Commencement time brings commencement speeches; one of my favorite commencement speeches is a speech by Robert Krulwich at Caltech in 2008, where he discusses the importance of storytelling in science. His speech makes a case for talking about science to audiences that may not be well-versed experts in the topic being presented. This speech should be required listening for any graduate student or researcher in science.
Krulwich begins the speech by putting the students in a hypothetical scenario where a non-technical friend or family member asks “What are you working on?” What would you think: Is it worth the effort to try to explain your work to the general public? Do you care to be understood by average folks? His advice: When someone asks this question, even if it is hard to explain, give it a try. Talking about science to non-scientists is a non-trivial undertaking. And, it is an important undertaking, because the scientific version of things compete with other perhaps equally (or more) compelling stories.
As researchers, we are competing for human attention; we love to hear stories. Storytelling is perhaps one of the most important-and one of the most under-taught-aspects of our discipline. The narrative of a research writeup or talk can often determine whether the work is well-received-or even received, for that matter. Some cynics may dismiss storytelling as “marketing”, “hype”, or…
