The older and less polite term for this activity is ‘dumbing down’.  But, if I read Hamideh Emrani’s Nov. 20, 2015 post for the Signals blog (insiders’ perspective on the world of stem cells and regenerative medicine; [Canada] Centre for Commercialization of Regenerative Medicine website) and understand the video clip (embedded in Emrani’s post) featuring Alan Alda (actor and science afficionado and communicator) rightly, the word ‘clarity’ is now being used. I’m glad to see the change.

As Emrani hints in her Nov. 20, 2015 post , it’s very difficult to gauge your audience’s interest level and knowledge about a topic,

I completely understand the challenge for a scientist to not use scientific language and not assume what they know is common knowledge. I still find myself adding jargon to my writing. But we all know the importance of keeping the audience engaged and the old saying: “practice makes perfect.”

Her comments were made in the context of a recent conference she had attended and observations she’d made about the presentations.

In the interest of not repeating Emrani’s post, I’m going to focus on some different aspects of science communication and audiences. In all the talk about science communication, there’s very little about communicating to audiences who do have some or lot of science education. So, here goes. Trying to judge your audience’s knowledge level can be tricky assuming you’re not at a specialized conference where you’d expect people to have the basics. Even an audience full of scientists can be tricky, if they have different specialties.

For example, some years ago I was told that a job for a technical writer was being opened up at TRIUMF, Canada’s National Laboratory for  Particle and Nuclear Physics. According to my information, they wanted a technical writer not to write manuals but to create a situation where TRIUMF’s scientists from various specialties would be forced to explain their work to someone who wasn’t a specialist. Apparently, these TRIUMF experts weren’t able to read each other’s written materials or (presumably) understand their presentations due to an overabundance of expertise and jargon on the part of the writer/presenter and a reluctance to admit to difficulties with understanding on the part of the differently expert reader/listener.

Of course, it’s all possible to aim too low. Years ago I was working in a local health department and learned this about an AIDS educator who’d been hired for her expertise to assist health professionals (mostly nurses) in their work with AIDS patients.

Shortly after starting with the health department, she gave a 2-day workshop and made a disastrous choice. The nurses had been dealing with AIDS patients for a few years and she gave a workshop designed for people who knew absolutely nothing about the disease thereby insulting the nurses’ expertise. Realizing her error on the first day, she recalibrated her workshop for the second.  (BTW, It’s very hard to do that to a presentation partway through.) Unfortunately, a chunk of her audience had left. Worse yet, I heard the story more than a year later in the context of an explanation of why a number of nurses were shunning her professionally.

Getting back to clarity, here’s Alan Alda,

As Emrani notes, practice helps. If you have time, don’t forget to check out her where she has more to say and another embedded video.