One common piece of advice I frequently give to young scientists is to always tell a story with their data, because it’s a useful way of organizing and presenting research ideas. An equally important piece of advice I give is to pick a story that an audience—namely, the reviewers of grants and papers—wants to hear.
It’s no easy task. Creating a story for a particular audience is one of the most difficult tasks for anyone to learn. This is true for scientists and writers as well as any creative artist who tries to understand the complexity of the world and explain it to other people. Telling a good story always takes skill. Telling a popular story, however, requires simplification.
I have noticed that the most popular stories tend to cast complex matters in terms of black and white or good and evil. And the simpler the story, the broader the ...
