The Problem with Being Right: Lessons in Science Communication

Being right doesn't automatically make you persuasive. That's an uncomfortable lesson for anyone who communicates complicated information for a living, especially science communication. You can have the research, the data, and the experts. You can even know, with almost absolute certainty, that what you're telling people is true, and your audience can still walk away unconvinced.

I remember having a conversation with one of my managers over a sponsorship package. We disagreed about the best way to execute one of the elements, and after going back and forth, he eventually ended the conversation by declaring that he was 100% right.

He wasn't, but there was another sales representative in the room nodding along with him, and at that point there wasn't anything I could say that was going to change his mind. The conversation was over. That's something we don't talk about enough when discussing persuasion. Sometimes more evidence doesn't help because the disagreement is no longer about the evidence.

Few movies take that idea to a more ridiculous extreme than Don't Look Up. Two astronomers discover a comet heading directly toward Earth. They do the math, verify their findings through peer review, and even determine when it will hit. The problem of the movie isn't figuring out whether the comet exists. the problem is convincing everyone else to care. Eventually, even the question of whether the comet exists becomes part of the argument.

Don't Look Up's Premise

Dr. Randall Mindy and graduate student Kate Dibiasky discover a comet on a collision course with Earth. This should be fairly straightforward information to communicate.

Giant comet - Earth - Collision - Bad - Armageddon levels of Bad (cue Aerosmith music)

Instead, their discovery enters an ecosystem where everyone has a different incentive for interpreting it.

• Scientists want people to understand the evidence.

• The White House wants to understand the political consequences.

• Television producers want something entertaining.

• The morning-show hosts want to keep the segment upbeat.

• Social media wants a meme.

• A technology billionaire sees an economic opportunity.

Eventually, the public is asked to choose between competing narratives about something they could theoretically settle by looking at the sky. That's what makes the satire work. Everyone is technically talking about the same comet but they're just not having the same conversation.

One of the systems that should help settle that disagreement—the scientific process itself—starts getting pushed aside. There's an early emphasis on having the discovery properly reviewed and verified. That's important. Science isn't supposed to depend on whether Randall or Kate personally seems convincing on television. Other experts should be able to examine the evidence, challenge the assumptions, reproduce the calculations, and establish whether the conclusion holds.

But as the story progresses, the public conversation moves much faster than that process.

The question stops being: What does the evidence tell us? It becomes: Whose version of the evidence do you believe? That's a very different communication environment.

When the Scientist Becomes the Story

Kate is perhaps the most obvious example of what happens next. Her frustration is completely understandable. She knows what's coming and understands the consequences. Then she finds herself on morning television watching people treat the end of civilization like another segment squeezed between celebrity gossip and commercials.

So she gets angry. Really angry. And suddenly her reaction becomes the story. Even her boyfriend dumps her partially due to the negative social media reaction she receives from her outburst on television. The audience becomes focused on the person communicating the information rather than the mundane news that - oh by the way - a comet is on a collision course for Earth. No big deal, let's go back to celebrity gossip.

Randall initially seems to learn from her mistake. He becomes calmer, more polished, and more media-friendly. People like him, or at least think they like him. Who wouldn't like Leonardo DiCaprio in a suit. Then something more complicated happens. He becomes part of the story too. Randall is swept into the administration's public messaging. He becomes a recognizable figurehead and even develops a relationship with television host Brie Evantee. His celebrity grows alongside the crisis he's supposed to be explaining.

I think that's one of the true tragedies of his character. Randall is a teacher and he genuinely wants to teach. He believes that if he can explain the science clearly enough, translate it for a broader audience, and meet people where they are, they'll understand.

That's normally good communication advice, but he makes an assumption familiar to anyone who has spent time teaching: He assumes the audience has entered the conversation willing to learn. His astronomy students chose to be in an astronomy classroom. The American public did not.

Teaching an Audience That Didn't Sign Up for Class

When you're teaching students, there's at least an implied agreement.

• I'm going to explain something.

• You're going to make some effort to understand it.

• We may disagree. You may get bored. Someone is absolutely going to look at their phone.

But fundamentally, we've agreed on why we're in the room. Randall approaches the public with a similar instinct. If he can become a better science educator, surely people will understand the threat. Except his new audience has wildly different priorities:

• Some are frightened.

• Some don't trust the government.

• Some are making money.

• Some are worried about politics.

• Some want reassurance.

• Some want entertainment.

• Some would rather not think about it.

• And some don't believe there's anything they personally can do anyway.

That last group is especially important. It reminds me of a moment in Project Hail Mary when Dr. Ryland Grace explains the astrophage problem to his middle-school students. Their initial response is essentially: We're doomed. Then they learn the worst global consequences aren't expected for decades. Suddenly, the emotional temperature changes. Why? The facts haven't become less serious. Their relationship to the consequences has.

That's an uncomfortable but very human part of communication. People don't simply ask: Is this true? They also ask: What does this mean for me? And then: What am I supposed to do about it?

Knowing the Science Isn't the Same as Science Communication

This is also why effective science educators are so interesting to watch. Someone like Kyle Hill can take complicated subjects—nuclear energy, radiation, physics, engineering—and build an explanation around an audience that may have little formal knowledge of the subject. That's a different skill from simply knowing the science.

Not everyone can build audience trust like Carl Sagan or Neil deGrasse Tyson. They became famous partly because they could translate complex scientific ideas into language that made people want to understand them. Even Bill Nye gets attacked by detractors who focus on his engineering education rather than engaging with his role as a science communicator. That's revealing, because once the debate shifts from: "Is this explanation accurate?" to: "Why should I listen to you?" you have a different communication problem.

Randall thinks his credentials and evidence should establish the answer. Then he discovers that public credibility works differently from academic credibility. The administration turns him into an authority figure. Television turns him into a celebrity. His relationship with a television host further blurs the line between educator and personality. None of that makes the comet less real but it changes how people evaluate the messenger.

This is where one of my favorite communication metaphors becomes useful. The elephant doesn't necessarily want to be led. It wants to know why the rider is convinced the water is that way. If I'm the elephant, telling me you're an expert doesn't automatically make me follow you. Show me what you see and explain why it matters. Help me understand how you reached your conclusion. Then give me enough information to decide that following you makes sense.

That's what great science educators do particularly well. They don't simply stand at the destination yelling, "Trust me! The water is over here!" They make the journey understandable. And importantly, they understand that their audience isn't obligated to care just because they do.

The Missing Call to Action

That's where I think Don't Look Up becomes particularly interesting from a communication perspective. The public gets plenty of messaging. What they don't get is much meaningful agency. Think about the dominant messages they're eventually given.

Just Look Up.

Or:

Don't Look Up.

Those aren't plans, they're positions. The public conversation becomes binary: acknowledge the comet or reject it. Meanwhile, what exactly is an ordinary person supposed to do?

• Prepare?

• Evacuate?

• Stock supplies?

• Pressure elected officials?

• Help their neighbors?

• Continue going to work?

• Spend their savings?

• Sit quietly and hope the government fixes everything?

There isn't a useful call to action because the solution is increasingly controlled by politicians, scientists, billionaires, and institutions far beyond the average person's influence. So people create their own responses. Some decide to live like there may not be a tomorrow. Others see an opportunity to make money.

The movie even gives us people selling absurdly expensive shovels so frightened customers can supposedly dig their way to safety. That's funny because it's ridiculous. It's also exactly the kind of thing you'd expect when fear is high, trustworthy information is fragmented, and people have no idea what useful action looks like.

When communicators don't provide a credible next step, somebody else will. It may be a politician, an influencer, a conspiracy theorist, and a salesperson with a $5,000 shovel. But uncertainty rarely stays empty for long.

The Communication Principle

There's a lesson here I used to emphasize with my public-speaking students: your audience doesn't receive your message in the same context in which you created it. You may have spent weeks researching something, but your audience hasn't. You may understand why one statistic completely changes the conversation, but they're hearing that statistic for the first time. You may have spent hours becoming increasingly alarmed by what you've learned, but they're meeting you at hour zero. And they may not share your priorities, incentives, trust, or even your belief that understanding the subject is worth their time.

That's a difficult gap to bridge. Repeating the information louder doesn't necessarily close it. Neither does declaring yourself 100% right. Kate demonstrates what happens when expertise can't adapt to the audience. Randall demonstrates something more subtle: what happens when expertise adapts so aggressively to the communication environment that the communicator risks becoming part of the spectacle.

One loses control of the audience. The other nearly loses control of himself.

When Everyone Has a Different Incentive

This is the part of Don't Look Up I find most applicable outside the movie. Communication rarely fails because only one person is involved. Think about how information travels through an organization.

An engineer identifies a problem.

A product manager interprets it.

Marketing decides how customers should hear about it.

Sales wants to know what to tell prospects.

Customer Success needs an answer for existing customers.

Leadership wants to understand the business implications.

Legal wants to know what shouldn't be said.

Everyone can be competent and genuinely believe they're helping. The message can still change every time it crosses another desk. That's because each person is answering a slightly different question.

The engineer asks: What happened?

The executive asks: What does this mean for the business?

The salesperson asks: What does this mean for my customer?

Marketing asks: How do we explain this?

Legal asks: What can we safely say?

The customer asks: What does this mean for me, and what should I do now?

None of those questions is inherently wrong. The problem comes when nobody recognizes that they're answering different ones. That's how organizations end up with five people discussing the same situation while believing everyone else doesn't understand it. They're all looking at the same comet.

The Real-World Parallel

One of the strangest things about working in television is seeing how dramatically the same information can change depending on where you're standing. News, Sales, Promotions,

Production and Programming can all be looking at the same event and see completely different priorities.

News wants accuracy and editorial independence.

Sales sees advertiser implications.

Promotions thinks about audience awareness.

Production is wondering whether any of this can physically happen before airtime.

Management is trying to understand how all those pieces fit together.

My years in broadcasting taught me that silos aren't dangerous because people don't care. Often, people care very deeply about their particular piece of the puzzle. The danger is assuming everyone else sees the whole picture exactly the way you do. They don't.

That's why some of the most valuable people inside an organization aren't necessarily the loudest experts in the room. They're the translators. The person who can say:

"Here's what News means."

"Here's why Sales is concerned."

"Here's what the customer actually needs to know."

"Here's what we can realistically accomplish by tomorrow."

Translation isn't watering down expertise. It's what allows expertise to travel. That's the difference between simplifying an idea and dumbing it down. A strong educator doesn't remove the complexity because they think the audience can't handle it. They create a path through the complexity so the audience can follow. You don't have to be the smartest person in the room to be the best communicator in it. You have to understand what the other people in the room need from you.

Professor Sherwood's Practical Wisdom

If I were teaching Don't Look Up in a communication class, I wouldn't ask: Who communicated the comet correctly? I'd ask: At what point did each communicator lose the audience? That's a much more useful question.

Communication isn't complete when you've said something accurately. It isn't even complete when you've said it clearly. The audience has to understand what the information means and what they're supposed to do with it.

Before delivering complicated information, I'd ask five questions:

What do I know that my audience doesn't?

What does my audience care about that I haven't addressed?

Does my audience actually want to learn what I'm trying to teach?

Who else will interpret this message after it leaves me?

What can my audience realistically do next?

That last question is easy to overlook. A call to action isn't just something marketers put at the bottom of an email. It's how communication gives people agency. If the only options you're offering are believe me or don't believe me, you haven't necessarily helped your audience make a decision. You've asked them to pick a side.

So What?

The absurdity of Don't Look Up is that eventually the comet becomes visible. You can look up and there it is. Somehow even that isn't enough to end the argument. That's satire.

This concept is also an exaggerated version of something communicators deal with constantly.

We tend to assume that if we produce enough evidence, enough research, another chart, another expert, another slide, eventually everyone will arrive at the same conclusion. Sometimes they will. Sometimes the manager across the table will announce that he's 100% right while someone beside him nods in agreement.

Sometimes the scientist will become a celebrity and sometimes the evidence will become secondary to the person delivering it. And sometimes the audience will understand perfectly well that something is wrong and still have absolutely no idea what they're supposed to do about it. People don't interpret information in a vacuum. They interpret it through trust, experience, incentives, identity, emotion, relationships, and whatever else is competing for their attention.

That's one of the reasons Don't Look Up remains one of my favorite movies. Underneath all the absurdity, I see a movie about connection—or the consequences of losing it. Randall wants people to understand the science, but understanding the science isn't enough. People need to understand how they fit into the story.

That's also at the heart of my own philosophy about communication. Whether I'm teaching students, developing a marketing strategy, coaching someone through a presentation, or helping an organization explain something complicated, I don't think the goal is simply to transfer information from one person to another. I want people to understand how they connect to it.

• What does this mean for me?

• Why should I care?

• How does my role connect to what everyone else is trying to accomplish?

• What can I actually do next?

Those questions matter inside organizations just as much as they matter to the public staring at a comet. An employee who understands the company's strategy but can't see their place in it isn't connected to the strategy. A customer who understands your product but can't see how it improves their life doesn't have much reason to buy it. An audience that understands the problem but has no meaningful call to action has information without agency.

That's why I keep coming back to the image of the elephant and the rider. The elephant doesn't necessarily want to be led. It wants to know why the rider is convinced the water is that way. Pointing harder won't accomplish that. Neither will repeatedly reminding the elephant that you're the expert.

Show it what you see. Make the path understandable. Give it a reason to believe the destination matters. That's communication. Randall thought becoming a better teacher would solve the problem. In a classroom, maybe it would have. But the world wasn't his astronomy class. The comet was real. The science was sound. The audience still needed something more than a lecture. They needed connection.

Maybe that's what I love most about Don't Look Up. For all of its jokes about politics, media, celebrity, technology, and science, it keeps returning to what happens when people stop seeing themselves as part of the same story. Great communication can't guarantee agreement. It can't force someone to follow but it can build the connections that help people understand why we're going somewhere, where they fit into the journey, and what they can do to help us get there.

Before you tell everyone to look up, make sure they understand what they're looking at, why it matters to them, and what they can do once they see it. Being right tells people where the water is. Great communication helps them understand why it's worth making the journey.

Being right isn't the same as being heard.