Communication Crisis in science?
In a text that has attracted much attention, David Rubenson from Stanford Cancer Institute makes the provocative statement that scientists ”don’t communicate well with each other”.
Is the science community getting entangled in the complexity of its communication? Do we need to deliver clearer messages and abstain from showing all the details?
According to Rubenson ”typical biomedical research presentation has become a dizzying whirlwind of incomprehensible slides, presented at lightening speed and labeled with unreadable font sizes and abbreviations known only to the speaker.” Publications also pose problems as ”many scientists report they don’t have time to evaluate or even read the deluge of articles coming from the growing number of print and on-line journals”.
Do you agree with David Rubenson – is there a communication crisis in research?
Opinion: Communication Crisis in Research (The Scientist, January 30, 2013)
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I think it’s not a communication crisis but rather an information crisis.
I doubt this problem can be solved by “just” communicating better.
We come to a point where we realize, that everything we change has an influence on many other factors and we can detect more subtle changes and connections. By Overexpression and knockdown of Proteins we also see connections which are of no physiologic relevance. But it takes a year with 50 papers on this topic until we realize.
I don’t know if open data and informatics and data mining strategies can help here but the amount of data produced in science is exploding and it’s not just about communication.
Hallo Peter,ich bin auch seit 1 Woche wieder zurück. Es war auch wieder ganz toll. Allerdings war das Wetter nicht so schön wie sonst. Stu#R,megen&r8230; aber auch zwischendurch Sonnenschein. Warst Du mal im Cafe de Paris? Hmmm Rosè u.Tapas, da bekomme ich wieder Fernweh.Viele GrüsseStephanie