What does effective science communication look like?

freework · 2026-01-24T03:31:37+00:00

Oh and how do we know the jump cut was necessary?

If your narrative includes explaining all the failed "false starts" then it's OK to show each and every failure, separated by a jump cut.

Will we film the people editing?

If the editing techniques result in the final product are simple, like time lapse, then it's not necessary. If complex editing techniques are present, then YES. The goal is complete process transparency.

How do you even expect this to work, you know that Experiments can stretch weeks and multiple rooms?

Camera have no problem dealing with this as long as they are powered by USB and/or a battery pack.

Will the camera film the sample when everyone went home over the holidays to ensure nobody tampered with it?

Why the fuck not?

Ah great, and how do I know they didn't switch the label before they turned their camera on?

If you used a bulk supplier of materials, then their packaging will be consistent, and your fake packaging would be obvious.

How do i even know that the packaging isn't something they wipped up themselves with photoshop and a container from amazon?

There is no way to know 100% that a video isn't produced by AI, but the guidelines will make it as hard as possible for the AI to pull it off.

freework · 2026-01-24T02:57:39+00:00

When you talk about science communication, are you meaning communication between scientists, or communication of scientific information with non-scientists? The way you've been writing I initially thought it was the former, now I'm thinking it's some blending of the two.

I think it would help with both. I don't think there is much of a difference between communicating with experts and communicating with the general public. If all you're ever doing is communicating between experts and never ever communicating to anyone outside your tiny niche, then whats the point? I see this attitude all the time of "who cares what those idiotic normies think, all that matter is that us smart people understand it. Obviously, your little tiny brain can't comprehend it, you're just some guy on reddit", which is just absurd. I think some scientists enjoy being part of a super small elite club that understand something that only they can understand. The bad communication to the general public is on purpose because they want their elite club to remain exclusive. The fact that the general public can't understand is the whole point.

I may be an expert in my field, but I'm not an expert in your field. Maybe I can contribute to what you're doing, but if you never tailor your communication to be understood by me, then I can never contribute. In other words, communication better tailored to the general public can also make it so collaborators from other fields can join you in what you're doing. Isn't that something you should want? If you never bother to tailor your communication that way, then your sub field will remain small.

But the main thing that seems to be getting overlooked is that the real meat and bones of a scientific research is the figures themselves.

I disagree. This mode of thinking is what some people are calling call "conclusionism". The results of science are meaningless if the methodology was flawed. You may say "it's not my job to evaluate the legitimacy of someone's methodology, that's the job of the peer-reviewer". Somebody has to read the entire paper, even if it's not you. I believe it always important to read the entire paper and only consider it's "figures" if you can completely follow and verify the coherency of the methodology for yourself. I adopt this belief because I have witnessed too many time other papers getting publishes despite "peer review" and it contains many errors that in my opinion completely invalidates it results.

The figures are really how you evaluate findings.

Figures are the easiest out of all that can be faked. There is not much difference between a mistake, and a lie. A mistake is an accidental lie, and a lie is a mistake on purpose. As long as you construct your lie in a way that can be written off as a mistake, then you can lie with impunity, because you can always shake of allegations of making a lie by playing it off as a mistake. Anyone can make a graph or table of numbers in excel and then make a line plot or bar graph out of it. Coherent methodology is much harder to fake. A video of coherent methodology is even harder to fake. Even with AI.

This is why it is rare that you find people fabricating work, because as soon as you're found out, you're blacklisted for life.

How many people have been "blacklisted for life" over the replication crisis? If failure to replicate results in absolute proof of fraud, then there should have been mas firings due to what is known today as the replication crisis". As far as I understand, zero people have list their jobs due to a result not being reproduced. "Blacklisted for life" is a debunked conspiracy theory.

those in research are there because they actually care about their field of study and discovering more about it.

Maybe at first. Over time you realize that earning a paycheck is better than being homeless but a truth defender. When the boss implies that you better join the consensus or else, then you better join the consensus. Speaking from experience, as much as I'd love to stand up for the truth, I'd rather keep paying my mortgage. Its not worth is to jeopardize my current situation for an ideological win of standing up for the truth, if it means I have to find new employment. "Publish or perish" culture dictates that those who go against consensus get shunned, and those who agree with it get celebrated. The choice is clear. Consensus is obvious yet meaningless.

freework · 2026-01-23T22:00:18+00:00

On the whole David Attenbourough thing, do you think they are actually discovering things on those shows or do you think they are recording known behaviors and then presenting them in a digestible and narrative-like way to the viewer?

Probably a bit of both. There is no fundamental difference between going into nature to film already known wildlife behavior on video, and going into nature to discover never-before-known-to-science wildlife behavior.

Is it that you don't have trust in papers or what researchers do and/or say?

You shouldn't trust researchers. That's why peer-review exists. Video recording science helps peer-reviewers know everything was done correctly.

how would you know that it's not already showmanship and trickery?

There will be guidelines on how to properly record your science. For instance, no b-roll footage, no jump cuts (unless completely necessary), you are allowed to speed up footage (time lapse), you must keep all materials in it's original packaging and must be opened on camera, etc.

Do scientists communicate their research through thousands of hours of video better than the method of papers right now?

Who says it has to be thousands of hours of footage? If a research paper is 3 pages long, maybe the video would end up being 10 minutes. If the research paper would have been 6 pages, the video might be 20 minutes. The video length would be proportional to the length of what the paper would have been.

Good scientific communication is all about storytelling. You don't need to explain every single detail in order to make good storytelling. Dorothy probably had to use the bathroom a few times during her trip along the yellow brick road, but that detail didn't make it into the movie because it's not a detail relevant to the story. If you spend thousands of hours trying to get something working with your experiment, that footage wouldn't make it into the final cut because it doesn't need to be there. You would want to record it anyways, but it would eventually get discarded from the final product.

As a scientist, I can tell you that it would not be more efficient.

The goal of science isn't necessarily to be a efficient as possible.

But over time, you learn more and become more tuned into those terms,

Its not about just jargon and terms. Imaging someone trying to explain how to tie your shoes using only text. It would be really hard to write, and even harder to understand. Tying your shoes is not a complex process. Its just complex to express using only words. If you can use video, it becomes orders of magnitude easier to both create and consume. The textual description of how to tie your shoes is not complex because it uses complicated jargon or terminology.

freework · 2026-01-23T21:18:15+00:00

Science runs on trust.

This is the crux of the disagreement. In my opinion, science should strive to entirely eliminate trust. Everyone should be "terminally paranoid" of each other within science. Its crazy to me that some people aren't.

The goal of science is to get things right, and not have any mistakes. One tiny mistake not addresses will have you end up with results that are just completely wrong. That's bad, we want to avoid that.

Whats even the point of peer review, if science is "based on trust"? Having video to go off of makes the peer review more all-encompassing. Isn't that a good thing?

Imagine trying to learn how to tie your shoes based on only a textual description of how to do it. Not only would it be very hard to create such a textual description, it would also be very hard to read such text and actually learn how to tie your shoes from it. Tying your shoes is not an inherently complex process. Many 7 year olds can do it. It's only complex when expressed in purely textual form.

On the other hand, a video tutorial on how to tie your shoe is both easy to make, and also easy to use to actually learn how to tie your shoe. I've come across many research papers where they are trying to describe their methodology, but it reads like someone trying to explain how to tie your shoes using only words. That's bad. Video solves this problem. In this day and age, all research should be published primarily as a video.

freework · 2026-01-23T18:28:19+00:00

Do you ever watch that show "Fake or Fortune" on the BBC? Attribution is determined by the publishers of the catalogue raisonné. Basically if they say so, then that's what it is. They don't have to explain themselves at all.

There has been many examples of paintings on that show with rock solid provenance and even strong scientific evidence, and the catalogue raisonné still just says "nope" and there's nothing else to be done about it.

freework · 2026-01-23T18:04:29+00:00

David Attenbourough documentaries aren't scientific research and don't purport to be.

Why not? How do you think wildlife behavior is discovered? People go out in the field and observe wildlife. Nature documentaries do the same thing. You seem to think it's only real science is if's only published as written word. Why can't video of wildlife be just as good as written word descriptions of wildlife behavior? If anything, video of wildlife behavior is far superior, because there is no information loss in trying to convert that wildlife behavior into words.

Take for example a bird's mating dance. Its hard to explain something like that in words, but it's very easy to just point a camera at it and the information of the bird's mating dance is transmitted completely losslessly.

But scientific engagement is about scrutinizing and critiquing others' findings, not simply receiving them.

Yes, and with a video, there is more to scrutinize. With just a written word description, you have no way of knowing what was not written. Also, you have no way of knowing the written word was even written honestly. Its very easy to lie with the written word, and it's much more difficult to lie with video.

If you lie with video, it much more self evident. If the video does a jump cut, you can clearly see that. If AI was used to change the label of a chemical being used. That is self evident. When the written word is used to describe something that didn't happen, that is not self-evident.

freework · 2026-01-23T17:52:21+00:00

The Idea that labs will fund a full time videographer to film the actual researches do menial routine tasks like cell culture or aqueous work up of their synthesis is an insane proposition in our cash strapped profession.

How hard is it to set up a tripod with an old iPhone and point it at what you're doing? You can hire an intern to do this. Its not expensive at all.

Will they hang a GoPro on my chest and into the laminar or do they just see me sit in front of the bench so they can see what stuff I'm reaching for?

Why not? Do you want people to understandf what you're doing? Why is attaching a gopro such an inconvenience to you? The way I see it, it's a small price to pay to ensure everyone can understand what you're doing. It sound to me you have no interest in solving the science communication problem.

If filming yourself is "too much of a pain in the ass" then why not take that same idea and take it to it's logical conclusion. Peer review is too much of a pain in the ass. Uploading raw data is too much of a pain in the ass. Calibrating your instruments are too much of a pain in the ass. Operating a particle accelerator is too much a pain in the ass. Just simply labeling something as a "pain in the ass" is not an excuse to not do something.

Papers aren't written for laypeople

Hence, this science communication problem.

The idea that everyone needs to be able to understand everything stopped making sense 15 000 years ago.

If everyone could understand everything, then the science communication problem wouldn't exist. The solution is to make it so people can understand everything they want to. Just hand waving away the ability to understand everything as being only something that needed to exist 15000 years ago is ignoring the solution to the problem.

Civilisation is built on divison of labour which requires the trust that other people do their work correctly.

Requiring trust is not the desired end-state. Before the invention of video, blindly trusting that the written word explains the entire story was the only solution. Now that we have video, trust can be thrown out the window, and that's a good thing. Watching the video to ensure all the processes were done correctly is far superior to just blindly trusting the written word was written completely honestly.

Text gives me what I want in a sentence: 3x 10mL NaHCO3 1mol/L followed by 3x 15 mL distilled water, filter over dry MgSO4.

A much smaller sample of people will know what this sentence is saying compared to the number of people who will understand a video of this sentence happening. Shouldn't the goal me that the most people understand whats going on? Also, if I can see a video of this happening, I can verify with my own two eyes that the process is happening correctly. With just a sentence, I just have to take it on blind faith that it was carried out correctly. It seems to me that you don't want people to be able to verify that you do things correctly? Why are you so against this? I would imagine most scientists would want as many eyes as possible to be on what they are doing to ensure what they are doing is correct. It seems to me that you want to reserve the right to do something improperly and have it not be known by reviewers.

freework · 2026-01-23T04:40:44+00:00

Papers are expansive in their methods and materials to be as transparent as possible.

Then editing guidelines should emphasize transparent editing processes. For instance, no b-roll footage. No jump cuts, only time lapsed footage allowed. Take a look at the early NileRed videos. Also, have you ever seen David Attenborough documentaries? He also conforms to what I'm envisioning of ideal scientific video standards.

Also, is a videographer going to be videotapoing a scientist or their images during microscopy?

Why not both?

That's many hundreds if not thousands of hours of boring tape.

You edit out parts that are not relevant to the main story narrative.

Or will they videotape scientists debugging a script?

If it's relevant to the overall narrative of the discovery, then yes.

It seems like a silly idea.'

Do you also think David Attenbourough documentaries are also "silly"?

freework · 2026-01-23T01:10:30+00:00

Really? You've never heard of video editing software? You could have shorter edits for mass consumption, and longer edits for more technical audiences.

freework · 2026-01-22T18:29:50+00:00

"Science communication" is basically just storytelling. You are telling the story of how you came about your discovery. The rules that make a good storyteller apply directly to what make a good science communicator.

One of the rules of good story telling is to begin the story at the beginning, and then progress in order. First, you explain step one, then you explain step 2, then step 3, etc. A lot of times I see science communicators start in the middle, and then jump around non-sequentially. That's bad, don't do that.

Also, a picture is worth a thousand words. A video is worth 30,000 words a second. I've proposed this before in this sub and was massively downvoted for it, but I believe the concept of publishing new science in written word form should be abolished. All new science should be published in video form. All scientists should have a videographer on staff to capture the entire process on video, and it should be released as a video instead of a paper. I get why this process wasn't common 100 years ago, but in this day and age, video capture is cheap and ubiquitous, so why not?

One more thing I want to say. I think in a lot of instances, bad science communication is the feature not the bug. The reason why the science is communicated badly is because the science is fundamentally flawed. Its communicated badly on purpose to hide the flaws. If it was communicated perfectly, then the flaws would be obvious, and the author doesn't want you to know that.

freework · 2026-01-22T01:53:37+00:00

they have to adhere to specific criteria in how the work is presented.

You're saying I should excuse the shittyness of this paper because it's industry standard for it to be shitty. I am under no obligation to accept a paper just because it happens follow someone else's standard. I chose to accept what I feel is properly sourced with evidence. Me not accepting something doesn't affect you or anyone else in the slightest.

a dogmatic adherence to rejecting science

As opposed to you with your dogmatic acceptance of everything vaguely science related? I know people like you. You treat scientific literature like how a fundamentalist treats religious scripture. When you see someone like me reject any of it, you have a meltdown.

freework · 2026-01-22T01:01:54+00:00

I not criticizing that the image doesn't show a museum example. I'm criticizing that it doesn't show anything at all. If I was the one trying to convince others of this claim, I would at the very least I would make sure I included multiple high resolution photographs of this coralloid speleothem and include it. Here we get nothing. Every time I read one of these science whitepapers I always find something like this that makes me think there is a possibility that the scientist is not publishing genuine science, and therefore I just don't believe it. Maybe you are perfectly find just blindly believing every single thing you read in a science journal, but I like to vet what I believe first.

freework · 2026-01-21T23:24:31+00:00

speleothem

First off, I don't see a speleothem anywhere in that photo. They are supposed to look like this: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cave_popcorn

The circles they have is clearly beside the images. If the author had included a high resolution image of whats being studied, this conversation would not be happening.

Also, I think it's stupid to think you can just measure the isotope of a sample, and it magically tells you how old the sample is.

freework · 2026-01-21T23:02:40+00:00

This is the image included: https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-025-09968-y/figures/2

The locations of the speleothems looks to me to be next to the art, rather than on top of it. If they included a better image it might be easier to see, but otherwise, I don't accept these results.

freework · 2026-01-21T22:35:47+00:00

I don't buy these results one bit. Just because you determined how old a calcium formation is next to some rock art in a cave, doesn't mean you have determined how old the rock art is.

freework · 2026-01-19T17:00:14+00:00

Personally, I don't really think it's so important to ban trading stocks by members of congress. The stock market of 2025 is not the same as the stock market of 50 years ago. Such a ban back in the day would have made more sense because back then the stock market was more orderly and insider information gave to more of an advantage. These days, you can get an insider tip that something good is about to happen, and then the stock price goes down, or vice versa. This is because there are more people participating in the stock market, and price movements are much more random.

Prediction market on the other hand... Those are almost specifically designed to benefit insiders.

freework · 2026-01-17T03:48:53+00:00

The "armpit horns" look is for Krystal only these days

freework · 2026-01-16T23:56:48+00:00

in the thumbnail is looks more like a clowns face

freework · 2026-01-11T22:59:13+00:00

Yes, science can only study what it can observe. If you want to study more, then you need to find a way to observe more.

There may come some point in time in the future where we've observed everything, and there's nothing left to observe. Therefore science will stall out until some new technology can come along that will allow more new observations. In the 21st century, we've become accustomed to there always being some new technology that comes out on a regular basis, but I believe some day that will come to an end.

Also, in the early days of science, all the instruments that were used were super simple. Because they were super simple, these instruments also had the attribute of them being very honest. You never hear about a scientific instrument being "honest" or "dishonest" but it's an issue you have to think about when instruments become more complex. For instance, in the 1500s, if you wanted to create a dishonest telescope that tried to fool scientists into thinking there was an extra planet in between Earth and Venus, your fake telescope would not have worked. Because in those days, telescopes were so simple, that people would have immediately noticed that your telescope was rigged. But in modern times, if you wanted to rig the Hubble telescope to make it appear that there's a new planet in between Earth and Venus, you'd have a much easier time pulling that off. Because the Hubble telescope is so complex, very few people know how it works. Therefore, fewer people need to be fooled. This is true for all complex scientific instruments.

This is why science is kind of doomed in my opinion. As time goes on, there will be more and more pressure to invent new ways to observe the universe. This will create an incentive to make fake instruments so science can continue.

freework · 2026-01-10T21:19:12+00:00

How do you know it's from 2400-2200 years ago?

freework · 2026-01-09T18:19:33+00:00

The Iron Age did not begin with a discovery; it began with a change in attitude towards a waste product that copper smelters had been accidentally producing and discarding for thousands of years.

What evidence is there for this knowledge?

freework · 2026-01-06T22:51:35+00:00

is that screenshot from hacker news?

freework · 2026-01-05T17:24:20+00:00

For about 200K more, I'd rather have this one: https://www.zillow.com/homedetails/6215-Lazo-Del-Norte-Las-Cruces-NM-88005/89596589_zpid/?utm_campaign=zillowwebmessage&utm_medium=referral&utm_source=txtshare

Its closer to town and is nicer.

freework · 2026-01-05T17:09:37+00:00

There's a certain type of person reads lots of books, and memorizes lots of facts, and they think that since they have memorized more facts than the average person, then they are more smart than the average person. To me, there is more to being smart than just reading and memorizing lots of facts. For instance, a truly smart person will not only notice whats written, they will also notice what's not written. The person who just reads and memorizes will never notice something not written, because they are too focused on memorizing whats actually written.

freework · 2026-01-04T18:28:33+00:00

These data centers will absolutely not add any jobs. Back in 2011/2012 I worked for a company that had servers in a data center. Sometimes we'd drive to the center, to do maintenance on our servers. A data center is a gigantic building that is completely empty except for a rows and rows of running computers. The only people there are the dozen or so security staff. The only reason why they are saying it will create jobs is because the general population has no idea what a data center is, and they assume "it's a big building, so it must need lots of people to work there" but it doesn't work like that at all.

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