My long resistance to being labeled a "science communicator" and why I finally accepted it

Explaining the weather is definitely "sci-comm," so why did it take me so long to come around to embracing that?

Hi there! It’s been a minute. But I’m back tonight!

I had a chance to get back to Rice University in Houston today. It’s one of my favorite spots in Houston. Why? At my core, I’m an academic and a nerd. I love college campuses. There is something about physically going to a college campus that sort of reinforces my love of science and learning. I also think Rice is an oasis in the middle of an urban jungle. It plots in right next to the frenetic Texas Medical Center, very near the always busy Rice Village, and not far from any number of miscellaneous freeways. But when there, it’s just a calming experience.

I was at Rice to speak to a class of students in a science communication class run by Scott Solomon and Lauren Kapcha. It’s a cool class because, well, why wouldn’t it be good to become a better science communicator? But also it’s an elective, so the students that are there are genuinely interested in the topic. It’s days like this where I’m reminded that as ridiculous as the world can be, there is hope for us all yet. The class asked great, thoughtful questions and hopefully I didn’t ramble too much about the pains of social media and all. But it was a good dialogue and featured students of varying science backgrounds. Interdisciplinary learning is so critical in science. We have so much to learn from each other, and as meteorologists on the front lines of this stuff day in and day out, I think we offer a unique perspective.

Rice is nice. (faungg on Flickr)

But one thing I admitted to them, I don’t usually admit to people. For a long time, I kind of rejected the label “sci-comm” for what I do. Not because I was trying to be derisive or minimizing what it is; just the opposite. When I teased science major friends of mine in college by saying “LOL you have to take orgo (organic chemistry),” it wasn’t because I wanted to tease them. I always found them smarter than me, and that’s how I coped. I don’t know if it was the imposter syndrome or what, but I never saw meteorology as sci-comm in the way you’d think of it in practice. I’m thinking of the Neil deGrasse Tyson’s and David Attenborough’s of the world, or in more practical settings, the Anthony Fauci’s or Lucy Jones’s. I’d be remiss to not shout out Dr. Kristen Panthagani also who has done amazing work in trying to combat bad science, conspiracy theories, and educate people on science they’ve been exposed to in recent years. These are gifted, brilliant communicators and scientists or both that can translate their science and others sometimes to an audience in a way that’s understandable and usually pretty clear.

For a long time weather and meteorology to me was more of a practice than actually being on the front lines of communicating science. I think I always believed that other science disciplines were far more complicated, meaningful, and tougher to explain than meteorology. I mean, you see meteorology every single day. It happens all around you. How hard can it really be to grasp? Turns out because you see it every single day, it’s one of the few sciences every human being engages with constantly. And when you add the air of periodic unpredictability to it, it almost takes on a mysterious quality to some people. But in a world where the weather is trending to be more extreme, more impactful, and more costly every year, it’s one of the most critical sciences to understand, wrangle, and prepare for. But it wasn’t that realization that finally convinced me to accept the label. It was Covid.

I think a lot of us in meteorology (and other sciences) saw how critical sci-comm was during Covid and how, for lack of a better word, it was scattershot at best. Some did great, some did not, we had bad actors spreading misinformation, and it all led to this jumbled mish mosh of fact, fiction, and general malaise. For a remote American Meteorological Society conference in 2021, I helped organize a panel with Lina Hidalgo (Harris County Judge), Susan Hough (seismologist), Janine Krippner (volcanologist), and Daniel Swain (climate scientist and meteorologist). We chose the scientists in this group because they are great communicators of their respective disciplines, and Judge Hidalgo offered a first-hand viewpoint about what she needed from her science experts as an elected official. I felt that early on in Covid people wanted information and were seeking it out however they could. In some respects, there was a bit of a science debate taking place in the public sphere at the onset of the pandemic (Is it technically a pandemic?, Is Covid airborne?, etc.) and that may have confused some in the public. And it made me realize that we need more interdisciplinary conversations with each other because we’re all dealing with the same heartburn and all have lessons we can apply to sci-comm in general.

And it was then that I said to myself, “Self, you are indeed a science communicator by the very definition of the term.” As meteorologists, we some of the most public facing scientists there are. We engage with audiences daily, and although some days it feels like weather forecasting is not as serious a science as astrophysics or molecular biology or something like those, it’s still science. And we have people’s trust most of the time, perhaps more than other scientists in other disciplines (through no fault of their own). So when we discuss things like climate change, people will listen. There are few science issues of more concern and likely direct impact than climate change. If not us, then who?

So maybe I was wrong to resist being labeled a true “science communicator.” I may have even been an outlier. Science can be intimidating. But my goodness is it important. Especially in the current environment we’re experiencing as a country. And one thing I love learning is how other scientists manage their challenges in their unique disciplines. The more we can learn from each other, the more we can all be better and more effective communicators going forward.