OPINION: Why science needs to speak human

The business and tech communities have jumped onto the storytelling bandwagon and are maximising the opportunity to connect with their audiences and demonstrate the impact of their work, innovations and products.

The NGO world is slowly catching up, but the tragedy is that the science community remains stuck in labs, books and journal articles, essentially, only speaking to themselves, while storytelling is the new currency of influence, and a public disconnect with science looms.

But while the business and tech communities ride the storytelling wave, one of the most important pillars of human progress, science, remains curiously silent.

Research breakthroughs pile up in journals that very few outside the field ever read. Discoveries that could inspire hope or spark change end up gathering dust behind paywalls.

Scientists, wary of media misrepresentation and allergic to simplification, often speak only to each other, leaving the rest of society to fill the silence with conspiracy theories, misinformation, and mistrust.

We live in a time where more than ever, humanity needs science to continue with the progress made over the years; think climate change, public health, energy, food systems, AI, but where’s the voice of science?

In the case of soft sciences and policy, the recently published UN80 Mandate Implementation Review report on UN reforms admitted, astonishingly, that people do not read their publications.

Here’s a quote from the report:

“Reports are also growing longer, with average word counts rising by 40 per cent since 2005. Reports to the General Assembly, the Security Council and the Economic and Social Council now average around 11,300 words each, about one third longer than the recommended limit for Secretariat reports. Despite the vast output, or perhaps partly because of it, most reports are not widely read. In 2024, nearly 65 per cent were downloaded less than 2,000 times, compared with the top 5 per cent of reports that were accessed at least 5,500 times. Download statistics alone are not proof of a report’s utility: important issues may not always find a wide public readership. However, these figures are an indication of the need for wider discussions when considering reports.”

This is the UN, with all the machinery, budget and expertise to ensure their public-facing documents are tailored to make them more palatable and easier to read.

Consider then the outputs of an average think tank, research institute, and worse, hard science journals, who is reading them? We are already walking the risky road of a disconnect between science and society.

In business and technology circles, storytelling has become the superpower of the 21st century. Apple doesn’t just launch phones; it narrates a vision of creativity and freedom.

Tesla doesn’t just sell electric cars; it promises a future of sustainability and human ingenuity.

Look at Banks, now telling the stories of their employees and clients, showing the impact of the work that they do, both inside the banking halls and outside, with their clients, helping them build homes, helping others expand their businesses, helping schools expand labs and many other stories to emphasise their impact.

Both hard and social sciences have larger impact prints, but who wants to tell those stories? And even if they are told, they are not promoted enough.

Even NGOs, long associated with reports and donor appeals, are realising that a single story of a farmer, refugee, or community can mobilise more support than a dozen policy briefs.

Because really, people are curious to know not only why you do what you do but also the impact of what you are doing. How are you touching and changing lives? This goes a long way to humanise your story.

But science, the very enterprise that has given us vaccines, satellites, clean water, and the internet itself, remains largely absent from this storytelling revolution.

Research breakthroughs are tucked behind paywalls. Paywalls which only institutions can afford, and even PhD students doing research may not be able to afford these journal paywalls, except in cases where they have institutional access.

What then of the general curious public? Important discoveries appear in dense language that even educated non-specialists struggle to follow.

Too often, scientists speak only to one another, in conferences and journals designed more for peer recognition than public engagement. At a time when society desperately needs scientific leadership, this silence is costly.

Then begs my question, is science meant for scientists or society?

When science doesn’t speak, others do. What’s the risk?

The pandemic made it painfully clear: when scientists fail to communicate clearly, misinformation steps in.

Conspirators to this day are louder than evidence-backed scientists who have spent countless hours researching, testing, and studying, and this has become the trend.

Ever since scientists chose to avoid the limelight, and sometimes not their own individual fault, some organisations have created stringent media policies that discourage their employees from engaging with the media in different forms.

From conspiracy theories about vaccines to denial of climate change, the public square has been flooded with loud, unqualified, but confident voices, many of them misleading or outright false.

The irony is stark: humanity has never needed science more urgently, yet science itself is often missing from the very conversations that shape policy, behaviour, and trust.

Again, nothing wrong about a healthy scientific debate in the public square of the internet, but the opposing side is not speaking against the conspirators, so who then are we led to believe? You have your answer.

This communication vacuum is not due to a lack of knowledge. It is the result of cultural habits within science itself: a preference for caution, a fear of oversimplification, and an ingrained conservatism that treats public communication as “optional” rather than essential.

The peer-review process, vital for credibility, too often becomes the endpoint, rather than the beginning, of a discovery’s life in society. We are stuck at peer review, which in my opinion should be a means to an end of continued study, debate and promotion of the work someone has done to invite collaboration and critique alike.

What science can learn from storytellers

Most business and tech leaders have already trailed the blaze of storytelling. They are building influence by putting together evidence with a story and humanised data.

They have moved beyond showcasing data to showing people and impact. Innovations are described and emplaced in stories of resilience, possibility and transformed communities.

Science can do the same without compromising rigour. A study on climate data becomes truly memorable when it is told through the lived experiences of a farming community that can no longer sustain itself.

A breakthrough in malaria research is not just about parasite mutations, make it about the child who survives because of it.

These are not embellishments; they are translations, bridging the gap between technical knowledge and public imagination.

Time to move toward a culture of scientific storytelling

Moving forward, science needs a cultural shift that views communication not as a dilution of rigour but as part of the scientific responsibility itself.

In fact, communication should be at the very core of research, involved from inception, not an afterthought as it currently is.

That means: We make it a priority to train scientists' storytelling skills. Just as experiments require methodology, communication is a craft.

Scientists and science organisations ought to partner with creatives, journalists, filmmakers, and communicators. Scientists need allies who can help them translate complexity into clarity without distortion; this is co-creation at its best.

Time to meet audiences where they are. Rethink presentation formats and platforms. Podcasts, TikTok explainers, visual infographics, and narrative essays all offer ways to make science visible and relatable.

The goal is to make science accessible, memorable, and human.

A new model of scientific leadership

It’s time we saw scientists as public intellectuals, not hidden in labs but active in the public square. We also need to imagine climate researchers not only publishing in Nature but also telling stories that help communities understand risks and solutions, and medical researchers sharing the human impact of their breakthroughs alongside the data.

In some quarters, this is already happening in glimpses, from astrophysicists who captivate millions on YouTube to virologists who became household names during COVID-19.

But these are exceptions, not norms. For science to thrive in the 21st century, it must normalise this kind of thought leadership and find its voice.

Who tells the story shapes the future

Because the uncomfortable truth is this: if scientists don’t tell their story, someone else will. And too often, those storytellers will be the conspiracy theorists, the climate deniers, the influencers peddling pseudoscience.

Science doesn’t need to choose between rigour and relevance. There is a need to realise that the future of both may depend on the ability of scientists to tell the story of discovery in ways the world can hear.

Mengo Sherastine is a Communications and Thought Leadership Expert