During my first year at DePaul I studied biology. While I don’t necessarily think it’s the right field for me, I still learned a lot about science and how important it is to people no matter what field you are in. Which is why it was surprising to see just how inaccessible scientific writing is to everyday people. I read a lot of scientific papers that contained valuable information, but the problem was that it may as well have been a separate language. There was no way people who were not in a scientific field would be able to understand it, I’d wager people who are in a different field of science may not be able to understand.
We have an issue these days with scientific illiteracy, people don’t understand science and it can end up being detrimental, in the case of climate change. Part of this problem is that scientists don’t learn to write for anyone other than scientists. Their information is placed into academic papers that is published in science journals that are really only read by other scientists. Now we do have publications like Scientific American that do important work in bridging the gap between the science language and the everyday person’s language, but there is information that can get lost in translation. By teaching more scientists how to write and make their work more accessible we can keep more people informed so they can properly make educated judgements.
