October 2022

Covid-19 has, probably more than anything, ever, made science communication a matter of public interest. A couple of weeks before recording this episode, the journal BioScience published an article that I co-authored, which takes a critical look at one aspect of science messaging - the way it has portrayed the relationship between land change and infectious disease risk. That paper will actually be the focus of next month's episode of the podcast, but this month I am joined by two of my young co-authors on that paper to discuss science communication more generally. All three of us are science communicators in some sense, but we're novices in this field. So this is not an authoritative overview but rather a discussion of perceptions based on what we have observed, especially over the past couple of years.

Neil Waters is a Canadian ecologist who has been studying and working in Tokyo, where he currently teaches science writing. Erin Kawazu is part of the communications team at the Institute for Global Environmental Strategies (IGES) in Hayama, not far from Tokyo, where I also work. She has a background in health and the environment.

Links to resources:

• Annual Summary Report of Coral Reef Condition 2021/22 - Good news from the Great Barrier Reef, briefly discussed in this episode.

• Messaging Should Reflect the Nuanced Relationship between Land Change and Zoonotic Disease Risk - The BioScience paper that I recently published with Neil, Erin and three other authors

Time stamps:

coming soon