This document provides an overview of a course on technical writing for scientific journalism and lay science audiences. The course covers different types of science journalism including technical articles aimed at audiences with some background in the topic and lay audience articles providing high-level overviews without jargon. It discusses how to write for each audience type, including assumptions to make about their knowledge level and importance of leveraging expertise. The document also emphasizes using visuals and analogies to convey abstract concepts to readers.

1. Technical Writing for
Scientific Journalism
and Lay Science
Colleen M. Farrelly

2. Meet Your Instructor
• Data scientist who writes technical and lay articles in machine learning
and mathematics
– Several articles in lay science digests/journals
– Lay audience book contract
– Internet writing on technical topics
• Course geared towards
– Journalisms hoping to venture into scientific journalism
– Researchers hoping to venture into journalism related to their fields

3. Course Overview
• Types of science journalism
• How to write a technical article
• How to write a lay audience article
• Adding visuals/analogies to convey meaning

4. Types of Science Journalism
• Technical
– For audiences who have a background in the general topic but not the specific
subject matter
– KDnuggets
– Academic publishers
– Generally involves in-depth treatment of subject matter
– Assumption that biologists know some genetics but may not know the latest analysis
being applied to genomics data
– Assumption that a general physics audience will know about black holes or quarks but
perhaps not the latest paper on the topic

5. Types of Science Journalism
• Lay audience
– College-educated audiences in other fields
– Forbes
– Local newspapers
– Popular science publishers
– Generally aimed at providing a high-level overview of a topic without using
specialist jargon
– High school teacher curious about current gravity research for use in his/her
classroom
– Sociologist curious about recent gene sequencing technologies that might help on
his/her next grant

6. Technical Articles: Part I
• Scope
– Field overview (ex. machine learning for executives)
– Major breakthrough on a problem (new cancer treatment, for instance)
– New research (perhaps a series of string theory papers)
• Goals
– Teach the audience
– Highlight someone’s research
– Share your own research to those outside your field

7. Technical Articles: Part II
• Audience assumptions
– Topic: a new GWAS study with clustered selection in predictive models
– In your topic’s research area (quantitative geneticists)
– In your topic’s field (biologists)
– In another field related to your topic’s field (clinical researchers)
• Importance of fresh topics
– Something new (not the 100th article on the topic)
– Something impactful for the audience type

8. Technical Articles: Part III
• Leveraging your expertise
– Landing a book deal/article solicitation
– Acceptance of your open submission article
– Starting a blog that receives many views
• Example
– My expertise in topological data analysis
– Scarcity of researchers
– Solicited to write an initial article for a social media website

9. Lay Audience Article: Part I
• Scope
– Field overview (ex. machine learning for executives)
– Major breakthrough on a problem (new cancer treatment, for instance)
– New research (perhaps a series of string theory papers)
• Goals
– Teach the audience
– Highlight someone else’s research
– Share your own research

10. Lay Audience Articles: Part II
• Audience assumptions
– Topic: a new GWAS study with clustered selection in predictive models
– College-educated audience (assume some biology knowledge)
– High school audience (assume a little less biology knowledge)
– General public (start with the basics)
• Importance of fresh topics
– Something new (not the 100th article on the topic)
– Something of importance to the audience
– Explanation of technical articles

11. Technical Articles: Part III
• Leveraging your expertise
– Best-positioned to explain the subject in a non-technical manner
– Credentials typically needed for a lay audience book or writing position
• Blogging
– Can be a good way to establish credibility in the field
– Creates an audience (important for book contracts)
• Importance of visuals/analogies in communication
– Picture is worth a thousand words…
– Gives concrete form to abstract or complicated material

12. Visuals/Analogies: Case I
• Simplex vs. graph
– 3 authors, each co-authoring a paper with one
other person
– Gives 3 2-way interactions in the triangle graph
– No paper authored by all 3 authors
– 3 authors who co-author with each other on a
paper
– 3-way interactions among the authors, rather
than just a series of 2-way interactions that
aren’t mutual to all 3

13. Visuals/Analogies: Case II
• Constrained optimization
problem with a cost function
associated with each item
• Or…
– Knapsack with finite space
that needs to be filled with
items for school

14. Visuals/Analogies: Case III
• Bridging constructs in psychology, where survey items are loosely
connected but not in a hierarchical fashion
– Difficult to convey the idea to statisticians
– Difficult to explain the methods used to psychologists
– Resolution in the paper
– Symphony with different movements involving different instruments during different
movements

15. Closing Thoughts
• Context matters.
• A picture can be worth a thousand words.
• Resources:
– https://www.americanscientist.org/blog/from-the-staff/12-tips-for-scientists-writing-
for-the-general-public
– https://journal.emwa.org/writing-for-lay-audiences/writing-for-lay-audiences-a-
challenge-for-scientists/
– https://web.mit.edu/course/21/21.guide/laypers.htm