Remember the scientist who was perpetually doing “really great work” on that thing?
He had the so obviously great research he was doing. It was going to change the world… only, it never did.
It failed to gain traction with funders and manuscript reviewers, because he thought it was so great that he didn’t need to do the hard work of communicating its benefits to anyone…
Or, maybe you don’t remember him after all.
You can’t be faulted, because nobody else remembered him – or the work he did – either.
This leads us to an important question:
What is the difference between great scientists remembered and great scientists forgotten?
It could be the haircut, though I’m not sure that was good ole Albert’s intention when visiting his barber. What can be said about Einstein though, is that his communication style was clear (and accessible!) to a variety of audiences – something that is true for most of the recognizable scientists throughout history.
If we aren’t communicating clearly with our teams, our colleagues, or our reviewers, we may just become a dim memory of “a person that was doing some stuff.”
What was that thing again?
There’s a common point of view that prevents many of us from actually doing the hard work that it takes to communicate our research to others… and that view is what Morgan discusses in this video. It’s worth a watch to see if you might have succumbed to this as well.
