Nathan H. Lents on Storytelling, Skepticism, and the Craft of Science Communication

Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen

Publication (Outlet/Website): The Good Men Project

Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2025/11/07

*Minor edits November 9, 2025.*

Dr. Nathan H. Lents, a molecular biologist, author, and professor at John Jay College (CUNY), discusses effective science communication rooted in storytelling, curiosity, and clarity. Emphasizing the importance of evidence-based messaging, he critiques sensationalism, creationist misrepresentation, and public mistrust in science. Lents highlights the vital role of science journalists in translating complex research for broader audiences and urges greater institutional support for the field. He reflects on challenges in conveying nuanced science topics—like evolution, climate change, and vaccines—while maintaining credibility. Through thoughtful engagement, Lents promotes public understanding of science as a self-correcting, collaborative, and deeply human process.

Scott Douglas Jacobsen: Today, we are joined by Dr. Nathan H. Lents—a molecular biologist, author, and professor of biology at John Jay College of Criminal Justice, which is part of the City University of New York (CUNY). He is widely recognized for his work in science communication, particularly for making complex biological concepts accessible to general audiences.

His books include Human Errors: A Panorama of Our Glitches, from Pointless Bones to Broken Genes and Not So Different: Finding Human Nature in Animals. These works highlight themes in evolutionary biology, genetics, and human physiology, presented in engaging and accessible ways. Dr. Lents also contributes essays and op-eds to popular science outlets, takes part in public conversations about science and religion, and frequently appears in media to advocate for science literacy—such as in this interview. Through both his research and public engagement, he promotes an evidence-based understanding of human biology and evolution across educational and public spheres.

Thank you so much for joining me again today. So, what are the key elements of making science communication accessible and engaging to non-experts? And if you would, please add some humorous comparisons or contrasts. What are some examples of bad science communication?

Dr. Nathan Lents: Well, I’m not sure I can come up with an example of bad science communication right off the top of my head, but one thing I’ll tell you about how I approach it is this: As an evolutionary biologist, I tend to look at almost everything through an evolutionary lens—including learning.

If you think about how humans learn and absorb information, it is largely through storytelling. That was our first method of learning, our first method of understanding, of communicating, of passing knowledge—not only within communities, but also across generations.

Humans were speaking with complex language for tens of thousands of years before anything was ever written down. So while reading and writing are important now for gathering and storing information, they are relatively new innovations. Storytelling, on the other hand, is ancient and deeply rooted in our biology.

Our brains are wired to learn through hearing and telling stories. If you picture Stone Age men and women gathered around a campfire, telling stories—that was the first classroom. And if you think about your own childhood, consider how long it took to learn to read and write. It was a slow, sometimes painful process because it is not something that comes naturally to us, biologically speaking.

But speaking and listening? That is instinctual. You do not need to teach a child how to speak. They will do it spontaneously. They refine their abilities over time, of course, but it is a natural act.

So I think of learning as a natural act—as long as it happens in a biologically familiar way. That’s a long-winded way of saying: I try to write the same way I teach—by telling stories. You have to draw the reader in. You have to make them care.

You have to make them go “Hmm…”—you have to pique their curiosity. Then you follow up with the information they are now eager to read because you have captured their interest. So, a good way to approach science writing is to first ask: Why would someone want to know this? Why would someone care? You cannot assume that just because you are interested in something, someone else will be too.

You have to set the stage. That is what I try to do. I pique interest, and then I tell stories. That is the engaging part of it.

But as a science writer, communicator, or teacher, you also have to back it up—with verified information, data extracted from the natural world through the scientific process. So as quickly as possible, I try to introduce evidence and then explain, again through storytelling, how that evidence was gathered and what it means for us.

Now, one thing I have noticed in bad science writing is that people sometimes try to do too much. I like to think of learning as bite-sized pieces of information. The more you can surround that one thing you want someone to know with stories, the better they will understand and remember it.

But I see some writers try to cover so many different things at once that they do not have time or space to wrap each point in a narrative. So, it becomes an esoteric, isolated factette—just a small, floating fact. And the reader is left wondering: Where did we get that information? How do we know it’s true? How does it connect to anything else?

That is why I like to think of my science writing as storytelling. You try to convey one main point, and then surround it with stories that help drive it home.

Jacobsen: Who do you think communicates effectively on non-scientific topics? And does their approach resemble science communication?

Lents: Well, in the humanities, for example, you tend to get long-winded storytellers. I often find that when I read more scholarly works—especially literature, history, or biographies—you get someone writing long, elaborate sentences.

And you can tell that each sentence probably took several minutes to craft. They clearly want to include as much as possible and use the most sophisticated vocabulary. But the result is often a word salad—dense, hard to absorb—because so much is packed into it.

So, when I read in the humanities, that is one of my biggest complaints: It sometimes feels like the writer is more interested in showing off what they know than in building understanding.

In the social sciences, however, I think they tend to do a much better job. The social sciences are still studying the natural world—but through a human lens. They focus on psychology, sociology, anthropology—how we form communities, how we connect, how we feel. It is centered on the human experience.

And so, the social sciences have a lot to teach both the humanities and the natural sciences because their science is very much in service of humanity. They begin from a place of inherent relevance—it is automatically about us.

For example, some people might read something in the humanities about a medieval text and see no relevance to their life. The same can happen in the sciences—sometimes you are reading about a quasar tens of thousands of light-years away, and again, you wonder: Why is this important to me? Why do I need to know this? It feels distant and irrelevant.

But the social sciences, at least ostensibly, are about the lived social experiences of human beings, so they start from a place of immediate relevance. That gives them an advantage.

The natural sciences have to work a little harder to show people why they should care. Now, I personally study and write about human evolution and the human experience as shaped by evolutionary history. So I like to think I have that same advantage. We all have a stake in this. We all have a natural connection to it. We are all descendants of millions of ancestors.

So most people are at least a little bit invested in whatever idea I am going to share, simply by being human—and by having a bit of curiosity about what it means to be human. That’s one of the reasons I write about human evolution: it’s an easy sell. Everyone wants to know where we came from. Everyone wants to know why we are the way we are. So I have that built-in advantage.

But again, as quickly as possible, I try to tell a story. And as part of the explanation, I include data or evidence—As researchers discovered X, Y, and Z—so that people understand science as an active process.

If I know something, it is not necessarily because I read it in a textbook. I might have done the experiments that generated that knowledge. And that is what science is ultimately trying to do: to create knowledge through observation and experimentation.

Jacobsen: Which scientific discipline do you think is the hardest to convey—the one with the most complex or inaccessible nuances—for a general audience?

Lents: Particle physics and high-energy physics are definitely hard to communicate to the public. There are so many principles that are not only unfamiliar to most people but also deeply counterintuitive.

Many of the theories about how the universe is structured are so far removed from our everyday experience—and so inaccessible to our natural senses, like vision and hearing—that you have to do a lot of groundwork just to get people ready for what you want to explain. So, I would say high-energy physics probably has the toughest time among the natural sciences.

The disciplines with the easiest time, as I mentioned, are the social sciences and field biology—things you can see and hear, things that people can directly relate to. When you are describing experiences people already have, and then offering a deeper layer of understanding, it is easier to draw them in.

So I am very glad I am not trying to write about physics.

Jacobsen: Is there any issue with inconsistency in expert messaging to the public? Does that occur? And if it does, is it a serious issue—or does it mostly fade away with time?

Lents: Yes, there are definitely times when that happens—especially when scientists disagree. But disagreement in the scientific community is not necessarily a bad thing.

It means you are in an active area of research, where our knowledge is still developing—so naturally, you will encounter different ideas that are in conflict. What irritates me, however, is that some scientists describe opposing views using straw man arguments, reducing them to something ridiculous.

The best way to argue—the most appropriate way to argue—is to do the opposite: to steel man your opponent’s position. Try to make the best, strongest case for the other side, and then present your alternative. But if you set up a straw man just to knock it down, you have done a disservice to your own position. You might get a few chuckles or laughs, but you have not actually explained the controversy. You have not explained why your view is stronger or why you support your position. That kind of poor argumentation leads to inconsistency—and, unfortunately, it can be devastating when it comes to public understanding.

It leaves people with the impression that even well-established principles are just a matter of opinion.

I am involved in a lot of debates between creationism and evolutionary science. Some of the material you find from creationist sources makes you wonder whether they know anything about what evolutionary science actually says.

If you are going to argue with something, you need to understand it first.

But after a while, I realized—they do know a little bit about evolutionary theory. The problem is, it serves their purpose to present a parody or caricature of it. They create a distorted version of what evolution actually proposes and then argue against that. By attacking the ridiculous version they constructed, they make themselves look stronger.

Once I understood this tactic—that they are trying to feed their readers something that sounds convincing, something like red meat—I realized that there is a lot of intellectual dishonesty in the creationist community. And until they confront that, they will not be taken seriously by the scientific community.

For example, they will often say, “This is all just a pure accident of chance. That’s what scientists want you to believe—that everything magically came into existence, randomly.”

But that is not at all what evolutionary biologists believe.

Natural selection is not random. It is absolutely targeted and directional. It does not have foresight or advanced planning, of course, but that is very different from saying everything is purely random.

They present this absurd view of evolution, and then position their own beliefs as the only reasonable alternative—as if their version must be true if this caricature of evolution is not. That is dishonest. You can usually spot a charlatan that way: when they present opposing views as ridiculous caricatures, you know you are not dealing with an honest actor.

Jacobsen: Is the relationship between scientists and the general public strong—or strained—right now?

Lents: Right now, it is quite strained. We have had some major public controversies and debates that have eroded public confidence in science. Sometimes, there is some fault on the part of scientists or scientific institutions. But more often than not, the problem lies with bad actors.

I would say vaccine skepticism is a good example of this kind of erosion of public trust. Yes, vaccine injuries are real. They do happen. But they are rare, specific in nature, and well-documented in terms of what they can actually cause.

But the vaccine skeptic community has, frankly, lost touch with reality. The risks are wildly exaggerated, and that has significantly eroded public confidence. There’s now a whole generation of Americans who believe that vaccination carries all kinds of potential long-term negative health consequences—and that is simply not true.

Again, vaccine injuries do exist, but they are rare, they are contained, and they are almost nothing like what vaccine skeptics portray. That kind of misinformation is damaging. Once someone’s trust in public health starts to erode, it creates cracks—openings for distrust to spread to other areas of science and medicine.

We see a similar pattern with climate change—specifically anthropogenic climate change. Among scientists who study the climate, including geochemists and atmospheric chemists, there is overwhelming evidence and a clear understanding of what is happening. Yes, there are real debates about what to do about it, and yes, the models have some uncertainty. But those are debates around the margins—not disagreements about whether climate change is real or human-caused.

Yet, if you listen to climate skeptics, they would have you believe that it is all guesswork, that scientists are promoting “crazy theories” to boost their grant funding. First of all, that is not how grant funding works. Making exaggerated, unsupported claims is a great way to get your grant rejected—not funded.

Scientists are actually quite careful and cautious in how they word things. And they are especially critical of each other’s grant applications. If someone steps too far outside the bounds of what the evidence supports, you can be sure they will be criticized—harshly—by their peers.

In fact, we almost enjoy taking each other down a notch when reviewing proposals or evaluating research. The idea that science is some kind of herd mentality or “consensus science,” where we all ignore our own instincts to follow the crowd—that just does not reflect reality.

There’s no way you could be a practicing, professional scientist and truly believe that. We are not necessarily friendly to one another in peer review. We will challenge any perceived weakness in a model or a theory—because we respect the process.

And that’s the key point: individual scientists do not have to be perfect—none of us are. But the scientific process is self-correcting. When you have many independent minds working on a problem, each study builds incrementally on previous work. That allows us to zero in on the truth, step by step.

Not every individual study is perfect. Not every conclusion is final. But each one moves us forward, adds to the collective knowledge, and becomes part of the bigger picture.

So right now, we are seeing skepticism toward science in three completely different areas: evolution, climate change, and vaccine safety. And the skepticism is spreading.

Once people lose faith in scientific institutions, that distrust begins to seep into everything else. That is why you see people rejecting traditional medicine in favor of alternatives—like taking fish oil, for example. By the way, fish oil is good for you. I take a fish oil supplement every day because it helps improve my lipid profile a little bit.

It reduces the oxidation of some of the lipoproteins in my blood. And I know that, over time, that can offer slight protection against cardiac events. But that is all it does. It is not a magic cure for anything.

I have no illusions that this is going to be the deciding factor between having a heart attack or not. But as part of a healthy diet and a healthy lifestyle, fish oil can provide a modest benefit for your lipid profile. That is it. And it is one of the very few supplements for which we actually have data supporting that conclusion.

Almost everything else in the supplement store is complete garbage. It does nothing. Many high-quality studies have been conducted on these supplements, and most have failed to demonstrate any health benefit—short-term or long-term.

And yet, there are people who will swear by their supplements without any scientific evidence—because someone told them to. Then, ironically, they will turn around and not believe scientists, even when hundreds of peer-reviewed studies support a scientific consensus.

It seems almost completely backward—the way skepticism is misapplied today. I wish I had the answer. I do not. But I am going to keep doing my job, which is to communicate accurate science as best I can.

Jacobsen: How do science communicators push back against misinformation and pseudoscience—through social media, campaigns, documentaries, engagement with the public, or through interaction with political and scientific bodies? How do you personally do that?

The creationism example is pretty straightforward because they are, frankly, so clownish. Whether it’s intelligent design creationism—which usually involves credentialed, mostly Protestant men—or the less sophisticated crowd, like “Banana Man” types, it is easy to point out the flaws in their arguments. So in a way, that battle is easier.

But in other cases, it gets trickier. 

Lents: And that is where science journalists become incredibly important. They can be our best allies because they are better equipped to communicate with the public—and they also have more time to do it.

You have to remember, most scientists—almost all, really—are fully occupied with their day jobs: doing science, publishing research, managing labs. Communicating with the public is something very few of us have the time or bandwidth to do well or consistently.

That is why science journalists are the bridge between the scientific process and the general public.

I try to support them every chance I get. I am friends with a few. I share their work, I promote them, I work with them, and I review their books when they write them.

Science journalists are key allies. There are also efforts like the Alan Alda Center for Communicating Science at Stony Brook University. But I would love to see more being done to promote, support, and raise the profile of that profession. Because they really can be the trusted intermediaries between science and the public.

And that was especially important during COVID. We saw some incredible science journalism—from Carl Zimmer, Ed Yong, and many others—who were doing the essential work of getting accurate information to the public, often at great personal cost.

Some of them were even threatened. So, trying to communicate science to the public can sometimes be a dangerous endeavor, especially when people have lost trust or gone down conspiratorial rabbit holes.

But another great thing about science journalism is how it connects with younger generations—students in high school, college, and early-career professionals who have a passion for science. They love science. But then they get into the coursework, and it is not what they expected. They find it dry or difficult. They are not engaged. Maybe they struggle with the technical aspects or with their grades.

And what they originally thought science was—was storytelling. Fun, interesting stories about discovery, exploration, and curiosity. And I always say to students like that, “You’re in luck.” Because there are other ways to be part of science besides becoming a scientist.

Being a scientist can be boring. The work is laborious and repetitive. There is a lot of mindless labor involved—counting things, measuring things, repeating the same procedure dozens of times. To publish something, your results have to be meticulously verified and documented. And to someone who loves narrative and storytelling, that can sound incredibly dull.

But science journalism offers the best of both worlds. You get to be close to the science. You talk to scientists, read their work, attend conferences. And then you go and tell the story to the public. It is a bridge between the humanities and the natural sciences.

Science journalists play a crucial role in translating complex, nuanced research into clear, engaging insights. The public wants the bottom line: What does this mean? Why is it important? Science journalists provide that connection.

It is a profession I would love to see more support for in our society.

Jacobsen: My follow-up to that would be—why not approach an endowment or a foundation to support this work? Maybe establish fellowships for aspiring science journalists—or for working journalists who have a clear understanding of science and want to contribute to public communication.

Even if there is no funding, you could offer them something—a research associate position, or a fellowship title—so they have formal recognition while doing what they are already passionate about.

That way, if someone asks, “Why are you writing about this scientific issue?” they can say, “I’m a research associate,” or “I’m a fellow at such-and-such institute.” Even if it is unpaid, the title can provide legitimacy and open doors. And if funding is available, all the better. But even without it, that structure can be valuable.

Lents: That sort of thing can go a long way. That’s a great model. In some ways, it is the apprenticeship model. And that’s actually how we train scientists, so it would mirror that approach well.

You have the Alan Alda Center for Communicating Science—so far as I know, that’s the only organization explicitly focused on science communication and journalism. And I would love to say: We love you, Alan! It’s a wonderful thing he’s doing. That’s exactly the kind of work I wish we were doing more of.

I would love to see foundations, philanthropies, and wealthy donors thinking about this—about the good work that could come from simply educating more people on how to communicate science effectively.

And not everyone trained in science communication has to go write for The New York Times. There are many ways a science communicator can make a living and make a difference. For example, someone could work at a PR firm—if they have training in science communication, that could be a major asset. Or in healthcare—at a hospital or pharmaceutical company—helping to translate cutting-edge research for patients, or even for medical professionals.

That would be an amazing thing.

So yes, I would love to see science writing and science journalism get even more recognition and support as a serious discipline.

Jacobsen: How do you communicate the excitement of scientific discovery without oversensationalizing the findings and damaging credibility?

Lents: That’s a great question because it’s something we all struggle with—in both science and science communication.

Big, flashy, exciting results are the ones people are most likely to read, to share, to talk about. They’re also more likely to get published or funded. So, there’s always a temptation to exaggerate—even unconsciously.

That’s why training in proper context and communication is so important.

In the sciences, that usually happens during our professional formation. We have to defend our ideas before committees, write grant proposals, and pass peer review. These processes involve scrutiny. People are actively looking for weaknesses, exaggerations, and inaccuracies. So, you learn to temper your language and keep things in check.

But when communicating with the public, there’s no peer review. No committee. No filter to keep you honest. That’s why it is so important to take that responsibility seriously—and to hold each other accountable when we see inaccurate claims.

This has happened to me. I was once giving a talk at CSICon, which is a major conference for skeptics and scientists. I said something, kind of as an aside—it wasn’t a central point—but I overstated something about animal diets.

Someone in the audience caught it, tweeted about it, and others joined the conversation. By the time I finished the talk, there was already a whole thread on Twitter discussing the mistake.

I was able to jump in and say, “You’re right. I said it too strongly. Here’s what I meant.” And within ten or fifteen minutes, we had it all cleared up. Everyone was happy with the clarification.

That was a rare example of real-time correction.

Unfortunately, what we often see today is people retreating to ideological camps. Instead of constructive correction, people circle the wagons—either to defend or attack perceived opponents.

So, while we are quite divided now and those moments of good-faith dialogue are rarer, I think scientists—especially those with public-facing roles—do a decent job of critiquing exaggerated claims when we see them. And we must keep doing that.

But we should do it respectfully. There’s no need to be rude or try to destroy someone’s reputation. We do better when we call out exaggeration or pseudoscience civilly, and I believe more scientists should take part in that effort.

Jacobsen: Professor Lents, thank you so much for your time again today. I really appreciate it.

Lents: As always, I support experts. Not a popular thing to say right now, apparently, but still—yes.

Thanks so much for your interest. I really appreciate it. I’d love to see this reach more people. It’s a great thing you’re doing—and yes, keep up the good work.

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