From flat Earthers and COVID-19 vaccine phobics who feared the jab would alter their DNA to those who believe global warming is a conspiracy, there has never been a time when science communication has been more urgent.

Both scientists and media professionals are beginning to realize the importance of explaining new technologies, vaccines, treatments, and lifestyles in ways the average person understands. Furthermore, environmental experts and researchers have also realized that a critical component in the ambitious goals of halting global warming is people buying into more environmentally friendly approaches on personal, social, and even industrial levels.

With the amount of misinformation that spread across social media when the COVID-19 pandemic broke out five years ago, journalists and scientists alike have started seeing the critical need for clear scientific communication to build the public’s trust in research-based findings.

After scientists worked intensively to provide COVID-19 vaccines, there was an overall lack of awareness on promoting their importance to the public. In the early days of the pandemic, advertisements in Egypt failed to encourage people to vaccinate; on the contrary, they confused them about the vaccines and the differences between the various types of shots. When the government rolled out the vaccine, Egyptians’ fundamental concerns of how the injection was ‘rushed’ or that it would cause gene changes were not addressed by the media or government-sponsored ads. Neither the commercials nor the press talked about the side effects. This informational gap led to a collective panic over the slightest rise in body temperature because nobody explained how the vaccine works or its immunity-boosting properties to the public. Instead, the media hosted celebrities to discuss how turmeric can protect against the virus. 

Legacy media reported science as it would report a political issue; they would get both sides of the story—except the ‘other’ side of the story was almost always composed of conspiracy theorists rather than researchers or virologists who could combat this misinformation. The media often hosted general practitioners who had never done laboratory research as ‘the experts’ on clinical trials. This failure to identify experts who would be able to draw on their scientific knowledge-and not impressions-to explain the vaccines may have led to an unnecessary loss of life because people were reluctant to take a vaccine they did not understand or trust. In a study published in the European Journal of Epidemiology, scientists estimated the preventable deaths among unvaccinated individuals in the United States in just 15 months between 2021 and 2022 to be 232,000.

In a rush to end a life-threatening pandemic and their initial failure to reach the public, researchers realized that deciphering the findings coming out of their labs was just as important as the work inside the lab. Working in their isolated silos and living in scientific ivory towers was no longer sufficient. Their science, ultimately, must be adopted by the public for it to matter.

Building Public Engagement 

Journalists also started realizing the importance of genuinely understanding scientific concepts to convey them to their readers accurately. They began to embrace the urgency of transforming technical, dry scientific research into human-focused stories that impact people’s everyday lives. Journalists began to recognize the significance of humanizing science while upholding their professional values and building credibility with their network of researchers.

A survey by the leading science publisher Nature found that while 90 percent of researchers believe communication is key to a successful career, 81 percent report struggling to convey complex science to a non-science audience.

In 2022, Egypt hosted COP27, the 27th United Nations Climate Change Conference, to discuss collective goals and initiatives to combat global warming. Egyptian journalists and scientists found themselves trying to bridge a gap that had grown out of a general difficulty in understanding sciences on the one hand and a lack of trust, unavailability, or inability to speak to the media on the other.

During the conference, Egypt outlined its Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), which included various climate change and environmental protection initiatives. One of the six goals of Egypt Vision 2030 is to have an integrated and sustainable environmental system. The 200-page report on the national agenda for sustainable development includes more than 20 pages on how this system will be achieved, including human development, reducing greenhouse gas emissions, and supporting infrastructure. While idealistic, ultimately, these goals depend on stakeholders’ buy-in to succeed, highlighting the importance of spreading awareness to align national goals across governmental, private, and civil institutions. 

A 2023 report by Carnegie Endowment concludes that failure to supplement environmental targets with coordinated intergovernmental and cross-sectoral action hinders Egypt’s progress. They found, for instance, that between 2005 and 2019, the country’s greenhouse gas emissions increased rapidly by 44 percent. They also concluded that the country could reach a critical threshold of absolute water scarcity (500 cubic meters per capita) within the next five years if population growth rates do not change and unsustainable consumption patterns remain the same. For instance, for any nationwide waste recycling initiative to succeed, the general public must grasp the importance of recycling. Similarly, public awareness of water resource scarcity and the need to conserve water is vital for changing habits, such as the practice of flooding fields. Moreover, understanding the benefits of drip irrigation and its long-term value can also encourage people to invest in more sustainable and efficient irrigation methods.

It is essential to bridge the gap between the lab and the people, especially after a global health crisis put peoples’ lives on hold and amid ongoing efforts towards sustainability and halting climate change. To achieve that, science communication must be at the forefront of research institutes’ and editorial agendas.

A Growing Field

Science journalism has emerged as a form of reporting that communicates complex scientific issues and discoveries to the public, translating the sciences into digestible and engaging stories that relate to the lives of a general audience. 

Universities worldwide are now offering undergraduate and graduate degrees in science journalism, focusing on health and environmental reporting. The University College London (UCL), New York University (NYU), MIT, Northwestern University, and Imperial College currently have programs targeted at journalists and scientists alike. Additionally, STEM departments started teaching their scientists how to communicate using storytelling to publicize and promote their work. 

The field of science journalism has grown exponentially over the past decade. For example, the World Conference of Science Journalists, hosted by the World Federation of Science Journalists (WFSJ), nearly doubled from 600 participants in 2004 to more than 1,100 in 2019. The WFSJ now has 15,000 members from 53 countries globally and represents over 70 science journalism associations in various countries. 

Interest in the field has also extended locally, with many Arab journalists trailblazing the field on regional and international levels. For example, two of the ten elected presidents of the WFSJ were Egyptian. 

There is also a growing international audience in popular science. One of the leading pop science magazines, Scientific American, reaches 10 million people worldwide. The Egyptian market is now home to the regional office of the world’s most widely known scientific journal, Springer Nature, which publishes leading popular science media outlets like Nature Middle East, the regional arm of the flagship Nature. It is also home to SciDev’s MENA regional office, a not-for-profit organization that produces news, views, and analyses about science and technology. Major news outlets in Egypt and the region also have science, technology, health, and environmental sections, including Al-Ahram. The UAE is also home to the regional office of Popular Science, which reaches more than 12 million people.

Deciphering Science in a Non-English-Speaking World

However, despite the growing interest in science communication and the emerging specialized sections, websites, and magazines, misinformation remains rampant in the Arab world. In a region where illiteracy rates reach around 20 percent—around 25 percent in Egypt—according to World Bank Data, misinformation can spread quickly. According to papers published in Nature Journal, more than 90 percent of science research is published in English. By contrast, Egypt is ranked 83 out of the 113 countries examined for English proficiency, with a score reaching 463, compared to a global average of 493. A 2011 report by Euromonitor indicates that 35 percent of the population possess intermediate English skills. This figure points to the fact that most Egyptians cannot read an English manuscript, let alone a scientific one. Journalists would then need to decipher the paper’s science and language, putting them at a disadvantage. 

In most local publications, science journalism is still in its early stages, and the broad base of journalists who write about health and the environment have not received the necessary training. As a result, they still feel intimidated by scientific manuscripts. Many specialized journalists still cannot read and decipher a scientific paper and resort instead to understanding the research from the authors’ interviews. In a training session for 15 journalists specializing in health, none felt comfortable reading a research paper on a topic they were covering. They all reported feeling intimidated by the papers and chose to call their sources and ask them to explain their research. But no journalist can run a meaningful interview and get in-depth, unbiased, and accurate information without first understanding the manuscript. Researchers often oversell their findings or only focus on one minor angle they each contributed. Only a thorough deciphering of the paper and an unbiased reporting process that involves independent researchers along with the paper’s authors can help tell the right story.  Researchers also need to be able to do it quickly enough to compete on timeliness in a fast-paced news world where misinformation spreads like wildfire on social media. 

Journalists also often resort to sources who may not be experts in the subject they’re writing about and then fail to understand the distinctions between specializations. Reporters end up with generalized comments about research they are unfamiliar with in fields they are not specialized in. They also might have biases in finding sources, especially gender-based ones, due to the lack of access to diverse scientists. Internationally, only 19 percent of the experts quoted in science and health stories are women. While there are no such statistics in the Middle East, chances are the ratio is much smaller despite women composing 40 percent of the STEM workforce in the region.

With the increased proliferation of global diseases leading to a growing general interest in scientific research, journalists and scientists must develop their science communication skills. It is critical to establish comprehensive training programs for journalists that focus on dissecting a research paper: identifying credible sources, assessing the validity of methodologies, and transforming dry-technical science into relatable and engaging stories that capture public interest. Scientists must also realize the importance of communication and conceptualizing their findings to a general audience to make their science more accessible to journalists and readers.