Lily Katz's NSC ePortfolio

As a child I read all the scientific magazines my parents ordered, cover to cover. Although my vocabulary was not up to par, through context, pictures and a few references to a dictionary, I could usually understand the basics. Fast forward a few years, I started to work in the Heilshorn Biomaterials lab at Stanford; I wanted to familiarize myself with the field by reading relevant literature. However, that proved to be a lot more challenging than I thought. Whether it was reading National Geographic as a child, or a technical journal as a student, it was a struggle. Helping to alleviate that struggle, sparked my interest in science communication.

Science communication is a very broad field, ranging from pieces written for a small, specialized audience, to pieces written for the general public. However, there is a large gap between the information portrayed in technical pieces, and that portrayed in pieces for a lay audience. So how do we bridge this gap without losing information? Finding this balance and the language to communicate technical ideas to general audiences is a challenge that all scientists and communicators face. One question I have as a science communicator interested in addressing a lay audience is how to balance the need to engage with the need to be accurate.

In order to properly translate a technical idea, one must first fully understand the science. Therefore, I start my portfolio with a piece I coauthored for the Heilshorn biomaterials lab, under the tab “Specialist Audience.” Although only one of many pieces I’ve written for a specialist audience, I decided to choose this one as it was published in a respectable journal. In this section I also include a presentation on this paper, to show the range of medium types possible in presenting scientific information.

My next piece, in the section “Framing Technical Pieces,” explores how the media uses photography to frame a particular message. What we see in a photograph is often not the whole picture. The photograph leads us to focus on a particular subject at a particular moment. The same could be said about scientific pieces for general audiences. This artifact creates a lens to view the rest of the portfolio and to get the reader thinking about the implications framing popular translations. This piece is followed by a popular translation in the section “General Audience,” as I try to address this issue.

Diving further into this idea of translation, I call the next group of artifacts, “Translation Process.” Here lies the meat of my portfolio. I go from a technical piece to a popular translation, trying not to fall into the trope of sensationalism that many popular science news authors do. In this group of artifacts I include a literary review, a rhetorical comparison and a popular translation. I examine the successes and struggles that I experienced while going through this process. Ultimately, I was not able to avoid sensationalization; however, I do examine how the popular translation structure I chose to use, a Nature Future article, attempts to tackle this dilemma of engagement versus accuracy.

My last two pieces for the portfolio move away from just the science community and show how the NSC has enhanced my science communication skills in other areas as well. After college, I’ll be working in life science consulting. Working in this field is all about communicating to a variety of audiences. Both of the artifacts in this section, “Impact of Communication in the Business World” highlight the importance of communication outside of technical and popular translations in the traditional sense. “Connecting Clinical Research and Medical Care” is a business proposal for a start-up. The start-up attempts to create a communication flow from researchers to doctors to patients, all of which require different types of communication. “Feminine Charm: Negotiating Relationships in the Workplace” is a podcast. This artifact is a social science analysis of gender communication, examining the special issue that women face in the work environment.

Throughout my time here at Stanford I have learned how audience influences my style of communication. However, I have also discovered that audience should not dictate the content. This portfolio demonstrates my development as a science communicator over my four years at Stanford but that does not mean that I have solved this problem of sensationalism in my portfolio. To some extent I have come to recognize that there is a reason why sensationalism is so prevalent; it has proven itself in its ability to grab the attention of any and all audiences. As a science communicator I still struggle with my desire to tone down sensationalism, but I have come to recognize that without engagement, a piece’s accuracy is moot. I hope to continue examining this conflict after college in my work at a life science consulting firm.