In good science communications, you really should lead people on, but not in a bad way. This is in direct opposition to how one writes a research paper. It’s putting your “so what” first to grab the attention of your reader or listener.
People often make decisions about whether to stay with a blog or video in less than 10 seconds. So, the lead or hook is important.
A “lead” (or, more technically “lede”) is a set of catchy words that interests people right away to listen to you. Journalists use leads as their title and their first few sentences. Scientists can implement these techniques when telling others about their research! Gwen Pearson’s example of “sparkly bat poop” is a lead.
In typical scientific research papers, we spend a great deal of time setting the scenario – background, methods, discussion, and then conclusion. That’s great when you’re publishing in journals.
However, that type of communication is actually “upside down” when grabbing the public’s attention. Even your grandma might get tired after a few minutes of research talk that uses that style!
Start with these things first – your leads – when explaining your research to help grab your audience’s attention:
- What solutions have you found? Let’s say you’re working in the field of bioreactors or buffer strips. In a journal paper, you’d discuss how the problem of eutrophication started, but in science communications say, “I help farmers keep the streams and lakes clean with X technique.” Or you’re trying to find a better way to make a chemical compound. “I’m working to find a way make an important, life-saving, drug more quickly and efficiently…”
- What are the results of your research? You’ve worked hard to get to your results. You know that. But communicating with the public means you need to get straight to the results, not talk about how you got there. Perhaps your team found a new method to help patients heal from injury. Or you bred new sorghum that is more drought tolerant. Lead with those statements.
- What are the benefits of your results? Perhaps you don’t have concussions yet! Deal with this in a fashion similar to “solutions”–just another way to phrase things. Example: Your project is looking for a faster way to determine if someone has X disease. The benefit is that patients can start treatment faster. This saves time and money and helps patients. Don’t go into a lengthy explanation of the disease, what treatments there are now (if any) – just get to what you want to solve.
There are also key words that help with leads. Using “active verbs” is a very engaging way to communicate. (I hope that didn’t make you flash back to your middle school English teacher – but really, this is important, so please stick with me. Also, I love English teachers!)
We are trained in writing scientific papers to write things like “Fisk et al found in 1982 that…” Or the common “research has shown that (citation)…” That’s great for peer-reviewed journals, but awful for public communications.
So, active verbs:
Helping * Improving * Decreasing * Increasing * Healing
Note that none of these words fall in the “jargon” category – like remediating, mitigating, elucidating etc., because that would break our “no jargon” rule of science communications.
Other good key words are adjectives–words that describe nouns.
Potential * Successful * Prosper
By developing your lead(s) – solutions, results, benefits – to have ready before you communicate to the public, you are much more likely to get people engaged in a conversation with you about your research. Practice makes perfect, right? Without a lead, you can turn people off with jargon and too much background information. You’ve got less than a minute to grab their attention. That first impression really can count.
Read these other blogs about writing and scripting:
Communicating so people understand (Readability)
Written by Susan V. Fisk, BS(Chem), M.Ed., MBA. Copyright by author.
Relatable Science 
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