Question: In your line of work, how important is communication? Do you often give presentations on agriculture or talk to the general public about your work?

Asked by davidmcafee to Brent, Dominique, Harjeet, Kim, Rebecca on 17 Mar 2013.

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  1. Photo: Brent KaiserBrent Kaiser
    answered on 17 Mar 2013:

    Dear Davidmcafee,

    Communication is really important. I spend quite a bit of time telling people about our research and why we do what we do. Often this is targeted to many different audiences that includes your peers to people well removed from science. This can be challenging when you work on a specific topic that is difficult for everyone to see the relevance of to everyday life.

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  2. Photo: Kim RitmanKim Ritman
    answered on 17 Mar 2013:

    I agree with Brent. We have a whole communications and media team who handle media enquiries, twitter and facebook accounts and help us release publications and media releases and interviews. I do radio interviews and present at conferences. Some of my collegues do TV and other high profile media depending on what we been working on. There is always a demand for people who are scientists and can communicate confidently and in a way that is easy to undertand. This includes spoken and written communication. maybe you have an interest in this?

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  3. Photo: Harjeet KhannaHarjeet Khanna
    answered on 17 Mar 2013:

    Very important, and fortunately, the importance of science communication as an essential component of any development strategy is slowly making its way up the agenda, in developed and developing countries alike. Scientists are recognising the need not only to communicate more freely among themselves – hence the growth of the open access movement – but also to communicate the significance of their work to both policy-makers and to the general public, particularly when it has important social implications, whether for good or, potentially, for ill.

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  4. Photo: Rebecca DoyleRebecca Doyle
    answered on 18 Mar 2013:

    Hey David again,

    You’ve got lots of great questions!!

    Communication is so important as a scientist. We need to communicate our findings and research plans to wider audiences in a way that they understand the implications of important findings.

    A great example of this is climate change – at the moment people who are climate skeptics are communicating their message really well, and as a result there are still quite a few people that don’t believe in it either. Climate scientists need to be able to communicate their findings clearly, because they have the evidence to prove that climate change is occurring. If they can’t do this, we run the risk of not acting on this important data.

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