Use your power for good: An ethical scicomm framework for making a difference in the academy

Borrow these ideas today! (A conceptual framework, a reflection tool, and an action plan you can put to work immediately)

Devaluing scicomm happens in myriad, subtle ways in academia. However, it also happens in readily identifiable ways that we can work together to correct. (Image: Avery Davis; part of Fig. 5 in Broder & Merkle et al. 2024)

As regular readers well know, I leverage evidence-based scicomm approaches to create tools that people can use to take action to make their efforts to share science more effective and ethical. I’m driven to create these tools (and to conduct the underpinning research) because ethical science communication is vital, given that we hope society will use science to make policy, civic, and personal decisions.

Unfortunately, institutional and systemic hurdles in academia complicate, constrain, and undervalue efforts to share science effectively and ethically.¹ After years of working within our own institutions to help them recalibrate, some collaborators and I² recognize that:

1. Plenty of other people also think academia/higher ed can be better. In fact, there are thousands of …