Communicating Limitations
It can be hard to tell people things accurately, but, sadly, that's the point of communication.
Note: This week’s newsletter idea comes to Fancy Comma by way of Jason Tetro (aka “The Germ Guy.” See his original tweet here.
I volunteer at a local hospital, where I make popcorn for the hospital staff and visitors. It’s a lot of fun - people stop by to chat and to grab some freshly popped popcorn - but sadly, as with all good things, the popcorn must end. After I hand the last bag of popcorn to someone, another person inevitably drops by, asking for some. It doesn’t help that, by that point, a few hours into my shift, the whole building smells like popcorn.
At this point, I have to tell people that we are out of popcorn, and I feel bad every time. My preferred approach is to be simple and direct and say, “Sorry, we just ran out of popcorn, but you can stop by next week!” I like to remind my fellow popcorn-obsessed friends that they can always stop by next week so that they don’t feel like their lifelong popcorn endeavors have been dashed (a terrible feeling).
As someone trained in crisis communications, I like to think that my fellow popcorn aficionados are grateful for my quick response and transparency. After a few minutes, people stop hovering around the popcorn machine, and we all move on with our day.
Why am I telling you this story? It’s because communicating limitations is tough, but it’s part of being a communicator.
We communicate limitations a lot in science, whether we’re explaining why the latest “groundbreaking” research on the nightly newscast is overhyped and therefore not really all that groundbreaking. We communicate limitations as science copywriters when carefully phrasing some scientific copy for a blog about a vitamin or other product, careful not to go overboard on health claims. The United States Food and Drug Administration, like other regulatory agencies globally, has strict rules about what you can and cannot say about various dietary products. I recently worked with a hair vitamin company to come up with a series of informative articles about the vitamins in the supplements, and every. single. article. had to go through several rounds of review by lawyers just to make sure we didn’t exaggerate what the hair vitamins can and cannot do.
Why do they do this? There are a lot of reasons. The main reason is that disclosing limitations helps prevent overstatements and misinterpretations. People are informed but not confused.
We tend to be optimistic about science and its transformative power, as scientists and science communicators, but we need to be mindful of its limitations — and communicate them. As Jason Tetro tweeted to Fancy Comma, “sometimes the data shows there is a limit to effectiveness and/or outcome. That should be conveyed.”
Communicating limitations is part of the ethical standards of being a science communicator, if you ask me. I’ve been hard at work this past month, doing a deep dive into unethical communication - in other words, how NOT to communicate. I believe that you can learn a lot about communication ethics just by learning what you should not do. So, stay tuned for those blogs on the Fancy Comma blog in late August and early September! Subscribe to our blog so you don’t miss them. (If you’re reading this after August 2023, you can read all our “unethical communication” blogs here.)
What do you think about communicating limitations? Comment here or tweet us @FancyComma!
Links from around the web (what we’ve been reading and writing):
Over at Web Writing Advice, Angela Tague talks about “embracing the ‘free’ in freelance.”
We’ve been busy blogging about improving science through sociology, as well as talking about specific examples of science x sociology. We’re excited to be one of the few SciComm blogs out there unpacking the sociology of science in an academic manner (one of us, Sheeva, is a neuroscientists, while another of us, Kelly, is a sociologist - so sociology of science is the perfect blend of both our interests!)
Fancy Comma also got to speak to William Gray, founder of FloorCharts, the website dedicated to tracking all of the signs that appear on the US House and Senate floors!
Sheeva’s been interviewing people in marketing on the Fancy Comma YouTube (subscribe if you haven’t already!). Check out our interviews with healthcare marketer Christina Levandowski, math communicator Suzza Silver, marketer and marketing professor Andi Robinson, and content strategist, Teodora Pirciu. They were all great conversations! Side note, if you’d like to be interviewed on our YouTube, get in touch!
Sheeva liked this article about achieving more by working less. She’s trying to work less and do more fun stuff.
That’s a wrap for this month’s newsletter! If you liked it, please share it with your friends, so they can enjoy the wealth of knowledge, too.