About the importance of credible science communication and the best ways to reach many people with it: our weekly recap

By Bart Brouwers

In our weekly recap on Sunday, we, as editors, look back at the past seven days. We do this at the suggestion of our cartoonist Albert Jan Rasker. He chooses a subject, makes a drawing, and we take it from there.

Margriet van der Heijden is the endowed professor of science communication at the Faculty of Applied Physics, Eindhoven University of Technology. Van der Heijden wants to research how to make this kind of communication effective. Recent developments in society have shown the need for this more than ever.

As a journalist, Van der Heijden has always been aware that newspapers function as a public domain where public debate takes place about what we want with the world. That this debate is now under pressure is something that the endowed professor has noticed.

“On the Internet and especially on social media, everyone can have their say. That’s great, but private, professional, and public opinions also get very mixed. That makes it difficult to tell the expert apart from the layperson. Who is knowledgeable, and who is just yelling out whatever comes into their heads? Moreover, the bombardment of information can leave people feeling numb. The challenge is to remain audible within that cacophony of sounds as a university so people know that the information you share is backed by real expertise. How can you make your authentic voice be heard?”

Albert Jan seems to agree, although I’m certain Margriet will have other methods in mind when educating her audience about relevant scientific developments. Just as we do at Innovation Origins 🙂 Read the whole interview with Margriet here.