September 2, 2025

real things on the ground – when we’re communicating science, we need to talk normal

This is a guest post by Tom Sheldon, Senior Press Manager at the SMC.

If you want to be good at communication, using clear language that your audience will understand is really important.  It’s so obvious, and I can’t imagine anyone disagreeing with it.  But not everyone does it.  Why?

Office jargon has been lampooned over and over again in shows like W1A or Mitchell and Webb where empty buzzwords like ‘optimising stakeholder engagement’ or ‘synergising communication pathways’ are used increasingly absurdly.  We all recognise it – as Homer (Simpson, not Odyssey) once said, it’s funny cos it’s true. 

I used to think that stuff was really only said by civil servants desperate to stay ‘on message’ or by middle managers in stationery companies with their love of key learnings and circling back.  But it’s starting to happen in science – and more worrying still, in science comms. 

At the Science Media Centre we find ourselves talking more and more about Real Things on the Ground (RTOTG).  It means the tangible, relatable, recognisable things that are essential when talking about science, particularly in press briefings.  It means electric cars, boilers, pylons, chickens, insects and burgers.

RTOTG – if you’ll permit me the irony of a new acronym – are essential to news articles for a general audience.  But they don’t come naturally to some scientists, and we have a creeping sense that they are actively avoided more and more by some people working in comms and science officialdom.  Some of those people prefer talking about whole systems approaches, holistic themes, pillars, silos and strategic roadmaps.  In other words, exactly the kinds of words that you never hear normal people using.

It has long been a routine part of the SMC’s daily work to get scientists to talk in normal language for a public audience.  Lots of scientists are already good at it, and we’re pretty good at helping the ones who struggle – as of course are so many of the best press officers who are dedicated to transparent, clear communication of science and evidence.

But it feels like the obscure terminology has begun to creep into the language of science itself.  I’m not talking about scientific jargon like polymerase chain reactions or solid state drives.  I mean the language used to communicate new developments in science – but which is vague, non-specific and absent of examples.

We have different theories as to why this may be becoming more common.  Perhaps it’s because more science is funded by government so scientists have to increasingly adopt the language of government; or perhaps science is now done in more large multi-disciplinary collaborations that need a common tongue.  Or – dare I even contemplate – perhaps it it’s intended to disguise, in an effort to hide behind fuzzy words, offend no-one, and protect against the damage the media might do if they reported Real Things.

Whatever the truth, the effect is that journalists are confused/annoyed and media interest is diminished – ironic, given the stated aim of science comms is usually to generate coverage.  Talking about systems and processes and strategy without giving any examples of what that looks like to normal people reading the news puts even more distance between scientists and the people.  The public are alienated and the meaning is lost.  I’m not sure anyone actually wins.

When preparing for media briefings, we always ask for outlines of what the speakers will talk about.  Here are some examples of the kind of wording we’ve been sent in advance, variously by scientists, policy people, press officers and funders:

• ‘investment in alternatives to hand over to the innovation team towards creating a blended protein economy’
• ‘lay out the pillars, activity and impact before expanding future research objectives in each pillar’
• ‘research and innovation is needed to enable the scale up and adoption of green solutions at the local, regional and national level’
• ‘taking an integrated, systems approach to soils, land-use and farming to deliver cutting edge research that informs future land use policy through integration of new and existing evidence’
• ‘The Circular Economy via materials and innovation is a key driver of scope 3 emission reduction and avoids the tendency to tunnel carbon vision’
• ‘Achieving climate resilience in the built environment requires broad, holistic, systems thinking to design for future climate conditions while working towards integrated, long-term solutions.’

You can see there is some meaning hidden in there.  I don’t think the people using this language are necessarily setting out to mislead, and in many cases it does mean something to them and their peers.  But it is studious in its avoidance of real, tangible examples – the RTOTG that make it mean anything to anyone else.

You can also (hopefully) see how maddening that stuff is for anyone in the business of improving communication.  It creates work for SMC staff, sometimes rewriting blurb into normal English, sometimes pleading with the authors to do the same.  And it’s not only meaningless for journalists, forcing them to ask for a translation each time – it works against the entire point of a briefing, which is to cut through confusion around science, not create it.

Yet even as everyone still says they hate it, more people are doing it.  What’s going on? 

It reminds me of the scene in Clear and Present Danger, where the president takes advice from his nervous, suited advisors about how to handle a growing conflict with the drug cartels.  They advise him to keep it vague and sidestep the truth to avoid political fallout.  Then Jack Ryan says the opposite, suggesting he just talks openly and honestly because there’s nothing to hide.  His advice is plain spoken, honest, and directly focused on achieving results, rather than ‘spinning for political optics’ (sorry).

The reason that scene (and others like it) is so memorable is that everyone you admire in the film prefers the honest narrative, while everyone who wants to make it vague and slippery is someone you dislike.  Not only that, it resonates with all the viewers because that honesty is what we all want too.  It’s a familiar trope in film and it works every time.  Why then, when people are put into the position of communicating something delicate, do they fall back on what sounds like bullshit?

We have had some feedback from journalists on this kind of thing happening in science, where we’ve organised a briefing but our pleas for RTOTG have fallen on deaf ears.  They’ve said:

• ‘Yes it was a tough one to get anything out of, precisely because it didn’t have much grounding in real things on the ground.’
• ‘I think they need to remember the old adage about explaining it to someone down the pub, and think about articulating some real world examples, or distilling top messages into everyday language – I thought it was a shame they couldn’t articulate the benefits more clearly for people. The ‘proactive procurement’ was another example – what does that look like on the ground, is it actually building gigafactories, backing lithium extraction from Cornish mines, or what?’
• ‘I think in a competitive news environment, and we’re going to get a lot of this kind of ‘how do we deliver net zero’ kind of report, you’re going to have to start standing out.’

I believe those journalists and I share their frustration.  But I also wonder if this is partly the media’s fault.  Working with journalists is nerve-wracking, especially when the subject matter – vaping, UPFs, geoengineering, antidepressants etc – is controversial and where sections of the media have their own preferred lines and biases.

There are great science journalists out there who work hard to present this stuff fairly.  But some others will jump at the chance to report a worst case scenario or a particularly provocative example to whip things up.  In their pursuit of the exciting, the media don’t always create a fair and moderate lens for the rest of us to view new scientific findings.

The effect of this on the communicator themselves is familiar to anyone who has ever heard a hapless junior minister desperately trying to make it to the end of their 8.10 slot on the Today Programme without offending the government’s director of comms.  It’s excruciating to listen to public servants fob us off with sanitised or mendacious rhetoric, but in my more generous moments I can forgive them for being so desperate to avoid saying something meaningful – knowing it could be turned against them by editors greedy for a scalp.

Sometimes I think this fear of generating the ‘wrong’ story can supplant the reason for communicating the science in the first place.  In a hierarchical government or research department, a risk-averse type handling a sensitive story might find themselves weighing up whether a boring story – or even no story at all – might be better than the bollocking they’ll get or the reputational damage if the media coverage is ugly.  Obscure or generalised language can be a shield against injury – and some of the reason for that self-protective response may be anticipation of what the media might do next.  But those of us who have given our careers to the communication of science for public benefit surely have to fight that instinct.

But enough about who is to blame, because I’m more interested in why this is happening within science.  We don’t really know.  Science has more than its fair share of jargon, but unlike politics or PR or journalism, it’s not a discipline you’d normally associate with using language to weaponise or deflect.  So it’s surprising that a culture of obfuscation – if that’s what it is – is evolving. 

We accept it’s part of the job of the SMC and all the excellent science press officers out there to cut through this.  But we are feeling perturbed at the creeping adoption of such language.  Why does this kind of management speak keep cropping up?  Is it risk-aversion and fear, or smoke and mirrors, or something else?  Am I right that it’s becoming more familiar in scientific circles – and if so, why?

I’d love to hear from you if you have any experiences with this sort of thing.  Maybe you yourself are a proactive adopter of synergistic language solutions.  Or maybe you find yourself experiencing frustration escalation during your own key stakeholder interfacing.  Either way, please get in touch – it could facilitate additional idea harvesting in this space.  Or at the very least it’ll be a laugh.

This blog contains the thoughts of the author rather than representing the work or policy of the Science Media Centre.