Clear as mud

by David Maddox
Sound Science LLC

Must deep and illuminating content be at odds with clear and effective communication? I hope not. Informed policy requires information and data needs to be effectively transformed into information that is appropriately delivered to various audiences. But scientists are sometimes awful communicators, and there is the seduction of “simple” messages that are sometimes just simplistic.

I attended a conference this week on the broad benefits of trees as infrastructure, something many people across the world are working on. The speakers included scientists, educators, policy makers, and communications experts. One of the latter gave an excellent and thoughtful presentation on the importance of clarity, content and communication in any endeavor. His greatest emphasis was on clarity and he is certainly right that clarity is critical as we, as a society, grapple with complicated and often contradictory information and opinion on our way to making policy.

Then he offered the following observation: “Sometimes a leader cannot make a decision because his head is too full of facts.”

Hold on. While clarity is important, so are facts and content. His observation is worrisome on three critical counts.

First, high quality information is the life blood, sinew, tissue and bone of any policy. Without information new policy cannot be designed to effectively address actual need and existing policy cannot be refined based on learning. Of course, many power point slides are hideously overstuffed and confusing – to the point of being useless as mechanisms to convey ideas. That doesn’t make fact the enemy of decision making. It means that technical people and scientists need to get better at communication and communications people need to help the audience understand appropriate content.

Second, the observation implies that policy makers, elected officials, and people in general, can’t handle complicated information. They can. They have a ear for unsubstantiated dogma and demand reliable and useful information to make their decisions. They deserve such information. To provide less than this is to dramatically reduce the probability that our message will be heard and incorporated into policy.

Third, some ideas actually are complicated and cannot simply be reduced to a few words or a slogan. Emotions and sales pitches can be effectively delivered on a taxi topper. The underlying “facts” that support policy and guide its design, not so much. Facts are required and they need to packaged and delivered effectively.

I am a great believer in the critical importance of good, effective, and stylish communication that is appropriately pitched to the specific audience being addressed. But while slogans are key components of any campaign, they are not substitutes for thoughtful, well crafted, and well communicated information. At the same time, piles of data are not useful information. Data must be translated into information that supports (or not) ideas. Scientists and technical people can be poor at such translations, and must become better. Communications people can be unsympathetic to content. So we must work together and insist always that the information that is delivered is real and useful. Strive to be understood and make sure to listen when people don’t understand the important point. Don’t “dumb it down.” Make the delivery of useful information better.

But the answer cannot be to abandon facts for slogans. That way lies poor, unsustainable policy.