Book Review: Science Communication: A Practical Guide for Scientists

Bowater and Yeoman’s Science Communication: A Practical Guide for Scientists provides a nice overview of the topic. If you’re starting out with public engagement or outreach to the public through the media, schools, or science festivals – or if you are planning your own event – I would recommend this book.

The book was written by two senior lecturers at the University of East Anglia in biology and medicine, so it’s not a surprise that many of the examples provided derive from those fields. That doesn’t diminish the book in any way if you are coming from a different field. I quite enjoyed seeing the examples from other disciplines and thinking whether they could be useful to mine.

Chapters covered why should scientists communicate with the public, encouraging scientists to communicate with the public, getting started, how to monitor and evaluate your event, getting started with schools, and working with the media. The book delivers good solid advice with many sections broken down into lists or steps to help readers remember the structure. The book is almost 350 pages, so it is a decent thickness for a subject that can often be presented much more cursorily and without depth.