Right after finishing my PhD, I knew one thing for certain: I needed to make my work more accessible.
Back in The Early Days
My academic path began in earth and environmental sciences. Yes, that included rocks, but it also sparked a curiosity about how the planet works. Later, I shifted into environmental sciences, and it was there I took my very first class on soil.
That single course ended up shaping the trajectory of my career.
Was that the path I had in mind at the time? Absolutely not. But sometimes the directions we don’t plan for are the ones that define us the most.
Soon after, I had the chance to intern at the University of Sydney. It was my first real exposure to international research, and when I returned home, I even got to present my work in Spain – a thrilling experience (and a funny story for another time). Back then, it didn’t really bother me that my family and friends didn’t fully understand what I was studying. It was university, after all. Abstract. Technical. Something far removed from everyday conversations.
A PhD, and a Wake-Up Call
Then came the PhD.
Almost immediately, I realised how wide the gap is between academia and the rest of society. The moment you tell someone you’re doing a PhD, you get placed in a category: “Wow, you must be smart”. But here’s the truth – not everyone likes to hear it – a PhD doesn’t make you smarter than anyone else. It makes you persistent. It makes you specialised. It means you’ve spent years immersed in a single subject until you know it inside and out. Anyone who dedicates that much time and focus will become good at it.
But there’s another side to the PhD experience. Day in and day out, you live in a world of complexity: jargon, protocols, methods, and technical detail. For eight hours a day, five days a week, you are surrounded by language and practices that make perfect sense inside academia – but sound alien outside of it. Naturally, when you try to explain your work to family, friends, or the public, that vocabulary does not always land.
That’s when I decided: I need to find a way to make my work easier to understand.
Learning to Communicate
Since then, I’ve been on a journey to bridge that gap. I wouldn’t call myself an expert communicator yet – it’s still a work in progress – but I’ve made progress by stripping away jargon, using examples from daily life, and leaning on analogies anyone can relate to.
My personal benchmark is simple: if I can explain it so my grandmother Odette understands it, then I’ve done my job.
But here’s the important part: because something is explained simply doesn’t mean it is simple.
The Hidden Weight of Simplicity
Behind every clear and accessible explanation are years – sometimes decades – of trial and error. Failed experiments, discarded hypotheses, dead ends, and long nights in the lab all sit beneath those easy-to-digest facts. Science is never as effortless as it looks on the surface.
That’s why I always caution: if you’re listening to someone who isn’t a scientist and they make things sound too easy, it’s either an oversimplification or, worse, a lie.
Science is not about giving you comforting stories. It’s about testing, doubting, checking, and re-checking. It’s about uncertainty and patience. It’s about building knowledge slowly, carefully, until we have confidence in the results.
What Science Really Offers
At its core, science has one purpose: to warn humanity of threats and to propose solutions. And these solutions aren’t always comfortable. Often, they demand change. They require new trajectories – choices that feel uncertain because we’ve never tried them before.
Take ecosystems like soil. Their destruction already costs the global economy trillions of US dollars. And yet, instead of investing in protecting nature, we keep pouring resources into activities that threaten it.
That’s not only a scientific concern – it’s an economic disaster and, ultimately, a human one.
The solutions science proposes aren’t always easy to accept, because they force us to rethink business-as-usual. But ignoring them is far more costly. Science does not only come with warnings – it comes with pathways forward, even if they demand courage.
Conclusion: Beyond Easy Answers
So yes, I try to make my work simple, because people deserve to understand. But don’t confuse simple with easy. Simplicity in science communication is the tip of the iceberg. Beneath it lies the full weight of research: rigorous, methodical, sometimes uncertain, but always moving steadily toward truth.
If we dismiss science in favour of voices that tell us what we want to hear, we risk losing the one community that is both sounding the alarm and offering the tools for change.