This week I read two articles from The Best American Science and Nature Writing 2010.  The articles were on the food industry and all its glory (or not).  The important thing to note though, is that these “best science writings” are not written by scientists: they are writings by award winning journalists.  Is this a message that scientists are not the best people to communicate with the public?  That we must use journalistic middlemen to get our message across?  Perhaps.  Or perhaps, scientists can learn from these journalists and employ these top ranking journalistic techniques in our own endeavors to communicate with the public.  What then, makes these articles - All You Can Eat by Jim Carrier and Graze Anatomy by Richard Manning - the best?

In All You Can Eat, Carrier describes the rise and fall of shrimping industry in the U.S. and the birth of shrimp farming – and all the problems associated with these practices.  The message: don’t eat shrimp – especially if it is farmed abroad.  In Graze Anatomy, Richard Manning takes a more positive approach to the food industry by praising the practice of grass fed cattle.  Here the message was: we can still eat all the beef we want and solve environmental issues – so support free range.  These articles used all the tricks used to grab the audiences’ attention: gripping first sentence, first person narrative, first hand accounts, personification, etc.  They played on the audiences’ emotion to make their readers think twice about eating shrimp or corn raised cattle (after all, who supports cruelty to animals, unnecessary death, or murder?).  I confess, at then end of reading these articles I never wanted to eat meat again (unless if it was free range, grass fed, organic). 

But where was the science?  These are after all “Science Writings.”  These authors used what I will call subtle science.  They didn’t cite primary literature or use complex words to talk about relevant scientific processes.  Yet, the science was there, hidden in behind pretty words and visual descriptions.  Manning talked about ecosystem health and nutrient cycling by comparing it to a cows gut – microbes are the base of both.  The reader can visualize deep underground where nutrients are cycled with the help of “lowly creatures like dung beetles and earth worms” and brought to the surface by the elevator action of perennial roots.  Manning is also able to make carbon cycling, source and sink dynamics, and global warming easy to digest.  Carrier didn’t talk about such “hard science” topics, but rather wove sustainable practices, life cycles, and how science was used to create farming practices into his narrative. 

As these authors have demonstrated, the subtle working of science into an argument is effective.  In this way, you minimize the risk of boring or alienating your audience.  Most people don’t care about all the details, but they do respect scientists and science.  By weaving science into a larger, and more griping story, I think that the public is likely to be more engaged with what they are being told and more likely to believe it.  We must all strive to have gripping stories through which we can share our science.