The Growing Need for Strategic Communication in the Basic Sciences

Today, a new piece of media published by UCLA caught my attention (link here). It is a short video on their Youtube channel featuring the prolific Professor Terence Tao, where they’re doing something crucial: exploring how research powers progress, and arguing why basic mathematics research is essential to society.

The context of this video matters. Terence Tao has been increasing his presence as a public figure and spokesperson for mathematics research throughout 2025, and it’s no surprise why. The federal-level budget cuts of 2025 to basic science funding are hitting academia hard. But despite Tao’s and others efforts to speak publicly about it, this topic seems to still be mostly overlooked by society at large. Meanwhile, top universities have already begun taking drastic measures like freezing hiring and rescinding P.h.D. admissions offers.¹ Decisions like these will have a trickle-down effect on the global research industry over the long run. These cuts illustrate the growing need for communication from reputable institutions, such as UCLA and Tao with the aforementioned video, in support of basic science research in the USA.

Though despite the significance of basic scientific research, its communication strategies as a discipline are still undeveloped. The UCLA video highlights this: while the video’s core message is important, I feel its argument could be significantly strengthened with some fundamental rhetorical improvements.

The video does a great job explaining that, at a high level, the ecosystems of basic science research progress by smaller results at steady rates, occasionally achieving important major breakthroughs. These breakthroughs are highly coveted and impactful, accelerating innovation across society. But crucially, they are interdependent on the faucet of meager results to facilitate them. The video falls short of actually proving this to the viewer though, as no clear example of the complex pipeline from smaller results to bigger ones is actually clearly illustrated. In fact, the only concrete example provided at all is about one new algorithm for MRI scans that cuts scan durations from 3 minutes to 30 seconds. While this is a valuable research contribution, in isolation it fails to drive home the core message. Audiences need significantly more insight into the ecosystem in order to be convinced. (To be clear, this is not a failing of UCLA or Tao; their work is simply reflective of the standard communication practices of the community as a whole.)

What I’m asking for is incredibly difficult to accomplish, because almost nobody is actually positioned professionally to execute on it. Modern research has become so siloed that even researchers within the same niches often still find it impossible to follow and fully understand each other’s work. There’s just too much context needed, and with the ‘publish-or-perish’ norm of contemporary academia, there’s too little time available to invest in establishing it. This has unfortunately created a gap in public understanding of how research powers progress. The result is now budget-makers have no idea why it’s important to fund an ecosystem of basic science that mostly produces minor results, and worse, we face growing public disillusionment about its value.

We urgently need more focus on scientific communications from across public and private sectors to support researchers and their progress without adding to their already overwhelming workload. After all, they already struggle to balance the creep of responsibility across their main gig—paper authorship—and obligations like teaching and professional services like peer-review contribution. They are highly-specialized professionals; it’s unrealistic to expect them to be public-facing communications experts as well. In any other industry, it would constitute a dedicated role.

That’s why we need accelerated investment into building scientific communications infrastructure and careers. This could include establishing dedicated communication teams at research centers, professional-development training programs in communications, and other platforms that help translate complex findings into tangible, intelligible results for stakeholders. Current estimates suggest only a few universities in the USA offer degree programs specifically in scientific communications. Further, science-based degree programs in general rarely emphasize domain-specific professional writing and communication skills cultivation either. Relative to how much scientific research is performed and published in the country, this is surprising.