Fear, facts, and frustration

The first step in good science communication is facing our fears

It was fear as much as love that brought me to science.

I used to be afraid of writing. I found joy in learning scientific concepts but I also found deep comfort in homework that had right and wrong answers. I didn’t want to open myself up to all the interpretation and subjectivity that lurked in humanities classes. I built my identity as a scientist at least in part to protect myself from this scary vulnerability.

I took this path all the way to a PhD, where all of a sudden there was not yet a right answer for the questions being asked. I remember the jolt I felt when I first heard a scientist refer to their set of experiments as a “story.” I was indignant, how could real data be a story? But I also slowly came to learn about the beauty of the narratives that emerged from experiments and the reality of the stories being told in scientific papers. I had to become more confident in my identity as a scientist to feel safe in the vulnerability and subjectivity of communication at the edge of uncertainty.

I started telling stories too. I crafted stories of the experiments I wanted to do and stories about where the results pointed me to next, stories of the work that had come before me and where there were gaps and opportunities. Stories about the future I wanted to see and what I would do there. I wrote these stories to colleagues and professors and to grant funders, and these stories marked moments of advancement through presentations, qualification, fellowships, publications, dissertations.

As I grew more comfortable with the centrality of this kind of storytelling as fundamental to the practice of science, I was better able to see where this identity crisis still bloomed when scientists step into the unknown. Often the fear of subjectivity was projected inward, rebelling against the emotions that revealed the lie of our rationalist self-image. But this tension was also projected outwards, as sneers from colleagues about someone seeming to try “too hard” to present their data clearly (”data should speak for itself!”) and in the whispers and doubts about people like me who decided to spend time sharing stories in public.

Outward projection didn’t stop at the walls of the university; fear was central to the story of how the “public” related to the work we were doing. It was axiomatic that the public fears science and technology, and it was taken for granted that this fear stems from lack of knowledge. If only people understood the facts and could just be rational like us, they would stop being afraid and we could get on with saving the world. 

I became a synthetic biologist precisely because of the field’s ambition to address some of the biggest challenges in the world, but I could see how this fear was holding us back. Not the public’s fear, but the fear scientists had of the public’s fear of technology (what sociologist Claire Marris calls synbiophobia-phobia). Over and over I heard scientists stress the need for good communication, but over and over I saw them retreat into the same kneejerk, ineffective strategies. Taken together, all these fears and insecurities would combine to form a perfect storm of horrible communication (not to mention marketing and product design): disconnection from our own subjective point of view, distrust of the real work of translation and communication, and incurious disdain for the points of view of others. 

Those points of view matter, and simply can’t be changed with simple appeals to the authority of science. When it comes to actually saving the world, it isn’t communicating the straightforward fact that anthropogenic climate change is happening (for example) that matters, it is: what are we going to do about it? When it comes to GMOs and food security, it doesn’t matter how many Nobel prize winners tell you to love GMOs, because the fight is a proxy for what actually matters to people. Real action on these challenges and translation of technologies into the real world requires so much more than telling people about the facts, it is about making collective decisions about the kind of world we want to live in. It’s about designing stories and products that show what that world could be, and inviting people in to really debate what is at stake and choose if it is something they want. 

These questions don’t fit comfortably at the bench, and when I was still working in the lab many scientists urged me to ignore them and focus on the things I could control. Even after I left the bench for the world of marketing, communication, and design, these appeals to fear and control remained ever-present. People often pushed me to avoid saying “synthetic biology” and use “engineering biology” or “precision fermentation” instead because “synthetic” is scary. People urged me to focus on communicating about the safety mechanisms locking engineered microbes inside of vats and new synbio ingredients not having any DNA in them to quell safety fears. But all of this misses the point. 

Simply using different words or documenting something is safely locked away isn’t good marketing. Good marketing is about moving upstream, understanding the market and people’s needs, hopes, and values, and really connecting with people about what matters to them. Emma Frow is a professor in ASU’s School for the Future of Innovation in Society and a frequent thought partner for me on questions of care and control in synthetic biology. Some of her recent research is on biocontainment mechanisms and how a successful product isn’t one that is held safely inside of a tank, but one that holds together the biological and social aspects of a problem it is meant to solve. Doing this is hard work, and requires opening up to the fears and challenges that come with interacting with the world.

I’m thinking a lot about these questions now after another scary leap into the unknown of my own. I recently left Ginkgo after ten beautiful and exciting years, and I’m eager to see where these questions lead next. What products will open up new visions for the world as it could be? How will the conversation about AI and biotechnology evolve and transform the role of technology, the nature of scientific work, of art, of nature, and of humanity itself? How do we launch new products, companies, and research initiatives into these complex worlds? If these are questions that you are thinking about too, please reach out!

I recently joined Karl and Erum on the Grow Everything podcast to talk about how the work of marketing in science requires confronting these fears of vulnerability and fears of debate, moving marketing upstream in order to understand not just the technical realities but the social worlds that new technologies live in. It’s scary, but it’s worth it.