APSA Newsletter - Phi Psi » 2009 Winter, Volume 3, No. 3 » Don’t speak in Greek to me!

Don’t speak in Greek to me!

Samuel F. Bakhoum, Newsletter Editor, APSA Public Relations Committee

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Last month, I had the chance to participate in a short educational seminar on how to communicate scientific research to laypersons and only then did I fully realize the depth of the scientific universe in which we spend most of our time. With the incredible pace at which biomedical discoveries are being made, the average doctoral thesis work is already light years away from the quotidian level of abstraction of the common citizen. To most scientists this may not present a significant challenge since they habitually communicate among themselves and with familiar granting agencies. For physician-scientists, on the other hand, being able to communicate on multiple levels and adequately relay scientific information to the layperson is a crucial skill. For instance, recruiting patients to clinical trials at times requires a rather sophisticated level of mediation between the laboratory and the clinic. Moreover, as physician-scientists brace to become the upcoming leaders in medical research and treatment, they ought to be able to efficiently communicate their work with the general public as well as politicians whose support is essential for continued research funding. For this precise reason and others, frequent attendance of conferences and meetings is an integral part of a physician-scientist’s training and APSA encourages all its members to attend many of the meetings that it offers. These range from the annual meeting in Chicago (which begins on Friday, April 24th this year) to regional meetings and other conferences to which APSA members are invited to attend. In this issue, we review a number of useful and important meetings that took place within the past year in order to keep you, our readers and APSA members, up-to-date and hopefully inspire you one day to attend one of these meetings if you have not done so yet.