicating” as part of their job description, even if they’re only communicating with their students and professional colleagues. But many people start down a trajectory of becoming a research scientist, only to discover that it’s the communicating that they are most passionate about. And some of those people might want to take the dramatic step of earning a living doing such communication, whether it’s traditional journalism or something more new-media focused.
So: how does one make the transition from researcher to professional science communicator? Heck if I know. I do a lot of communicating, but it’s not my primary job. You’d be better off looking at this thread from Ed Yong, where he coaxed an impressive number of science writers into telling their origin stories. But lack of expertise has never stopped me from offering advice!
First piece of advice: don’t make the tragic mistake of looking at science communication as a comfortable safety net if academia doesn’t work out. Not only is it an extremely demanding career, but it’s one that is at least as hard as research in terms of actually finding reliable employment — and the career trajectories are far more chancy and unpredictable. There is no tenure for science communicators, and there’s not even a structured path of the form student → postdoc → faculty. Academia’s “up or out” system can be soul-crushing, but so can the “not today, but who knows? Maybe tomorrow!” path to success of the professional writer. It’s great to aspire to being Neil deGrasse Tyson or Mary Roach, but most science communicators don’t reach that level of success, just as most scientists don’t become Marie Curie or Albert Einstein.
Having said all that, here are some tips that might be worth sharing.
First: there’s no need to wait. If you think/wonder/suspect that science communication might be for you, then start communicating! Dive into the ecosystem that already exists online, and start participating in the conversation. The good news is, the internet revolution has greatly multiplied the ways one can be a working “science communicator.” The bad news is, it has greatly the diminished the number of traditional science-journalist staff jobs at newspapers and magazines and TV/radio outlets. But, you know, chaos is a ladder. Find the intersection of your passions and your talents with what people might somehow pay you to do, and get cracking.
At the very least, you need a Twitter account, and you should start following (and responding to, and retweeting) some scientists/communicators you think are interesting. And of course adding your own voice! It can be overwhelming, but here are some lists of folks on Twitter (of course with my obvious physics bias):
- Particle Physicists and Cosmologists on Twitter
- Twenty-First Century Science Writers
- Physicists on Twitter (Lucretius 21c.)
And there’s a whole “Social Networking for Scientists” wiki. One simple tip: don’t just read, participate. Leave comments on blogs, respond to people on Twitter, make your presence felt. That will make other people much more likely to notice and link to your stuff once it starts appearing. And if that’s too much to take in, look at my lovely wife Jennifer Ouellette (@JenLucPiquant), who does Twitter as well as anyone.
Next step up in commitment: start a blog. I pay for my own web host (which is great, since you can use it for multiple purposes), but it’s easy to start up a blog for free in a matter of minutes:
Start typing away. Read other blogs (you can subscribe via a reader like Feedly, and find links to new blogs on Twitter). A few of my favorites, with widely-varying styles:
- Matt Strassler
- io9
- Scott Aaronson
- Sabine Hossenfelder
- John Johnson
- Quantum Frontiers
- The Mermaid’s Tale
- Aatish Bhatia
Write about what you’re passionate about or momentarily think is interesting. If nothing else, blogging is a great writing laboratory: you can figure out your own style, as well as what kind of things you are interested in. If anyone actually reads your blog, that’s a bonus!
It might, of course, turn out that you try Twitter or blogging and find it’s just not for you. In that case, it’s possible (certainly not definite) that science communication isn’t for you, either. To make a living off of this stuff, you have to be pretty charged up by the idea of constantly thinking and talking about science.
But perhaps writing just isn’t your bag, and your more of an audio/visual person. It’s much easier to dive into that these days than it used to be, by starting a podcast or YouTube series. By now you are out of my area of pretend-expertise, so my advice is worth even less. But you can be educated by looking at good examples. Here are a couple of audio podcasts I have recently appeared on,
There are also video chats, which are easy to produce via something like Google Hangouts. Another couple I’ve done recently:
If video is really your bailiwick, you can get plenty of inspirations from these YouTube channels:
Then at some point you might want to start writing articles for magazines or websites. The rules here are much murkier, and I’m not really an expert — no false modesty there. (My modesty is essentially never false.) But the basic idea is that you come up with a killer story concept, and then go pitch it to whatever outlet seems most appropriate. (Don’t, in other words, wait for an invitation, or think that being a staff writer is the only way to get published.) Here’s some useful resources in that direction:
- The Open Notebook, and in particular their pitch database
- A Note to Beginning Science Writers (Carl Zimmer)
- CASW: How to Get Started in Science Writing
- NASW: Articles for New Science Writers
If you are passionate about writing but feel like the structured environment and mentoring provided by an academic program is more your style than diving in headfirst without a paddle, consider getting a Masters degree:
or applying for a media fellowship:
At some point, if it all works out, you might want to join a trade organization for science writers:
And hey, maybe someday you will get a book or TV contract! That’s beyond the scope of the current post, but if you get that far — don’t forget the little people who offered unsolicited advice on your way to the top.
John Barrett–
Michio Kaku is a professor of physics. But I wouldn’t call him a professor of theoretical physics, since his last published paper was more than a decade ago. You said “Michio Kaku proved that quantum mechanics and general relativity cannot be unified. ” He did no such thing, but he likes telling people how important he is. He is now just a media figure, who repeatedly makes nonsensical statements. Read Matt Strassler’s comments at http://profmattstrassler.com/2013/03/19/why-professor-kaku-why/
“Michio Kaku is a professor of physics. But I wouldn’t call him a professor of theoretical physics, since his last published paper was more than a decade ago.”
I’m pretty sure he is a theoretician and not an experimentalist. In any case, your last clause is a non sequitur. The type of field one works on is not determined by when one has last published a paper.
“You said “Michio Kaku proved that quantum mechanics and general relativity cannot be unified. ” He did no such thing, but he likes telling people how important he is. He is now just a media figure, who repeatedly makes nonsensical statements. Read Matt Strassler’s comments at http://profmattstrassler.com/2013/03/19/why-professor-kaku-why/“
This Strassler post links back to this post of Sean, which also links to Strassler. 🙂
I saw a youtube video once where Kaku said that he did, because he ended up getting an infinite number of infinities by trying to work a calculation to combine the two theories. Then I also saw a youtube video of someone at Fermilab talking about how the Higgs Field was responsible for the force of gravity. I think Leon Lederman that named it the God Particle also had connections with Fermilab. The people at Fermilab have worked towards the search of the Higgs for a long time. I wouldn’t be surprised if they held the same opinions, and most people have been excluded from their little circle.
If you ask me, I think the God Particle should be the photon. Biblical text always mentions that “God is the light”, and “In the beginning God let there be light”…
“What would happen if all the postdocs and associate professors went on strike?”
Not much. Note that in some countries, some academics are civil servants and not allowed to strike (not a bad deal in exchange for job security). The purpose of a strike is to put pressure on the employer by forcing him to have less intake of money due to the lack of work. In academia, the purpose of the jobs is not to make money for the employer, so the whole idea behind a strike doesn’t make any sense. Also, one would hurt students primarily, who have no say in the issue.
I am very disappointed about not being able to hear the recent Sean Carroll episodes on the audio podcasts cited above. At #1, the horrible woman “hosting” simply refused to shut up talking about herself; and I began to feel — acutely — the 19 years or so actuarial tables suggest that I may have left for taking in the show being pointlessly dissipated: flipping calendar pages danced in my mind… Why doesn’t this Gwyneth Paltrow-esque person just make it simpler for everyone and concentrate on interviewing potted plants from here on in? …Chalk up one more episode in life’s parade of existential absurdities.
At #2, a) iTunes will not work on my Android device as an option; and b) the “link” to libsyn would only spit out a page of programming gibberish to Android/Chrome. No alternative instructions are provided. Life is just too short for this sort of thing. Not Sean’s fault, of course.
Since my post above about being banned from WEIT has 5 likes and no dislikes (is that why it is now yellow?), let me point readers to an 8-year-old post with a similar thought I found by coincidence:
http://saltosobrius.blogspot.se/2006/05/shawls-and-bikini-tops.html
While I find it hard to believe that any rational person can disagree with Martin or me on this one, I am still amazed at the fact that my comment on this topic at WEIT got me banned. Sure, if it was impolite, or vastly off-topic, then it is up to the moderator to do what he wants, but it was neither and surely banning me forever rather than just deleting one comment is too extreme. (Legally, of course, he can do what he wants. That’s not the point. The point is rational discourse.)
It would be somewhat better if Jerry owned up to banning me, mentioning the specific comment which led to it. But he doesn’t. As any journalist knows (getting back to science communication), telling only part of the truth is often worse than lying.
It’s simple, though not easy and not lucrative: Teach undergrad courses to non-majors. (I’d suggest teaching HS & below too, but in the USA they have that pretty well sewn up, albeit more tightly in some states than others. I’m in what seems to be the worst: NY.) Or give adult education courses outside of any institution’s curriculum.
The main problem with teaching undergrad courses to non-majors is that you get a preponderance of students taking the course not because they wanna, but because they gotta. Schooling in general is a racket that way. So I’ve given some thought to who’d be the most willing audiences for science ed., and it seems the answer there is hobbyists & DIYers who need instruction in how-to. But even there, for the most part they want cookbook, not understanding, and not experiment. But I’ll say based on my tiny sampling of online DIY material, it’s mostly awful, the blind leading the blind, and often “interested” in the pecuniary sense, so biased. There’s even at least one YouTuber I know of who mixes genuine instructional material with hilarious hoaxes.