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19 June 2018
On creativity in science
By Bonnie McGill. This is a cross-posting of a post originally found on her blog, AGua. Until eleventh grade I had no inclination to be a scientist. Zero. I was going to be a graphic artist. Magazines, fonts, photographs, and layouts were my thing. The secret scientist in me was awoken in an eleventh grade environmental science class (thank you, Mr. Betts). At the time, I thought I was putting …
29 May 2018
Webinars for scicomm: Consider me a convert
I thought webinars were basically lectures online, and don’t get me wrong, they can be. But I quickly realized that they can also be, and are, a great tool to share content and engage with audiences who normally wouldn’t be able to participate in person.
14 May 2018
The humans behind climate science – a podcast
“I’m too busy,” I said to myself. “I should be writing papers,” I protested. Nevertheless, the idea wouldn’t go away. It refused to die.
7 May 2018
Communicating about rare and common species
On March 19, in a grassy enclosure at the Ol Pejeta Conservancy in Kenya, a northern white rhinoceros named Sudan died. He was the last of his kind.
23 April 2018
Building better tools for risk communication with user-centered design
By Sonia Stephens How can we build better tools to communicate about coastal risks? As a technical communicator, I’m interested in how we can make scientific information more understandable and meaningful for different audiences. One of the things I study is how interactive risk visualization tools are made. That is, I study how these tools are developed: who does the design and development, what choices they make about design and …
5 April 2018
Heading to the field? Submit your Postcards from the Field!
By Shane M. Hanlon In mid-2014 we launched our Postcards from the Field campaign through our shiny-new Tumblr account where we asked you to share stories and photos from your field experiences. We’ve also created calendars from postcard images voted on by our members and the public. It’s that time of year again. Flowers are blooming, trees are greening, and scientists are prepping for field season. Whether you’re in the middle of a field season or preparing for …
2 April 2018
NASA is for early-career, female scientists, too
When I tell someone that I’m part of a research team at NASA, I’m immediately met with stunned silence that is followed up with a confusing look. I wait, anticipating the inevitable question that arises as they look me up and down and say, “Wait, how old are you?”
26 March 2018
Building a scicomm program from the salt marsh up
As a scientist whose research required lying face-down in muddy salt marshes to search for itty-bitty marine snail eggs, I was often asked by casual onlookers, “Why the heck are you doing THAT?”
19 March 2018
Standing up by sitting down
I have a sticker on my laptop that says, “Stand Up for Science.” Nice, but how do you really stand up for science?
13 March 2018
WATCH: Up-Goer 5 at AGU17!
Every year, scientists explain their research using the 1000 (ten-hundred) most common words in the English language. The results are fun, silly, heartfelt, surprising, and overall a great time.
The Plainspoken Scientist is the science communication blog of AGU’s Sharing Science program. With this blog, we wish to encourage scientists to reach out to non-scientists and to do so with plainspoken discussion.
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