Sto­ry­telling in Sci­ence...

by Chelsi and Heather C. Mor­ris

For cen­turies, sto­ries were the pri­mary way that in­for­ma­tion passed from one gen­er­a­tion to the next. First oral, then writ­ten, sto­ries con­tained the his­tory and wis­dom that so­ci­eties con­sid­ered worth hand­ing down to fu­ture gen­er­a­tions. 

Sto­ries were humanity's legacy.

© Chelsi Cas­silly

Even though our dig­i­tal age pro­vides easy ac­cess to in­for­ma­tion at the tap of a fin­ger, sto­ries re­main an ex­cel­lent way of help­ing oth­ers re­ceive and re­tain in­for­ma­tion. We are wired to re­mem­ber sto­ries. Sto­ries about our fam­i­lies, about our past, about our cul­ture. Whether silly, in­spir­ing, his­tor­i­cal, or spooky, sto­ries help us sort, cat­e­go­rize, in­ter­nal­ize, and learn. Au­thor An­drew Kla­van said, "Sto­ries are not just entertainment...A story records and trans­mits the ex­pe­ri­ence of be­ing hu­man. It teaches us what it's like to be who we are." This is also true for nearly all sorts of teach­ing. When par­ent­ing, men­tor­ing, or in­struct­ing, sto­ries can be vi­tal. Ina May, no­table Amer­i­can mid­wife and birth in­struc­tor, said that sto­ries have the power to "teach us of pos­si­bil­i­ties that might not oc­cur to us with­out them." And this is no less true in the realm of sci­ence com­mu­ni­ca­tion.

Per­haps more par­al­lels ex­ist be­tween clear, con­cise sci­en­tific writ­ing and craft­ing sto­ries for broader au­di­ences (both kids and adults) than one might ex­pect. And these sim­i­lar­i­ties might be use­ful in de­vel­op­ing sci­ence com­mu­ni­ca­tion that en­gages and cap­ti­vates a broader au­di­ence. When pre­sent­ing our work, when writ­ing up our find­ings, and es­pe­cially, when fol­low­ing the thread of story from one ex­per­i­ment to the next, it is help­ful to con­sider the over­all story we want some­one out­side the sci­en­tific com­mu­nity to un­der­stand. This way of think­ing of­ten prompts the ques­tion, "What is the best next ex­per­i­ment?" Not sim­ply "what could be done?" but what con­tin­ues the story that is be­ing in­ves­ti­gated… and then telling that story. As Prin­ci­pal in­ves­ti­ga­tor Lora Hooper once ad­mon­ished, "Sev­enth graders should be able to read our pa­pers and un­der­stand our con­clu­sions. Most peo­ple read on a sev­enth-grade level, and we want most peo­ple to un­der­stand and ap­pre­ci­ate what we're do­ing." Ul­ti­mately, log­i­cal, story-dri­ven ex­per­i­men­ta­tion and clear writ­ing is cru­cial for com­mu­ni­cat­ing re­search (and there­fore, build­ing trust) in a way that the gen­eral pub­lic can un­der­stand and em­brace.

© Chelsi Cas­silly

When writ­ing fic­tion or non­fic­tion for a broader au­di­ence, some el­e­ments may be dif­fer­ent (think of di­a­logue, char­ac­ters, set­ting de­scrip­tions), but strong sto­ry­telling and clear writ­ing re­main key build­ing blocks sup­port­ing mem­o­rable sto­ries for kids and adults (see ex­am­ples here, here, and here). Clear writ­ing is con­cise and fo­cused. All stories—those that are re­search-based and those writ­ten to en­ter­tain – have a be­gin­ning, mid­dle, and end. And the best sto­ries are log­i­cal, but sur­pris­ing.

These story-telling con­ven­tions may ap­pear ob­vi­ous. But all too of­ten, sci­ence can be­come mud­dled and im­pen­e­tra­ble when we di­verge too much from this clas­sic story struc­ture. The best sci­en­tific lec­tures are those in which the speaker avoids over­whelm­ing amounts of in­for­ma­tion, keeps a clear ob­jec­tive from be­gin­ning to end, and of­ten re­minds the au­di­ence of the "take home mes­sage." Fur­ther­more, sci­en­tific man­u­scripts fol­low a sim­i­lar pat­tern: the ac­cepted for­mat of most man­u­scripts in­cludes an in­tro­duc­tion, ex­po­si­tional in­for­ma­tion (ma­te­ri­als and meth­ods), a se­quence of events build­ing upon one an­other in a nar­ra­tive plot (re­sults), and a res­o­lu­tion (dis­cus­sion and/or con­clu­sion). This does not mean that we "dumb down" or dis­count our work. In fact, Strunk & White em­pha­size that brevity leads to clar­ity and that achiev­ing such writ­ing is of­ten a thor­ough and it­er­a­tive process.

© Chelsi Cas­silly

To­day, clear com­mu­ni­ca­tion of sci­en­tific dis­cov­er­ies and ad­vances is ar­guably more im­por­tant than ever. Over the past few years, many of us have watched as decades-old data re­gard­ing vac­cine de­vel­op­ment and ef­fi­cacy (among other things) have been dis­missed in fa­vor of what so­cial me­dia in­flu­encers pro­pound. But now more than ever, we can lean into how these sci­en­tific "sto­ries" have trans­formed our so­ci­ety. In this new age of sci­ence com­mu­ni­ca­tion, per­haps we can re­lieve our­selves of the bur­den of con­vey­ing every­thing and in­stead fo­cus our ef­forts on con­vey­ing clearly. As Pe­ter Medawar wrote: "The at­tempt to dis­cover and pro­mul­gate the truth is nev­er­the­less an oblig­a­tion upon all sci­en­tists, one that must be per­se­vered in no mat­ter what the rebuffs—for oth­er­wise what is the point in be­ing a sci­en­tist?"

Heather C. Mor­ris is the au­thor of mul­ti­ple books for kids, in­clud­ing the pic­ture books, Trunk Goes Thunk! A Wood­land Tale of Op­po­sites and Back­yard Stew, a ghost story in the Haunted States of Amer­ica An­thol­ogy, and the up­com­ing pic­ture book, Drib­ble, Shoot, Swish (2027). Prior to writ­ing full-time, Heather worked as a re­search sci­en­tist, where she stud­ied and wrote about bac­te­ria… from the ones that col­o­nize our guts to the ones that col­o­nize the In­ter­na­tional Space Sta­tion. Find her on­line at www.heathercmorris.com.