The Nightmare of Scientific Communication

October 24th, 2024

In October of 2024, I attended a graduate level cancer biology lecture by Dr. Feng Yue of Northwestern University of Chicago hosted at The Rockefeller University. The lecture was free and open to the public, a fantastic thing for advanced research and overall a good thing. I actually originally intended for this post to be about his presentation if not for one problem: I, a graduate in biotechnology, struggled to follow along.

I originally planned to write a long review about the techniques involved in the research he presented but found myself quickly distracted by just how opaque the literature feels. It was hard to assess who the presentation was for. It seems to me likely that it was for graduate students, and possibly upperclassmen in undergrad education, but there were, according to the presenters, world class experts in this audience. As a medical scribe who wandered in effectively off the street, it was easy to feel like an outsider.

As a consequence I thought a lot about Dr. Angela Collier , a physicist and youtuber, who talks a lot about the gap between experts in the field and what information is presented to the layman, and how misinformation can propagate. In physics, this leads to a phenomenon where less well substantiated hypotheses and OOC abstracts of research papers can be propagated by the media cycle until it effectively becomes a fringe conspiracy.

In biology, a lot of this looks like misinformation about vaccines and cancer treatments. Most people are familiar with movements such as anti-vaxxers. The effects of this are a little bit more sinister when it comes to typical people. In an article posted on LinkedIn about a novel vaccine undergoing in-vivo trial in rats against C. diff: “Spike Protein generator? If so, is the cure worse than the invading bacteria? Please advise.”

This comment made me laugh at first, because it's a bizarre thing to say about a vaccine against C difficile. C diff is a rare but often serious infection, often found in a hospital setting. Since it has known risk factors such as antibiotics usage, a vaccine could be selectively applied to those most at risk. Furthermore. C diff is a bacteria.

So this comment immediately strikes me as someone hearing about fear mongering from the COVID MRNA vaccine, which was culturally extremely prominent, and extrapolating from it logically that a similar vaccine may have similar risks to the one he was warned about. (In reality it doesn't seem like spike proteins in isolation can cause illness either, hence COVID misinformation)

When I was 22 I was asked to give a report on my research to interested passersby at a convention at my school. At the time I was deeply involved in this research and showed up to the lab on a nearly daily basis. This is the first time I experienced first hand how important it is to know who you’re speaking to at meet them at their level. I talked to people about gene cloning and PCR, and selective plating, all things I find very simple, but I know for sure many of them walked away wondering what the hell I was talking about. That poster is on my site here, for those interested.

So, with the presentation in mind, (it was about 3D genomics and cancer) I thought I would be able to roughly meet the level of the speaker, and largely left with more questions than answers. I intend to come back to you with those answers, because I’m not the type to give up so easily. I fully intend for that post to be more at my level of knowledge so stay tuned.