What Happened
At the opening of the UK Media Excellence for Emerging Technologies (UK MEET) program in Ghana, Professor Abigail Opoku of the Ghana National Research Fund called on journalists to translate scientific research into plain language. Her argument: when ordinary citizens understand science and innovation, they can participate in the decisions that shape their country's future. The message was simple. Scientists and reporters need to start working together.
The Communication Angle
Here is the core problem with how most science gets communicated, in Ghana and everywhere else. Scientists write for other scientists. Journalists cover stories, not ideas. And the public ends up with either a dense research paper nobody reads or a headline that strips out everything meaningful. Both sides are failing, and Professor Opoku is right to name it.
But here is where the comparison matters. Look at what happens when science communication goes wrong versus when it goes right.
Wrong approach: A researcher publishes findings on, say, drought-resistant crops. The press release uses technical language. A journalist rewrites it badly, gets the numbers wrong, and publishes something that either confuses readers or loses them entirely. The public learns nothing. Policymakers ignore it. The research dies in a drawer.
Right approach: The same researcher partners with a journalist from the start. They agree on the three things a farmer in northern Ghana actually needs to know: what the crop does, why it matters this season, and how to get access to it. The story gets written around those three points. People understand it. People use it.
The difference is not writing ability. It is sequencing. The wrong approach starts with information and hopes for understanding. The right approach starts with the audience and works backward to the information. Professor Opoku's call is really a call for that mindset shift. Stop asking "how do we explain what we discovered?" and start asking "what does this person need to know, and why should they care today?"
Ghana's development goals are not abstract. They are roads, crops, health outcomes, jobs. Science that cannot connect to those stakes will not move anyone.
This is exactly the kind of scenario I break down in Say It Right Every Time. The chapter on audience-first framing gives you a framework for reversing the communication sequence, starting with what your listener needs to walk away knowing, then building everything else around that. It sounds obvious. Almost nobody does it.
Never Be Lost
for Words Again
Get word‑for‑word scripts for the conversations that shape your life, from job interviews and negotiations to difficult talks with family and partners, so you always know exactly what to say and how to say it.
Never Be Lost
for Words Again
Get word‑for‑word scripts for the conversations that shape your life, from job interviews and negotiations to difficult talks with family and partners, so you always know exactly what to say and how to say it.
Key Takeaway
Before you write or pitch any science story, write one sentence in plain language that answers this question: "Why does this matter to someone who is not a scientist?" If you cannot write that sentence in under 20 words without using technical terms, you do not understand your own story well enough yet. Go back and ask one more question of your source before you write a single word.
