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A Conversation with Bob Hirsch- Science Communication

Dr. Robert Hirsch, Chief Hydrologist for the U.S. Geological Survey (1994-2008), talks with Jody Eimers about science communication.

Jody Eimers:

Bob, several years ago you won the Eugene Shoemaker Communications Award that the U.S. Geological Survey gives annually to its superior communicators. Working for you, the thing I learned most was the value that you placed on communicating effectively with the public, with decision makers and with stakeholders. Can you comment on your communications strategy?

Bob Hirsch:

Communications has always been extremely important to me and I think the strategy has to be made up of a variety of pieces. One of them is direct face to face communication with interested parties, whether in the universities, whether with state agencies, whether it is with the Congress, whether it is with other agencies, and trying to make the science understandable. To recognize we cannot use the jargon, we've got to get it down to basics and paint a picture for people that they can understand.

Another aspect is through written documents whether in fact sheets or things like web pages. But, it's a very – there's a really important point that it took a while in the USGS to really understand, but which I fought for and argued for very vigorously over many years.

In our desire to be better communicators, we were trying to simplify our products to speak to a broader community that didn't necessarily have the in-depth technical knowledge. But, in doing that, we sometimes were compromising the technical thoroughness with which we addressed issues. And, we were trying to write products, written products that spanned from the technical to the more lay audience and I said, no, no, no we can't do that. There will always be and must always be a role for very serious, very in-depth, frankly rather dry technical products that really go through very rigorously, describing our methodologies, the theory behind it, the data and how we analytically got to our answer.

What I told our scientists over and over is you've got to write those serious in-depth technical products. Once those are approved and published then you're liberated, you don't have to explain how you got to that conclusion, you can simply write about what the conclusion was how did we get to that conclusion and provide references to the serious technical documents so that the people who want to understand in a deeper level can see that.

Another thing that I considered very important and I was very proud of the accomplishments we've made in this area is in what I called synthesis products. I mentioned earlier the subject of nitrate in our nation's rivers and we've told stories in many, many places. What needs to happen is bringing together those stories and explaining it in relatively simple terms so that the people can understand that.

Over the last couple of decades, the USGS has put out a series of extremely well written circulars on the subject of ground water and understanding the sustainability of ground water and how ground water and rivers interact with each other. One of my earlier experiences with these kinds of circulars was a circular on the downstream impact of dams. We have done a lot of research in the USGS in the Grand Canyon, on the Flat River, on the Chattahoochee River and a whole variety of places understanding what the implications are of having a dam in terms of the characteristics of a river, its eco-system, etc., downstream.

I asked some of our best scientists to get together and write a document that was accessible to the public that would help them understand these issues and the science that lies behind it and we published that. These are the kind of things that I really wanted us to do.

[End of Audio]

Duration: 5:15 minutes