It’s Not Just the Science That’s Important – It’s Explaining It

Why brilliant innovation still gets lost in translation

Every major breakthrough in biotech begins deep in a lab, yet too often its promise falters when the moment arrives to explain it to the people whose belief matters most - investors, regulators, clinicians, patients. To be crystal clear, I’m not talking about translational science that moves findings from bench to bedside. I mean the craft of explanation. The science may be excellent, but without a narrative that resonates, it can be unseen, misunderstood, or mistrusted.

I’ve watched this happen up close. A team unveils a discovery that could accelerate development timelines or help identify the patients most likely to benefit. The data are strong. The methods are sound. Then comes the outward moment - the deck, the press note, the conference slot - and the room goes cool. Not because the work is weak, but because the audience cannot find themselves inside the story.

That gap is not a soft problem. It is a strategic one. Ideas live or die on whether the people who must act can understand, remember, and believe them.

Why complexity feels safe - and why it isn’t

Complexity is a comfortable fortress. A fifteen minute talk dense with acronyms and inferential statistics can feel like rigor and seriousness to our peers. But most of the decisions that determine whether a breakthrough prospers are made by people who do not live inside that fortress. The National Academies have been blunt about this for years: effective science communication means aligning strategy with goals, tailoring messages to audiences, and addressing complexity and uncertainty head on. It is not a knowledge dump. It is a decision aid.

That is easy to agree with in principle and hard to do in practice. It demands we begin not with what we want to say, but with what our audience needs in order to decide - a different starting point than most lab meetings or manuscript drafts.

“People don’t connect with science. They connect with people.”

Paul Sutter, an astrophysicist and experienced communicator, wrote an Undark essay that I keep recommending. He argues that the public is not losing trust because they cannot recite p values, but because they do not see scientists as knowable humans with values and motives. His line that “people don’t connect with science, they connect with people” should be pinned above every research comms plan. He also calls out a structural problem many of us recognise: institutions still do not reward communication, so engagement becomes a hobby rather than part of the job.

That diagnosis resonates in biomedicine too. When scientists stay silent or stay abstruse, other stories fill the vacuum. Some are simply more charismatic. Some are wrong but compelling. And some are malicious.

The uncomfortable bit about trust

The Association of American Medical Colleges has chronicled the collision between how science evolves and how the public consumes information. Their reporting on the ivermectin saga remains a case study in how narratives run ahead of evidence, then harden.

An initial, flawed preprint spread quickly, and even after retraction, belief persisted. The AAMC captured the deeper communication tension through a quote I wish every scientific leader would internalise:

“There’s a real tension if you’re a scientist trying to communicate with the public - projecting certainty and confidence, while recognizing that you are operating with a considerable degree of uncertainty.”

That is Stephen Joffe, MD, MPH, chair of the Department of Medical Ethics and Health Policy at the UPenn Perelman School of Medicine, and he’s right.

There is a second lesson from that series. The phrase “follow the science” may have been meant as reassurance, but it often landed as absolute instruction rather than an honest signal about evolving evidence. As Aaron Carroll put it recently, scientists provide data and insight, while policy requires value judgments. Conflating the two erodes trust.

Communication that improves the science, not just the slides

One of the most useful perspectives I have encountered comes from the Alan Alda Center. Sarah Wettstadt’s piece makes a deceptively simple point: doing the work of communication forces researchers to rediscover their “why.” That reflection can sharpen hypotheses, open collaborations, and even change a project’s direction. In other words, explaining your work better can make your work better.

There is a humility in that view that I like. It is not the marketer telling the scientist to become a brand. It is a scientist reminding the field that storycraft is part of inquiry because it clarifies purpose and tests relevance.

A real-world arc: when the audience is the mechanism

If you want a commercial illustration of how explanation and focus alter outcomes, consider the long arc of gefitinib. AstraZeneca’s drug first received accelerated approval in 2003 in non small cell lung cancer, only to be withdrawn from the US market after disappointing survival data in unselected patients. A decade later the story changed. The FDA approved the use of gefitinib in 2015 for patients whose tumors carry specific EGFR mutations, alongside a companion diagnostic to find them.

The mechanism had not changed. The audience had. Matching treatment to the right molecularly defined group - and telling that story clearly - resurrected a drug.

I bring this example up not because it is unique, but because it illustrates a pattern. Many of the most meaningful advances in modern medicine will be targeted and conditional. They demand communications that explain who benefits, who does not, and why that is a feature, not a flaw.

That is not spin. That is precision.

The structural incentives we swim against

When Paul Sutter says scientists are not rewarded for engagement, he is describing a system problem that bleeds into industry as well as academia. Press releases still overstate marginal results. Papers, not conversations, remain the primary currency of career progress. Outreach is still seen as a nice-to-have.

The National Academies again: engagement is learned, incentives matter, and the deficit model - the idea that people will choose the science if we simply give them more of it - does not work on its own.

Meanwhile, public trust has been trending in the wrong direction. Pew reported last year that the share of Americans who say science has had a mostly positive effect has fallen, and confidence in scientists to act in the public interest has declined since early pandemic peaks. The nuance matters across political groups, but the headline is consistent: trust cannot be assumed.

None of this is an argument for dumbing down. It is an argument for designing how we speak so that people can decide.

What better looks like in practice

I have seen three patterns repeatedly in programs that gained belief and momentum.

First, they start with a human problem, not a platform. The most engaging early conversations are not about architectures, pipelines, or validation metrics. They are about a stubborn clinical reality or a preventable cost. Only then do they show how the science makes a difference to that reality. The Alda Center’s emphasis on starting with motivation is not just a performance trick. It is a content discipline.

Second, they define the boundaries of the claim. What is known now. What is unknown. What would change your mind. The AAMC’s reporting described this well during the pandemic. Overstating preliminary signals wins short attention and loses long trust. Setting expectations honestly is slower in the moment and faster over a program’s life.

Third, the originators do the talking. You cannot outsource conviction. External communicators can help translate, shape, and stress test, but the most persuasive voices are the people who did the work and can explain why it matters, where it breaks, and what comes next. This is not a media training footnote. It is a leadership task.

Storytelling as part of the innovation

Here is the inconvenient truth. Most of the things we want - funding, adoption, trust - are second order effects of being understood. Being understood is a product of craft. Craft requires time and feedback. And time and feedback are scarce unless we treat communication as part of the work, not an after-action report.

That means building a habit of explanation into project milestones. It means pressure testing your narrative on people who do not share your internal references. It means aligning your story with the decision on the other side of the table. And it means recognising that narrative clarity is not a cosmetic overlay on excellence. It is part of what excellence now requires.

As a field, we can do more to shift the incentives. Tenure and promotion committees can recognise public engagement. Companies can link communication quality to program gates rather than leaving it to launch. Funders can ask applicants to articulate their why to non expert reviewers and test their understanding as seriously as their power calculations. None of this requires a manifesto. It requires will.

A final note on language and honesty

I am often asked whether we should stop saying “trust the science.” I do not think the phrase is the heart of the problem, but I do think it mistakes the role of science in public life. Science narrows uncertainty and expands the set of wise choices. It does not make the choice for us. Confusing those two invites backlash. As Carroll argues, we should be transparent about what evidence can and cannot tell us, then be equally transparent about the values that inform policy. That is how adults talk to adults.

We also need to accept that some of our most valuable results will be provisional for longer than a press cycle can bear. That is fine. People do not expect omniscience. They expect candor and care.

If the science is hard, the explaining must be worthy of it

We cannot make complexity vanish. We can make it navigable. The price of doing so is attention to story, audience, boundaries, and the human reasons behind the work. When we do that, funding conversations change. Adoption conversations change. Trust changes. And sometimes the path to impact opens not because the molecule is different, but because the world finally knows who it is for.

That’s not just marketing. That’s science.

Signal over noise.

Noah

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