Helping Scientists to Communicate Well for All Considered: Strategic Science Communication in an Age of Environmental and Health Crises

As the scale and scope of environmental and health challenges increase, it becomes ever more essential that scientists and experts communicate about relevant science with audiences beyond the scientific community. In this era of a global co-occurring climate and health emergency, good science that requires effective communication between and among multiple contributors and public audiences has never been more crucial. And yet, scientists are often not adequately prepared to directly engage with non-scientific audiences (e.g., community members, policy makers, educators, industry, and journalists). The infrequent and oftentimes ineffective discourse between scientists and non-scientists must be improved to sustain public trust in science, and to more effectively and equitably apply scientific research to meet societal needs.

Although science communication can be critical for building and sustaining public trust, advancing specific behaviors, and engaging broader audiences in scientific research, the majority of practicing scientists have no communication training. Their efforts, therefore, are often more reactive than strategic, and potentially cause more harm than good. Given the many goals, approaches, and audiences for science communication, there is no single, comprehensive approach for training scientists in these skills and competencies. Furthermore, scientists too often view public engagement as an ‘add-on’ that, at best, provides some value-added benefit for their teaching and research endeavors; or, at worst, as an activity that is not adequately valued and so a waste of time. There are therefore two key problems to be addressed: too few training opportunities to clarify and systematize effective, inclusive science communication; and a lack of institutional valuing and incentives to encourage these efforts. Possible solutions include developing evidence-based science communication training programs for scientists at varied career stages; demonstrating how science communication training improves academic writing, public communication more broadly, and confidence as communicators and scientists; and building collaborative, interdisciplinary teams with diverse expertise and a unified goal of effective science communication.

We encourage articles (i.e., original research, reviews, opinion, and commentary) from scientists in academic or commercial or policy environments as well as science communication practitioners that address important themes related to effective, inclusive science communication with diverse public audiences, such as the following:

• Training early career environmental scientists (undergraduates, graduate students, postdocs) to be better communicators with multiple audiences (e.g., their peers, land managers, journalists, lawmakers, communities).
• How can we best train and support early career scientists (undergraduates, graduate students, postdocs) who are interested in hybrid careers that span scientific research and science communication?
• How to build buy-in from established scientists for more effective science communication?
• How to integrate rhetorical and/or social scientific approaches and thinking for effective science communication with diverse audiences?
• Promising practices for teaching science communication skills and competencies in the science classroom.
• Case studies examining how effective, inclusive science communication works or doesn’t work to solve societal problems (e.g., ecologists doing conservation).
• Examinations into where inclusivity in science communication is lacking.
• How to address the issues of intersectionality in science communication.