Scientific Outreach Quotes

Scientists must venture outside their comfort zones to show the public how cool - and how important - their work really is.

If scientists can't communicate with the public, with policy makers, with one another, the future is going to be held back. We're not going to have the future that we could have.

When I write a scientific treatise, I might reach 100 people. When the 'National Geographic' covers a project, it communicates about plants and fish and underwater technology to more than 10 million people.

If scientists could communicate more in their own voices - in a familiar tone, with a less specialized vocabulary - would a wide range of people understand them better? Would their work be better understood by the general public, policy-makers, funders, and, even in some cases, other scientists?

My successes already accomplished have mostly been taking existing science and getting people to apply it in their everyday lives.

Not explaining science seems to me perverse. When you're in love, you want to tell the world.

I put a lot of effort into writing 'A Briefer History' at a time when I was critically ill with pneumonia because I think that it's important for scientists to explain their work, particularly in cosmology. This now answers many questions once asked of religion.

Through basic science literacy, people can understand the policy choices we need to be making. Scientists are not necessarily the greatest communicators, but science and communication is one of the fundamentals we need to address. People are interested.

My first published writings were trying to take scientific concepts and make them clear for a general audience.

I want very much to communicate science to as wide an audience as possible, but not at a cost of dumbing down, and not at a cost in getting things right.

I would say it's important for scientists to speak out when they can and when they can be listened to.

People think I appear on television to promote my image. That's not fair. I hate filming. I turned down 'Strictly Come Dancing.' But television is a wonderful opportunity to promote scientific ideas. 'Super Doctors' is a very thoughtful piece.

As long as we continue to invest in good content that increases excitement about and understanding of science, we're on the right side of this fight, and I have no problem at all stealing from the toolbox of the clickbaiters.

I recognize that there's an appetite that I'm now serving, and I'm happy to do so. I think it means quite a bit that science has achieved this level of public interest and access. And so I'm simultaneously astonished every day upon recognizing this, and I think it's a good sign for the country and possibly for the world.

I'm a great believer that scientists should spend as much time as possible explaining, and you do explain in the process of teaching.

If I could change the science system, my prescription for changing the whole thing would be organising it around big goals and building teams to do it.

Science shouldn't be just for scientists, and there are encouraging signs that it is becoming more pervasive in culture and the media.

There's no shortage of people that we can put on, because science touches us all.

My general impression about people like Steve Gould and Carl Sagan and so on is that when they disappear as individuals and are no longer appearing on the stage and they are no longer writing, that their lifetime of acknowledgement by the general reading public is not very long... There were many people in the 19th century who were equally famous people who gave working man's lectures, supporters of Darwin, we as scholars know their names but the general public never heard of them.

We have all been given a gift with 'The Big Bang Theory,' a show that's not only based in the scientific community, but also enthusiastically supported by that same community - this is our opportunity to give back, in that spirit, our 'Big Bang' family has made a meaningful contribution, and together, we'll share in the support of these future scholars, scientists and leaders.

Access to science is greater than ever before. There are more vehicles out there that grant the public access to science. Not to mention the Internet.