Things I’ve been thinking lately – ways to communicate.

I’m reading a lot at the moment. In fact I’ve been reading pretty much all the time and it’s making all too obvious how similar journal articles are to each other, and how scientific writing is all the same. So I’ve been thinking about ways to communicate academic concepts more appropriately for both the general population and policy makers.

Pedro Noguera, a sociologist who works with urban schools, came to our colloquium this week and he talked about how one of the threads of his research is ‘making the familiar strange’. For instance, we know that socioeconomic status (SES) strongly predicts student grade point average (GPA), which is seriously unfair but also widely ignored and forgotten. In a project that Noguera et al. did, they created a map of San Francisco where they mapped GPA onto suburbs to show that elevation of a neighbourhood is strongly related to GPA. The wealthy like to live on hills. The map was so powerful that is was on the front of the San Francisco Chronicle and suddenly something everyone knew was compelling again.

It’s difficult to break out of the mold though, even writing the above I initially wrote SES and GPA without any explanation of what the acronyms mean, which is not helpful for clear communication.

Then I went to a Zadie Smith reading. Dream. She read from her book of essays and they were so witty, articulate and insightful. I don't see why more academic writing can't be creative - it's so effective. Unfortunately in psych we’re still trying to convince everyone we’re a science.

So one day I will write a novel or super creative journal articles. For now I’ll write my blog. I’ll work on making it more interesting.