Lately, there has been much debate about how scientists should communicate their research and its results to the public and to what extent they should shape public opinion based on scientific evidence. Are scientists visible enough? If so, could they do better? If not, why is that the case?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":3525,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"inline_featured_image":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[249],"tags":[464,463,454,451],"class_list":["post-11481","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-opinion","tag-communication","tag-kommunikatsioon-en","tag-science","tag-teadus-en"],"acf":{"postbuilder":[{"acf_fc_layout":"text","type":"text","text":"Since I was recognized as early as 2008 for my environmental blog Keskkonnaabi, I will share my perspective based on the experiences I have gained while running a blog.\r\n\r\nI am convinced that scientists could and should communicate their work and its results roughly five times more than they do now. Of course, there are already quite a few scientists who are constantly in the public eye. Their ability to successfully secure research and development projects is a significant factor in this. If evaluators have heard of a scientist before, they rate the needs outlined in their applications more highly. This phenomenon can also be viewed from another angle: if journalists pick up a science-related topic, it can be inferred that it is essential.\r\n\r\nA great example of increasing the visibility of science and scientists is the PhD competition organized by the Estonian Academy of Sciences. Participants must explain their research and its significance in just three minutes. We have used the same method at university-industry collaboration festivals, where scientists deliver three-minute elevator pitches.\r\n\r\nThis format was enjoyable and highly effective: scientists learned to present their goals and experiences engagingly and concisely, while audiences quickly received the essential information. After all, there are plenty of stories about scientists who plan to give a 30-minute presentation with 60 slides but, five minutes before their time is up, are still on slide ten\u2014without explaining a single formula in a way that makes sense to the audience. The elevator pitch method should be applied much more widely, as it helps condense complex topics and find formulations that are both accurate and stripped of unnecessary details.","image":null,"align":""},{"acf_fc_layout":"image","image":6834},{"acf_fc_layout":"text","type":"text","text":"