# the role of scientific communicators **URL:** \ **Category:** In My Humble Opinion\ **Created:** [November 21, 2015, 11:26pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-role-of-scientific-communicators/738234 "2015-11-21T23:26:49Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 13\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![thanatic](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/97f17d/32.png) [@thanatic](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/thanatic)\ **Post date:** [November 21, 2015, 11:26pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-role-of-scientific-communicators/738234/1 "2015-11-21T23:26:49Z")
1. Carl Sagan 2. Bill Nye 3. Richard Feynman 4. Neil Degrasse Tyson there are others like Brian Greene, Lawrence Krauss, Dawkins etc. the 4 i chosen… Sagan,Nye, Feynman and Tyson…are known to be great scientific communicators, **but none of the 4 are famous for any type of research accomplishments etc.** Do you think it takes a different skill to be a scientific communicator than a scientist ---
**Author:** ![Senegoid](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/senegoid/32/6606_2.png) [@Senegoid](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Senegoid)\ **Post date:** [November 21, 2015, 11:37pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-role-of-scientific-communicators/738234/2 "2015-11-21T23:37:59Z")
Wasn’t Feynman well-noted for his accomplishments in Feynman Diagrams and mariachi drumming? ---
**Author:** ![Measure\_for\_Measure](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/measure_for_measure/32/557_2.png) [@Measure\_for\_Measure](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Measure_for_Measure)\ **Post date:** [November 22, 2015, 12:14am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-role-of-scientific-communicators/738234/3 "2015-11-22T00:14:50Z")
Feynman won a Nobel. > **[Richard Feynman](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richard_Feynman)** > > Richard Phillips Feynman (/ˈfaɪnmən/; May 11, 1918 – February 15, 1988) was an American theoretical physicist, known for his work in the path integral formulation of quantum mechanics, the theory of quantum electrodynamics, the physics of the superfluidity of supercooled liquid helium, as well as his work in particle physics for which he proposed the parton model. For his contributions to the development of quantum electrodynamics, Feynman received the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1965 jointly wi... ---
**Author:** ![Trinopus](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/2bfe46/32.png) [@Trinopus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Trinopus)\ **Post date:** [November 22, 2015, 12:32am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-role-of-scientific-communicators/738234/4 "2015-11-22T00:32:13Z")
Isaac Asimov was a so-so chemist, with one or two fairly minor papers – and a ding-dong codwalloping top-shelf A+ dynamo as a science popularizer. David Quammen is my favorite living science writer – and he started as a travel writer. I don’t think he has any real science cred whatever. Different skills. ---
**Author:** ![Kent\_Clark](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/kent_clark/32/105_2.png) [@Kent\_Clark](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Kent_Clark)\ **Post date:** [November 22, 2015, 1:29am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-role-of-scientific-communicators/738234/5 "2015-11-22T01:29:33Z")
Here’s [Carl Sagan’s c.v. from 1961](https://docs.google.com/viewer?url=https%3A%2F%2Fcdn.loc.gov%2Fservice%2Fmss%2Fmss85590%2F012%2F012.pdf). At that point, he was 27 years old and already had authored 17 papers. He seems to have had a special interest in the planet Venus. I’m guessing some of Sagan’s work was real research. ---
**Author:** ![friedo](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/f/8edcca/32.png) [@friedo](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/friedo)\ **Post date:** [November 22, 2015, 1:44am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-role-of-scientific-communicators/738234/6 "2015-11-22T01:44:50Z")
> [@thanatic](#): > > 1. Richard Feynman > > the 4 i chosen… Sagan,Nye, Feynman and Tyson…are known to be great scientific communicators, **but none of the 4 are famous for any type of research accomplishments etc.** Wut? Feynman is one of the most important physicists of the 20th century and won a Nobel Prize. ---
**Author:** ![Kamino\_Neko](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/kamino_neko/32/34_2.png) [@Kamino\_Neko](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Kamino_Neko)\ **Post date:** [November 22, 2015, 1:48am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-role-of-scientific-communicators/738234/7 "2015-11-22T01:48:32Z")
> [@thanatic](#): > > Sagan,Nye, Feynman and Tyson…are known to be great scientific communicators, **but none of the 4 are famous for any type of research accomplishments etc.** As stated, you’re wrong on Dr Feynman, who I wouldn’t say is famous as a popularizer at all - I’d say he fits more in the realm of Einstein - he worked on something BIG at a time when science was given a lot of popular focus, and was enough of a personality to become famous in his own right, not just for his work. Bill Nye isn’t actually a research scientist - his degree is in engineering. Drs Sagan and Tyson, though, are actually research scientists who are more famous as popularizers. This shouldn’t be taken as diminishing their work as scientists, though. It’s rare for a scientist to become famous for their work as a scientist. But to answer the question, of course it takes different skill sets to be a working scientist than to be a science popularizer. Some, like Drs Sagan and Tyson (or Steven Hawking, for someone you didn’t mention), have both. Some, like Mr Nye, only have one. I suspect Dr Feynman actually had both, but he never really applied his people-skills to actual science popularization. ---
**Author:** ![Ruken](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/f475e1/32.png) [@Ruken](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ruken)\ **Post date:** [November 22, 2015, 1:48am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-role-of-scientific-communicators/738234/8 "2015-11-22T01:48:34Z")
> [@thanatic](#): > > Do you think it takes a different skill to be a scientific communicator than a scientist Communication comes in different flavors. Scientists need to be able to communicate their science to other scientists. Communicating to non-scientists is a different skill that has its utility, but it’s often easy enough to hire someone to do that for you. Hence the existence of university press offices, communications teams, etc. ---
**Author:** ![Colibri](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/colibri/32/1841_2.png) [@Colibri](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Colibri)\ **Post date:** [November 22, 2015, 1:52am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-role-of-scientific-communicators/738234/9 "2015-11-22T01:52:48Z")
> [@thanatic](#): > > the 4 i chosen… Sagan,Nye, Feynman and Tyson…are known to be great scientific communicators, **but none of the 4 are famous for any type of research accomplishments etc.** They’re not famous _to you_ as scientists, but to people in their own fields they may be. As has been pointed out, Feynman was an extremely important physicist, and Sagan was an author on more than 600 scientific papers, which is a lot. (Sagan was a professor of Astronomy at Cornell when I was an undergraduate there in the early 1970s. I went to a few public lectures by him and he was already a great communicator, but not as famous as he later became.) ---
**Author:** ![GIGObuster](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/gigobuster/32/421_2.png) [@GIGObuster](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/GIGObuster)\ **Post date:** [November 22, 2015, 2:31am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-role-of-scientific-communicators/738234/10 "2015-11-22T02:31:10Z")
Neil Degrasse Tyson had several scientific papers published in Astrophysical journals, and many books. [http://www.haydenplanetarium.org/tyson/curriculum-vitae#research](http://www.haydenplanetarium.org/tyson/curriculum-vitae#research) Besides being the current Astrophysicist and Director of the Hayden Planetarium. ---
**Author:** ![GIGObuster](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/gigobuster/32/421_2.png) [@GIGObuster](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/GIGObuster)\ **Post date:** [November 22, 2015, 2:44am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-role-of-scientific-communicators/738234/11 "2015-11-22T02:44:29Z")
Just about the only one that the OP could be right is Bill Nye, but he has reported many times before that he is an engineer. He worked at Boeing and then did some work at NASA for a sundial that was included in the Mars Exploration Rover missions. His job is mostly now as popularizer of science. And some institutions like John Hopkins and Rutgers University did give him honorary doctorates in Science. ---
**Author:** ![Wendell\_Wagner](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/w/8491ac/32.png) [@Wendell\_Wagner](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Wendell_Wagner)\ **Post date:** [November 22, 2015, 2:48am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-role-of-scientific-communicators/738234/12 "2015-11-22T02:48:31Z")
Martin Gardner wasn’t a mathematician at all, but his “Mathematical Games” columns in _Scientific American_ from 1956 to 1981 were responsible for originally getting a large proportion of all American mathematicians born from about 1940 to about 1970 interested in mathematics. ---
**Author:** ![Asympotically\_fat](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/e47c2d/32.png) [@Asympotically\_fat](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Asympotically_fat)\ **Post date:** [November 22, 2015, 3:03am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-role-of-scientific-communicators/738234/13 "2015-11-22T03:03:32Z")
In fact you in those 4 you have a fairly diverse bunch in terms of rearch acomplishments: You have a scientist who is universally regarded as one of the greats of his era (Feynman), who was also known for his ability to teach and communicate science. You have a scientist who was active and prominent in his own (in some ways “unsexy”) field, but achieved far greater renown as a science communicator (Sagan). You have someone who trained as a scientist and has done some research, but is not prominent in his field and has worked mainly and very successfully as a science communicator (Tyson) Someone who is not a trained scientist (Nye), but is a much-loved science communicator.