{"id":2705,"date":"2026-07-22T08:30:18","date_gmt":"2026-07-22T08:30:18","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/sites.exeter.ac.uk\/doctoralcollege\/?p=2705"},"modified":"2026-07-22T08:30:20","modified_gmt":"2026-07-22T08:30:20","slug":"communicating-contentious-topics-in-science-empowering-researchers-to-engage-with-confidence","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/sites.exeter.ac.uk\/doctoralcollege\/2026\/07\/22\/communicating-contentious-topics-in-science-empowering-researchers-to-engage-with-confidence\/","title":{"rendered":"Communicating Contentious Topics in Science: Empowering Researchers to Engage with Confidence"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><em>Daniel Williams is a postdoctoral researcher of Aviation Climate Impacts in the Department of Mathematics and Statistics at the University of Exeter. His research investigates the impacts of aviation contrails on Earth\u2019s climate. Contrails are long, white clouds produced behind aircraft in cold environments when water originating from fuel burning freezes. While completely harmless to us, they are known to warm the planet under certain atmospheric conditions. He is exploring ways to minimise the formation of contrails through the intelligent rerouting of flights informed by meterological data. Beyond research, he enjoys travelling and making the most of Devon\u2019s landscapes whether by bike, on foot, or capturing it on camera.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">In an era where research\u2014particularly in climate and environmental science\u2014is increasingly scrutinised, misrepresented, or dismissed, the ability to communicate effectively is more critical than ever.\u00a0Certain areas of research are unfortunately fraught with controversy and prejudices, both within and outside academia. My own research area of contrails is frequently hijacked by \u2018chemtrail\u2019 conspiracy theorists, purporting them to have adverse effects on human health when in fact they are no different from many types of natural clouds. Likewise, colleagues investigating the impacts of geoengineering are frequently targeted by misinformation as another contentious area of scientific research. I\u00a0felt that communicating\u00a0these areas of research well\u00a0requires\u00a0additional\u00a0skills beyond the\u00a0little training that I (or I imagine most early-career researchers) received as undergraduates.\u00a0How do we take control of our scientific narrative? I\u00a0didn\u2019t\u00a0have the answer, but I thought it would be\u00a0a great opportunity\u00a0to learn from someone who does. From this came my idea for\u00a0a workshop on \u201cCommunicating Contentious Topics in Science\u201d.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">To run\u00a0some\u00a0training,\u00a0I brought in Prof Jon Copley\u00a0from\u00a0SciConnect, a\u00a0Professor\u00a0of ocean exploration and\u00a0science communication. Jon is a marine biologist who has\u00a0vast\u00a0experience\u00a0of\u00a0science communication in all its guises: print journalism (The Guardian, Daily Mail, New Scientist etc.); TV journalism\u00a0(Sky News, BBC etc.); social media\u00a0and also media consultancy (for Blue Planet II and the upcoming Blue Planet III!).\u00a0Together with Jon, we worked together to plan a day-long workshop that would cover various aspects of communicating science, with a specific focus on\u00a0dealing with potentially contentious topics in both academic (seminars and conferences) and public\u00a0(face-to-face and media) settings.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">20 PGRs and ECRs from the Mathematics and Geography departments attended the workshop\u00a0at the start of June. We started with Jon emphasising how effective communication requires understanding your audience. Who are they?\u00a0What knowledge do they bring?\u00a0Why should they care about your work?\u00a0You might think these are obvious\u00a0questions at first glance, but\u00a0most researchers tend to rinse and repeat the same\u00a0communication techniques\u00a0they copied from senior colleagues\u00a0without ever questioning\u00a0if they are any good! We learned that a journal article structure, whilst great for publications,\u00a0fails to\u00a0translate across to\u00a0short\u00a0talks especially. Audiences should be kept interested with a clear leading hook that might\u00a0provide a\u00a0summary of your results, or something that resonates with their values or interests, whist avoiding jargon or confusing language.\u00a0From this we developed an \u2018hourglass\u2019 structure for giving presentations and each had the opportunity to develop\u00a0(and get feedback on)\u00a0a plan for a talk based on our\u00a0own research area and target audience.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">We also tackled the challenges of countering misinformation, and how simply presenting facts is often ineffective or even polarising. We learned that sometimes acknowledging a person\u2019s existing misconceptions is a great way of involving them in your communication. With the knowledge learned throughout the day, we considered how we could use our new communication toolkit in the context of media interactions and tools for direct engagement with the public. We covered the roles of reporters, columnists and editors, and how each has a different role that influences how they might seek to present your work. We also covered how to pitch our work effectively to different outlets who might have vastly different viewpoints.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">I\u2019m\u00a0incredibly glad to have attended the workshop\u2014for which I am incredibly grateful for\u00a0an\u00a0RLI grant to fund this event\u2014and\u00a0I\u00a0feel like\u00a0I\u2019ve\u00a0gained some\u00a0really useful\u00a0knowledge going forward.\u00a0It made me reflect on how\u00a0I\u2019ve\u00a0attempted\u00a0to communicate my work previously, but also that I now feel more confident should I be asked to give a talk at an outreach event for example. Feedback for the event\u00a0from participants\u00a0was\u00a0very\u00a0positive. I hope therefore that the attendees feel empowered to\u00a0more confidently communicate\u00a0their\u00a0work; I look forward to seeing some exciting seminars from researchers in my group\u00a0in the near future!<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Daniel Williams is a postdoctoral researcher of Aviation Climate Impacts in the Department of Mathematics and Statistics at the University of Exeter. His research investigates [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1109,"featured_media":2707,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[39],"tags":[379,383,361,117,85,385,197,377,159],"class_list":["post-2705","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-rlis","tag-climate-science","tag-environment-science","tag-faculty-of-environment-science-and-economy","tag-postgraduate-research","tag-research","tag-research-communication","tag-rli","tag-statistics","tag-workshop"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v23.0 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>Communicating Contentious Topics in Science: Empowering Researchers to Engage with Confidence - Doctoral College<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/sites.exeter.ac.uk\/doctoralcollege\/2026\/07\/22\/communicating-contentious-topics-in-science-empowering-researchers-to-engage-with-confidence\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Communicating Contentious Topics in Science: Empowering Researchers to Engage with Confidence - Doctoral College\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Daniel Williams is a postdoctoral researcher of Aviation Climate Impacts in the Department of Mathematics and Statistics at the University of Exeter. 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