Two Montreal Gazette op-eds and media interviews

During my year as a Public Scholar, I wrote two opinion pieces for the Montreal Gazette and was interviewed by TVA Nouvelles, Le Journal de Montréal and NSERC about aging research. It was my first serious experience communicating science outside of the lab and the classroom, and it changed how I think about the responsibility researchers have to the public.

Timing is everything

The most important lesson was about timing. An op-ed has to connect to something people are already talking about. When a challenge about aging was trending on social media, I used it as a door into what the science of aging actually says. People read it because it met them where they already were.

That approach is different from how scientists usually think. In research, we start with the question we find interesting and work outward. In public writing, you start with what the reader already cares about and work inward toward the science. Nobody wakes up wanting to read about cellular aging. But many people are curious about why they look and feel older, and that curiosity is the opening.

Saying less, more clearly

Writing for a newspaper also forced me to cut. A research paper can carry caveats, methods and nuance across many pages. An op-ed has a few hundred words and a reader who can leave at any sentence. The discipline is in choosing the one or two ideas that matter most and stating them plainly, without overselling what the science shows. I found that harder than writing for experts, and more useful.

If we don’t explain our work, someone else will, and usually less accurately.

Two languages, two audiences

Doing interviews in both English and French reminded me that explaining science is not translation. Each audience has different reference points, and the same finding needs a different first sentence for each. In Montréal, that is not a theoretical point. The way a story is framed on French-language television is not the way it lands in an English newspaper, and pretending otherwise usually means reaching neither audience well.

Interviews taught me something else: you do not control the final story. A journalist will pick the quote that fits their piece. The best you can do is make every sentence you say accurate on its own, so that whichever one gets used still holds up.

My perspective

Academics often see media as a distraction. I see op-eds as part of the job: one of the few ways expertise can inform public debate and, sometimes, policy. Most research is publicly funded, and the public has a reasonable expectation to hear what it is paying for, in language it can follow.

There is also a practical argument. Aging research attracts a lot of hype, from miracle supplements to promises of radical life extension. When researchers stay quiet, that space gets filled by people with something to sell. If we don’t explain our work, someone else will, and usually less accurately.